Internationalization doesn't work. In 2.0 you had no choice of language for auto spell check at *all*. IIRC, 2.0.1/2 fixed that.
strange. i've been using all kinds of development versions, never stumbled upon this. if i's fixed, then you probably can strike it out from your list:)
Instalation of additional dictionaries in 2.0/2.0.1 was borken. People say that 2.0.2 fixed that - but nobody in our company managed to make it working. (Yes, we updated that magic document for downloading dictionaries. No, it didn't help.)
ahh, i usually add dictionaries by editing dictionary.lst manually. maybe that could help you. you could also write a simple script to install the dioctionary (it would be two or three lines in bash:) )
Also, GUI became even more bloated compared to one in OOo1. Before it looks weird - but was practical. Now it looks nice - but very distracting and at times annoying.
if you have specific complaints, try filing an issue. that might be a bug or an oversight.
For me - touch-typist - OOo1 works better. OOo2 does some redundant redraws on screen while typing. Especially in on-line view (normal mode in WinWord terms). Needless to say page view is even worse - it's quite hard to type when pages jump on screen.
i don't think they are intentional - i have reported a couple of unnecessary redraws (mostly about picture handling and such) - most are fixed already, some are accepted. if you can reliably reproduce them, report.
In the end, I still use VIM to prepare large chunks of documentation and only then paste them into OOo.
ahh:D vim. ok, that probably works for simple text input. if redundant redraws is your biggest problem you probably could use oo.org once they are fixed, but...
Also, I can check-in the raw text files into SVN/CVS - and have version history for all modifications....this is veeery nice. i have just recently set up a testing svn instance - and i like it a lot:) i like it so much i am trying to think of ways to use it for myself;) i am not coder, so the best thing i have found are some large scripts. there are some talks about possibility to keep odf documents in svn, but i don't think that's possible right now without some extensive hacking.
Thou, since final document has no relation to raw text file, the revision history become obsolete quite fast.
i've though about automated process that would decompress the contents and feed them to svn - but most of the changes would be incomprehensible (formatting, some non-plaintext content etc).
feeding only contents, maybe ? posible, but that would lose all the formatting changes, which can be important...
i'll probably leave it for more experienced people;) a detailed change history probably anyway requires a good oo.org support.
seems that you were eaten alive by latexed maniacs =)
i haven't used kword much, but several friends have used oo.org for long documents. if the document gets really long and you still want a familiar environment (wysiwyg text editor, not scribus/*x/whatever), take a look at oo.org master documents. that should be relatively easy to do and could help to manage the amount of data.
though with a mac versions of oo.org you currently have a dilemma between x11 version and slightly older neooffice.
Or what about a grammar checker? Something else OO.o lacks entirely.
never wanted this. though i think there was some development of grammar checker for english, i'm sure it will be long time before something usable for latvian language appears;)
Has been present since at least version 6.0. I've used a master document running Windows 3.1 on a 386.
i haven't used master document extensively, but i've heard from people who have written long pieces that msoffice master documents are awful and oo.org ones beat them on sight, both in oo.org mailing lists and other resources that compare oo.org to mso. and then there's this: http://addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm "there are two kinds of Master Documents: Those that are corrupt and those that will be corrupt soon."
this might be improved in recent versions, but after such a history i really would avoid using them. thankfully, not so in oo.org;)
> Anchoring images in Word is a pain, it's in 3 dialogs deep worth of crap. Perhaps you could explain what you mean by this.
i don't know about anchoring, but a friend of mine was trying to lay out a relatively simple two page document with logos, some background images, frames etc. he was cursing like hell after trying to do it in msword for two days (that was a requirement for the result). i suggested oo.org (1.1-something at that time). after 5 minutes he had done everything he wanted (he was using oo.org for the first time and had used msoffice for a lot of years). as i understood, it was about unability to set absolute position without ugly hacks, pictures jumping around and general unability to position objects reliably.
that was msoffice 2002, i think.
And yet a fairly common dialog, page setup, moves to Format -> Page. Sure, if you think about it, it fits better there. However, that argument loses its validity when you take into consideration that almost every other program, at least under Windows,* puts it at file->page setup.
when i first tried oo.org, i was unable to find page setup in file menu. after blinking for five seconds, i looked in format menu. so far i have given/set up oo.org for a lot of people. 3 or four have asked me "where is page setup ?" - i told them "now, think about what you want to do." - "ahh, found it". took 15 seconds at most for less computer savvy person. that seriously is an improvenment.
