Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Full Text Issue Listing |
Summary: | Select 'Range' for error bars | ||||||
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Product: | General | Reporter: | issues@www <issues> | ||||
Component: | chart | Assignee: | kla <thomas.klarhoefer> | ||||
Status: | CLOSED FIXED | QA Contact: | issues@graphics <issues> | ||||
Severity: | Trivial | ||||||
Priority: | P3 | CC: | argel.gastelum, arotcarena, daniel.carrera, IngridvdM, issues, jbf.faure, jeongkyu.kim, lohmaier, matthias.mueller-prove, ndeschildre, oo, pagalmes.lists, tony.galmiche.ooo | ||||
Version: | 3.3.0 or older (OOo) | Keywords: | ms_interoperability, oooqa, rfe_eval_ok | ||||
Target Milestone: | --- | ||||||
Hardware: | All | ||||||
OS: | All | ||||||
URL: | http://specs.openoffice.org/chart/ErrorBars.odt | ||||||
Issue Type: | FEATURE | Latest Confirmation in: | --- | ||||
Developer Difficulty: | --- | ||||||
Issue Depends on: | |||||||
Issue Blocks: | 5787 | ||||||
Attachments: |
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Description
issues@www
2001-02-02 13:06:29 UTC
This is a RFE. Will continue work on this isssue asap. Just to add my 2 Brazilian Centavos, I feel that this is quite possibly the single most important feature (that doesn't currently exist in StarOffice) for the scientific community in terms of usability of Opencalc. I know a number of people that are using Excel *only* b/c this feature does not exist in SO. Is there anything I can do to help? Testing? Example data? Non-gui coding? changing QA contact from bugs@ to issues@ Would be nice to have some feedback on the status of this issue... *** Issue 3444 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** A nice-to-have but not on our roadmap for 2.0 Set to OOo Later > A nice-to-have but not on our roadmap for 2.0 > Set to OOo Later This decision torpedoes the chance of OOo being adopted as site policy in the very many higher education establisments where (non mathematical) scientific departments exist. There has been plenty of support for this feature. Since Excel Chart contains this feature, end users will resist adoption of OOo as an office suite, no matter how good the rest of it is. Don't get me wrong, I use Gnuplot for charting, and probably would even if the ability to set error ranges were included, but the majority around me will cling to Excel Chart for dear life if the alternative lacks what they see as a basic feature. OOo could realy use the education users for medium to long term growth, and it frustrates me incredibly that the developers appear not to be listening to the users on this... I saw somewhere that the ability to define flexible source range selection for different parts of data series is in the roadmap for OOo chart 2.0 (http://tools.openoffice.org/releases/q-concept.sxw) - is this element so alien that error ranges can't be done with the other ranges? I have to second Derek's comments. The ability to get a quick graph of data (including error bars!) is really fundamental for OOo adoption in the scientific world. Well, as always, keep up the good work people. Not complaining, just wishing. Falko, it is not a nice to have, it is essential for scientific use. And that is exactly were OO.org/StarOffice can find most potential users. I tried to hack it in there myself, but understanding the internals of OO.org sadly costs me to much time. Also, it is a bit strange that you post "continue this issue asap" in 2001, and postpone it 2 years later to somewhere after 2.0. So the status "Started" seems silly to me. Yes, I am complaining :) d. I too agree that this is a more important issue for the adoption of OOo Calc by scientist. I started using OOo Calc as my spreadsheet, but had to always open Excel in the end to make figures for my cumulative data. Sadly, I now only use OOo Calc if I'm pretty sure I won't need such a graph. I agree with Jon and Danny that this feature is very important if you want to attracted scientists-- a group who may be more willing to make a switch that those in e.g., business. gregg *** Issue 20551 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** Glad to find others to agree with that this issue is an essential fix and not a "we may possibly fix this later" type of issue. I was very supprised to find that OOo could not do this as it is such an important function for graph drawing. Especially when publically presenting data, without error bars your results can be viewed with some suspicion. I have to agree with Jon Lapham that you are blocking any wider adoption of OOo, especially by schools, universites and the scientific community by not fixing this issue ASAP. It's a shame you changed your minds from "will continue work on this isssue asap" in 2001 to "A nice-to-have but not on our roadmap for 2.0" in 2003. However, OOo is a great product that is always improving so please keep up the good work! Re-assigned to Matthias Müller-Prove for further evaluation. to Bettina, our central dispatcher for RFEs Anybody wanna figure out how to do it? Surely the OO people would help us or point us in the right direction. I know C and a little C++. Also I gotta say- I agree with everyone in this thread, and would love to ditch excel once and for all, but come on--it's free. Funny how the more professional the package begins to look the more people seem to feel they've somehow paid money for it. It might never work, but if there were a few of us in contact, playing