I understand what you mean, this is an interresting function, even if I suspect this may be a kind of nightmare to implement properly.
But as for the example you were providing, I was just thinking that the search and replace function with proper use of regular expressions would be efficient to do it. Granted, it is not always easy to build regular expressions for Mr. Everybody, but this one should be pretty straightforward if I read your case well. Can they be included in a macro-command? I wonder.
It is possible to define the language of a whole selection by just two contextual clicks: a great improvement if not an inovative feature. Even more so considering that the typespelling options in recent Word versions are completely unusable (try to deactivate it for instance...)
Many other features are presented in a much more consistent ways than in Word : image, table properties are all accessible trough a single serie of tabs. Options management is way ahead.
List & title management is as bloated as in Msft gas-plant.
The help tools actually allow one to find what one looks for, compared to the screw-your-windows-with-flashy-crap of the latest Msft software, which randomly provides some information sometimes in an understandable language.
I do not know if this is an inovation, but the fact that "clipy" (l'insuportable trombonne) is not there is a most marvelous idea.
And, last but not least, one of its greatest inovation is stability, fewer bugs. Some have already spoken of file formats: I agree and won't ellaborate here.
Style management is consistent too. PDF creation is a nice tool.
The feature I really look forward to seing there (it should be there in OOo 2) is keyboard shortcuts to directly apply styles: how on earth did they forget that?
One important thing to mention would be the versions of Office they were using previously. My own use of "recent" Office products, and more specifically Word and Outlook, make me think they become unusable because they are filled with really nasty bugs. From the last months (Word 2002): - search & replace function forgets occurences; - I suddenly saw clipart trees appearing in my resume with the "copy/paste aspect" function; - suddenly, a character appears that one cannot erase, nor the line to which it belongs. Create a new doc, paste what's before, paste what's after, trash your first file. - Outlook 2003 ergonomy is a mess and is incredibly ressource-hungry. - Excel just trashes file saved on the network. - and so on and so on.
Despite all the so-said discriminatory pratices in France, my country is much more opened to foreign films than the Us. In this field, the US are the heralds of protectionism.
no corruption, no pork-barrel spending... lack of competitive pressure
The competitve pressure is clearly a strong incentive to reduce costs and to look for efficiency, you are plainly right. But a lack of funding is another strong incentive to creativity too, and the current hyper-wealthy commercial TV is miserable compared to the poorly-funded public TV that existed 30 years ago: fortunately it is now possible to download those old programms to properly educate kids. There's no progress in competition in this this field, or, to be more precise, the spirit in which things are done seems at least as important as the economical solution in which they are produced.
As for the corruption and the pork-barrel spending, it seems to me to prosper at least as easily in the private sector as in the public sector: just consider fiscal paradises for instance and all the wealth siphoned to them. Should Mr. Hayek and his like just consider the old Adam Smith moral rules they would be ashamed of the current state of affairs. Public spending has, in a way, a great advantage over private spending: there are some chances that it will be vetted by strict accountability, transparent procedures and democratic choices, all conditions that are quite rarely met in the wonderfull private world.
Please do not consider me as a communist: I am in no way against the private sector, nor against private property and I value the free enterprise for its ability to innovate, for its fostering of energies. But the "big" private sector nowadays is mainly and uniquely interested in short term huge profit and has no interest at all in we, the people. I scoff at dogmas, including at Mr. Hayek and his kin ones.
Hamburgers - however juicy - are very good at short term profit and very destructive of long term culinary art, except for the happy few. From British railways to California energy crisis and to Fox News, we have plenty of examples of complete failures of the "only the private sector is beautiful" model.
The state can make mistakes like this Greenhouse built in easily flooded zone (the Grande bibliothèque in Paris), but let us not forget externalities (?), let us judge on a case by case basis, and let me state out that those huge corporations, this weird financial planet, completely free of any democratic control, seems to me a very real world power on its own, a threat to democracy and to the planet.
Je suis français aussi, et "courriel" est utilisé de temps en temps, de plus en plus à mon sens, parce que c'est quand même beaucoup plus français que "e-mail", qui est très très moche en français. "mél" était hideux et est mort dès que né.
En l'occurence, je remercie les cousins québéquois de nous avoir fournis celui-ci, qui a de plus l'avantage d'être compréhensible pour le néophyte. Quelle idée, cet auto-dénigrement systématique !
There is just something very wrong with the idea of using English as a lingua franca ! <p> I would hate learning latin again. I will stick with English.
I read perhaps 300 comments so far and my feeling are mixed: - there are plenty of good-will people there, thanks - and half/. people forget to read comments, to follow links or to think as soon as they can resume French bashing.
