I almost didn't bother trying Cinelerra because of all the "crashes" I hear about. While it's not the best app, I've been completely unable to get it to crash. And I believe I had to use an unstable version to even compile it for 64 bit. Are people talking about the way it use to be? Has it gotten that much better over the last year or have I just been lucky?
I've used Cinelerra for several projects dating back to when it was Broadcast 2000. Yes, it did have problems with crashing quite frequently, but over the last couple of years, the stability has improved significantly (in my experience). I haven't seen a crash in quite some time (but the old memories still have me saving my work every couple of minutes).
Having said all that, I'm just a schmo that uses Cinelerra mostly for personal projects a couple of times a year. So I'm by no means a video editting professional. But for my purposes (and my background in engineering and software development), I'm satisfied with its usability and appreciate the ability to automate some processes by generating the XML (EDL) files via scripting.
(Man, I love the occasional chance to respond to a reasonable post! Thanks for that!)
Congratulations! That's the most clueless comment I've read today. Have a cookie! The egotistical, yet oblivious attitude may have been the extra touch that pushed you up in the rankings.
But I'm not done reading, so you may be dropped into second or third place by the end of the night.
My point is that your anecdote really says nothing about the value of or interest in OpenOffice. The software market isn't an either/or proposition, even though you seem to be trying to interpret it as such.
As I said before, in my opinion the biggest obstacle for most FOSS adoption is the inertia of the status quo and the lack of significant advertising/marketing. Your story is simply another example of the fact that most people still aren't even aware that there are viable alternatives to MS Office. But even so, FOSS usage continues to grow, mostly at the expense of the current proprietary market-majority equivalents.
... given that the majority of the problems people I deal with run into have with it seem to be externally derived these days. I'll stop tangenting now. =)
Good idea! With that next-to-last sentence, I think you tangented off into a parallel grammatical dimension!:p
It was quite a success and a reminder that to most folks OpenOffice.org is a ticket to nowhere.
Wow, what an astounding example of misinterpretation of the given information. A low-cost course in MS Office is quite a success, so you interpret that to mean OpenOffice is "a ticket to nowhere" to "most folks." So if a course in OpenOffice has good attendance, would that be a sign that MS Office is "a ticket to nowhere?"
Whether you like to admit it or not, there is room in the marketplace for more than one office suite. And OpenOffice is growing in popularity as more people become aware of its existence. Most folks aren't even aware of OpenOffice, and I would say that is the main reason its uptake hasn't been faster. But as I noted, its usage grows nonetheless.
The same argument holds for FOSS applications in all of the other categories. You may not like them, but there are plenty of others who have embraced them wholeheartedly and are introducing them to friends and family at a growing rate.
As soon as you find a set of open source products that provide the same level of functionality and interconnectivity as the Microsoft products -- let everyone know.
So many people want to wait to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. It's a good thing there have been enough people willing to step out and explore or try new things in order to advance our civilization.
There are plenty of open source apps that are more than adequate replacements for most teaching uses. Once again, too many people want a perfect copy of the existing tools or they think they are somehow unworthy of consideration. Pretty sad.
FOSS is absolutely NOTHING LIKE your telephone analogy because most FOSS products DO NOT EASILY WORK TOGETHER -- or -- at the very least require so much glue code, development and generally pissing around that it would cost 100 times more to MAKE them work together as buying a comparable set of MS products off the shelf.
You're missing the point. Microsoft works with little other than Microsoft, whereas most all FOSS at least attempts to share open formats. And since that's a goal, the FOSS tools will and have improved in that realm.
I won't respond to the rest, as I don't have time and it's only typical "the status quo is the only answer" verbiage. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. But history's on my side that Microsoft won't be on top forever, so you're gonna have to learn something different at some point.
(Sorry Linuxies and OpenOfficionados -- but MS-Operating Systems and Applications ARE THE STANDARD of business.)
You forgot to qualify that as "ARE CURRENTLY THE STANDARD." Won't be forever. Is there anybody without a vested interest in the good fortune of certain software companies who truly believes that staying the course, tied to single-source, closed document formats is good for our future? Such a person would also have to believe that the public is being harmed because there are so many phones on the market that can intercommunicate and they're not all built and sold by a single vendor.
