plz do my homework for me!
Wednesday, 16. April 2008, 22:46:18
If you have an informational website, and some way for people to contact you, you’re bound to get requests that can be summarized as: “Please do my homework for me!” If I reply at all, it's along the lines of “this website can help you to do your own homework!”
Now I'm preparing for a workshop (about accessibility). My Windows laptop is slowly dying, so I don't dare to use that. My MacBook is brand new, and I've never done a presentation with it. And I hate Powerpoint and prefer Open Source Software (OSS) whenever possible anyway, so I'm thinking of using OpenOffice.org Impress. OK, so I do a little research - adapters to connect the MacBook to a projector (all sorted now), collect some tutorials for Impress to get up to speed quickly (there's an incredible number of those).
And I find the superlative of the do-my-homework-for-me syndrome in the comments on one (otherwise not very useful to me) tutorial; this one doesn't look like homework — more like a business meeting:
plz send me ppt presentation for open office in which presentation on writer,clac,ectErr… “ppt”? A Powerpoint presentation on Open Office??
otherwise, Impress is pretty good as far as I have used it, although I also use PowerPoint when in need of sending to a conference or something where you know they will use MS software. The compatibility should be pretty good.
about the macbook - I remember on one conference a participant couldn't hook up his mac to the projector, so he had to move files around on his flash, that had problems with compatibility... but it sorted out in the end...
By Quinnuendo, # 17. April 2008, 10:15:04
By JavaWoman, # 17. April 2008, 12:22:45
although I figured from your original post (the part about adapters) that you'll be fine...
By Quinnuendo, # 18. April 2008, 12:20:51
Being prepared, indeed! And not for nothing, as it turned out… See Nerd-on-a-stick to the rescue! Oh, boy.
By JavaWoman, # 26. April 2008, 17:47:35
It's a long time since I found a projector that stubborn though...
By chaals, # 28. April 2008, 17:31:01
I know Opera can do this (though I haven't tried it, should do that some time when I get a few tuits) but I have on occasion done presentations in just HTML; I'm not too fond of the CSS-only methods though, they tend to be too hard to control. I've also used Powerpoint, which I absolutely hate!
So, portable OpenOffice.org (or on the Mac NeoOffice) with Impress it is for me, and when I post the presentation on my site I can easily make it available in various formats, not just open document format, but also PDF or even — god forbid — Powerpoint (but only if I get specific requests for that!).
As to stubborn projectors… well, this one certainly was, a whole building full of them. I do hope it's the last such I'll encounter but I fear not…
By JavaWoman, # 28. April 2008, 22:05:52