Actually in my experimentation just now I found one place where OO.o is sorely lacking: right clicking on an edit when using track changes doesn't give you an option to accept or reject.
now, i could go on about oo.org features that word either lacks or they suck (pdf output, page styles (!), styles as such (they are much better implemented in oo.org), cross-platform, odf (integrating with document management or any other system is so goddam
it is already mentioned, but please - submit this as a bugreport to both kde and openoffice.org bug trackers.
koffice should not save files that oo.org is unable to open, but oo.org should be able to open files that koffice can. let the developers figure the best solution for this problem (hopefully without pointing fingers & flamefights;) )
it's not about the profits that much. marketshare and a perfect place for alternatives to grow - that is the real threat to microsoft. too bad that isn't happening, if it ever got close enough, bribing everybody in sight will help every time.
unless your country has radically different defintion of monopoly, i suggest reading laws that regulate these things. here, in some sectors (banking) company can be considered for extensive monitoring and anti-monopoly measures if it's marketshare is bigger than 40%. i'm sure there is no sector where more than 90% isn't considered a monopoly from legal view.
i don't read slashdot that much, but even then i have noticed the exact same post in some 5 or so places. even at articles that have nothing to do with linux, userfrendly computing or computers at all. so yes, that particular post was clearly a troll.
1. a point about more efficient car is a good one andi fully agree; 2. most europeans have VERY different view on a term "house" than americans. for americans, moving to new are isn't something extraordinary - probably the fact that most of families at one point immigrated anyway helps somehow. and the "love for the land" might be even stronger in latvia than in most of the europe.
here, settling in one place is the goal of most people. families have houses over hundred years old, that have been built by their grand-grand parents. houses where everything has it's tale, places where giant trees have been planted to celebrate some ancestors birth. where some relative still can tell stories about other buildings in the "yard". that's probably also historical thing, affected by difficulties to get the land (what has been less of a problem in america). i am sure there is some research about this;)
doesn't mandrake/mandriva ? besides, i don't not explicitly want commercial distro - actually i am running slackware on most of my boxes, i am just planning migration to suse on my workstation;)
stateless linux isn't tied to migration in any way - it is more of a way to manage large amount of computers.
i wanted to paste some info from the pdf on their website, but it seems to use some shitty protection against copying. screw them, that's not an opensouce project.
I recall discussing it with company management at CSC in 1994. So not only was it on the table, it was being taken seriously.
i recall talking about this at 2000. the person (supposedly working in it...) had never heard of it and for the first weeks wrote it LENUX. he is relaying on linux servers every day now (no workstation - yet). i recall telling about linux/oss a friend of mine, who had not heard about it a year ago. he is evaluating it as his primary os for the new workstation he is going to buy. it is new.
Trouble is, it was a bad idea then, and it's still a bad idea. There's a massive difference between hiring an administrative staff that knows Windows and one that knows Linux. If you're hiring a dozen people, it makes about a quarter million dollar difference annually, and you're also hiring from a much smaller pool of available applicants. When you consider that using Linux instead of Windows is only saving you about $5,000 a year in licensing fees... well, that's just plain stupid.
hmm. assuming that software age is ~ 3 years and equiping average workstation with windows, msoffice, antivirus and whatnot would be somewhere around 300ls = $600, this would turn out into 25 workstations (not counting any servers at all here...) using it for 5 years would be 41 workstations, still no servers. depending on qualification, you can get an average it support person here for ~ $600-~1200 a month (which probably heavily differs from your location). getting a wannabee windows expert might be slightly cheaper than wannabee linux expert, but once you start looking at people who know what they are doing, the wages quickly level out (i believe this should be the same everywhere:) ).
now, if you really need a dozen of people to keep (let's be generous) 50 workstations running... depending on the needs, that should be half-time for a single person at most...
and that's not counting the fact that you have provided some baseless amount. are companies with thousands of employees getting all their windows software for $5000, no matter what and in which amounts ? how does ms survive then ?
That saying is about people. Software generally becomes obsolete in twenty years.
this _is_ about people. this is about thinking. this is about changing something people are used to. and this is about availability of your information - to you. this isn't one software vendor against other, this is completely different concept.
