I first got to know OpenOffice in a very awkward place at a very awkward time: specifically, in the Akihabara district of Tokyo at about 3:30 am. I had just finished a ridiculously long "meeting" which basically consisted of karaoke, drinking, and listening to The Greatest Hits Of The 80's volumes 1–9. Needless to say, we didn't accomplish much during normal hours that night!:-)
Anyway, it's 3:30 am. I'm stuck in Akihabara because I don't have an International Driver's License (let alone a car) and have to find a cheap place to crash for a few hours before the JR starts its morning run. I managed to find a 24-hour cybercafe open, so I went in, paid my ¥800 and found a quiet booth to stay in. As soon as I turn on the computer to check my e-mail, I see icons for both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office on the desktop. I figure, hey, maybe I can get some work done, and fire up OpenOffice.
And that's when the trouble starts.
I first tried to open up a Japanese text file (saved in Shift_JIS format). Simple task, right? WRONG! OpenOffice insists the file is in UTF-8 format. I try to override it by looking for a converter, but alas, I can only work in Unicode. Apparently Shift_JIS isn't good enough to be supported in OpenOffice. I open up the text file in Microsoft Word and it looks fine. I figure it's some sort of one-time bug, so I save the text file (making sure it's in Unicode) and close Word. I try (keyword: try) to open the file in OpenOffice, and...
I wait. And wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. I'm guessing Java isn't too good with rendering Kanji at a rate faster that 5 characters per second. I'm almost reminded of an old Telnet session made over a modem. But at least it rendered characters correctly!
After about an hour of trying to get this God-awful mess of an office suite to open and display a single text file, I give up. I close down OpenOffice and go back to trusty Microsoft Word. Later that day, over a bottle of C.C. Lemon and some habanero chips, I'm reminded why there are product delays: It's because they'd rather hammer out the bugs themselves than subject their paying customers to a shitty product. Go figure.
Long story short: If any employees suggest OpenOffice, or indeed any "quality" open-source program, I'm throwing them out on their ass. And they're not getting severance pay. And I'm filing it as them quitting so they don't get any unemployment checks. Morons don't deserve to be paid.
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I first got to know OpenOffice in a very awkward place at a very awkward time: specifically, in the Akihabara district of Tokyo at about 3:30 am. I had just finished a ridiculously long "meeting" which basically consisted of karaoke, drinking, and listening to The Greatest Hits Of The 80's volumes 1–9. Needless to say, we didn't accomplish much during normal hours that night! :-)
Anyway, it's 3:30 am. I'm stuck in Akihabara because I don't have an International Driver's License (let alone a car) and have to find a cheap place to crash for a few hours before the JR starts its morning run. I managed to find a 24-hour cybercafe open, so I went in, paid my ¥800 and found a quiet booth to stay in. As soon as I turn on the computer to check my e-mail, I see icons for both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office on the desktop. I figure, hey, maybe I can get some work done, and fire up OpenOffice.
And that's when the trouble starts.
I first tried to open up a Japanese text file (saved in Shift_JIS format). Simple task, right? WRONG! OpenOffice insists the file is in UTF-8 format. I try to override it by looking for a converter, but alas, I can only work in Unicode. Apparently Shift_JIS isn't good enough to be supported in OpenOffice. I open up the text file in Microsoft Word and it looks fine. I figure it's some sort of one-time bug, so I save the text file (making sure it's in Unicode) and close Word. I try (keyword: try) to open the file in OpenOffice, and...
I wait. And wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. I'm guessing Java isn't too good with rendering Kanji at a rate faster that 5 characters per second. I'm almost reminded of an old Telnet session made over a modem. But at least it rendered characters correctly!
After about an hour of trying to get this God-awful mess of an office suite to open and display a single text file, I give up. I close down OpenOffice and go back to trusty Microsoft Word. Later that day, over a bottle of C.C. Lemon and some habanero chips, I'm reminded why there are product delays: It's because they'd rather hammer out the bugs themselves than subject their paying customers to a shitty product. Go figure.
Long story short: If any employees suggest OpenOffice, or indeed any "quality" open-source program, I'm throwing them out on their ass. And they're not getting severance pay. And I'm filing it as them quitting so they don't get any unemployment checks. Morons don't deserve to be paid.