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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."
One thing that Microsoft Word continues to have are some features very useful for the average user.
For example, a Grammar checker. The Word grammar checker isn't perfect, and no professional should use it as a crutch, but it is a nice tool for most people to quickly check for mistakes.
There is continually talk that OO.org will eventually include a Grammar checker module... but I've never seen any evidence of that.
Until OO.org offers such features, I can't imagine them gaining dominance. Anyone migrating will ask "How do I check my grammar (or another basic function)?" And when they're told that they can't... they'll switch back to Word.
Don't get me wrong-- I'm an avid Debian user. But Word is still a better program for the average user.
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
Something is wrong with Word, as currently installed on Dvorak's computer. He would rather describe the symptoms in detail than fix it by, say, reinstalling Word. Direct quote: "I suppose I should reinstall Word, but other people have told me they have the same problems. So why bother?" Is Word really any worse than any other Microsoft applications under Windows? Don't they all suffer from Registry rot?
Various versions of Word aren't 100% compatible. Dvorak and some editors tried to use the change-tracking markup, and "we had a huge mess." What was this mess? He didn't specify.
He doesn't like the warning when you save to an older .DOC file format.
HTML files created by Word are full of useless junk. (Absolutely true, of course.) He says something hand-waving-ish about if the HTML is bad, the XML is probably bad, so he's never tried the XML. (If I write about how I've never tried something, can I be a famous pundit too?)
When you save a plain text file, there are too many options in the dialog box.
Based on his conclusions, Dvorak (who is not a software developer himself) has figured out that the Word code base (which he has never seen) should be scrapped. Quote: "There are many more issues than these. It's clear the program is in decline, with too many patches and teams of coders passing in the night. It's about time that it's junked and we get something new. This code can no longer be fixed." How the heck is he qualified to judge whether the code can any longer be fixed?
As it happens, I agree that Word ought to get a major overhaul. Instead of pasting more layers of features onto Word, Microsoft ought to spend a bunch of man-years cleaning it up and making it faster. They won't, because that is not considered a profitable approach. (They actually tried something like this once. Eventually, they terminated that project, and just made the Windows code base the baseline for all future versions of Word. I didn't work on that project, but I heard that it was just taking too long and costing too much to clean it up, and people were worried about how long it might take to debug the final result.)
If Dvorak had wanted to do some actual research, and write an essay that would actually be of some value, he could have installed OpenOffice and tested its compatibility with his documents, and then written about that. This essay is awfully light on facts; I think he must have about 20 columns to write every month, and he just needed to bang something out to meet a deadline. (Note that I have no proof and did no research before making that statement. Just like Dvorak! But no one is paying me anything to write this, so I don't feel too bad.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Very true, but there are often still mystery changes (especially those involving changing the margins with the ruler up top) which seem to kick in almost at random...
This is why I train my users to find other ways to hit ctrl-z whenever something goes wrong and your document gets eaten by Word.
Apple commercials aside, I still have a Word document which had the center of it *eaten* and random gibberish inserted for completely unknown reasons (and no, the gibberish wasn't pasted/typed in--the people involved have fought with Word for years now). There are no traces of a virus, it's more like the computer confused which inodes belonged to the file...
The problem is that even with the reveal formatting option, there is some stuff you just can't edit. For instance, if you have the replace-as-you-type thing turned on and type a row of underscores (or was it hyphens, I've habitually turned off the auto-crap on every Word installation I've used for years now), Word helpfully replaces it with a line. Which you can't delete, move, or otherwise interact with. It can't be clicked on. If you highlight starting above it to somewhere below it and hit delete, it deletes everything but the line. For years, the only way I knew of to get rid of the line was to undo past where you typed it and then turn off all the auto-crap and try again. I finally found out that Word creates the line by formatting the previous paragraph with a bottom border line, and the answer is to highlight the previous paragraph and edit its formatting to remove it.
I just want to crank out a quick letter or memo. I doubt I'm far removed from the typical word user who could give a rats about XML.
It's simple really. Send the document to someone with a MAC or who does not have MS software. They may write back complaining they can't read your propritory file format document. Could you send it as text or XML instead?
That's when you care about your file format. Don't assume everybody is running MS software and can read your quick letter or memo. They care even more when it contains a worm macro and Norton bounces it. Memos and letters should not contain executable code.
The truth shall set you free!
It sounds like he didn't know how to install Word properly.
Think about what you just said.
That alone, is quite a damning indictment of the product.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Yeah, you can't edit this stuff, until I learned how, then you could....this is the typical bs that causes windows programs to get a worse rep then they already deserve."
Which is why Linux is no worse than Windows when it comes to usability.
I hope that's what you meant to say 'cause that's what you actually said...:-)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
From the MVPs Word FAQ
Word, on the other hand, is a series of nesting containers, characters inside words inside paragraphs inside sections inside documents.
Why does that prevent the display of codes, HTML style? HTML is also nothing more than containers in containers.