with it at our leisure we might actually overcome that steep learning curve. Imagine the fame. Imagine the glory. Imagine all the women falling at our feet. OH how they would fall. Jack jackinthepants@businessfist.com Anybody wanna figure out how to do it? Surely the OO people would help us or point us in the right direction. I know C and a little C++. Also I gotta say- I agree with everyone in this thread, and would love to ditch excel once and for all, but come on--it's free. Funny how the more professional the package begins to look the more people seem to feel they've somehow paid money for it. It might never work, but if there were a few of us in contact, playing with it at our leisure we might actually overcome that steep learning curve. Imagine the fame. Imagine the glory. Imagine all the women falling at our feet. OH how they would fall. Jack jack@businessfist.com *** Issue 21749 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 22861 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 22740 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 22740 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 23909 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 22429 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 25277 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** I don't believe that this IS fixed as I've checked the user manuals from 5.2 to now and find the same instructions for plotting trendlines and it simply doesn't work. Oh yeah, why do we have an option for a "power" regression where we can't set the power that we want to use. I believe 1 of 2 things happened. StarDivision was working on this before being purchased and it has remained the same since then or whomever was working on it just stopped before the acquisition. Here's a detailed example of how it DOESN'T work. Like everyone else here, this is not a feature or enhancement but a BUG and a NECESSITY! Nobody at Purdue even looks at this because of this "feature". Here's the data that I'd like to perform a regression analysis on: 0 0 500 250 1000 400 1500 460 2200 495 3000 512 3600 520 4000 525 4500 520 5000 515 5500 500 5900 490 6500 460 I create an x-y plot with the data which looks fine. Then I double-click on the line (within the plot) and receive a window that essentially has the "object properties" such as: line, characters, font effects, data labels, statistics and options. Under options I should be able to select the regression curve of choice; again, please note that the power variable of "what power is desired" is not there. Anyhow, if any of the regression curves other than linear are chosen such as log, exponent, or power are chosen then no proper curve appears on the plot. In fact, I get a line across the bottom of the plot that is supposed to represent my "power regression". This doesn't work according to all the reading that I've done and I've done a LOT. The lack of having a polynomial fit, moving average, or even something as simple as an R^2 analysis in the regression package is also pretty laughable. How are businesses, students, governments, and academia supposed to use this when they can't EASILY massage their data. Just look at Excel and after plotting the data, then click on the line, right-click and left-click on "add a trend line" and you'll see what you are missing. It sounds like the OO guys that are supposed to be working on this don't appreciate (or don't understand/comprehend) how this is a VERY BASIC functionality when dealing with statistics. It is an ESSENTIAL part of BASIC statistics and it is MISSING. It's apparent that this isn't going to get remedied by the chaps at OO in the near future as long as they keep overlooking it. Well, I'll just keep saying that OOcalc is a joke in comparison to Excel. Nice job with the other packages but if you want to see how it is supposed to work then look at Excel. I know my way around numerical methods and being able to solve for these parameters so I can help with the coding if anyone else wants to figure out how to get OO to work with it. If we wait on these guys to release it in VERSION 3 AT BEST then we'll be old and grey. Otherwise, if you want this item resolved by the OO guys, like I do, then "vote" for it by logging in and casting some votes. I think we are allowed 5 by default to cast on OOcalc. sorry if I'm curt but I've been waiting forever and the fact that this gets passed up everytime someone brings it up is frustrating. Find this a defect and not an enhancement. *** Issue 28458 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** This is a very important issue. Graphing is often overlooked, but it is a critical tool that must be flexable enough to allow the user to add and change graphs to produce what they need. I am a Biologist and I need to be able to create graphs that have error bars that are based on 'real' values contained in a range of cells. For any kind of graphing I must use another program (currently Applix for Linux). I agree with many of the other comments here, that this is a BASIC feature that must be present for this to be adopted by scientists, students and educators. Hello Björn, wiil the error bars be integrated into OO.o 2.0 including ranges? My report, 28458, has been closed as a duplicate of this one, but I'm not now sure. I was suggesting that it ought to be possible to access the regression coefficients in the sheet, and more importantly, that it ought to be possible to do so