[softwarelist] Re: OPW and copy/paste options
- From: Clive Bonsall <cbonsall@xxxxxxx>
- To: davidpilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 15:27:40 +0000
On 5 Jan 2010, at 13:49, David Pilling wrote:
> In message <1A71ABA9-CBB0-46AA-8FD9-F518BDA19D44@xxxxxxxx>, Clive Bonsall
> <cbonsall@xxxxxxx> writes
>> The "point" is that documents for typesetting in OPW are normally presented
>
> Yes I understand this is a really useful feature.
>
> What I meant is that Ovation Pro, is on the same path as Kunzle cakes and
> Callard and Bowser's butterscotch. Well loved, but not by enough.
>
> However much of my limited time I put in, the project will not survive. It is
> perhaps a mistake to do nothing when you can only do a little, but that is
> the situation.
>
> I think the best thing would be for me to find something else to do, and OP
> to become an open source project, but I can't bring myself to give away all
> the years of work until I find something else.
I can sympathise with everything you say. But when you say "the project will
not survive", how do you define "survival" ... purely in terms of the number of
users?
Presumably, new users would have to be converts from other software. At a
guess, most current users of OPW have migrated from the RISCOS version.
Attracting converts from WINWORD will always be an uphill struggle, the more so
since OPW lacks certain industry standard functionality -- e.g. copy/paste
options, save as Word/RTF, Table generator. Converting Mac or Linux users (with
an inbuilt hatred of Windows) might have been easier, but the same limitations
apply.
I'm a university teacher, and I often think the main group who would benefit
from OPW are final year undergraduate and postgrad students when writing their
dissertations. Virtually every dissertation I've seen produced in MSWORD is a
presentational disaster, especially when it contains pictures ... and I often
recommend my students to try OPW. But the constraints are those I've listed
above + COST -- altho' the full commercial price of MSWORD is much greater than
OPW, students (and staff) get their software free or at educational prices,
e.g. the educational price for the entire Office (Ultimate) 2007 suite is
£38.95. Just like banking ... catch 'em young, and the chances are you've got
them for life! Even if they later migrate from Windows to Mac OS, probably they
will still use MSWORD in preference to Apple software like Pages ... not
because it's better or easier to use (which it isn't), but because it works and
they are familiar with it (i.e they have invested more than money).
Would the same philosophy work for OPW (very low starting price + charge for
major upgrades)? I don't know.
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C.B.
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