I have recently begun using OpenOffice nad feel it is an excellent product and 
could be of great use in prying users loose from Mr. Gate's high priced junk.
I did however have some difficulty in using the program.  This difficulty was 
not due to any design defects or bugs.  It was due to the metric assumptiooons 
in the default set-up.  My printer is a QMS desklaser which unlike many 
printers can detect the paper size differences between A4 (Euro std) and US std 
(8-1/2 x 11).  This drove me nuts at 3 in the morning, until I had some sleep 
and thought, "Let's check out the detailed set-up parameters".  Sure enough the 
dimensions were in cm nad US.Can std is inches.  After setting up these, I was 
able to proceed with my work.

My suggestion is rather simple, but, would I feel lead to a much smoother 
transition for new user's and therefore, deeper penetration into the desktop 
area and convert meor people to the open systems software family.

The installation program should, during the set-up, obtain the user preferences 
in terms of the typical paper and envelloppe sizes.  This would allow the 
default settings to be more efficiently set for the user.  For instance A4 
paper and the associated envelloppes would indicate a Euro user and metric 
measusres.  An een better alternative w/b for the user to input his country and 
then ask for his typical output formats.  This coould be extended in the future 
so that the set-up would be able to set preferences for layers, engs etc.  This 
could really bite the MS garbage pile!!!

But to return to the real reason, simply setting up for general use std's for 
the country of use would really smooth the new user's introduction to the 
OpenOffice system.

Jim Rooney
dbmsjim@yahoo.com