Coming from Fedora 17 which had a pre-installed »Calligra Suite« (v 2.41) on it I am now continuesly using the »Words« software for about one month. I am a big fan of using pre-installed tools and since Calligra Suite uses the OpenOffice-Document-format it was a pleasure to dive into the functions.

At first.

After one month of really frustrating usage of the text processor »Words« I have to say: It has so many bugs in it that's nearly unusable. I also updated to the version 2.55 available through the Fedora repository. With no success on the bugs. I wouldn't even use it to create a simple letter. Just because the time to correct things where Words messed with formattings is simply precious.

Having said that please understand that I am not going to blame anyone who creates this software. No, really not! I know this is free software. I understand that everyone involved in this project does it in his unpaid spare time. Creating software is hard work. I know because I am a software developer myself. And I love the simplicity of the Words-interface. Everything you need to do in about 85% of daily usage is there. And it's simple to use.

But it's not working. And that drives me crazy.

I think anyone involved in this project does this not just to show up his/her name in the credits of some software (hopefully) but just to make a good office suite. There's a big competitor named OpenOffice which is a reliable tool (using it on Windows for about six years now). But it's a heavy tool which is not easy to master. Calligra Suite is a lightweight tool with way fewer options but an ideal solution for most users. So there is really a need for an alternative office suite. I repeat: There is a need for an alternative office suite.

But it also need to work. It must not (!) mess up your precious work. It must not!

If you guys and girls at the development team want to make it a useable tool you have to concentrate on the bugs of the software. No-one needs new features where others currently still available ones don't work.

I have a list of around 10 bugs which I would love to share. I've looked at the bug reporting tool and searched for some bugs but for me it looks like it is a mess on it's own. So if anyone is interested in my bug list please contact me here at the forum.

Kind regards,
Henrik Fisch

hfisch wrote:If you guys and girls at the development team want to make it a useable tool you have to concentrate on the bugs of the software. No-one needs new features where others currently still available ones don't work.

If I want to work on a document created by Microsoft Office I currently have the option of opening it in Microsoft Office on a Windows PC, opening it in LibreOffice on either Kubuntu or Windows or trying to use Calligra 2.61. For me, usability means being able to import and export to or from the various file formats with minimal problems and corrections needed once the file has been converted.

I recently needed to work on a Word document at home that I had been working on at work. I emailed it to my personal email address and opened it up in LibreOffice. It didn't look too bad, just a couple of very minor problems that took seconds to rectify. I then opened it up in Words and most of the more complicated formatting was completely lost. Even after using LibreOffice to convert the file from ,doc to .odt format I found that Words simply could not cope with the formatting that was very necessary for me to use. When I had finished changing my file in LibreOffice, I emailed it back to my work address and the following day all I had to do was again correct just two very minor formatting errors.

I'm sure that documents created, edited, printed and re-edited using the Calligra suite can be processed without too many problems but in the real world conversion to and from other formats is a necessity for Linux users. Where I work, most files are stored and transmitted in .doc, .xls or .pdf formats and are created using Microsoft or Adobe software.

I share Henrik's concerns about reporting bugs. It's not an easy task reporting format conversion problems and giving examples but may be we need to try harder.

The bug tracker is the right place to report your bugs. Here in the forum it's less likely that the right people will read about them.

Even if the bug tracker might sometimes look a bit messy and you might not get a reply immediately -- at some point, people will be like "ok, let's fix bugs now", and then they go to the tracker and search for open reports and fix whatever is reproducable. Your issues should be in that list

Greetings