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Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up (InfoWorld)
InfoWorld reports that the Central Scotland Police is dumping StarOffice and returning to Microsoft Office. "In the past, when the agency deployed a new police application on StarOffice and Linux, the application had to be customized to work with the open-source software, [IT head David] Stirling said. It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said.
Perhaps most of all, the agency needed its systems to work smoothly with those at other agencies and criminal justice departments. Scotland's other seven police jurisdictions use Microsoft for their desktops and applications layer, he said. 'Even though we're one of eight police forces, we make up only 5 percent of the police officers. It's hard to have 5 percent driving the rest of the force,' he said."
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Lock-in rules OK Posted Aug 12, 2005 13:55 UTC (Fri) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link] Another fine example of the power of Microsoft's lock-in. Open Source is not being ditched because of any real technical problems, but because it's "different" to what "everyone else" uses. Of course, what's really different is Microsoft, because it's the one sphere that's basically non-interoperable with all other spheres. But being the biggest, it matters not - except to us, of course.
Lock-in rules OK Posted Aug 13, 2005 0:04 UTC (Sat) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link] Star Office being a bloated pig with a horrible user interface isn'tnecessarily due to Microsoft. It's due to Star Office being a bloated pig with a horrible user interface. My fiance tried Open Office for a couple months, a year ago when she got her new laptop. It was the only word processor installed on there. The experience was apparently so painful it inspired her to go out and BUY a fresh copy of Word, and she refuses to even look at OO anymore. I understand her feelings because I used to recommend The Gimp to people (over Photoshop), until I tried to make a flyer in it for a convention. The Gimp may be marvelous for scripting graphics transforms from the command line, but its GUI user interface sucks amazingly. A friend and I spent _hours_ trying to put text in a box with the Gimp. It wouldn't even WORDWRAP, let alone handle seamless font changes. (Each bit of text in a different font was a separate graphical element, having to be positioned seperately by hand. Yes really. This was in 2004, the app was well over 5 years old and it couldn't handle text.) After HOURS of fighting with it my friend rebooted his laptop and pulled up photoshop, and we had the flyer done and ready to print in half an hour. Here's the final flyer. Not brain surgery: http://web.archive.org/web/20040411115056/http://www.linu... But we could _not_ do that with the Gimp. And yes, we tried, at length. Because clearly, the Gimp had been created by people who had never tried to do anything remotely like that with it through the GUI tools. The people who use that sort of tool were apparently not even consulted during its development. (Who are its users today? Ex-photoshop users, or people scripting graphical transforms from the command line?) We come from a community where the two most popular text editors are "vi" and "emacs" (as opposed to Windows, which had notepad over ten years ago. Yeah it was a clone of a mac app. So why didn't _we_ clone that mac app too? Because it wasn't Unixy, and vi and emacs were?) Rob
Lock-in rules OK Posted Aug 13, 2005 0:30 UTC (Sat) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link] So you found Gimp unusable for making a mostly-textual brochure as a graphic image? Okay, I can buy that, but was the real problem that Gimp doesn't handle large gobs of text as well a Photoshop or that you were fixated on trying to use a graphics tool for what looks to me like a simple text document with a couple of graphics?
Square peg, round hole Posted Aug 13, 2005 3:04 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] Your problem with that flyer was that you were trying to perform a "desktop publishing" kind of task with a program intended primarily for low-level bitmap manipulation. Applications like KWord (which in many ways is more of a DTP application than a MS Word-esque word processor), Scribus, Cenon, etc., are a much better choice here; for one thing, that way the resulting PDF file should be much smaller (this PDF is 1.7MB), and would allow copying text from it to the clipboard or X selection. > We come from a community where the two most popular text editors are "vi" and "emacs" (as opposed to Windows, which had notepad Are you suggesting that Notepad is better? Last I remember, Notepad still couldn't handle files larger than some not-especially-large fixed size. > over ten years ago. NEdit has been around for a long time. I'm not sure exactly how long, but its mailing list archives go back to 1997, and at that time it was already approaching version 5.0. > Yeah it was a clone of a mac app. I don't think it's especially similar to TeachText, and even less similar to SimpleText; these could handle rich text to some extent, whereas Notepad cannot. > So why didn't _we_ clone that mac app too? Because it wasn't Unixy, and vi and emacs were? We have KWrite, gedit, NEdit, etc.; what more do you want?
