tomhudson's Journal: Yet another open source failure

Trying to print an envelope address in openoffice under linux? What a waste of time.

Do the people who code this sh*t actually ever use it? Or do they never use anything else, so they simply don't know that it's possible to do better?

Easy prediction - open source will never be competitive. When it's so bad that I'm tempted to throw a copy of XP (or even Wn95) on the box because linux on the desktop is still 2 decades behind the times anyway, there's a fundamental problem that obviously will never be fixed.

I really hate them, but my next computer is going to be a mac.

Re:

[Barbara, not Barbie]

I was trying to print on a standard envelope. What a joke. I ended up using the "original digital editor system" - all 10 fingers worth. Maybe I should hunt around for an abacus so for when they "improve" the spreadsheets?

Oh, it was the latest LibreOffice, not OpenOffice.

We're not making progress ...

Re:

[kermidge]

When I read this I realized that I hadn't tried to print an envelope since '89 using Timeworks' WordWriter on my Atari 1040STe to a 24-pin Epson. Guess I must have had fun then, also.

So, being adventurous, I thought to give it a go. Along the way I figured I should check if'n I had the latest firmware, driver, and utilities (Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit) for the Laserjet P1006 on the table. What with that, checking settings both in LibreOffice Writer and printer, after an hour, I successfully printed an envelope.

Re:

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Now you see why I ended up doing it by hand ... and hour just to print an address? Dot-matrix and daisy-wheel printers from the command prompt weren't so bad ... just "copy address.txt < LPT2" - on a stupid 286/20 with 2 megs of ram, 2hds, 4 comm ports (3 modems, 1 mouse), 3 lpt ports, 2 monitors, 2 hds, and the whole thing only took 17 seconds from a cold boot to ready to work, or under 15 seconds for a warm boot.

Posted from debian, because fedora has failed the "update w/o breaking too much" test -

Re:

[kermidge]

Well, I remember printing envelopes with Atari (Shephardson; my favorite from those days) Basic on the 800 in '81 or so... It worked fine, after one worked out where the addresses would appear. Printer had tractor and friction feed; using a plain envelope in either orientation needed some watching to see that it fed through squarely. I think I ended up writing a wee Basic prg to handle regular and business size, also postcards. Somewhen back there one could get tractor fed envelopes and such but they wer

Re:Have yoIt all sucku tried it in Windows lately?

[Barbara, not Barbie]

I've already decided that Debian is just more open-source garbage. I changed the theme because the default one is too low-contrast and too bright, and the end result is now every single theme I use, neither the "Subject" nor the "Comment" text boxes appear any more. Even after logging out and back in.

So, I have to write my reply in a text editor, and then paste it in the invisible comment box, and then, to make sure it's actually there, do a CTRL-A to select it all.

How stupid is THAT?

So, until I can

Re:

[kermidge]

"So, I have to write my reply in a text editor, and then paste it in the invisible comment box, and then, to make sure it's actually there, do a CTRL-A to select it all."

Yar, 'atsa pretty stupid.

I've been a bit luckier; mostly been using Ubuntu last five years, most stuff just works, pretty much. Your open-source complaints are well taken; I suppose that's what happens when stuff gets done by people 'as the spirit moves them.' Yet stuff does get reviewed and vetted, at least for the kernel. The rest? Ye

Re:

[Barbara, not Barbie]

I just finished trying out the Windows 8 Preview ... I'm now downloading Fedora 17 Beta to get rid of that garbage ASAP.

Microsoft has a real disaster in the making on their hands. The Metro UI is kludgy, is NOT going to work for businesses OR consumers, and about the only thing I can say is you really have to experience it first hand to see just how bad it is.

My guess? It doesn't matter what Microsoft does, businesses are just going to keep re-imaging using their existing XP licenses every time a com

Re:

[kermidge]

I had W8 as a vm for a few months, maybe spent twenty hours with it all told. Once I figured out how to get a desktop and how to shut it down... it's not totally horrible; one can see they put a lot of work into it. Speedy boot and shutdown. Had I a tablet I might even consider using it. Did I still use Windows as a working OS I'd use 7 - it's a decent successor to XP; compatibility mode mostly just works. It's more robust than XP, has better overall recovery stuff, log viewer, and a much-improved grap

Re:

[mcgrew]

Indeed, printing envelopes has always been a PITA in any of the word processors I've used (and I've used a lot of them).

Re:

[Qzukk]

Making Labels pre-ribbon was actually a ton easier than now. Back then, there was a wizard that guided you step by step.

Now with the ribbon, you get all the buttons yourself, and you have to figure out what order to push them in, and you have to dodge traps like the "Create Labels" button, or forgetting to push the "Update Labels" button to let Word know you actually wanted every label cell to contain an address block.

Re:

[FoolishOwl]

Most of the trouble I have is with the printer and the custom printer drivers that come from the manufacturers -- I usually have to print a couple of envelopes to get it lined up right.

Printers? I hate them

[tqft]

While it is in the machine I can cope. Printers in the process of collapsing the wave function of my ideas into a fixed form tend to get very mixed up. Even plain text. Yes I have had nightmares about the things. You know deadline, VIP's waiting. Printer dies or worse mysteriously corrupts. Unfortunately the nightmares come from experience not imagination.

Once many years ago my direct supervisor sent me around the building looking for very specific version of telegraph paper (yes it was to go into a d

I made a template once...

[jawtheshark]

Took a lot of time, now I just load the template. Yes, in OpenOffice... and no, Word's way of handling labels and envelopes isn't intuitive or easy either.