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Time to Kill Microsoft Word?
Allnighterking writes "Apparently the frustration with another Windows Product is starting to reach increasingly visible users. John Dvorak over at ABC News is starting to question if it's time to kill Word With Viable options like Open Office.org available for Windows as well as AbiWord and others. Since they are both using XML as a way to create the documents. Or perhaps dropping a separate application altogether and going with something like X Forms to create a browser based office suite."
NO!
Are you crazy? That piece of software alone will keep me employed for years to come!
Seriously, you lost. YOu didn't get the first post AND you forgot to to post AC. You, my friend, are a 2 time loser.
....when he/she does any of the following:
1. Types in numbers and spaces to make numbered lists instead of using the bullet/number function.
2. Uses spaces and tabs instead of margins, alignment, justification, etc. to format text layout.
3. Uses 57 different font or section styles.
4. Writes a web page, especially ones that use a complicated, eyeball-scarring background image for the body.
5. USES MULTIPLE FONT STYLES AND CAP. LETTERS FOR SECTION HEADERS
Now that's a word processor I'd like to see.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
The fact is (and this is the only MS product I can say this about) that Word is the best product in its class. All the alternatives blow to a greater or lesser extent.
Although I use LaTeX for the creation of serious documents, and I hate Word in principle, I still find myself firing it up whenever I have to create a document with some low-level formatting. It's simply the easiest and best choice. Surely that's the mark of a useful product -- when you hate it, and yet you still use it.
What I seriously object too, however, are those evil .doc files. While I generally use AntiWord to view Word attachments, and it does a very good job, it is only a matter of time before the format is changed again. It is just criminal that the de facto standard for document propagation is proprietary and closed. I recently got into a fight with a non-techy friend about this. She just couldn't understand why I got all worked up about it.
Originally from alt.rants about five years ago..
For reasons which are completely beyond my control, I've spent half a week writing a document in Word 98.
I have never in my life seen, heard of, or even imagined a more malodorous piece of steaming shit than this little slice of Microsoft. Words fail me, and all that follows is the faintest Platonist shadow-on- a-wall of what is, in my heart, the Ideal Peeve, perfect in its sincerity, bottomless in its depth, and unassailable in its accuracy.
This bloated, pestilent gigabyte-swamping piece of ordure takes up enough computational resources to accurately model the world's weather for the next billion years, and what do you get for it? Something that will format and display text? Don't make me fucking laugh. What you do get is a profusion of bells and whistles thrown in a careless heap, each bauble lovingly designed to make the straight path crooked, the intuitive arcane, the simple impossible.
Take the ``Help'' for example. It's not just help, it's a new friend!
I don't want a new friend, you shit-slurping choad-munching bunch of retards; I've all too many as it is. What I want is something simple where I can find a technical detail with a minimum of fuss and interruption. I don't want animation. I don't want natural-language interpretation. I don't want to be led by the fucking nose. Give me a fucking index and get the hell out of my damn face. If I dismiss a window, I want it gone. I don't want it to wave goodbye, or hesitate, or sneeze. I want it gone.
The document I was working on was very simple. No images, no tables, no nothing. One font, one style, that's it. It would be perfectly simple in other system, even earlier versions of Word, but, oh no, not in this latest magnum opus of the word processing world.
This helpless, hapless, hopeless, buggy piece of offal insisted on changing my fonts every couple of minutes for no reason. Random chunks of text, at random times. And bullet points, don't talk to me about fucking bullet points. It's a little known fact that in the bullet-point mode of Word 98 every single button on every single toolbar is the ``Fuck Me Over Now'' button. I've got bullet points going left, I've got 'em going right, and down and up, I've got 'em changing indentation, and style, you name it.
You'd think in 20 or so megabytes of RAM there'd be room for one scenario in which it doesn't actively do anything wrong, but for that you'll have to wait for Word 2023, which will have a user interface like a retarded version of ``I have no mouth, and I must scream.''
And don't try telling me that one need only configure the options to avoid these problems; I'm not a fucking moron. I quickly configured the preferences so as to minimize all this bullshit, at which point Word promptly changed them back. Lather, rinse, repeat. If you don't want fast saves, then fuck off, you're gunna have 'em. Don't want your grammar constantly corrected by some shitty little subprogram that doesn't know the first goddamn thing about grammar? Tough shit. Empty your wallet and move off to the side.
How did this come about? It can't be incompetence, at least not the usual mundane sort one is constantly immersed in simply by having to share a planet with a bunch of fucking primates. This is either some transcendent type of incompetence, or active malevolence.
My money's on malevolence. This software was obviously created by a company who's motto is ``We're Microsoft, and you, the customer, aren't worth fuck to us.'' It matters not one iota what their official motto is, watch the hands, not the mouth. Well, Microsoft, your time will come. It may not be Linux that does you in, it may not be the DoJ, it may not be this decade, but you're going to go the way of the dodo, and I for one will cavort naked on your grave, pissing effusively on your memory, and screaming, ``Animate this, you bastards!'' to the sky.
But in the here-and-now, I shall finish this document with the quiet dignity with which I have always comported myself, and then I shall un-install Word, and swear a terrible oath that I would rather daub dung on paper with a stick than write a document using a Microsoft product.
http://www.weird.com/~woods/ms-word.sucks.html
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I'm all for seeing Word die a horrible, painful death, but let look at the source for this article. John Dvorak made a living for a good portion of the late eighties and nineties predicting the demise of Apple. I'm not sure his prediction that Word is on its way out means a thing.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I hope that utility also allows kill -9 clippy .
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
There is continually talk that OO.org will eventually include a Grammar checker module
I can see that you desperately need one.
If you want to know how badly bloated Word is, check out this unbelievable screen shot.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
But why use WORD to create HTML documents? That's what notepad is for.
No, that's what vi is for.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
After: You're fucking wonderfully.
skribe
Blog
Maybe Slashdot could include this feature for people who don't use the OL tag to make ordered lists. ;-)
irb(main):001:0>
Comment removed based on user account deletion
killing MS Word makes sense, killing Clippy is murder!!
Another rule you should never forget is that prepositions are not good words to end sentances with.
You have the right concept, but wrong feature. The feature most useful to the average user is ... WordArt.
Sadly, this appears to be a major feature of MS Office.*wince*
I at least hope it has a kill -9 me
OpenOffice doesn't hold a candle
Why on earth would anybody design a word processor to hold candles?
Microsoft already implemented every other feature imaginable, so that's all they had left.
You've got to be joking. A grammar checker? Anyone else here just dying for a grammar checker?
I'm dying for one on irc clients. It's really embarrassing saying "omg strongbad is 2 kewl" when the correct expression is "omg strongbad si r0x0r"
:wq
Oh, fine! Blame Scotland for every little problem!
Sassanach bastard....
And the brethren went away edified.
Anyone for whom English ain't no native language (like myself)
Oh, you must be from Texas.
Just kidding, y'all. I'm from Texas too.
I can live without Word's quote-unquote grammar checker. :)
:-)
You actually *wrote* "quote-unquote"?!
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Why on earth would anybody design a word processor to hold candles?
So you can read your work at night.
Duh.
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
it's supposed to read:
Time to kill Microsoft? Word!
It looks like you're writing a death threat!
Would you like to:
- chrish
Alternately:
visitor: "Where's your library at?"
Harvard student: "At Harvard, we do not end our sentences with a preposition."
visitor: "Alright then. Where's your library at, asshole?"
I am officially gone from