[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Advice required on auto text resize (Impress)

[Stefan Knorr]

Hello all,

> I agree with Mirek and think "Autofit" should be removed or optional 
> (with the default being "off").
> And I don't think we have to take exporting presentations to PPTX into 
> consideration. The export to Microsoft Office is so bad (yes I know, 
> it's Microsoft's fault!) that text size is the least problem here.

Please give our developers some credit. I'd reckon that among the
non-MSO suites, LibreOffice has the best export functionality for MSO
formats. (It's of course not perfect.)


> And fiddling around with content to fit on a slide is _not_ "a massive 
> pain in the backside", it's a part of the job of making a presentation. 
> The presenter has to think about what to present actively! It's the user 
> who has to do the work, not some "LibreOffice magic" ...

Sure, continuing that argument, we'll notice computers shouldn't help us
with making slides at all. Instead, why not do stone carvings with our
fingernails?
I'm not saying people shouldn't prepare their slides properly, but it
seems like you argue against LibreOffice helping with that. We'd all
like to have people hold presentations that adhere to Seth Godin's
guidelines [1]. Or, at least some of us would like to see people do
that.
In any case, if you even remotely limit the amount of text you put on a
slide, you'll be fine even with autofit on. However, the one advantage
that auto-fitting text brings is that helps ensure fidelity on foreign
systems, i. e. when your fonts are replaced by fonts with different
metrics.
In consequence, the merits of the auto-fit functionality lie in using it
the right way.


> And again, why does LibreOffice have to behave like Microsoft Office? If 
> people don't have the money for Microsoft Office, they should be happy 
> to get a well functioning free Office package! If they have Microsoft 
> Office, but are not satisfied, they obviously want to have something 
> different!

I would suspect that part of the reason why LibreOffice is so similar to
MS Office is that some companies in the community have an interest in
selling services for LibreOffice to businesses with a history of 20
years MS Office monoculture. 


> Sorry for being so emotional, I don't want to offend anyone! It's just 
> that I am having a really bad time at work, with my bosses getting angry 
> at me every time they see me using LibreOffice. And whenever one comes 
> to a conference, there is only Microsoft Office ... and if you try to 
> install a portable version of LibreOffice, you are the devil himself!

Sorry for your experiences there.

Astron.

[1] http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/really_bad_powe.html