Desktop publishing, text editors Posted Aug 13, 2005 11:31 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] > Your problem with that flyer was that you> were trying to perform a "desktop publishing" > kind of task with a program intended primarily > for low-level bitmap manipulation. Agreed. I don't do much of that sort of thing, and even /I/ know to try something more text oriented if my project is mostly text. For the quick single-shot stuff I usually do, Mozilla Composer, print preview, and a printer, usually does the job, but that's more simple sign type things than brochures. For that, I'd try OOo or KOffice, or Scribus or the like. >> [T]he two most popular text editors >> [for Linux] are "vi" and "emacs". >> [Compare Windows Notepad.] > Last I remember, Notepad still couldn't > handle files larger than some > not-especially-large fixed size. 64 KB, because it was based on 16-bit Windows 3.x code, with its DOS based 64 KB memory segments. (DOS based memory was segment:byte addressed, each part being 16-bit, allowing 2^16 bytes or 64 KB max in the byte address. Anything within the local segment was in the "near" segment and a quick memory jump. Anything outside the local segment was a "far" memory jump, slower and more complicated. Thus, a simple app such as Notepad would have a single segment operating data size, 64 KB. Note that the actual test file max size would likely be slightly smaller, because 2-4 KB of the segment would normally be used to store other application data, the current file path, etc.) >> So why didn't _we_ clone [Notepad]? >> Because it wasn't Unixy, >> and vi and emacs were? > We have KWrite, gedit, NEdit, etc. Actually, kedit would be the closest direct comparison in terms of KDE apps. KWrite is just an SDI (single document interface) to the KATE (K Advanced Text Editor) KPart. KATE, of course, is more a programmers editor, with a number of plugins, programming language sensitive context hilighting (part of the kpart, so KWrite gets the hilighting too =8^), and of course an MDI (Multiple Document Interface). KEdit (and its kpart) is just a simple text editor, without the hilighting and etc, so it would be most directly comparable to Notepad. Anyway, your point stands. I'd doubt vi(m) and emacs are the most popular, any more, anyway, altho it's possible they retain a plurality in terms of folks that can sort of use them, due to the fact that they work in CLI, their universality, and the many other choices available, splitting the vote. Even in CLI, however, there's midnight commander, with mcedit (my personal favorite for sysadmin tasks for file management and editing, respectively, mcedit handles programmer's hilighting fairly nicely, too), nano (Gentoo's default choice, due to the fact that it's a small CLI app that none-the-less is functional for fresh MSWormOS switchers and other newbies, /far/ more so than VI(M)/EMACS), and others. Nano, in fact, might be fairly directly compared to the MSDOS EDITOR application that was shipped at least thru 9x as a useful emergency boot disk text file editor. Ironically, that "emergency" editor was more functional than Notepad (even having an MDI, by MSWormOS 98. tho I think it was SDI in 95), and just as easy to use. Even at its small size, however, nano can handle programmer's hilighting, with an appropriate config. As I said, I expect that due in part to the recent influx of relative *ix newbies, VI(M)/EMACS aren't used much by the majority, any more. In any case, there's enough other text editors in widespread enough use, that the Notepad comparison by the OP, if it was ever accurate at all, isn't any more, and hasn't been for several years at minimum. Duncan
Desktop publishing, text editors Posted Aug 13, 2005 21:39 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > Actually, kedit would be the closest direct comparison in terms of KDE apps. I remember reading somewhere that KEdit will be discontinued eventually, and that the only reason it hasn't been already is that it supports bidirectional text and Kate/KWrite don't. > Nano, in fact, might be fairly directly compared to the MSDOS EDITOR application that was shipped at least thru 9x as a useful emergency boot disk text file editor. Actually Nano is closest to Pico, which is a standalone version of the editor in the Pine mail program (it is non-free, which is why Nano was written).
Desktop publishing, text editors Posted Aug 17, 2005 12:13 UTC (Wed) by carcassonne (guest, #31569) [Link] > Anyway, your point stands. I'd doubt vi(m) and emacs are the most> popular, any more, anyway, altho it's possible they retain a plurality in > terms of folks that can sort of use them, due to the fact that they work > in CLI, their universality, and the many other choices available, > splitting the vote.
Exactly. I use emacs for years in CLI.
I.e. Common Linux Icons.
I click on the emacs icon (double click when in Windows) and then emacs appears. I load a file and then I use the mouse roller to scroll up and down the file. I mark text using the mouse and paste it using the mouse. I make it full screen and split the emacs window in many mouse-siezable parts. Then I save this window configuration, load more files and recreate and resize new windows, save them, and in one second I'm back to the other window setup with the other files. I also use the mouse to click on emacs menu items like to make diffs between directories or to change the color theme. Or maybe to play Tetris. Or to browse class hierarchies.
I'm not sure what the GUI-oriented editors out there are doing nowadays, but to have such a comment as the one above about emacs (Xemacs not !) linked to text mode surely rings of terribly advanced features on the GUI side. Pray tell, are these current GUI editors writing automatically what you should write ? Can we move about the files with a nod of the head and/or the movement of the eyes ? Can we use our feet to delete files ?
Lock-in rules OK Posted Aug 17, 2005 12:00 UTC (Wed) by carcassonne (guest, #31569) [Link] > 5 years old and it couldn't handle text.) After HOURS of fighting with it> my friend rebooted his laptop and pulled up photoshop, and we had the > flyer done and ready to print in half an hour.
What I don't understand, and to make an analogy, why use Open Office to write C++ source code ? Or in this case why use The Gimp to make a terribly simple one-page flyer that can be done in minutes using Open Office ? I did a lot of birthday cards using Open Office draw and it's downright easy. In fact, kids can do it.
