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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Question about your KPresenter's review
From:       Catherine Olanich Raymond <cathy () thyrsus ! com>
Date:       2002-02-11 6:42:32
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On Sunday 10 February 2002 08:15 am, David Faure wrote:

> The documentation is being worked on - by the very brave team of
> documentation writers. Have a look at koffice/doc/kpresenter on
> webcvs.kde.org.

I will do so.  Thank you.  As I just pointed out to Thomas Zander in respond 
to a posting by him, though, an end user is not likely to think of trolling 
the Web for information on an application.  Perhaps more to the point, an end 
user who finds that the program interface and on-line help do not enlighten 
them about how to use the program's basic features is likely to throw his or 
her hands up in frustration *before* getting around to looking on the Web for 
information and guidance.

>  But since the UI needs to be improved first, as you noted
> (same work as the one that was done on KWord, cleaning up menus and
> toolbars), it'd be a better idea to do that first, before finishing the
> documentation.

I have mixed feelings about this.  I believe the UI needs to be improved.  On 
the other hand, KPresenter is out there *now*, and it does perform the basic 
tasks--if the user can only figure out how to do so.  Fixing the 
documentation first will give users incentives to try using KPresenter now.  
If you fix the program first, you may find that the users who might have been 
willing to give it a try have already given up on it.



> The sound effect when switching pages is already implemented in CVS -
> thanks to Toshitaka Fujioka.

That's good.  We'll have to experiment with the improved version.


> Changing the font properties of a whole object at once is done too
> (hmm, this reminds me I still have a patch for doing the same thing in
> KWord to test and apply).

Yes, and in fact I have comments on KWord that I have not had enough time to 
send the team yet.  I will try to do so this week.

> The current work on KPresenter includes zoom support, and using the same
> text-formatting object as KWord, bringing WYSIWYG, more fine-grained
> text-formatting options (e.g. different types of paragraph in the same
> text object etc.)

All of these sound like improvements.  If you like, you can send me the 
current version and I will happily attempt to use it, see whether I run into 
any other problems/bugs, and let you know about them.


> Blinking text: this is the first request I see for this. Obviously not
> such a showstopper as you seem to think. Can be done in libkotext, with a
> timer to hide/show the text, I suppose.

I admit that Eric was more frustrated by the lack of blinking text; we wanted 
that effect for one of our slides in the Drag.net presentation.  I would say 
that most business users won't care, one way or another, if they cannot get 
blinking text, so this can be an item left to later versions.


> KOffice's main problem is the lack of developers. We're doing what we can,
> but building a complete office suite takes time.

I understand that.  Moreover, I think KDE is building a good suite.  As I've 
said before, the KDE suite has many strong attributes.  KWord comes to mind.


> Bashing the work that has been done, the way you did, is quite impolite
> and doesn't really motivate people to improve the application.

It was not, and is not, our intention to bash.  It was our intention to issue 
a kind of wake-up call.  I'm sure that KDE needs more developers.  I, 
however, am not a developer and cannot help with that. I am an actual end 
user, and it seemed to me (and to Eric and Rob as well) that the KDE team 
needs feedback from non-technical end users in order to achieve a level of 
performance that will interest potential users outside the Linux community.


>
> "K Presenter was extremely frustrating to learn and rather limited."
> really surprised me. I have been doing more than 12 presentations with
> KPresenter - see http://perso.mandrakesoft.com/~david/, and I found it
> quite a nice application to use. (Ok, I did fix anything that wasn't
> working the way I wanted, and added a few features while doing those
> presentations ;). 

But  David, that's the point.  :-)  *You* had no problem using the program 
because you helped write it, and understood what features were available and 
how to use them.  

I'm not sure it really possible for the development team to forecast how easy 
the application they are writing will be for end users to learn--you simply 
know too much about how the application actually works.  That is where 
feedback from actual non-technical users has to come in.


> It needs improvements - which is under way - but really,
> I was always considering KPresenter one of the best applications for
> making presentations.

Out of curiosity, which other "applications for making presentations" have 
you tried to use?

I had never used a presentations application before my experience with 
KPresenter.  However, afterward I experimented a little with MS 
PowerPoint--and found text editing, at least, to be a lot easier to deduce 
and less frustrating.

Thanks for the comments--I appreciated them.

-- 
Cathy Raymond <cathy@thyrsus.com>

"The meeting of personalities is like the contact of chemical substances; 
if there is any reaction, both are transformed."  Carl Jung
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