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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: New general filter status file in XML
From:       Nicolas Goutte <nicog () snafu ! de>
Date:       2002-08-05 21:17:38
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On Montag, 5. August 2002 09:58, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Monday 05 August 2002 02:36, Nicolas Goutte wrote:
> > > I also wonder why you have 'good' as the maximum. As pointed out by me
> > > before this means many filters will get a different status as they
> > > assumed before that there ware things like 'perfect' and 'very good'.
> >
> > You can also look in another way: "good" is now "working" and there is a
> > new label "good" with a new meaning. All filters that are considered to
> > be finished have increased to this new "good". (As the user-visible
> > status file will not have such labels anymore, it is not much a problem.)
>
> That is what I said;
> a filter has gone from 'good' to 'working' between release. I have a
> problem with that, it seems a downgrade.

Now I have renamed the labels, still in the hotel categories: "onestar" to 
"fivestars". (Not renamed: "planned", "none", "abandoned".)

Only two formally "good" filters are now 3 stars ("threestars"):
- MS Word
- MS Excel

I do not know about KSpread's MS Excel filter, but I can tell about KWord's MS 
Word filter. There is no working support of pictures of any kind, styles can 
get mangled, KWord gives kdWarnings and even a kdError (due to a <LAYOUT> 
without name attribute.) All these are barely signs of a fully working 
filter.

>
> > And it is also why I am making it public now. Maintainers can still
> > protest. However, since I have first posted the list, I have not seen any
> > complain about the new status of a single filter.
>
> /me complains! (a number of times allready, and a number of people have
> agreed with me, I even made the weekly with the email :)
>
> > And I would be very careful with labels like "very good" and especially
> > "perfect". What can they be worth if 90% of KWord's filters will never be
> > able to support KWord's DTP mode? For me, "perfect" means more something
> > one-to-one. Again due to KWord's DTP mode that is not possible for most
> > filters. So why trying to find superlatives of "good". I find "good" fine
> > enough.
>
> To me it means something different.

May be! It is as right as the point of view of people thinking that "good" is 
100% feature, 0% crash.

> And that is exactly why I don't think filter writers should think in words,
> but more in numbers.

Numbers will have the same kind of misunderstanding.

If you see for example 70%, what does it mean?

70% of reliability
70% of the features supported
70% of the files supported
70% of the code done
70% of the code working
70% of the users happy with the filter

>

(...)

>
> > > This will then be used to determine which status string to generate in
> > > the HTML file, since talking in numbers always makes for more informed
> > > decisions.
> >
> > Talking about numbers meaning sence, yes! About artificial numbers, no!
>
> They are still better then a list of words that mean something different to
> a different group of people. French people look at the prepared list
> different from, say, a dutch person :)

But don't you see that the problem exist with numbers too. People simply have 
different ways of seeing things.

Take an example of a filter, give it to a few people and ask the people to 
give the filter a note.

The first person is very methodical and finds out that 35 features of 100 are 
implemented. He gives a 35% to the filter.

The second one is practical. He takes his collection of files and tests them 
with the filter. Only 10 files out of hundred worked: makes 10%.

The third one will notice that all simple files work but more advanced ones do 
not. He thinks that half the work is already done: 50%.

The fourth one has very special files. The filter always crashes: 0%

The fifth one has only simple letters: the filter always works: 100%

Any other person will have other criteria and would give other notes.

Therefore, as developers are human users too, they will not have a single way 
how to see a filter. So any method will have drawbacks. Percents too.

(...)

Have a nice day/evening/night!
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