Some people claim this shows how great Linux is, but strangely enough, the people who didn't like Linux ten years ago *still* don't like it... for pretty much the same reasons.
steve ballmer ?;) antivirus companies ? overpriced commercial software producers ? yeah, their reasons probably are the same:>
> It seems like Linux is the only desktop os that has ever gained marketshare against > Microsoft's monopoly.
This appearance is generated through unverifiable means. When someone buys a PC with Windows installed, installs Linux as a dual-boot option, and then never uses the Linux boot... which I have seen done many times... is that desktop market share?
ugh. WHO is counting that ? i'd say that cases when a computer is sold with mswindows licence and later linux is installed over it are a lot more common than such a miscounting. this seems to be an extremly false argument.
I'll bet they count it. I'll also bet the surveys on Linux market share are largely conducted among a self-selected group that is likely to use Linux anyway. But let's pretend they're a standard distribution anyway, okay? It will make Linux look good.
of course They do. They have a way to track EVERY linux install ! fear Them ! wtf ? surveys of linux marketshare usually are done either by comparing revenue gained by it (which favours windows a LOT) or by enquiring businesses (and here also quite often clueless people respond to qu
kde is sort of nicely supported. information coming out of novell is quite different. official position is "we ship both, but concentrate on gnome in our commercial products".
i've heard that gnome is being pushed hard by ximian zealots, though;) if i see kde being obsoleted by suse, i'll leave it in a moment.
i don't think parent referred to tecnical qualito of games. it was more about gameplay quality.
now, aoe and aoe2 were one of best rts games i've seen. aoe3 was crap. not that they are the only ones, lately there are less and less interesting games. oldschool games like simon the sorcerer or larry are bastardised by 3d. great fun series like carmageddon ar fscked up (carmageddon 3 sucked badly). lately i'm checking out games for linux - scorched3d, wesnoth, liquidwar. games that are fun to play, even though they are small and without extra graphics:) ooh. just noticed, there is a linux version of tapan kaikki for some time already. see ya;)
um, i don't want to think into this too much, but maybe lvm2 can help you in some or other way. for example, have a single source repository of all data. mount a writable snapshot for each department. this way only changes will take up diskspace. of course, this would be bad in long term if you have no chance to sync central repository now and then, thus would work only for relatively short periods of time.
"Those who care enough to configure file dialogs would probably care enough to learn about Ctrl+L."...which was utterly broken when these dialogs first appeared (it seems to be fixed in latest gtk versions) - it was adding user input, not replacing the suggestion.
and it's not that this was the only problem. even on slashdot articles lists containing >10 items were compiled. i can point to problems with most if not all software i use, even the ones i like a lot. i like gimp pretty much (and use it a lot), firefox is very nice - but those dialogs just damage the experience.
i'm pretty sure that searching various bugzilla will result in a lot of things, it's just that i (and a lot of other people) have talked about these problems enough. i see that some of them are fixed now - so they were recognised to be problems. which is fine, but it tells me that even though gnome people speak all day about usability, they do not bother to test it enough - any qa should have caught these.
most people who have been forced to use those dialogs complain. a lot. you just say "oooooh, i have never done that... you can repeat it as often as you like... lalalala"
forcing these dialogs on people in the state they were (they might have gotten better, at least autocomplete is replaced, not added now) was simply stupid - everybody who tried them had a bad experience and first impression is the most important.
well, they _could_ be configurable, but that's probably heresy in gnome world;)
that's the problem - a lot of people have signatures configured improperly, sometimes relevant information is added to signature... i usually do a quick stripping anyway, so disabling that behaviour would be nice. i'm surprised i was unable to find that in about:config...
Slashdot Mirror
Internationalization doesn't work. In 2.0 you had no choice of language for auto spell check at *all*. IIRC, 2.0.1/2 fixed that.
:)
:) )
:D
...this is veeery nice. i have just recently set up a testing svn instance - and i like it a lot :) ;)
;)
strange. i've been using all kinds of development versions, never stumbled upon this. if i's fixed, then you probably can strike it out from your list
Instalation of additional dictionaries in 2.0/2.0.1 was borken. People say that 2.0.2 fixed that - but nobody in our company managed to make it working. (Yes, we updated that magic document for downloading dictionaries. No, it didn't help.)
ahh, i usually add dictionaries by editing dictionary.lst manually. maybe that could help you. you could also write a simple script to install the dioctionary (it would be two or three lines in bash
Also, GUI became even more bloated compared to one in OOo1. Before it looks weird - but was practical. Now it looks nice - but very distracting and at times annoying.
if you have specific complaints, try filing an issue. that might be a bug or an oversight.
