Re: [MLUG] Linux *really* hits the big-time (poison)

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Another point I find myself making often is that often the person creating
the content is not the same person that is adding the presentation bells &
whistles. Usually this type of thing is (or should be) handled by more
than one person. Anyone who's ever seen research done by the graphic arts
dept or presentations done by scientists probably knows what I'm talking
about. By breaking content from presentation you gain quite a bit of
flexibility. One it through one filter to generate a TeX/PDF type
file.. one for the PowerPoint-type presentation.. and another to make it
available on the web. Now that is a huge productivity increase. A light
documnet editor with XML abilities and template designers for common
output formats would be of more use IMO. :)

*^*^*^*
Michael McGlothlin <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
http://www.nomadphones.org

On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, Igor Izyumin Jr. wrote:

> > Causes normal people to waste their time & money and be grateful for the
> > experience eh? I never understood why people defend Microsoft
> > products. Obviously I've used the same products and was unimpressed. Do
> > they just have low expectations or does the M$ drug really work that
> > well? :)
> Well, I'd say M$ puts in a GREAT DEAL of marketing to keep the products 
> viable and actually make people think that they need the extra functionality. 
>  I see nothing in Word that I cannot do with a text editor like Pico or VI or 
> Emacs or whatever.  There's absolutely no point in making the text be all 
> kinds of weird fonts, colors, farting noises, animations and other funkified 
> things.  There's no point in having a word processor.  You have two things: 
> content and presentation.  You are the one writing content.  A good 
> word-processor should take care of the presentation itself, using a 
> predefined set of templates/whatever.  You should not be the one managing the 
> layout if all you're doing is writing a report or something.  The program 
> should do it by itself.  Microsoft does it exactly the opposite way, by 
> pushing the burden of creating the layout on to the end user.  And they 
> actually advertise this as being good, while it only
> wastes employees' time.  This also doubly applies to PowerPoint.  People 
> waste time creating powerpoint presentations when they would not have created 
> if they actually had to put some effort and money into it (like creating it 
> on actual slides).  This only decreases productivity, instead of increasing 
> it.  There is no point in creating powerpoint presentations - it's just a way 
> to impress someone's boss.  However, lots of employee time is WASTED on 
> creating those.  I'm not even going to talk about putting more useless 
> features into Word and other programs.  Anyone who actually USES grammar 
> check, readability check, the spellchecker (for more than catching typos), 
> and whatever else they've put in there probably doesn't deserve to have a job 
> related to writing documents, because it means they don't know how to write.  
> The same applies to PP's "features."  The purpose of business is not to 
> impress managers, it is to make money.  Business only loses money on 
> powerpoint presentations.  Just think about it: a research department has two 
> goals (actually research stuff/make a report/whatever and make an impressive 
> presentation) instead of just the first one and a fixed amount of time and 
> money to spend on both tasks, they will spend time on creating the 
> presentation but not on research.  Therefore, money is wasted.  It only takes 
> some common sense to understand that office programs with lots of features 
> will NOT improve productivity.  If I were a manager (not that I would ever be 
> one :), I would specify the font sizes, typefaces, letterheads, whatever, 
> that the employees must use, so they don't waste time on layout.  I would 
> also ban all use of powerpoint and similar stuff within the company.  That 
> way, I won't be paying for employees wasting time picking fonts or clipart or 
> whatever.
> -- 
> -- Igor
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