I hope the translation will be more faithfull than AP's translation of Chirac wich are generally biased to suit the neocons.
Anyway, Tolkien's language is more marvelous in in English than translated in French, and nothing compares to the original work in its own language. You make Jeanneney's point there. What a pity if European litterature was only to be read through Us-English translations!
Many high-profile Frenchmen have been shown to have made millions (possibly billions) off of Iraq's oil-for-food program,
Could you just name one, with proofs, not with Fox's headlines? And why not thousands of billions of trillions of Euros if we go there? In which currency do you speak? Has the dollar fallen so low lately?
As so does the USA. Try to project a foreign film there and enjoy privately buit protectionism backed by the State. "Amélie": how many screens in the US when it was launched?
Forgive me, but when some label Jeanneney's editorial as "anti-american", I do understand that they feel like being attacked. The title goes on to say that "France hates Google"... This is either paranoia or "double standards".
As for the "Uber-Esperanto", it is a cute idea in a way, but it already exists and is called English. The bottomline remains: English won, so let us use it as a lingua franca, but we must be very carefull to cultural wealth such as languages and English speakers must aknoledge it.
You are right to point out that Europe will be more powerfull once all its citizens share a common language. This will take time, it will always remain very imperfect and non-native-english-speakers will always have a disadvantage over the others. I am one and I express myself more fluently in French, mind you:-)
You forgot to mention that the building is located on the riverside of the Seine and that its bottom stairs are not only under the river level, but under the ground water level too: they can be drowned.
A complete architect idiocy, a tribute to an old president senility. I am an ashamed French about this one. Fortunately, the most precious books -and their are manu of them- have been numerised and are kept somewhere else in an appropriate bunker, not in a sinking greenhouse.
Mr Jeanneney's solution is a classical French top-down, command-economy approach.
Well... if it does work, and it frequently does, what is your point?
I am not so pleased to pay a 5% or 10% premimum on a car just because they decided to buy silly adverts I do not trust in newspapers or on TV. If the public efficiency matches the private efficiency and is judiciously aimed, what good is there to criticise it?
Even if Bush father or son had learned French, would they appreciate if the French had sent a non-english speaking liason officer? No. Why should have de Gaulle?
I am French and I like it, provided authors and editors are not spoiled, and that Google has a mandatory obligation to remain free of charge with a zero downtime and never unduly censors things, should it become the Sole Purveyor of Knowledge:-)
You do not have to. France does use Google and Jeanneney too. We do not hate Google and neither does he.
He simply points out that the effort led by Google, if is successfull, will once again be a powerfull tool to strengthen English (and US thinking) as the dominant cultural reference, and that this is a threat for all other cultures that imperils them a bit further.
He just calls for his European colleagues to join an effort to accept the challenge and match it in our European way, which does not always goes through private companies, although it often does. As far as I understand Google's reaction from the linked article, they do understand his point of view. I rather trust Google, but I understand what Jeanneney means and I approve his call.
How on earth does it come that any call for a non-american effort is immediately labeled as a threat to America? Why are so many Americans surprised when one states out that the disapearance of local cultures in the mainstream medias (TV, movies, Internet, scientific publications...), because they are overwhelmed by US might, is a pity, a loss to the entire humanity?
Fortunately, GwBush has just saved the French fries from oblivion. But French bashing continues unabated.
Completely wrong. The court actions were not triggered by the French government but by French private companies, Jewish defense groups or anti-racism groups.
France is a democratic country and one can raise a case before a court, thank you.
Well, if this a quote, Wikipedia has it wrong there: what makes "53% of GDP in France" (to be verified) is not the government spending but the _public_ spending, which includes healthcare, social security (we call it "retraites"), local communities spendings, allocations for the unemployed, and so on.
So the public spending is much broader than the the government spending here, and the later does _not_ amount to 53% of GDP. Last time I heard about it, our Sécurité Sociale (pensions + healthcare for just everybody), a system -theoreticaly- managed by the Unions and the big companies _together_, amounted to a quarter of GDP (should be more than that now).
Considering how expensive healtcare is in the US, I would appreciate to read evenhanded statistics, with those health costs included in the US "public spending". And pensions paid by private companies to their former employees should be included too of course. And every single penny spent on healthcare by private fundations. What would be the results ? A leftist (bah!) US, but with 40 millions citizens with no healthcare?
French bashing still makes some laugh apparently. It just makes me sick from the beginning.
And Danes or Swedes fare even worse than Frogs if one compares that way.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand what you mean, this is an interresting function, even if I suspect this may be a kind of nightmare to implement properly.
But as for the example you were providing, I was just thinking that the search and replace function with proper use of regular expressions would be efficient to do it. Granted, it is not always easy to build regular expressions for Mr. Everybody, but this one should be pretty straightforward if I read your case well. Can they be included in a macro-command? I wonder.