without drawing a graph at all! What do other reporters feel about this? Yup, I'd like to see that too. I'm also SICK of seeing this as an "enhancement". What good is a spreadsheet if it can't do basic regression/error analysis easily and in a user-friendly way. There is basic regression functionality in Calc. With the functions SLOPE(yrange,xrange) and INTERCEPT(yrange,xrange) you get a linear regression f(x) = SLOPE*x + INTERCEPT. You can also calculate r^2 with the function RSQ(yrange,xrange). All other regressions in the chart are based upon linear regression and can be calculated easily with the logarithm: logarithmic and power: create a column with the LOG(x) of every x-value and use this as y-values exponential and power: create a column with the LOG(Y) of every y-value and use this as y-values. Instead of INTERCEPT you have to use EXP(INTERCEPT) Hope, that helps. BTW. about regression curve parameters there also exists Issue 5289. Sorry, I meant: logarithmic and power: create a column with the LOG(x) of every x-value and use this as x-values (not y-values!) exponential and power: create a column with the LOG(Y) of every y-value and use this as y-values. Instead of INTERCEPT you have to use EXP(INTERCEPT) @bobharvey,enmane,bm: Have a look at the fuctions LINEST() & LOGEST() to calculate various parameters, inluding the regression coefficient, RSQ,... and others setting keywords, subcomponent according to new RFE-process *** Issue 40578 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** I've just downloaded OpenOffice.org 1.9.74 for SuSE, and I was really surprised that this functionality is still lacking. Will it be available in the final release of OO 2.0? I looked for information on this functionality and the best I found is a macro called FitOO, which is discussed in the French forum of OpenOffice.org. The macro is available at http://oooconv.free.fr/ However, it's not as easy as in Excel. As already said by many other users, this is not an enhancement, but the lack of an important feature. My work is based on data analysis, and I don't want to create columns or use any other workaround if I can do that with a single click on Excel. I don't understand why it's so difficult to add such a functionality. Calc already plots the regression curve, so it calculates its coefficients. Few lines of code will add the capability to show the equation in a text box. Few lines of code which would make Calc more useful for a lot of people in the scientific world! I consider this feature a *lot more important* than the new logo for OpenOffice.org 2.0, which could be the same of 1.1. with just the release number changed! Regards, ap OK, enough is ENOUGH! This issue needs another evaluation. It shouldn't be under "graphics" and is DEFINITELY not an "enhancement". This There are a whole slew of people that refuse to use this product because of the lack of this functionality. This is addressed to bm, cloph, joergwartenberg, and mmp. Whos IS it that you report to? Surely everyone reports to someone else and there HAS to be someone that can reevaluate whether this is an "enhancement" or a SERIOUSLY LACKING FEATURE. I would like have you guys/girls reevaluate as to whether this is an enhancement or not. Maybe we need to educate you guys/girls on what is lacking as maybe you are unaware as to how important these features are to ANYONE that has to ANY statistical analysis. Children in High School are exposed to this using Excel and almost every college student in ANY scientific field uses these features REGULARLY. For some, maybe spreadsheets are a way to tabulate data and run simple equations but for the scientific community it is used for this and MUCH more when we need to evaluate the data statistically. If these features cannot or WILL NOT be added then you are FORCING us to continue to use Excel. Who's attention do we have to get to have them take this more seriously? To everyone else that finds this a problem then use your VOTES to escalate this issue. I for one agree that the "pretty" features and the database issues are moot compared to this feature. I ask myself the following question all the time, "who doesn't use the statistical features of a spreadsheet?" For this reason alone I find it completely incomprehensible that these features are STILL not there. This product will remain second-rate until these features are included. So either you are not getting it or we aren't doing a better job explaining what the problem is. I second the last comments, this is a severely lacking feature that prevent the basic statistical uses of the spreadsheet, mostly with non-technic savvy people. The usage of macros or the LINEST funcions are not enough, as most students want to simply put data in a column and see the regression line with its regression coeficients, at least. Please reconsider this bug, and the closely-related ones in Issue 5289 and Issue 4509. Thanks in advance. Last time I looked at the relevant source code a placeholder had been put in the code by one of the developers for custom-range defined error bars, so it looks like the intention is there, although perhaps not in time for 2.0.0 itself (this was several months ago, though). Perhaps someone who has the time at the moment could have a look and report back. Another important point. Some recent comments appear to me to have been about trendlines and regression curves, which are not covered by this issue. **ALL MEMBERS ADDING COMMENTS PLEASE READ** Thank you **It would be useful if future commenters could please reread the initial Summary and Description at the top of the page, as you could be wasting your time and that of the OOo team by putting your comments on the wrong issue. It could also risk invalidating the original issue by diluting it with material irrelvant to this issue, making it difficult to interpret, which would be a great shame.