For me - touch-typist - OOo1 works better. OOo2 does some redundant redraws on screen while typing. Especially in on-line view (normal mode in WinWord terms). Needless to say page view is even worse - it's quite hard to type when pages jump on screen.
i don't think they are intentional - i have reported a couple of unnecessary redraws (mostly about picture handling and such) - most are fixed already, some are accepted.
if you can reliably reproduce them, report.
In the end, I still use VIM to prepare large chunks of documentation and only then paste them into OOo.
ahh
vim. ok, that probably works for simple text input. if redundant redraws is your biggest problem you probably could use oo.org once they are fixed, but...
Also, I can check-in the raw text files into SVN/CVS - and have version history for all modifications.
i like it so much i am trying to think of ways to use it for myself
i am not coder, so the best thing i have found are some large scripts.
there are some talks about possibility to keep odf documents in svn, but i don't think that's possible right now without some extensive hacking.
Thou, since final document has no relation to raw text file, the revision history become obsolete quite fast.
i've though about automated process that would decompress the contents and feed them to svn - but most of the changes would be incomprehensible (formatting, some non-plaintext content etc).
feeding only contents, maybe ? posible, but that would lose all the formatting changes, which can be important...
i'll probably leave it for more experienced people
a detailed change history probably anyway requires a good oo.org support.
broke/killed every feature we liked in OOo
really ? could you list at least some of them ?
gompletely
what odf option are you really talking about ?
1.1.5 should support opening odf, but not saving them.
seems that you were eaten alive by latexed maniacs =)
i haven't used kword much, but several friends have used oo.org for long documents. if the document gets really long and you still want a familiar environment (wysiwyg text editor, not scribus/*x/whatever), take a look at oo.org master documents. that should be relatively easy to do and could help to manage the amount of data.
though with a mac versions of oo.org you currently have a dilemma between x11 version and slightly older neooffice.
you can configure gnome ?!?!?!?!??/!~~!!??
omg. omg. *runs in circles*
where will this lead ? what is happening to this world ?
ah, i just feel like commenting ;)
:)
;)
:
;)
For instance, Word has page view, normal view, outline view, and web view.
have never really liked this one, somehow oo.org approach is good for me
The track changes feature works a lot better in Word (at least starting with 2002).
agreed. there is an issue, so you might want to vote on it
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=23 465
Or what about a grammar checker? Something else OO.o lacks entirely.
never wanted this. though i think there was some development of grammar checker for english, i'm sure it will be long time before something usable for latvian language appears
Has been present since at least version 6.0. I've used a master document running Windows 3.1 on a 386.
i haven't used master document extensively, but i've heard from people who have written long pieces that msoffice master documents are awful and oo.org ones beat them on sight, both in oo.org mailing lists and other resources that compare oo.org to mso.
and then there's this
http://addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm
"there are two kinds of Master Documents: Those that are corrupt and those that will be corrupt soon."
this might be improved in recent versions, but after such a history i really would avoid using them. thankfully, not so in oo.org
> Anchoring images in Word is a pain, it's in 3 dialogs deep worth of crap.
Perhaps you could explain what you mean by this.
i don't know about anchoring, but a friend of mine was trying to lay out a relatively simple two page document with logos, some background images, frames etc. he was cursing like hell after trying to do it in msword for two days (that was a requirement for the result). i suggested oo.org (1.1-something at that time). after 5 minutes he had done everything he wanted (he was using oo.org for the first time and had used msoffice for a lot of years). as i understood, it was about unability to set absolute position without ugly hacks, pictures jumping around and general unability to position objects reliably.
that was msoffice 2002, i think.
And yet a fairly common dialog, page setup, moves to Format -> Page. Sure, if you think about it, it fits better there. However, that argument loses its validity when you take into consideration that almost every other program, at least under Windows,* puts it at file->page setup.
when i first tried oo.org, i was unable to find page setup in file menu. after blinking for five seconds, i looked in format menu. so far i have given/set up oo.org for a lot of people. 3 or four have asked me "where is page setup ?" - i told them "now, think about what you want to do." - "ahh, found it". took 15 seconds at most for less computer savvy person. that seriously is an improvenment.
