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That's a pity. Your bug reports were very helpful.

Thank you for the detailed reports. I referred your bug reports to our developers.

Charles, we would be sorry if you left. Your bug reports have been most helpful. Unfortunately, there are some areas in the software that most people don't tend to use, and they don't get the same scrutiny by customers as others. For example, we received many times as many reports for the DOC filter as for ODT or RTF. This of course leads to higher bug fixing rates for the former. And if we don't know about issues, we can't work on them.

So, if you are so willing, please continue reporting issues. We listen to you.

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Sven Leßmann
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Hi Charles,

I haven't been able to get to the forum in a while, because of commitments at work, but my sense is more that this is a question of manpower rather than a lack of desire to implement such systems.

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Cheers
Jim

Charles, thank you for your considerate opinion, even if it is a rather dark picture you paint. Just like you, I work almost exclusively with TextMaker, so the other programs in SoftMaker Office are of little importance to me. I can only say that my personal user experience is quite different from yours. I've been around in this forum for quite a while, first as a user, than as a volunteer, and I don't do it out of pure sympathy for a small software company. I do it because TextMaker has been, and still is, the product that brightens up my day as a person spending most of his working time sitting in front of a computer screen and writing. I gave both MS Word and OOo Writer an earnest try (in case of Word, more than one), and gave them up again because, frankly spoken, they are simply a pain in the ass in terms of user friendliness and reliable results. TextMaker just does what I want, it's easy to learn and easy to use, clean, quick, simple and reliable. If I didn't run into the bugs you did run in, maybe it's because my needs are different. (For example: I write seldom, if ever, documents with more than 20 pages, so TOCs are not much of an issue for me.) Working in a MS environment, I need first rate .doc import and export, and TextMaker has it. I can open and edit every Word document given to me and export it again without any glitches (or, in the worst case, without any that couldn't be fixed in Word within five minutes). In my opinion, TextMaker is (almost) as Word compatible as a word processor can get that isn't Word itself or an identical twin, and I quite agree with you that, as a Word clone, TextMaker would be superfluous. I just like it because it is not Word. So at some point you have to decide between striving for a perfect word processor or striving for perfect Word compatibility.
Again, I rarely encounter .odt documents, but the few I got worked reasonably well for me. So, from my point of view, TextMaker is not "substandard"; it's the standard I measure other word processors at. TextMaker is one of the few apps I couldn't do without, and If I were ever forced to give it up and adjust to some other word processor it would be a serious blow to me.

All this may be completely different for somebody else. SoftMaker didn't develop PlanMaker and Presentations because they wanted a "real" office suite at any price, but because many users cried for it and made it a point of buying or not. Companies set their priorities just as users do. As a customer, I consider myself my own company and choose according to my needs. My needs are satisfied best by TextMaker. If your work and your projects are of a kind that lets you run into the limitations of TextMaker and ultimately decide for OOo Writer as best suited app for your needs, that's the way it is. I can understand if you are disappointed or even slightly infuriated because TextMaker doesn't meet your expectations, and of course I would also like to see it still better than it is now, but from my experience the SoftMaker people have done an excellent job so far.

I am very sorry that TextMaker has been letting you down, Charles.

For my part, I like TextMaker very much. I am now using it regularly on my PC at home, where I have no copy of M$Office, and occasionally on the office laptop instead of M$O just for a change. I write complex documents with tables, graphics, indents, bullets, styles, cross-references all over the place in M$Word, and I have found relatively few problems.

I agree that tables and tables of contents are a bit below par relative to M$W and I hope that SoftMaker is still improving these.

I do nevertheless find TM a pleasure to use and very versatile in its ability to read and write M$W docs. For sure, I have not encountered the frustrations you have evidently been plagued with. I would, however, be extremely grateful to you if you could find the time to continue providing SoftMaker with the kind of valuable feedback you have provided thus far, because I do really want to see this program continue to improve in all areas - not least the ones I have not yet encountered myself.
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John