Does that educational discount get carried along for the lifetime of the student? We're not talking simply about the monetary costs to the educational system; there is also the cost to the students while in school and afterwards. I believe the school system has a responsibility to try to teach using tools that minimize costs (present and future) to the students. FOSS is and always will be free to the students, their families, their friends, everybody.
Wow, talk about a bad analogy! You should stick to software/car analogies. Even though they're highly limited, at least there is some relevance. If you think that using and/or educating about software alternatives is akin to teaching intelligent design, then you must consider anything new or out of the norm to be unworthy of being taught. Our youth probably shouldn't be learning those new-fangled concepts being spread by the science community (bunch of radicals). Newton's discoveries were good enough, eh?
FOSS is to intelligent design as public libraries are to, uh, intelligent design?
Wait for the cost/benefit ratio to be more favorable.
I agree that it will be handier when that ratio improves. The problem is that the cost/benefit ratio won't improve without help. And that's precisely what much of this effort is about: getting more people and organizations behind an open standard so that it improves and gets easier for others to follow. If everyone adopts the "wait until it's easier and cheaper" attitude, there is no advancement. And that applies to so many aspects of human history that I shouldn't have to point it out.
There is only *1* office suite that supports it, and it has very little presence in business
Actually there are a few that I'm aware of. Support may not be 100% at this time, but they're definitely heading that way.
So what's your suggestion for moving away from a closed, proprietary format? After all, the status quo is definitely not where we want to remain. Any change will be costly, but the long-term costs of being tied to a single vendor are much greater. Too many people and organizations only look at the short term, which is a very costly mistake.
legislation mandating ODF should mandate a "Freely implementable XML format" or some other such language. Not ODF. Not OpenXML. The laws should be simple and clear, and agnostic towards Open or Closed software. If MS's "NewOpenXML" winds up being a billion times better than ODF, we shouldn't be tied to ODF by law.
I agree. And many proposals haven't been tied specifically to ODF, but to a freely-implementable (in so many words) format. I would love to see Microsoft actually moving away from their standard practices of promising one thing to get customers to not adopt alternatives, then delivering something quite different. I guess we'll see.
Ok, that's an answer as to why ODF may not currently be able to completely replace DOC files. (Whether it's true or not, I don't know. But I'll take your word for it.) But that has little to do with whether MS can *support* ODF for the majority of documents. I've been using OpenOffice for a few year now to read DOC files, store them in ODF (or its OpenOffice predecessor), them read them back in and save as DOC to send to others. No problems with lost information or significant formating issues.
Now try answering the larger question: Why do so many people with no vested interest in Microsoft seem to be so against a common format supported by multiple office suites? As I said, there should be little doubt that it's in the best interest of consumers and citizens for public documents to be available in a free and open format. Customers should start demanding a more open format in order to drive a more open market.
I'll withhold my judgement of Open XML until I hear whether it's *truly* open, meaning fully published and free to be implemented on any platform by any interested with party with no patent restrictions. If that's the case, then sure, I agree that more choice in the "open" market is good.
Unfortunately, history shows that Microsoft often says one thing and delivers something completely different. So we'll see.
Whoops! Mistake on my part. Lost track of what you were responding to. Sorry about that.
But my point still stands: Is there some reason why customers (such as yourself) wouldn't want MS Office to support ODF? There should be little doubt that it's in the best interest of consumers and citizens for public documents to be available in a free and open format. So why do so many people with no vested interest in Microsoft seem to be so against a common format supported by multiple office suites? After all, that is the main subject of this submission.
Sounds like you're confusing OpenOffice (the office suite of applications) with ODF (Open Document Format) since all your arguments only discuss MS Office vs. OO.o. As people are quick to point out, there is nothing stopping MS from supporting ODF so that you could keep using those Office capabilities that you find so indispensable (although everyone I know seems just fine with OO.o) and others can deal with the same document in their office suite-of-choice. Is there some reason why that would be a bad thing (other than for Microsoft's monopoly)?