** You're right derekhtodd, this post is about error bars, but others issues refers to this also for trend lines and their equations. Regards, ap ap78, thanks for the information. The issue which appears appropriate for your comments posted here, I think, is Issue 5289, and I see you have posted there. If any non-related issues direct you to this one, than they are of course in error. I'd be greatful if you could email me with the details of any examples you have of non "define custom error bar range" related issues pointing to this issue, so that things can be clarified. Many thanks, Derek I looked for them and found: 23909, 22740, 25277, 28458 and 40578. However, you've already clarified that they are not a duplicate of 366 :-) Thank you, ap Respectfully suggest increase in priority. I am unable to use OpenOffice for my undergraduate Modern Physics Lab course because of this lack of basic functionality. I had to install a copy of Windows on my laptop so that I could use Microsoft Excel. Graphs without error bars are useless to scientific users. *** Issue 4826 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** Raised priority and changed issue type to feature. *** Issue 58553 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 3380 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** As a biologist, I heartily agree with the comments above. Any scientist will tell you that adding custom error bars is absolutely critical for presenting data. Any presentation of data without this "feature" would be immediately rejected from publication and laughed out of a symposium. I can't use OOCALC's chart feature for teaching purposes or for my own research for this reason. It should be implemented immediately. Sincerely, Chad Smith University of Texas at Austin Earth to OOCalc developers! Please pick up a statistics book and look into the difference between regression analysis and error bars - they are NOT THE SAME! This has gone on long enough - 5 yrs and there still isn't someone at OO that knows what the heck we're talking about. Please pick up a book and read up on what it is we're looking for or to make life easier then go find a scientist that uses MS Excel and just ask them to show you what it is we're talking about. And I thought MS was slow... ->enmane: What do you think will you achieve by your rant here? Of course we know the difference between regression analysis and error bars. If would take a look at the product you are talking about you would see that these are different things and that they are, apart from some missing features (e.g. this one), the same as in MS Excel. I won't explain why we haven't implemented this feature as I think I have done this often enough. We can start new features only when the basis for this has been done, so you have to be patient. Ranting doesn't help. Helping in development would. We are two people re-implementing the chart. So far in all this years we just got one developer who just started some small implementations. So may be I am allowed to rant, too. Why do you guys think when you get a software for FREE and do NOTHING for it apart from ranting, that we should listen to you. We will implement this feature, when we finished chart2 and have the time for it. Period. So, if anybody has some constructive advice, a specification for how to implement this feature, you are welcome to help. If you think this issue is important, you can vote for it, but as you can see a high vote count does not mean that this is implemented immediately, because in the current chart implementation it is impossible to implement this feature, so we all have to wait until the re-implementation is finished before we can care about this issue. And if you think we are stupid then either tell us what we misunderstood or shut up, as this kind of rant doesn't help anybody. (It just takes time again to write this comment, that could have been used for doing real work) And what do you mean by "what we are looking for"? I think the summary is very clear: this issue is about "Select 'Range' for error bars" and nothing else. First of all, thank you bm and the OO team for your efforts in doing the programming for the charting in OO. In regards to this issue, I think that there is a high level of frustration among OO users due to the fact that this feature is critical for serious use of OO in some fields, including scientific research. This prevents me and many others to use and/or promote OO among colleages and force us to go back to use MS Office, in spite of our preference for OO or Staroffice. I understand that it is heavy work and I whish I could help, but I am not a programmer. I concluded that the best way for someone like me to help is topromote OO use, and that is why frustration is high, because I cannot until issues like this are resolved. Daniel sorry if I've made you upset but there is no reason that my post on Tue Feb 10 11:00:30 -0700 2004 should be in the same Issue 366. That post was about regression analysis and curve fitting and not error bars. The fact that they