Perhaps for programmers the need is not evident, but for anyone who writes long documents, it's indispensable. It's indispensable enough that I am still using Microsoft Word for anything that has any sort of header/subheader structure. OO and LO are OK for short letters and memos, but if it has more than 2 headings it gets clunky because of the lack of outline mode.

The core difference between writing text and writing code, which apparently the programmers working on OO and LO fail to grasp, is that writers are producing text which will be read by humans, not executed by machines.You can't just comment out the cruft and do a GOTO jump over that module you decided you don't want, then tell them to go back 17 pages to pick up the information in paragraph 3. Writing needs structure and flow to lead the reader through the material in a way that make the content comprehensible. It needs primary and subordinate ideas. Order and levels of importance are important. In Microsoft Word, collapsing the document into Outline mode and seeing the heading and subheading structure makes the flow of the document visible, and more important, the means to change that flow is on the same screen. There is no interruption in the work flow.

http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/ seems to understand it, going the other direction: most real code isn't actually in a form that can be simply read .... in order to grok it I have to essentially rewrite it. I'll start by renaming a few things so they make more sense to me and then I'll move things around to suit my ideas about how to organize code. Pretty soon I'll have gotten deep into the abstractions (or lack thereof) of the code and will start making bigger changes to the structure of the code. Once I've completely rewritten the thing I usually understand it pretty well and can even go back to the original and understand it too.

Which leads me to "Issue 3959", wherein writers asked for this on 2002-04-10 20:39:19 UTC ... it's ranked as "Trivial" now. It has nothing to prevent implementation except the inability of the code maintainers to accept that writers really do know what they need in their tools.

Here's the overview of Bug 3959 ... https://issues.apache.org/ooo/...

OVERSHOOT wrote upstream: Ah, yes. Issue number 3959. Originally filed April 10, 2002. More than twelve years ago. In that time it has remained in the top-voted issue list year-in and year-out. Others come and go, but 3959 keeps on pissing off users. At last look, there are about ten duplicates requests on file.

Every few years some developer wanders by and tells the people following it that nobody needs outline view, or that there are tools available to do it, or whatever. Often, they close the issue. In effect, "I don't use outline mode so obviously it's not important." The mailing list heats up for a while, the developer either mumbles something about maybe the team should look into it and vanishes or else just vanishes, but the issue is either reopened or left open. I've seen at least four of those cycles so far. We're probably due for another one.

At this point, I suspect that 3959 will outlive (Open|Libre|Star)Office for the classic open-source software reason: if it doesn't scratch a developer's itch, it ain't happening. And apparently, developers don't outline, edit, or otherwise structure their writing or much care about the people who do.

As the wisdom of XKCD proves - http://www.xkcd.com/619/

I think the sentence "Your brain surgeon does not suck that bad anymore." is not applicable in this instance. If your brain surgeon sucks, then your brain is is irretrievably damaged. If your Gnu/Linux distribution sucks, then your computer is not irretrievably damaged - you could back up your data, wipe your disk clean, and install another distribution (or wait until the original distribution no longer sucks).

A better sentence would be "Your hair stylist does not suck that bad anymore".

Sorry to hear about your brain surgeon, by the way.

You know, it occurs to me that if Mark Shuttleworth hadn't been "too ambitious and stubborn", he wouldn't have acquired his fortune in the first place - a fortune that he's subsequently used to bankroll Ubuntu and Canonical, and generally drive the Gnu/Linux ecosystem forwards.

Now he might fail (as you state, he is up against Apple, Microsoft and Google), but I think it is very good that someone is making the attempt - even if this does occasionally annoy his existing user base. For those there is always Xubuntu!

I'm currently with Linux Mint Debian Edition on my desktop (I migrated from Ubuntu as Unity and Gnome 3 were somewhat new at the time!). If only rolling upgrades were approximately every three months, I'd be happier. Unfortunately, they're not. (UP4 was on 2012.04.05, UP5 was on 2012.09.17, UP6 was on 2012.12.19, UP7 was on 2013.09.23, and UP8 was on 2014.02.04. Only one of these was a three-monther). When I installed LMDE it was a "rolling" release. Now it's described as "semi-rolling".

To be honest, I think the issue is lack of resources within Mint. When I installed LMDE, there was an XFCE edition (which I installed). This has been dropped. Fair enough, if the 'market wasn't there, no point in using resources unnecessarily.

Which leads us back to Ubuntu. This has been successful because Mark Shuttleworth has been using his personal fortune to keep things going. I sense a need for Canonical to get (at least) to a break-even point so it can continue even after Shuttleworth's fortune is no longer available (I doubt his pocket is bottomless!).

That either means relying on donations (like Mint) or getting some commercial success. Canonical have decided on the latter, and are have adopted their behaviour accordingly. I do not begrudge them this, and wish them well.

I will try the Unity (and Gnome) editions in VirtualBox (XFCE 12.04 LTE is on the laptop). I will then make an independent judgement as to what I think of them. For my next desktop build, I might revert to one of the Ubuntus (or if I'm feeling masochistic, I might even try Arch!)

And to compare - I recently bought a retail version of Windows 8.1 and installed it in VirtualBox. To be honest I don't think it's as bad an Operating System as has been made out - but the privacy issues are horrendous (I paraphrase, but one default install option seems to be to "send all browsing history to Microsoft to help Microsoft 'improve' the user experience etc."), and the default location for documents is Sky Drive. Microsoft also dream of "monetization and profits"! Now Ubuntu might be as bad (although I doubt it), but at least I don't have to pay to install it!

Canonical is an Organisation. It needs to keep going and thrive, and I (for one) hope they do. There is worse out there!

Nope. You get the blank forms from the government, W-2 (employer statements containing income and withholding numbers), and statements from banks and investment firms. Employers and banks and such are required by law to deliver the tax statements by the end of January each year, but it's not uncommon for financial institutions to be significantly late (this is a popular reason for the filing of extensions). Lots of opportunities for transpositions and transcription errors as you manually copy numbers from one form to another. Must be really fun for people who suffer from dyslexia.

I've been filing my taxes electronically for years, and quite frankly, I can't remember whether the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board are even sending me the instruction booklets and blank forms any more (which would be fine, as they would just go directly into the trash).

Blanket approvals and template documents that you can cut and paste notifications into are the way to go, especially when it's on a schedule like MS, Adobe & Oracle. If they push back, suggest a documented process (this is ITIL, right? You can avoid the need for a CAB if it's an approved and documented procedure) where you push the patches to a few test systems on Tuesday (in the case of MS) then deploy to the rest later in the week - whatever they are happy with - if there are no issues. Depending on your timezone Tuesday PM or Wednesday AM are good slots for weekly CABs to pick up this; push to the test servers on the day, then the rest at the end of the week. For *nix, i've done updates this way for anything that didn't require a reboot so only stuff like Kernel updates and major low-level libraries needed to get approval via a CAB.

For everything else, it's your call. Either the patch waits for the next regular CAB or you play the game and keep calling emergency CABs when there are justifiably critical updates, such as Heartbleed, or for the inevitable critical updates from MS every second Tuesday that impact your systems. The best tactic is to embrace ITIL and make it work for you, not allow them to make you jump through hoops and spend your time crafting unique documents for every patch. It also serves as a useful procedure check to make sure you don't mess up and have a contingency plan for when you do, and ultimately, if you get it right, you still get to dictate the schedule and make them do things in ways that you are happy to work with.