I know what you're *trying* to say. But once again, when you use phrases like "excellent revision control feature," that's a pretty big statement. Now you've qualified that to "excellent, at least within the constraints it was designed with," a statement which completely removes the backbone of your claim. After all, I can say almost anything can be construed to pass that test, depending on how I define the design constraints!:)
Sorry, I may just be having a little fun at your expense, since I realize you didn't mean to come across as a MS Office zealot.;)
But I also stand by *my* claim that Office's collaboration tools have a ways to go before they can match the stability, accuracy, and capabilities of standard version control tools, which is the way our group maintains software documentation (design documents, user's guides, etc., several over 400 pages) with a dozen or so authors, tagging the documentation directly with the software tags. Oh, and all of this cost us $0 and no licensing hassles like we see other organizations constantly struggling with, which is a nice bonus.:)
Bottom line is, try not to make such strong statements when it's relatively easy for others to offer evidence to the contrary. I don't doubt that you're happy with the solution you have in place, and I realize you were just trying to slap down a "zealot." But that doesn't mean there aren't other equal or even better solutions out there from the perspective of others, which may be one interpretation of what the original poster was getting at. Our solution is a LaTeX/CVS solution -- not exactly the "non-existent OO.org/Subversion 'solution'" you attributed to the GP, but a close approximation which indeed was "easy" and "painless" for us. In fact, for our team (most of whom had zero prior LaTeX experience), the basic learning curve was less than a week and we no longer have to deal with the frequent Word formatting issues, etc. But that's another subject.:)
Wow. Just, wow. Talk about kettles, black, and all that! You jump on someone else for suggesting there are better alternatives to the MS Office collaboration tools, calling the person a blinded evangelist. Then you turn around and use phrases like "Word's excellent revision control feature?!"
Try having a dozen or more co-authors edit a document simultaneously, merging the changes submitted by each along with a short description of why each change was made. Then repeat the process a couple dozen times, generating multiple versions of the document, retaining the ability to simply generate any version at any time.
MS Office's change tracking, SharePoint (TM), etc. may be fine for some things, and it may be improving. But to say that Word has an "excellent revision control feature" is a bit over the top. I would say it is adequate for many purposes, but comes nowhere near a true version control system's capabilities for true collaboration and version control.
Perhaps it isn't so much a matter of competence but rather some professors realising that getting the job done quickly and easily is better accomplished with Word and Mathtype.
From my experience and observations over the past 20 years, using TeX/LaTeX has *always* been faster and easier than using any wordprocessor for documents larger than a few pages or containing significant mathematics.
I'd say the real issues are pretty obvious: Most professors aren't even aware that LaTeX exists or they're afraid of any sort of markup language (even though a couple of days using it often convinces people that it is easy enough). Over the years, I've introduced many people to LaTeX. If I could get them to spend a week using it, they didn't go back to a word processor except when forced.
And I suspect you're making off-the-cuff accusations based on your single data point. Based on what I see others posting, it appears that you must think there are a lot of liars posting today.;)
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I've used Cinelerra for several projects dating back to when it was Broadcast 2000. Yes, it did have problems with crashing quite frequently, but over the last couple of years, the stability has improved significantly (in my experience). I haven't seen a crash in quite some time (but the old memories still have me saving my work every couple of minutes).
Having said all that, I'm just a schmo that uses Cinelerra mostly for personal projects a couple of times a year. So I'm by no means a video editting professional. But for my purposes (and my background in engineering and software development), I'm satisfied with its usability and appreciate the ability to automate some processes by generating the XML (EDL) files via scripting.
(Man, I love the occasional chance to respond to a reasonable post! Thanks for that!)
Congratulations! That's the most clueless comment I've read today. Have a cookie! The egotistical, yet oblivious attitude may have been the extra touch that pushed you up in the rankings.
But I'm not done reading, so you may be dropped into second or third place by the end of the night.
My point is that your anecdote really says nothing about the value of or interest in OpenOffice. The software market isn't an either/or proposition, even though you seem to be trying to interpret it as such.
As I said before, in my opinion the biggest obstacle for most FOSS adoption is the inertia of the status quo and the lack of significant advertising/marketing. Your story is simply another example of the fact that most people still aren't even aware that there are viable alternatives to MS Office. But even so, FOSS usage continues to grow, mostly at the expense of the current proprietary market-majority equivalents.