Actually in my experimentation just now I found one place where OO.o is sorely lacking: right clicking on an edit when using track changes doesn't give you an option to accept or reject.
unfortunately, a very longstanding feature request...
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=61 91
comparing with word, oo.org is lacking one more thing i would like to have - rectangular block selection.
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=15 96
that's one awfully old feature request.
now, i could go on about oo.org features that word either lacks or they suck (pdf output, page styles (!), styles as such (they are much better implemented in oo.org), cross-platform, odf (integrating with document management or any other system is so goddam
it is already mentioned, but please - submit this as a bugreport to both kde and openoffice.org bug trackers.
;) )
koffice should not save files that oo.org is unable to open, but oo.org should be able to open files that koffice can. let the developers figure the best solution for this problem (hopefully without pointing fingers & flamefights
it's not about the profits that much.
marketshare and a perfect place for alternatives to grow - that is the real threat to microsoft. too bad that isn't happening, if it ever got close enough, bribing everybody in sight will help every time.
unless your country has radically different defintion of monopoly, i suggest reading laws that regulate these things.
here, in some sectors (banking) company can be considered for extensive monitoring and anti-monopoly measures if it's marketshare is bigger than 40%. i'm sure there is no sector where more than 90% isn't considered a monopoly from legal view.
i don't read slashdot that much, but even then i have noticed the exact same post in some 5 or so places. even at articles that have nothing to do with linux, userfrendly computing or computers at all. so yes, that particular post was clearly a troll.
1. a point about more efficient car is a good one andi fully agree;
;)
2. most europeans have VERY different view on a term "house" than americans. for americans, moving to new are isn't something extraordinary - probably the fact that most of families at one point immigrated anyway helps somehow. and the "love for the land" might be even stronger in latvia than in most of the europe.
here, settling in one place is the goal of most people. families have houses over hundred years old, that have been built by their grand-grand parents. houses where everything has it's tale, places where giant trees have been planted to celebrate some ancestors birth. where some relative still can tell stories about other buildings in the "yard".
that's probably also historical thing, affected by difficulties to get the land (what has been less of a problem in america). i am sure there is some research about this
doesn't mandrake/mandriva ? ;)
besides, i don't not explicitly want commercial distro - actually i am running slackware on most of my boxes, i am just planning migration to suse on my workstation
stateless linux isn't tied to migration in any way - it is more of a way to manage large amount of computers.
i wanted to paste some info from the pdf on their website, but it seems to use some shitty protection against copying. screw them, that's not an opensouce project.
I recall discussing it with company management at CSC in 1994. So not only was it on the table, it was being taken seriously.
:) ).
;) :>
i recall talking about this at 2000. the person (supposedly working in it...) had never heard of it and for the first weeks wrote it LENUX. he is relaying on linux servers every day now (no workstation - yet).
i recall telling about linux/oss a friend of mine, who had not heard about it a year ago. he is evaluating it as his primary os for the new workstation he is going to buy.
it is new.
Trouble is, it was a bad idea then, and it's still a bad idea. There's a massive difference between hiring an administrative staff that knows Windows and one that knows Linux. If you're hiring a dozen people, it makes about a quarter million dollar difference annually, and you're also hiring from a much smaller pool of available applicants. When you consider that using Linux instead of Windows is only saving you about $5,000 a year in licensing fees... well, that's just plain stupid.
hmm. assuming that software age is ~ 3 years and equiping average workstation with windows, msoffice, antivirus and whatnot would be somewhere around 300ls = $600, this would turn out into 25 workstations (not counting any servers at all here...)
using it for 5 years would be 41 workstations, still no servers.
depending on qualification, you can get an average it support person here for ~ $600-~1200 a month (which probably heavily differs from your location). getting a wannabee windows expert might be slightly cheaper than wannabee linux expert, but once you start looking at people who know what they are doing, the wages quickly level out (i believe this should be the same everywhere
now, if you really need a dozen of people to keep (let's be generous) 50 workstations running... depending on the needs, that should be half-time for a single person at most...
and that's not counting the fact that you have provided some baseless amount. are companies with thousands of employees getting all their windows software for $5000, no matter what and in which amounts ? how does ms survive then ?
That saying is about people. Software generally becomes obsolete in twenty years.
this _is_ about people. this is about thinking. this is about changing something people are used to. and this is about availability of your information - to you.
this isn't one software vendor against other, this is completely different concept.
