Re: [tlug] Stand Up for OpenOffice!!

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Darren Cook writes:

 > OpenOffice is just as bad. E.g. in the spreadsheet I format a column as
 > a datestamp with YYYY-MM-DD. But when I click it to edit it jumbles up
 > the numbers into some other date format. I posted this as a bug a couple
 > of years back and got it dismissed as not a bug, with the claim that
 > this is a feature: it uses the locale!

If I understand correctly, it *is* a feature.  If you want a different
*default*, you can set LC_TIME.  If you want a different format in a
specific document or cell, you can set it in the appropriate place.
But this way OOo will DTRT for most users out of the box.

 > Considering I have had to set the locale of my whole system to en_GB
 > just to get open office to default to A4 paper size

This is also a feature.  Defaults for peripheral devices are
system-specific, and should be taken from the environment ("locale").
You shouldn't have to set "the whole system" either; you should be
able to get the results you want with LC_PAPER.  Try the man page for
`locale' to find out what values it takes (I don't think they are the
traditional "language_REGION.encoding@example.com" format).

 > I find that a rather poor response: obviously specific column
 > formatting should override locale,

What do you mean by "specific column formatting"?  Ie, I can see that
there should be page-level[1] and document-level attributes, but it
doesn't make any sense for column A to be A4 and column B to be
US-Legal. ;-)  And just because the columns fit on an A4 page doesn't
mean that the printer doesn't have B4 loaded.


Footnotes: 
[1]  I would expect this to be almost never used, but I did once get a
spreadsheet where I was told "sheet 3 should be printed to B4,
everything else fits on A4".  If you have a printer capable of
switching trays based on input, this could be automated.