Good idea! With that next-to-last sentence, I think you tangented off into a parallel grammatical dimension! :p
Wow, what an astounding example of misinterpretation of the given information. A low-cost course in MS Office is quite a success, so you interpret that to mean OpenOffice is "a ticket to nowhere" to "most folks." So if a course in OpenOffice has good attendance, would that be a sign that MS Office is "a ticket to nowhere?"
Whether you like to admit it or not, there is room in the marketplace for more than one office suite. And OpenOffice is growing in popularity as more people become aware of its existence. Most folks aren't even aware of OpenOffice, and I would say that is the main reason its uptake hasn't been faster. But as I noted, its usage grows nonetheless.
The same argument holds for FOSS applications in all of the other categories. You may not like them, but there are plenty of others who have embraced them wholeheartedly and are introducing them to friends and family at a growing rate.
Free as in free enemas.
So many people want to wait to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. It's a good thing there have been enough people willing to step out and explore or try new things in order to advance our civilization.
There are plenty of open source apps that are more than adequate replacements for most teaching uses. Once again, too many people want a perfect copy of the existing tools or they think they are somehow unworthy of consideration. Pretty sad.
You're missing the point. Microsoft works with little other than Microsoft, whereas most all FOSS at least attempts to share open formats. And since that's a goal, the FOSS tools will and have improved in that realm.
I won't respond to the rest, as I don't have time and it's only typical "the status quo is the only answer" verbiage. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. But history's on my side that Microsoft won't be on top forever, so you're gonna have to learn something different at some point.
You forgot to qualify that as "ARE CURRENTLY THE STANDARD." Won't be forever. Is there anybody without a vested interest in the good fortune of certain software companies who truly believes that staying the course, tied to single-source, closed document formats is good for our future? Such a person would also have to believe that the public is being harmed because there are so many phones on the market that can intercommunicate and they're not all built and sold by a single vendor.
Does that educational discount get carried along for the lifetime of the student? We're not talking simply about the monetary costs to the educational system; there is also the cost to the students while in school and afterwards. I believe the school system has a responsibility to try to teach using tools that minimize costs (present and future) to the students. FOSS is and always will be free to the students, their families, their friends, everybody.
Wow, talk about a bad analogy! You should stick to software/car analogies. Even though they're highly limited, at least there is some relevance. If you think that using and/or educating about software alternatives is akin to teaching intelligent design, then you must consider anything new or out of the norm to be unworthy of being taught. Our youth probably shouldn't be learning those new-fangled concepts being spread by the science community (bunch of radicals). Newton's discoveries were good enough, eh?
FOSS is to intelligent design as public libraries are to, uh, intelligent design?
I agree that it will be handier when that ratio improves. The problem is that the cost/benefit ratio won't improve without help. And that's precisely what much of this effort is about: getting more people and organizations behind an open standard so that it improves and gets easier for others to follow. If everyone adopts the "wait until it's easier and cheaper" attitude, there is no advancement. And that applies to so many aspects of human history that I shouldn't have to point it out.
Actually there are a few that I'm aware of. Support may not be 100% at this time, but they're definitely heading that way.
So what's your suggestion for moving away from a closed, proprietary format? After all, the status quo is definitely not where we want to remain. Any change will be costly, but the long-term costs of being tied to a single vendor are much greater. Too many people and organizations only look at the short term, which is a very costly mistake.
Ok, that's an answer as to why ODF may not currently be able to completely replace DOC files. (Whether it's true or not, I don't know. But I'll take your word for it.) But that has little to do with whether MS can *support* ODF for the majority of documents. I've been using OpenOffice for a few year now to read DOC files, store them in ODF (or its OpenOffice predecessor), them read them back in and save as DOC to send to others. No problems with lost information or significant formating issues.
Now try answering the larger question: Why do so many people with no vested interest in Microsoft seem to be so against a common format supported by multiple office suites? As I said, there should be little doubt that it's in the best interest of consumers and citizens for public documents to be available in a free and open format. Customers should start demanding a more open format in order to drive a more open market.