Some people claim this shows how great Linux is, but strangely enough, the people who didn't like Linux ten years ago *still* don't like it... for pretty much the same reasons.
steve ballmer ?
antivirus companies ? overpriced commercial software producers ?
yeah, their reasons probably are the same
> It seems like Linux is the only desktop os that has ever gained marketshare against
> Microsoft's monopoly.
This appearance is generated through unverifiable means. When someone buys a PC with Windows installed, installs Linux as a dual-boot option, and then never uses the Linux boot... which I have seen done many times... is that desktop market share?
ugh. WHO is counting that ? i'd say that cases when a computer is sold with mswindows licence and later linux is installed over it are a lot more common than such a miscounting. this seems to be an extremly false argument.
I'll bet they count it. I'll also bet the surveys on Linux market share are largely conducted among a self-selected group that is likely to use Linux anyway. But let's pretend they're a standard distribution anyway, okay? It will make Linux look good.
of course They do. They have a way to track EVERY linux install ! fear Them !
wtf ? surveys of linux marketshare usually are done either by comparing revenue gained by it (which favours windows a LOT) or by enquiring businesses (and here also quite often clueless people respond to qu
kde is sort of nicely supported. information coming out of novell is quite different. official position is "we ship both, but concentrate on gnome in our commercial products".
;)
i've heard that gnome is being pushed hard by ximian zealots, though
if i see kde being obsoleted by suse, i'll leave it in a moment.
i don't think parent referred to tecnical qualito of games. it was more about gameplay quality.
:) ;)
now, aoe and aoe2 were one of best rts games i've seen. aoe3 was crap.
not that they are the only ones, lately there are less and less interesting games. oldschool games like simon the sorcerer or larry are bastardised by 3d. great fun series like carmageddon ar fscked up (carmageddon 3 sucked badly).
lately i'm checking out games for linux - scorched3d, wesnoth, liquidwar. games that are fun to play, even though they are small and without extra graphics
ooh. just noticed, there is a linux version of tapan kaikki for some time already. see ya
i was talking about behaviour when user input was added to autocomplete, not replacing it. not about it failing second time or whatnot.
the middle one ?
um, i don't want to think into this too much, but maybe lvm2 can help you in some or other way.
for example, have a single source repository of all data. mount a writable snapshot for each department. this way only changes will take up diskspace.
of course, this would be bad in long term if you have no chance to sync central repository now and then, thus would work only for relatively short periods of time.
"Those who care enough to configure file dialogs would probably care enough to learn about Ctrl+L." ...which was utterly broken when these dialogs first appeared (it seems to be fixed in latest gtk versions) - it was adding user input, not replacing the suggestion.
and it's not that this was the only problem. even on slashdot articles lists containing >10 items were compiled. i can point to problems with most if not all software i use, even the ones i like a lot. i like gimp pretty much (and use it a lot), firefox is very nice - but those dialogs just damage the experience.
i'm pretty sure that searching various bugzilla will result in a lot of things, it's just that i (and a lot of other people) have talked about these problems enough. i see that some of them are fixed now - so they were recognised to be problems. which is fine, but it tells me that even though gnome people speak all day about usability, they do not bother to test it enough - any qa should have caught these.
yep, this was the ugliest crap - but it fortunately is fixed ;)
gtk+2 2.8.16 (from slackware-current) works as it should
ps. subject is trimmed because i entered 52 symbols and limit is 50 !!!!!111~~~~!!
most people who have been forced to use those dialogs complain. a lot.
;)
you just say "oooooh, i have never done that... you can repeat it as often as you like... lalalala"
forcing these dialogs on people in the state they were (they might have gotten better, at least autocomplete is replaced, not added now) was simply stupid - everybody who tried them had a bad experience and first impression is the most important.
well, they _could_ be configurable, but that's probably heresy in gnome world
it's hard to find a scanner that's supported by linux at all :E.
;>
i almost managed to get canon lide 30 (that's supposedly "complete" in sane scanner list), but i was a couple of days - last one already was bought...
actually, i'd like to kick some canon exec in the nuts for this
that's the problem - a lot of people have signatures configured improperly, sometimes relevant information is added to signature...
i usually do a quick stripping anyway, so disabling that behaviour would be nice. i'm surprised i was unable to find that in about:config...