Then why use The Gimp for such a purpose ? It's not made to do that. Why don't you use emacs instead, while you're at it, and complain that emacs is not good to make flyers.
> We come from a community where the two most popular text editors are "vi"
Comparing emacs and Notepad: I hope it's not a trend for people looking into Linux to completly get it wrong and then to go about complaining about it. It's bound, with popularity, to have more and more 'newbies' around and unfortunately more and more not very well designed softwares, but these people should take a hint and look a bit more at what they're so rapidly describing.
Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up (InfoWorld) Posted Aug 12, 2005 14:33 UTC (Fri) by penguinroar (guest, #14460) [Link] Apparantly only some servers was OSS/Linux and the databases and the firewall will be left standing. What is changed then? Well mostly StarOffice and the Sun Solaris servers. The problem here was that some moran decided to save in StarOffice format instead of in MS Office format. That would have been natural considering this installation of StarOffice was only 5% of the total installed base, the rest was MS Office.
They also got a sweet deal on that application wich should cost £100.000 to develop. Microsoft has promised to fix that little thing.
All in all i cant see this as a huge win over linux as the installation was mostly SUN and Microsoft to begin with. Possibly a big win over Sun but linux, they will keep most of it!
Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up (InfoWorld) Posted Aug 12, 2005 14:54 UTC (Fri) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link] One wonders whether or not they upgraded OOo after the initial install? It would be unfortunate if they decided to completely ditch it based on the shortcomings of a version five years old...
Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up (InfoWorld) Posted Aug 12, 2005 18:34 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > the application had to be customized to work with the
open-source software This is misleading, because StarOffice is not open source software. Furthermore, unless I'm mistaken, the article actually said that it was the Windows version of StarOffice ("It retained Windows on its desktop PCs"). The only specific open source software mentioned in the article was Linux, which was only being used on servers to start with ("30 Linux servers installed at branch offices") and still is ("It plans to retain its Linux firewall and the Linux servers it uses for some of its database applications").
Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up (InfoWorld) Posted Aug 12, 2005 20:41 UTC (Fri) by scotdb (guest, #3170) [Link] From discussion on the local ScotLUG (Scottish Linux Users Group) mailing list, it appears that the main "Linux Advocate" with the police force had also moved on.
Regarding the Linux-based database servers, I believe that although the operating system was Linux, the DBMS software was proprietary (IBM's DB2 I think, but am not certain).
Phil (in Scotland)
Bloated Star Office (Open Office) Posted Aug 13, 2005 16:56 UTC (Sat) by Hansin (guest, #31814) [Link] I want to add that I do feel OOo is a bit bloated. But I will give it this: once I recompiled FreeType to enable the byte-code interpreter and pulled over my Windows TT fonts to Linux, it rendered the docs I checked flawlessly, and some had tables, etc. At least it is themeable to improve appearance. If I were to roll out the use of OOo, I would fully customize the UI to make it user-friendly. It would be nice if OOo could modularize components (maybe it is) and work on stripping out redundant/depricated/slow code. But it is a LARGE program. But the fact that it rendered .doc files flawlessly, and hopefully it's new native format in 2.0 is well thought out, it could be a contender.
Bloated Star Office (Open Office) Posted Aug 15, 2005 1:39 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] OOo doesn't get close to rendering graphical content fromWord documents correctly; it messes up tables of contents and pagination; and any attempt to translate macros is utterly doomed. Unless you're abandoning the MS Office format altogether, and prepared to tell your colleagues you'd prefer them to send you a pdf and not expect you to edit it, OpenOffice is definitely not (yet) a "contender" to replace MS Office.
Exchanging documents Posted Aug 21, 2005 15:05 UTC (Sun) by shane (subscriber, #3335) [Link] At our office we have a few people who do a lot of work on documents. These departments invariably use Microsoft Word heavily. Our management team also (with only two exceptions).Most of our staff only needs Word to read documents that we receive from our clients. For this, I find that Open Office works just fine - you don't need tables to render pixel-identical to understand what the sender was trying to say. I have used Open Office instead of Word or Excel for 3 years internally, and none of the rest of the staff has even noticed. This tells me that it is "good enough" for working with Word or Excel. Most of my documents produced like this are less than 10 pages, so I admit that I am not the kind of person likely to have problems. I also admit that Open Office 1.1 could not produce presentations that interoperate with PowerPoint (and in fact neither could Microsoft Office for Mac a couple of years ago). Our IT department is getting new versions of Microsoft Office for our company this year, with a bill of 75000 Euros or so. (Linux users will use a terminal server to use this software.) We have less than 100 people! The waste really annoys me, but management decisions are what they are. I don't like to think about what my staff writes about my decisions on the forums they frequent. ;)
Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up (InfoWorld) Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:19 UTC (Mon) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link] These are rare news -- sure, such things happen and it would be strange if they didn't. But the fact that this kind of news is really RARE says it all.
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