Subject: Re: Response to Bad Review [was Re: Fwd: not worth downloading]
From: Robin Turner (robin@bilkent.edu.tr)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2001 - 05:52:52 CDT
On Tuesday 19 June 2001 03:52, WJCarpenter wrote:
> alan> Some people just dont care about having access to the source.
> alan> (Spyware, ha!) Some people just dont care about having a
> alan> program that is incredibly cross platform. (If only the rest of
> alan> Gnome Office was so enlightened) Some people dont care that the
> alan> rest of the world does not speak the same language as them.
> alan> Some people dont care about being able to import and export a
> alan> plethora of file formats. (Being able to bring your old
> alan> documents with you without having to convert them in some
> alan> external program is a killer feature.) Some people dont
> alan> appreciate a constistent and familiar interface (even if Abiword
> alan> is to an extent mimicking the de facto standard) Some people are
> alan> very harsh irrespective of the fact that a project is run
> alan> entirely by volunteers and not for profit. Some people dont
> alan> understand the pre version 1 softwafe is not perfect, and the
> alan> odd version numbers indicate unstable unsupported releases.
> alan> (Abiword is remarkably solid considering)
>
> I think it is quite reasonable for a very large number of people not
> to care about these things and in fact to have never given them much
> thought at all. In fact, for the commonly-stated target user of
> AbiWord, this is even more true. Most users use one computer in one
> place in one locale, and they want apps that do various things in easy
> ways.
>
> You are, in effect, trying to point out extenuating cirumstances
> rather than pointing out where the reviewer was factually wrong. "I
> couldn't help chase my neighbor's cows because my leg was in a cast."
> That may be true, but the neighbor's cows are still wandering on the
> road.
It's true that the "commonly-stated target user" may fall into some or all of
these categories. However, that's an individual user. Taking the user group
as whole ...
- it's important that AW is cross-platform, because users use different
platforms.
- it's important that AW come with different languages, because users speak
different languages.
- it's important that AW support a plethora of file formats, because users
receive documents in different formats.
And so on. I like the Abiword approach, though I have to admit I find it
frustrating that this thoroughness slows down development of new features
(people may remember my frequent requests for table support!).
Robin
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Tue Jun 19 2001 - 02:52:07 CDT