Re: Feedback, Bugs and Wishes

[Jean Bréfort <jean brefort normalesup org>]

Le jeudi 19 février 2009 à 19:52 +0100, Richard Kolodziej a écrit :
> Hi.
>
> I've tried Gnumeric (again) to see, if it fitted my needs for a
> spreadsheet program or if it was just better than Microsoft Excel or
> Openoffice.org Calc. Well, I've found some things that that don't seem
> to be right with Gnumeric and its homepage. I will just speak my mind
> and give feedback that could sound a litte harsh, but I don't intend
> to offend anybody.
>
> Lets begin with the homepage:
>
> It should be overhauled. It's okay that it just looks old by the means
> of "modern" webdesign but it lacks some key elements and throughout
> has a major inconsistency.

The homepage is not really maintained. Nobody has both the skills and
available time for that (time being the most important thing). Of
course, you are welcome to volunteer ;-)

> 1) The mission statement is missing.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_statement
>
>     "What is the purpose and the goal of Gnumeric and its homepage?"
> would be the main question here. See
>      
> http://kava.student.usp.ac.fj/class-shares/TS208/2006%20Material/TS208%20Resources/Impact%20of%20mission%20statements%20on%20firm%20performance.pdf
> for further reading
>
>     Other things I asked myself were:
>
>     "Who are you competing with? Microsoft Excel (OpenOffice.org Calc)
> or SPSS?" Gnumeric looks like a regular spreadsheet program but is
> befriended with the R-Project and can do some accurate statistical
> calculations (as linked to "a recent report"
> http://www.csdassn.org/software_reports.cfm ).
>
>     "Why should I use Gnumeric? What are its advantages over Excel,
> Calc and/or SPSS?" A nice comparison table would be nice, showing the
> benefits of Gnumeric over Excel/Calc(/SPSS).
>
> 2) The About page is missing. What is this homepage about and what is
> Gnumeric in more detail? This is where the mission statement should be
> and more information about Gnumeric. (There should be only a brief
> explanation of what Gnumeric is on the landing page, like it is right
> now http://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/ )
>
> 3) The Contact page is missing. Hard to find an e-mail address or
> webform to contact you, I have to guess my way through "Development:
> How can I help" -> "contact us" to finally get an e-mail address.
>
> Inconsistency:
>
> 4) Why are the download links in the news section on the landing page
> different and more up to date than on the regular download page? Why
> don't you have simple download buttons for any supported GNU/Linux
> distribution and Windows?
>
> And now some things about Gnumeric:
>
> 5) I have included a screenshot taken on a Windows Vista machine
> (don't know if that works in a mailing list). While it may be
> important that Gnumeric should be more pleasant to the eye it is of
> minor role here (this is a problem of GTK+). The default font size of
> my system was increased from 96 dpi to 120 dpi which makes the spacing
> of the cells inappropriate. The letters look cropped and in fact,
> these are commas and not points in front of the decimal place. And why
> isn't the €-sign placed directly after the number but is instead
> aligned right (the number left)? For readability reasons it would be
> nice to have the currency or any number aligned by the comma (or
> point) in front of the decimal space.

Strange, I don't have this behavior (using linux). You might file a bug
report.

> 6) When you want to close Gnumeric and you made some unsaved changes
> it asks you - in this order - to 1) Discard changes 2) Don't close 3)
> Save. This is inconsistent with the order of Excel and Calc: 1) Save
> 2) Discard 3) Abort. (I don't have SPSS installed on this machine to
> tell you its order).

This order is quite standard on unix machines. May be we should change
it for the win32 build.

> What I would like Gnumeric to be:
>
> Right now, Gnumeric seems to be an okay replacement of Excel but it
> also tries to reach up to SPSS (or Matlab). This duality is okay with
> me.
> Gnumeric should be a simple - in the means of usable not "dumbed down"
> - but powerful spreadsheet program without any annoyances between you
> and the data (like ribbons -> "Where the hell is the function I
> search!?"). It also should be a more simple/usable statistical
> calculation program by using the power of R. Adding output beauty
> through LaTeX/PDF files for reports would make it perfect.

LaTeX and pdf export are already there (pdf export is done using the
print engine).

> These are all just wishes and while I completely lack programming
> skills, I know that this would be hard work to implement.
>
> So far about my observations, I hope I didn't offend any one with my opinions.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard
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