were lumped together implies that they are the same thing when they are, in fact, not. Please see that post again and re-read it as I DID offer to help. I am not a great coder although I have coded in C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, and Basic but it has been a while. I do know regression analysis and statistics. You let me know what it is that you guys are lacking and if I can contribute then I will. I agree 100% with Daniel - I've STOPPED promoting this package because it really doesn't compare w/MS Office at all. Sure it has a few features that are really great and even better than MS Office but as a whole, it is still a decade behind. Now that 2007 is coming out, it'll fall even further behind. I still believe that the original implementation was vastly superior - 1 desktop that handles everything - and Sun made a mistake in wasting all those resources in splitting up the packages and beautification when it could have gone to added real features that were lacking. This clearly shows why Sun, as a company, hasn't done well in decades. Having 2 people working on this is ridiculous. to clarify your post on "So may be I am allowed to rant, too. Why do you guys think when you get a software for FREE and do NOTHING for it apart from ranting, that we should listen to you. We will implement this feature, when we finished chart2 and have the time for it. Period." --> Well, I know that I feel that my time is very valuable and I want to promote OO but when I waste considerable time on features that don't exist then it costs me money, if time=money. The money that is spent isn't only the money that is laid down for a package. I feel lied to when the promotions come out talking about how great OO is and I waste my time to download it and promote it only to find out little significant (to me) progress has been made. The fact remains that people value their time and wasting it upsets me. My reputation is on the line when I promote this package only to find out that there are still missing features. I want to help and promote it but I won't do that anymore because of the history of development and lack of features. So YEAH, I feel justified in bitching about it because OO has cost me considerable time, resources, and has affected my reputation with regards to this package. Not all things are measured in greenbacks that have been pulled from one's wallet and one could argue that the really important things aren't measured with greenbacks at all. BM, your efforts and the other person are greatly appreciated. My issue isn't with you but the fact that Sun isn't allocating their resources effectively on the issues that are critical. Sun should take this example into consideration, Buy MS OFfice for $100 (very easy to find price)- all features included and provided Person pays nothing for OO - cost $0 but spends at least 5 hours over the course of 4 yrs finding ways to do things such as, * creating good looking templates that already exist in MSO * doing proper plotting * productivity losses due to speed differences * exporting filtering issues * getting multimedia to play correctly in OOImpress (windows AND linux) * figuring out how to get things done in OO vs MSO At a cost of $20/hr (cheap, if you ask me) then the person would be better off with MSO because they would have saved time and NOT been frustrated. Now, consider that a 5 hr loss over 4 yrs is very conservative, I know that I've wasted that in a few months on OOImpress. Consider that $20/hr is pretty cheap her in the US and you'll see that OO has a very tough battle ahead of it. If there is any wonder why people aren't using it, just point the Sun executives to this example. I would be better off using MSOffice both for reasons of frustration and lost time/money. Based on this example, the only ones that would use OO are those that just cannot afford to lay out MSO or those that want to promote it at the expense of wasting their time (for whatever reason such as dislike of MSO and wanting to see a true competitor); well, I know I fall into the latter camp along with many of the posters here and we are walking away one after another because eventually we realize that the shine on OO has lost its luster. So unless Sun makes some changes real quickly then the ones that are using it but can afford it are going to walk away if they haven't already. It just isn't worth our time. Heck, I know that I'd even offer $$ if the package was anywhere near MSO but it isn't and I'm not about to give money to a company that doesn't heed the community. I've given considerable amount of money to opensource efforts such as PCLINUXOS, Mandrake, and Mozilla (among some) - much more than to MSO - but that is AFTER I got some value out of their product. I usually do it after 6 months of use or so and signs that they are developing in a direction that I agree with. I would imagine THAT is the reason that OO isn't seeing too much money and Mozilla has so much money that they don't know what to do with it all. Well, just wasted another 30 minutes on this posting. Heck, I bet I've wasted my 5 hours on this 1 issue alone. So now how is someone at Sun going to convince me to continue using this product? Because it's FREE? IT ISN'T! Not so long as people value their time on this Earth. Don't take it personal bm, the issue is larger than that and rests with the people leading Sun. So why have I singled Sun out and not OO developers? It's because the majority