I'll withhold my judgement of Open XML until I hear whether it's *truly* open, meaning fully published and free to be implemented on any platform by any interested with party with no patent restrictions. If that's the case, then sure, I agree that more choice in the "open" market is good.
Unfortunately, history shows that Microsoft often says one thing and delivers something completely different. So we'll see.
Whoops! Mistake on my part. Lost track of what you were responding to. Sorry about that.
But my point still stands: Is there some reason why customers (such as yourself) wouldn't want MS Office to support ODF? There should be little doubt that it's in the best interest of consumers and citizens for public documents to be available in a free and open format. So why do so many people with no vested interest in Microsoft seem to be so against a common format supported by multiple office suites? After all, that is the main subject of this submission.
Sounds like you're confusing OpenOffice (the office suite of applications) with ODF (Open Document Format) since all your arguments only discuss MS Office vs. OO.o. As people are quick to point out, there is nothing stopping MS from supporting ODF so that you could keep using those Office capabilities that you find so indispensable (although everyone I know seems just fine with OO.o) and others can deal with the same document in their office suite-of-choice. Is there some reason why that would be a bad thing (other than for Microsoft's monopoly)?
I know what you're *trying* to say. But once again, when you use phrases like "excellent revision control feature," that's a pretty big statement. Now you've qualified that to "excellent, at least within the constraints it was designed with," a statement which completely removes the backbone of your claim. After all, I can say almost anything can be construed to pass that test, depending on how I define the design constraints! :)
Sorry, I may just be having a little fun at your expense, since I realize you didn't mean to come across as a MS Office zealot. ;)
But I also stand by *my* claim that Office's collaboration tools have a ways to go before they can match the stability, accuracy, and capabilities of standard version control tools, which is the way our group maintains software documentation (design documents, user's guides, etc., several over 400 pages) with a dozen or so authors, tagging the documentation directly with the software tags. Oh, and all of this cost us $0 and no licensing hassles like we see other organizations constantly struggling with, which is a nice bonus. :)
Bottom line is, try not to make such strong statements when it's relatively easy for others to offer evidence to the contrary. I don't doubt that you're happy with the solution you have in place, and I realize you were just trying to slap down a "zealot." But that doesn't mean there aren't other equal or even better solutions out there from the perspective of others, which may be one interpretation of what the original poster was getting at. Our solution is a LaTeX/CVS solution -- not exactly the "non-existent OO.org/Subversion 'solution'" you attributed to the GP, but a close approximation which indeed was "easy" and "painless" for us. In fact, for our team (most of whom had zero prior LaTeX experience), the basic learning curve was less than a week and we no longer have to deal with the frequent Word formatting issues, etc. But that's another subject. :)
Wow. Just, wow. Talk about kettles, black, and all that! You jump on someone else for suggesting there are better alternatives to the MS Office collaboration tools, calling the person a blinded evangelist. Then you turn around and use phrases like "Word's excellent revision control feature?!"
Try having a dozen or more co-authors edit a document simultaneously, merging the changes submitted by each along with a short description of why each change was made. Then repeat the process a couple dozen times, generating multiple versions of the document, retaining the ability to simply generate any version at any time.
MS Office's change tracking, SharePoint (TM), etc. may be fine for some things, and it may be improving. But to say that Word has an "excellent revision control feature" is a bit over the top. I would say it is adequate for many purposes, but comes nowhere near a true version control system's capabilities for true collaboration and version control.
From my experience and observations over the past 20 years, using TeX/LaTeX has *always* been faster and easier than using any wordprocessor for documents larger than a few pages or containing significant mathematics.
I'd say the real issues are pretty obvious: Most professors aren't even aware that LaTeX exists or they're afraid of any sort of markup language (even though a couple of days using it often convinces people that it is easy enough). Over the years, I've introduced many people to LaTeX. If I could get them to spend a week using it, they didn't go back to a word processor except when forced.
And I suspect you're making off-the-cuff accusations based on your single data point. Based on what I see others posting, it appears that you must think there are a lot of liars posting today. ;)
Wow! That is one cool number, alright! Are you a member of the Math Professionals Association of America?
1998 called, and they want their Linux complaints back.