[sdiy] PCB/Schematic software

[John Alex Hvidlykke]

> > Open Office may lack some of the features that MS Office has, but When
> > I started using it 6+ years ago I found it easier to use than MS
> > Office (having not used office software much).
> > All four of us use Open Office at the company where I work and have
> > not found any limitations doing spreadsheets and text documents.
> 
> What about macros, such as with embedded VB code in Excel?  This is very
> important for me in my work.  I also write C++ code and compile into DLLs
to
> run within VB code in Excel.  If Open Office can do all that stuff, then
maybe
> I should check it out.
> 
> For the record, I only use Office 2003 (running on Windows XP
Professional).
> The think I like about it is that they worked nearly all the bugs out of
it.
> Later versions of Office moved reorganized all of the buttons and menus,
> thus rendering it virtually useless for anyone used to the older versions.
> Why software geeks do that sort of thing is beyond me.

I am not sure about the VB code. But all sheets and documents I have
imported into OpenOffice (and later LibreOffice) has translated perfectly,
including the formulas. I seems the translation is very thorough.

I agree on the design sentiment. One of the advantages in OpenOffice is that
it looks exactly like MS Office - much more that MS Office itself does
today!

I would not blame the change on the software geeks but on the marketing
geeks and the user interface laboratory geeks.  But having an acute
visual/positional memory I find the changing tab-style menu too confusing,
compared to a fixed set of menus.

Cheers
John