of OO developers are actually Sun employees. Please, everyone, any comments not of direct relevance to the techical aspects of implementing this issue should be mailed directly, or taken to the mailing lists, where they belong. Issuezilla is not a discussion forum, and this is wasting everyones time and benefiting nobody. If anyone feels that they absolutely must respond to this (and I'd very much rather they didn't), please mail directly and not add more unhelpful noise. And yes, I do realise that I've added to it, but hopefully to a constructive end. Thank you. *** Issue 69423 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 69423 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** The barrage of comments over the past 3 or more years says it all. If Calc is to be suitable for serious scientific work, it must have error bar capabilities at least equal to those of Excel, and must display error bars from an Excel file. Is the continuing lack of this feature evidence of a disconnect between the OOo team and scientists? It's more fundamental than that and has always been the problem when CS people lose touch with what the clients are looking for. I've made myself available on numerous occassions as a numerical methods person (not a coder) and I haven't heard a single thing from a single coder asking for any input. At this point, I don't care anymore. I'm beginning to wonder that WHEN these features do appear whether or not they'll actually be worth using based on a technical standpoint. If the coders aren't working with people that know how to do numerical methods then what are the odds that it'll even come out correctly - this is a SERIOUS problem with MS Excel and very few scientists use the results from Excel in technical journals because of it's deficiencies. A simple google search will show this. ->thfil, enmane: Reading all the comments in this issue it should be clear for everyone what the situation is. Repeating the same stuff again and again doesn't help anyone, it only increases the number of comments thus renders this issue more and more useless. Please note again that this is not a discussion forum. A MORE COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH ============================= Many issues were discussed in this thread (beyond the original posting). Please note however, that there is a more general approach to all the issues listed. WE DO NOT NEED TO REINVENT THE WHEEL! See also the wiki page on statistical methods (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Statistical_Data_Analysis_Tool , especially the paragraph 6 - Task Breakdown - Third Party Library Integration). and the issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=66589 ("R Statistical Software", which aims at integrating R with OOo Calc). Implementing all this issues directly into OOo Calc will be difficult. DISADVANTAGES ------------- - many resources (coders, even financial constraints) - code becomes more and more complex, more difficult to understand by new developers, more testing time needed - experienced coders work already on other open source projects; less availability for a new project ALTERNATIVE ----------- - a very good alternative is to do all these advanced things with dedicated external software, when such free alternatives exist: -- I have read something about gnuplot on this thread. -- There are other softwares as well, e.g. R (with over 500 packages), octave and many more, each suitable for some specific task. ADVANTAGE --------- - one can easily implement many more features from the specific program with minimal effort (once the external program is embedded within OOo) - dedicated programs offer more advanced solutions than anything that would be implemented in OOo (or some competitive software) - less resources needed: -- programs are developed by their own groups, -- tested by appropriate folks and therefore -- NO major delays, less propensity for bugs -- new features are implemented more easily (we at OOo need only make a new Menu/Gui and paste the correct syntax to the external program) - smaller code, smaller program -- should also run faster, not so many resources loaded -- only users that need that option will run it (see also the note below) A special note: - because some licenses may not be compatible with OOo (although they are still open source), I DO NOT MEAN including the code in OOo - what I mean is a general mechanism in place that allows OOo to communicate (bidirectioanly) with the external software - instruct users what external programs (extensions) do exist and where to find them (url) - allow users to easily acces the functionality of that programs through OOo Menus (or functions): -- e.g. R is a state-of-the-art statistical software, but it is NOT menu-driven and most users will find it difficult to use, so implement handy menus in OOo that paste the correct syntax into R (R can be embedded in other implications, see paragraph 7 - Links, on the wiki page). There is a previous comment that fits very well to my post on external software
integration. (Sorry for the double post)
> I'm beginning to wonder that WHEN these features
> do appear whether or not they'll actually be worth using
> based on a technical standpoint. If the coders aren't working
> with people that know how to do numerical methods then what are
> the odds that it'll even come out correctly ...
This is another strong reason why external software are a better alternative!
