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List:       openoffice-discuss
Subject:    Re: [discuss] Re: Word count, again....
From:       "M. Fioretti" <mfioretti () mclink ! it>
Date:       2005-02-07 4:40:36
Message-ID: 20050207044036.GF12273 () mclink ! it
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On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 20:40:05 PM +0000, Andrew Brown
(killspam@darwinwars.com) wrote: 
> "M. Fioretti" <mfioretti@mclink.it> wrote in
> news:20050206094804.GC12273 
> @mclink.it:
> 
> > Me, I can confirm that whenever I write an article it does have an
> > assigned word count, and that checking its value whenever I move/
> > rearrange/edit/delete paragraphs is the one thing that slows me
> > down the MOST in OO.o.
> 
> So download and use my macro -- put it on a button, and it's pretty
> easy.

Andrew,

I _am_ using your macro and am grateful for it. It is excellent, like
the others you make, but I stand by what I said, because:

1) w.r.t. the fuel level analogy, having to push a button to check it
   is better than parking, but still much more awkward than what it
   should be, that is have it always available in the status bar

2) the *real* problem is not the quality of your macro. Is the fact
   that OO.o proper does NOT have a usable (=constantly updated in
   the status bar) word count. The fact that you must discover that a
   separate macro exists, find it and install it. All to have (not
   your fault of course) a sub-optimal functionality: a patch, not a
   solution.

The prove is the fact that the reviewer I mentioned in this thread
immediately went for the word count and couldn't care less to check
if, with *his* own effort, the program could reach that level of (for
him) minimal functionality. Because, being (ok, for him) a really
basic function it should have come in the status bar with the
package. It simply wasn't his responsibility to do it.

The net result is, like it or not, that OO.o ended up looking
suboptimal for casual readers because it doesn't have the first
function that *all* its first time reviewers need in order to deliver
earlier. Maybe this is one of the areas with the greatest ratio between
marketing/PR benefit and coding effort, but it keeps being ignored.

I know of the issue for placing the word count in the status bar, but
(as far as I remember) I gave up voting back then because discussions
here gave me the impression that there was really no feeling or
acknowledgment of this particular problem.

Ciao,
	Marco F.

-- 
Marco Fioretti                    mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Red Hat & Fedora for low memory   http://www.rule-project.org/

We shall serve God, family and country, in that order, because without
the one before it, each would perish.

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