OpenOffice Impress

In two weeks I'll be giving a talk at the 2010 American Chemical Society National Meeting. Today, I started putting together slides for that presentation, so I opened up OpenOffice Impress to start making it. Now this is the first time I've used v3.0+ of the software, and when I opened it up I was initially encouraged by what I saw. One of my gripes about v2.4 was that it did not apply my system theme colors to the application window. I don't like bright things, so I use a dark theme:

So it's pretty nice that now Impress is pulling in my system colors. In fact, it's really cool because now my presentation by default starts with a dark background and light text! Just the way I like it. (Note: the following was done using OpenOffice 3.2.0.7 on openSUSE 11.2 x86_64 with KDE 4.4 using a modified Obsidian Coast color theme):

I've made the title, but I don't know if the font should maybe be a little bigger. To check this, I want to throw the presentation up in slideshow mode and move back about 10 feet from the screen. That should help me tell how large it is:

Wait, what? Now I have a white background, but the text is still gray! That is absolutely terrible! Now I could almost understand if it would change the background to white and the text to black. It would still be dumb, but to change the background color silently but not the text color is beyond worthless. The appropriate behavior here would be to make the actual presentation use the same colors that I see on my screen, no matter what they happen to be. So this sucks. No good. Instead, I'll change the text color to black:

Now I've highlighted the text and selected black as the text color. But the text on the screen is still light gray! What does the slideshow look like?

Oh, so now the text color is fixed, but that isn't reflected on the "edit" view. How is this acceptable behavior for any sort of supposedly WYSIWYG editor program? Especially a program that makes slideshows, which, by their nature, are intended to be aesthetically pleasing. How am I supposed to make a decent presentation if I can't see the colors? I suppose I could just keep opening the slideshow view every time I want to change an element of the presentation, but that's terrible from a usability standpoint. In case you're wondering, applying a presentation theme (or "Master Page" as it's called in Impress) doesn't help. The colors are not displayed in the "edit" view, only in the full slideshow.

Now you'd think that if the program is now trying to apply system colors, there would be some easy way in the program to disable this. Firefox, for instance, has a "Use system colors" checkbox that allows you to disable system colors from being used when no color is specified in the HTML. I have not been able to find a similar option in Impress. The colors dialog would task me with making changes to all of the colors used in the program manually:

With this sort of interface to the program, I find it unusable. I had to fire up my VirtualBox and use Microsoft PowerPoint (ugh), because it at least allows me to see what I'm actually doing to the presentation as I make edits. It really makes me sad, because I want to use open source software. And most of these things actually work quite nicely, but for some reason OpenOffice 3.0+ fails to properly handle system colors. I should not have to change my system color scheme or manually change application color settings to make the application usable.

OpenOffice Writer does something similar: it displays a normal text document as light text on a dark background. However, when printing the document, it prints as black on white, which is somewhat sensible. However, it should really just abandon the system colors when it comes to showing a WYSIWYG document on the screen, since failing to do so breaks the WYSIWYGness and confuses the user.

What I'm Reading and Watching

It's been an intense week. Everyone in my family (including me) has alternated being sick, and work this week was incredibly busy. So I haven't had much time or energy for blogging. But there have been a number of interesting links I've come across this week, and so I thought I'd share some:

• Slashdot: Ars Technica Inveighs Against Ad Blocking- The tech site Ars Technica recently implemented an experiment in which they blocked their site's content from users using AdBlock Plus for 12 hours. Comments on Slashdot are very interesting because they highlight the balance of economic interests in running an Internet publication. If you try to charge people to read your site, then people will go elsewhere. If you try to make money with ads, people won't click them and will block them. But somehow you've got to figure out how to pay your writers. Tough problem.
• The Cult of Originality- An illustrated article by artist and filmmaker Nina Paley discussing the nature of creativity. Her argument is that there is no such thing as originality, all artistic expression is derivative. It's a pretty interesting read, and really challenges the notion that anyone can "own" creative ideas. In turn, it challenges the nature of copyright, which seems to place a high value on the creation of "original" artistic works, and locks those up so that they cannot be freely shared.
• TechDirt: Utah Wants To Own State Microbes; May Demand Royalty On Any Products Developed- The title pretty much says it all. Apparently the state of Utah believes that it is owed money if anyone makes commercial use of products derived for microbes found in the state. Talk about a money grab....
• Raheem Brock Released by the Colts- It blew my mind when I saw Raheem Brock tweet a few days ago that Super Bowl XLIV was his last game in a Colts Uniform. I've heard that he asked to be released, in spite of the fact that his contract was not up. Maybe he thinks he can make more money in free agency during the uncapped year, or maybe something else was going on behind the scenes. It's sad though, because he is really great at connecting with football fans, giving us an inside look into the Colts locker room. He'll be missed.
• Google Gesture Search- This is a neat little application I put on my Droid. It allows you to draw letters on the screen to search your phone (and everything else that the phone searches- in the Droid's case, it will also search Google and nearby locations). Pretty handy to go long with voice search and the normal keyboard search.
• Tostito's "And Then There Was Salsa" Commercial- I just saw this commercial this morning. It's a really beautiful advertisement, and looks amazing in HD. I think it's a very effective ad because it's not annoying, has a lot of character, and (most importantly) makes me really want some chips and salsa! Edit: On Vimeo, this video is even more awesome! Lagged a bit for me, but was still cool.