I can only partially agree with discoleo. Using external applications for advanced statistical analysis is probably the best choice from a technical point of view. However there's no doubt that the absence of statistical tools in OpenOffice represents a serious limitation for users and, as consequence, for the adoption of OpenOffice in many work places such as labs, schools, universties. I think more factors should be considered. Using external applications requires the user to install and learn how to use them, which is usually more difficult than working with a spreadsheet. For example, doing a regression in Excel is just some click. Also, another important factor is that many applications used to manage analysis instruments in labs save data in a spreadsheet format (usually xls). So it's immediate to manipulate data in Excel or Calc, while it would require conversions to use external software. **ALL MEMBERS ADDING COMMENTS PLEASE READ** Thank you **It would be useful if future commenters could please reread the initial Summary and Description at the top of the page, as you could be wasting your time and that of the OOo team by putting your comments on the wrong issue. It could also risk invalidating the original issue by diluting it with material irrelvant to this issue, making it difficult to interpret, which would be a great shame.** *** Issue 71948 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** *** Issue 72322 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. *** I must agree that selecting a range for errorbars is the most important feature I am missing in OOcalc. I do not want to repeat the arguments which are already listed above. Unfortunately I have no real programming skills to contribute to this issue. But perhaps it is helpful to point out, that this "errorbar feature" is already implemented in "gnumeric". The source code of gnumeric is free. I do not know if it is possible, but it might be easier to transfer this code from gnumeric to OO instead of reinventing the wheel. Hi guys! It's really strange that "custom error bars" feature still has not been implemented in OO. I am a system administrator in a big scientific institution and I can say that for now absence of this feature for us seems to be THE ONLY major factor hindering transfer from MS Office to OO. Using Calc without this feature in a scientific setting isn't worth using Calc at all, because, as opposed to common office tasks, research calculations almost always should result in "barred" charts with custom error bars (by the way, most scientific journals just will not accept an article if your chart doesn't have them). As it's been stated here already, scientific society is one of the most useful and perspective fields for spreading and implementation of OO. Well, I understand that the current "list of wishes" for Calc's improvements is quite big, but the discussed feature should be, of course, placed to the beginning of it. 3 gang, as much as I'm frustrated with the developers taking so long (6-7 yrs on the weakest point of Calc) here's what we can do, 1) Use the point system and give this problem points so that your voices are heard by the metrics they use. 2) Try out http://graphics.openoffice.org/chart/chart.html - the coming new charting utility which "promises" to help solve "some" of our problems. Download it and install it and report the bugs BEFORE they get into 2.3 otherwise we'll all be back here again. They ARE making progress even though it might take longer than we'd like. -> lunacarb: please avoid making "noise". Consider posting on the issue only if you add real value to it. What coud be better, is ask how you could help to make things faster. As enmane said, testing the new version is a way to help. -> enmane: thanks for your reply ;-) -> pagalmes: May be I got it wrong, but it comes out that for the issue tracker the first post should be the only one, and anyone (excluding the initiator) shouldn't make "noise" and has to just vote if he/she agrees with it. What about discussing all pros and cons for the issue? Should it be held separately somewhere? changed target to 2.x This is the single issue which stops me from being happy with my linux system. I am a scientist and as many of my colleagues have already noted, Openoffice Calc is USELESS without this feature. Please, its been more than 6 years since this was first reported. Adding noise and pleas in this bug report only delays possible development, if anything. Please keep silent (and just use the Vote for this issue -feature) unless you have some real contribution to make, probably some code patch or other thing that has taken you countless hours to develop and aids the real development work in a significant way, while at the same time being aware all the development that has been done in so far, ie. having read mailing lists for some months etc. and being comfortable with the OOo code base. Anyway, the content of this particular noise message is to re-iterate that Chart2 has been under construction for a long time now, which may or may not include all the Chart features people want, and may be possibly included in OpenOffice.org 2.3, coming out in September. If you want to help in developing to make sure "your" feature will be there, you join the mailing lists, get the source code and develop. Adding comments in bug reports when the bug has been already described does not help, quite the opposite. Thanks. Hopefully this will be the end of noise. (unfortunately I've a feeling it's not...) mrv, many of us are not coders and can't help in this fashion. I understand your frustration but understand mine - I've offered to help a coder with the math involved in regression