Best regards.
It is possible to define the language of a whole selection by just two contextual clicks: a great improvement if not an inovative feature. Even more so considering that the typespelling options in recent Word versions are completely unusable (try to deactivate it for instance...)
Many other features are presented in a much more consistent ways than in Word : image, table properties are all accessible trough a single serie of tabs. Options management is way ahead.
List & title management is as bloated as in Msft gas-plant.
The help tools actually allow one to find what one looks for, compared to the screw-your-windows-with-flashy-crap of the latest Msft software, which randomly provides some information sometimes in an understandable language.
I do not know if this is an inovation, but the fact that "clipy" (l'insuportable trombonne) is not there is a most marvelous idea.
And, last but not least, one of its greatest inovation is stability, fewer bugs. Some have already spoken of file formats: I agree and won't ellaborate here.
Style management is consistent too. PDF creation is a nice tool.
The feature I really look forward to seing there (it should be there in OOo 2) is keyboard shortcuts to directly apply styles: how on earth did they forget that?
Best regards.
Have you tried to use the search and replace feature with regular expressions ?
Beside, this is not a bug but a missing feature, and it may not be considered properly if you noticed it in this improper way.
One important thing to mention would be the versions of Office they were using previously. My own use of "recent" Office products, and more specifically Word and Outlook, make me think they become unusable because they are filled with really nasty bugs. From the last months (Word 2002) : ; ;
- search & replace function forgets occurences
- I suddenly saw clipart trees appearing in my resume with the "copy/paste aspect" function
- suddenly, a character appears that one cannot erase, nor the line to which it belongs. Create a new doc, paste what's before, paste what's after, trash your first file.
- Outlook 2003 ergonomy is a mess and is incredibly ressource-hungry.
- Excel just trashes file saved on the network.
- and so on and so on.
This is with a rather limited use.
Thank you to make my point.
Despite all the so-said discriminatory pratices in France, my country is much more opened to foreign films than the Us. In this field, the US are the heralds of protectionism.
The competitve pressure is clearly a strong incentive to reduce costs and to look for efficiency, you are plainly right. But a lack of funding is another strong incentive to creativity too, and the current hyper-wealthy commercial TV is miserable compared to the poorly-funded public TV that existed 30 years ago: fortunately it is now possible to download those old programms to properly educate kids. There's no progress in competition in this this field, or, to be more precise, the spirit in which things are done seems at least as important as the economical solution in which they are produced.
As for the corruption and the pork-barrel spending, it seems to me to prosper at least as easily in the private sector as in the public sector: just consider fiscal paradises for instance and all the wealth siphoned to them. Should Mr. Hayek and his like just consider the old Adam Smith moral rules they would be ashamed of the current state of affairs. Public spending has, in a way, a great advantage over private spending: there are some chances that it will be vetted by strict accountability, transparent procedures and democratic choices, all conditions that are quite rarely met in the wonderfull private world.
Please do not consider me as a communist: I am in no way against the private sector, nor against private property and I value the free enterprise for its ability to innovate, for its fostering of energies. But the "big" private sector nowadays is mainly and uniquely interested in short term huge profit and has no interest at all in we, the people. I scoff at dogmas, including at Mr. Hayek and his kin ones.
Hamburgers - however juicy - are very good at short term profit and very destructive of long term culinary art, except for the happy few. From British railways to California energy crisis and to Fox News, we have plenty of examples of complete failures of the "only the private sector is beautiful" model.
The state can make mistakes like this Greenhouse built in easily flooded zone (the Grande bibliothèque in Paris), but let us not forget externalities (?), let us judge on a case by case basis, and let me state out that those huge corporations, this weird financial planet, completely free of any democratic control, seems to me a very real world power on its own, a threat to democracy and to the planet.
When will /. accept non-us characters ??? Sorry for the mess.
Je suis français aussi, et "courriel" est utilisé de temps en temps, de plus en plus à mon sens, parce que c'est quand même beaucoup plus français que "e-mail", qui est très très moche en français. "mél" était hideux et est mort dès que né.
En l'occurence, je remercie les cousins québéquois de nous avoir fournis celui-ci, qui a de plus l'avantage d'être compréhensible pour le néophyte. Quelle idée, cet auto-dénigrement systématique !
There is just something very wrong with the idea of using English as a lingua franca !
<p>
I would hate learning latin again. I will stick with English.
I read perhaps 300 comments so far and my feeling are mixed: /. people forget to read comments, to follow links or to think as soon as they can resume French bashing.
- there are plenty of good-will people there, thanks
- and half
It's a pity and a very unhealthy signal.
