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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."
I imagine if there was a "reveal hidden codes" feature in Word, it might be a lot easier to use
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.
Remember, this is the same John that predicted Apple would switch to the Itanium.
I hope that utility also allows kill -9 clippy .
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
...Word is the best product in its class.
Not by a long shot. Both Lotus WordPro and WordPerfect have features, stability and ease of use on their side. Both have superior layout control. Both are better at complex text flow. Both are better at generating indexes and the like. Unfortunately, Word is bundled with Excel and Access, two products that are very, very good. Access less so than excel, which offers several features that kick the teeth of the competition in like PivotTables and Solver.
-- $G
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
Most companies are already archiving those as Portable Document Format (pdf) files. This preserves print format much better than Word ever did. IBM would be happy to show you how and yes, you can search the text.
If your company was dumb enough to archive things in Word format and is not looking for reliable methods to get the information out, you might as well throw the things away. New Word itself has a hard time opening older Word documents, especially "complicated" ones with OLE from visio and other programs that your company might not have anymore.
Hopefully, people will learn and use reasonable text editors and type setters for future work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have a client who has been having intermittent problems with Word2002, namely "abnormal termination" errors. Crash, boom, bang.
/a" -- a word processor with a "safe mode"?), installed the support and troubleshooting document templates, turned off NAV Office virus checking (as per the MS KB article 320475).
.DOC files. I would switch these users to something better, if only there was a clearly superior product on the market. As much as Word sucks, it's become a de facto standard. There's no competition anymore, and I wonder if this situation means that there's no incentive to make this a stable product. I wonder who is in charge of product development in Redmond: engineers or marketdroids? Do I really need the ability to make Word my default HTML editor? Do I really need to know my Fleisch score? Clippy? Hello? Is anyone home?
I've done everything: deleted "NORMAL.DOT" (which had bloated to 710KB), scanned for macro viruses, did a repair install, did an uninstall and a clean re-install, applied all three service packs (service packs for a word processor?), started it up in safe mode ("winword.exe
And still it mocks me.
I'm starting to look at the OS and the network at this point, but none of the other applications have crashed, and both the computers and network are new (under a year old, mostly Dells running XP Pro). The users don't do anything fancy with Word, no pictures, no embedded objects, just plain vanilla legal documents (it's a law office, so I'm thinking that maybe there's a karma thing happening).
I've met every challenge that administration has thrown at me, but the solution for this one has eluded me for a month now. The users are getting impatient and they aren't taking "Well, it is a Microsoft product" for an excuse. Nor do I for that matter. I can't blame Redmond, even though their products are starting to remind me of the US automotive industry back in the 1970s: big, inefficient, prone to crashing, waiting for a nimble competitor (Japan) to eat their lunch.
The automobile:software analogy breaks down, of course. When you bought a Toyota to replace your Ford you didn't have to migrate anything but the contents of your glove compartment and your trunk, not a year's worth of
Just give me a goddamned word processor that doesn't throw a runtime error and my users and I will be happy. Or I swear to God I'll kill this puppy.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
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
When installing word or any office program ALWAYS run a "custom" installation and get to the screen with all the grey boxes that turn white when selected for installation. Select the top-most box and click "run from installed location". All the lower boxes should turn white - that means they will all be installed on the HD.
After the installation is complete, the installer will ask if you want to delete the installation files or leave them on the hard disk. LEAVE THE FILES ON THE DISK. While this only applies to Office 2003, it does make patching or servicing the installation later a breeze.
-ted
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."
There is a misconception about Word's Save as HTML function. It isn't there to generate (clean) HTML.
It is there to save your document in a format that can (somewhat) be read by a browser, but more importantly, that can be read by Word. I found this out when I managed to corner a MicroSerf "evangelist" (or whatever the fark they call their sales/tech dweebs) and ask him what the #$@ SA-HTML was supposed to do.
He told me the extra garbage they embed in the file is for Word's benefit, so it can recreate the document in all its bloated glory if you load the HTML file back into Word.
Let's take a look at a "Hello World" doc, shall we? (spaces added to deal with crak-smoking---sorry---'leet filter/editor)
Note that only a tiny bit of the document is concerned with rendering "Hello world." The rest deals with preserving document styles and properties--stuff you'd find under the "File, Properties" dialog.
Yeah, right.
The best article I have read that summarizes what word got wrong is http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html.
The gyst is that Word, and all word-processors, confuse the distinct tasks of preparing your text logically, and laying it out. This leads to the standard situation that frustrates me when I have to use Word: I am entering text, when I see that it won't fit on a page, so I stop thinking about my text to change paragraph formatting and then, oh, where was I? Later I'll change the text, and probably want to change the paragraph formatting back, but won't be able to remember what it was before. Now my document is inconsistently laid out.
Implementations may vary. Word is often slated as being particularly obnoxious, changing formatting of its own volition. However, the conflation of distinct tasks is a conceptual error of all word-processors.
The alternative suggested by the article, LaTeX, is undoubtedly not to everyone's taste either, but at least if you read the article, you will understand the deeper reason Word is frustrating.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
OpenOffice doesn't hold a candle
Why on earth would anybody design a word processor to hold candles?
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 looks like you're writing a death threat!
Would you like to:
- chrish