analysis and haven't been taken up on my offer and that says something about the "team." To the rest of you, Download a copy of the currently-being-developed Chart 2 and try it out. I've already created 3 bug reports on it. If you don't voice your opinions now then it will most likely be another 6 yrs before you get your feature included. In summary, do the following: 1) VOTE - use your points to vote for the issues that are important to you 2) Stop beating this dead horse-they are working on Chart 2 so focus your energies on fixing Chart 2 3) If you aren't happy with the current implementations and want to try your luck on something being developed then work with Chart 2 which "should" have some of the features your looking for and vote for the features that are missing! Turn your frustrations into positive actions. Play the game properly! @enmane: I downloaded and tested the new chart, and I'm disappointed. But I also gave up with calc anf I go on using Excel, which still is far superior in many fields. It's impossible after such a long time not to have basic (yes, they are basic and not advanced as someone think) functionalies like non-linear regressions. I'm not interested in seeing a plot of the regression, but in obtaining an equation in some click without using a different application. This and other features are postponed without a clear reason, and help from users is not accepted if not in terms of an already ready solution. It's really sad to say, but in this way OOo is going nowhere. Regards Developers, just to be clear, we users are well aware of the complexity of the OOo codebase and the amount of work that it will take to implement this and other essential features. We don't expect miracles. We do expect an apology for not recognizing the seriousness of this problem, and for not making it a higher priority earlier on. An acknowledgment that serious mistakes have been made in the past would make a lot of scientific users much more willing to support you in the future. Defensiveness does not breed the things you need the most: evangelism and contributions. Thank you for your work on this project. I use OOo for simple data analysis, and supplement it with Matlab and statistical packages for more complex work, and Grace for graphs. I look forward to being able to use Impress for scientific presentations without having to import external images for graphs with error bars. Please, stop flames ! @pagalmes Sorry, I didn't mean to flame. I was just commenting and explaining my point of view. I also recognize the good work done on other parts of OOo like writer, which is superior to Word in my opinion, and thanks to Novell efforts now is more compatible with the MS formats too. Regards setting target Why not use RLPLOT as an add-on for scientific/statistical graphs?It would be great if RLPLOT could be included in future versions of OOo. There is a great scientific and academic community out there that is spending a lot of money in MSExcel, why not helping them now: Can anyone code an extension for using RLPLOT in combination with OOo 2.X? (Im sure the rlplot people would be delighted to help with that) http://rlplot.sourceforge.net/index.html http://rlplot.sourceforge.net/Examples/index.html Fixed in CWS chart20. Is there a spec about how this was implemented? Setting URL to Spec. Thanks Björn ! ->TK: Please verify in CWS chart20. As this fix required some profound changes in the XML filter for charts with own data, it is important to test load/save of charts with own data and clipboard from Calc (charts taking data from sheets) to Impress thoroughly. Created attachment 51811 [details]
Testcasespec for Y Error Bars
Seen ok in CWS chart20 -> verified Can we get an idea of when this change will make it into the binaries? Is this going to be a September '08, OpenOffice 3.0 thing, or will it be available beforehand. Thanks in advance, and thanks for your hard work. When this change goes through, I will finally be rid of my need for Gnumeric to do data analysis. Bug 366. When I first reported it, a bit over 7 years ago, I thought I would soon switch to OO.org after this was fixed. Much has happened since then. I became so much involved in free software that I switched to openoffice.org anyway. Even although I did my graphs with other programs (gnumeric, for all has fallacies, had lately become the most easy tool for quick graphs though). Actually, spreadsheets are not that suitable for publication quality graphs, but it is nice to have something for quick and easy data inspection or the weekly talk. I wish to thank all the people that worked on this. I hope all my fellow scientist in this thread now follow up to their promises here and pollute all lab computers with OO.org 3.0. Cheers, Danny >I wish to thank all the people that worked on this. >I hope all my fellow scientist in this thread now >follow up to their promises here and pollute all >lab computers with OO.org 3.0. Nice thought, but not until ISSUE #42946 gets implemented: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=42946 Still a deal breaker for many scientists. Sorry to post another comment to this bug, but since this bug is now "closed" and it still has 131 votes, please consider moving your votes to ISSUE #42946 (error bars for x values) It is both an interoperability issue (as MSOffice has this functionality) and a usability issue (as it limits the usefulness of OpenOffice for science students). /soapbox I have just read he comment from davidbl on RLPLOT and checked that out. It is EXCELLENT! It's so much work already done! Why not incorporate it into OO, either as a component, or as an add-on? That would be marvellous! Seen ok in current master -> closed |