I hope the translation will be more faithfull than AP's translation of Chirac wich are generally biased to suit the neocons.
Anyway, Tolkien's language is more marvelous in in English than translated in French, and nothing compares to the original work in its own language. You make Jeanneney's point there. What a pity if European litterature was only to be read through Us-English translations!
Could you just name one, with proofs, not with Fox's headlines? And why not thousands of billions of trillions of Euros if we go there? In which currency do you speak? Has the dollar fallen so low lately?
As so does the USA. Try to project a foreign film there and enjoy privately buit protectionism backed by the State. "Amélie": how many screens in the US when it was launched?
They are doing that for years...
(sigh)
How funny.
We will surender to their charms if they are Hubsch Fraulein.
Welcome in France !-) As far as I know, your passport may be optionnal.
Forgive me, but when some label Jeanneney's editorial as "anti-american", I do understand that they feel like being attacked. The title goes on to say that "France hates Google"... This is either paranoia or "double standards".
:-)
As for the "Uber-Esperanto", it is a cute idea in a way, but it already exists and is called English. The bottomline remains: English won, so let us use it as a lingua franca, but we must be very carefull to cultural wealth such as languages and English speakers must aknoledge it.
You are right to point out that Europe will be more powerfull once all its citizens share a common language. This will take time, it will always remain very imperfect and non-native-english-speakers will always have a disadvantage over the others. I am one and I express myself more fluently in French, mind you
You forgot to mention that the building is located on the riverside of the Seine and that its bottom stairs are not only under the river level, but under the ground water level too: they can be drowned.
A complete architect idiocy, a tribute to an old president senility. I am an ashamed French about this one. Fortunately, the most precious books -and their are manu of them- have been numerised and are kept somewhere else in an appropriate bunker, not in a sinking greenhouse.
Mr Jeanneney's solution is a classical French top-down, command-economy approach.
Well... if it does work, and it frequently does, what is your point?
I am not so pleased to pay a 5% or 10% premimum on a car just because they decided to buy silly adverts I do not trust in newspapers or on TV. If the public efficiency matches the private efficiency and is judiciously aimed, what good is there to criticise it?
Even if Bush father or son had learned French, would they appreciate if the French had sent a non-english speaking liason officer? No. Why should have de Gaulle?
I am French and I like it, provided authors and editors are not spoiled, and that Google has a mandatory obligation to remain free of charge with a zero downtime and never unduly censors things, should it become the Sole Purveyor of Knowledge :-)
You do not have to. France does use Google and Jeanneney too. We do not hate Google and neither does he.
He simply points out that the effort led by Google, if is successfull, will once again be a powerfull tool to strengthen English (and US thinking) as the dominant cultural reference, and that this is a threat for all other cultures that imperils them a bit further.
He just calls for his European colleagues to join an effort to accept the challenge and match it in our European way, which does not always goes through private companies, although it often does. As far as I understand Google's reaction from the linked article, they do understand his point of view. I rather trust Google, but I understand what Jeanneney means and I approve his call.
How on earth does it come that any call for a non-american effort is immediately labeled as a threat to America? Why are so many Americans surprised when one states out that the disapearance of local cultures in the mainstream medias (TV, movies, Internet, scientific publications...), because they are overwhelmed by US might, is a pity, a loss to the entire humanity?
Fortunately, GwBush has just saved the French fries from oblivion. But French bashing continues unabated.
Completely wrong. The court actions were not triggered by the French government but by French private companies, Jewish defense groups or anti-racism groups.
France is a democratic country and one can raise a case before a court, thank you.
You add to Google's noise by providing a link to a sooo-stupid propaganda page. Nice advertising from you.
Furthermore, Google could sue this site for trademark infringement...
Well, if this a quote, Wikipedia has it wrong there: what makes "53% of GDP in France" (to be verified) is not the government spending but the _public_ spending, which includes healthcare, social security (we call it "retraites"), local communities spendings, allocations for the unemployed, and so on.
So the public spending is much broader than the the government spending here, and the later does _not_ amount to 53% of GDP. Last time I heard about it, our Sécurité Sociale (pensions + healthcare for just everybody), a system -theoreticaly- managed by the Unions and the big companies _together_, amounted to a quarter of GDP (should be more than that now).
Considering how expensive healtcare is in the US, I would appreciate to read evenhanded statistics, with those health costs included in the US "public spending". And pensions paid by private companies to their former employees should be included too of course. And every single penny spent on healthcare by private fundations. What would be the results ? A leftist (bah!) US, but with 40 millions citizens with no healthcare?
French bashing still makes some laugh apparently. It just makes me sick from the beginning.
And Danes or Swedes fare even worse than Frogs if one compares that way.