Out of curiousity, have you (or has anyone) actually seen *any* version of OpenOffice that will open and run spreadsheets with VBA? I keep hearing vague claims about VBA compatibility (what the heck is "partial VBA support"??), but every version of OO I've tried (including 3.0 beta for Windows) chokes on my VBA spreadsheets. I was able to port these spreadsheets to Starbasic leaving 90% of the code unchanged (and with a *lot* of help from the forums at Openoffice.org). But I have yet to see any reasonable out of the box compatibility.
For the record, my spreadsheets primarily contain user-defined functions (and a few subroutines) that call built-in Excel functions that exist in OO (such as NormSInv), and they read and write to named cells. Not trivial, but not rocket science, as VBA goes.
This sounds like an ideal application for a Google or Yahoo groups account. You would have a private group for the board. All of the e-mail would be available in a central location, with individual messages accessible by search, and each board member could forward each mail to their own personal account or not, as they see fit.
I've already yelled:-). Maybe you can help me make a more constructive request. I have several objections to the EE blogging module; perhaps these can be addressed:
1. If you cut and paste from a word processor into the EE screen, you lose all links and formatting. Not true with Blogspot.
2. Handling of graphics is just terrible. I couldn't figure out how to place a graphic where it should go so I posted in blogspot and our sysadmin ported my post over. The sysadmin apparently struggled for a while with graphic placement (it needed to go in the middle of the post).
3. The formatting icons are physically far removed from the blog content input box. In the publish form screen I see the Title entry, followed by the formatting bar, then author, then date published, then opening blurb, then blog content. So while working on a small monitor, I found I was constantly scrolling the screen to go from the blog content to the formatting bar. I suppose I could have just entered the HTML, but it was very clumsy. Are you saying that these individual pieces can be moved around (e.g., appear in a different order)?
My point of comparison is blogspot, which I considered so-so until I encountered EE. Thanks in advance for any pointers you can provide. It would be great to have it working better.
If you're going to be hosting blogs be sure to look closely at the blogging component of Expression Engine. It's all I've seen of EE (I'm a user, not a developer), and it's got a horrendous user interface. I can't speak about the rest of EE.
Monty's choice of a door to open is not random -- he has to pick a door that doesn't have a car. Say you pick door 1. Here are the three equally-likely possibilities:
If 1 has the car, he can pick either door. If you switch, you lose. Prob 1/3 If 2 has the car, Monty *has* to open 3. If you switch, you get the car, Prob 1/3 If 3 has the car, Monty *has* to open 2. If you switch, you get the car, Prob 1/3
Thus, there's a 2/3 chance of getting the car when you switch.
The other way to think about this is that Monty is revealing no information about *your* door when he opens one of the other two. Thus, the probability that your door has the car must be 1/3 both before and after Monty opens one of the other doors. Since there's only one closed door left, the car is behind it with prob = 2/3.
As an historical addendum to your comment, I believe it was Alan Kay who once pointed out that the revolution in books occurred not with Gutenberg's press but with Aldus Manutius's typefaces. Manutius created fonts readable at small sizes and published the first personal books, leading to widespread dissemination of the classics. The original use of the Gutenberg press, by contrast, was to recreate the large and immovable tomes that had been produced by monks.
The revolution occurred when a book became something you could misplace.
First, I assume it was clear that I'm not in IT. I'm a user.
Your suggestions are very sensible. As it happens, data on desktops is automatically backed up, in addition I sync important files to my laptop every night. And everyone has a network drive available. I personally have an idiosyncratic setup and a lack of confidence in our IT folks so I'm happy with the desktop. And the interesting thing is that the IT folks haven't managed to get the non-idiosyncratic folks among faculty and staff to do things the sensible way you suggest. There simply isn't leadership or clear technological vision. (I believe that students do make heavy use of their network drives, but they're otherwise not backed up.)
I'm at a university and many of my colleagues leave their machines on overnight because they sometimes need access to their machine, either to retrieve a file or to run a program. If the IT folks provided everyone with a wake-on-lan script then everyone could turn off their machine. For years this has seemed to me like a no-brainer.
Is there some security or other downside I'm not aware of? Is WOL not reliable?
I agree with the other poster. Things have changed.
1. I just got an e-mail from a student who couldn't use our Blackboard discussion group. Switching from IE to Firefox solved the problem.
2. My son the other day was creating a birthday invitation (part had to be rotated 180). In all truth, he found it easier to use OO than Word (we were both scratching our heads about Word's help on this issue). We started with Word and switched to OO to complete the task.
3. My school is rolling out MS Exchange, but it's been slow and my department has effectively (and happily) standardized on Google calendar for the time being. This is user driven.
4. I have written VBA spreadsheets to accompany a text and have grateful Mac users because they're usually ignored. A few weeks ago I ported everything to OpenOffice in anticipation of Office 2008. Painful (because documentation is poor) but not too bad and it all works great.
5. My facebook-using daughter is happy with our XO laptop.
There are too many alternatives now for Microsoft to get away with being obnoxious. My own view is that MS is going to be hit by a tidal wave in the home and small office market, and that this will portend much more gradual but significant slippage in the corporate market. (Full disclosure: my predictions are usually lousy;-)
I think you're completely right about the fit and finish of OO being klunky, and it is slow for some tasks. But I have recently started to wonder: so what? I really think it's now good enough for most people for most tasks. My wife's new laptop has OO rather than office, and it's fine. When my son had to make a birthday party invitation, he started in Word, grew frustrated (as did I trying to help him -- it was a two-fold card so we had to rotate part of the page 180 degrees). We tried OO and found that the help was clearer and he was able to finish the task.
As far as speed, I have some macros I ported from VBA to OO basic. One macro that does internal computation takes 10x longer on OO. Another that does the same computation but also writes extensively to the screen is consistently twice as fast on OO. So Office has its slow spots too. I agree that OO is not snappy, but once it's up and running it's been fine for me.
Office 2007 is very slick, but I find it a total pain to use because I can't stand the ribbon. I used to roll my eyes at OO advocates. No more. I think OO has arrived.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
I'll also pass along two cautionary anecdotes, also about Word 2003. No clue about Word 2007.
1. A few years back I wrote a 30 page or so document (for a third party, so I needed to use Word) and I resolved to really use the program correctly. I auto-numbered the sections, structured everything appropriately, and it looked fine and seemed to be working fine. The third party told me it needed a table of contents. Inserting the table of contents **deleted** all of the section numbers and stripped out all bullets and enumerated lists. It happened for them, it happened for me. The text was all still there, the indents were there, but the autonumbering and bullets had vanished. Reverting to earlier versions and inserting the TOC caused this to happen every time. The only fix either of us could find was to generate the TOC and then reinsert everything manually that had been deleted.
I asked if this kind of thing happened often. I was told yes, with a sigh. "Why do you use Word?" I asked. "It's what everyone uses."
2. Two colleagues writing a book wanted to use Word because of version tracking. (You can guess that I had suggested LaTeX). This was a *long* book, probably 1000 pages of manuscript. At some point well into the project, the document went nuts. (I don't know how they had it organized with respect to multiple files, automatic cross-references, and so forth.) Graphics and tables floated to who knows where, section numbering was off. In the colleague's words, it was a disaster. The publisher hired a consultant to fix the document so it would be suitable for review. In the end it got patched back together, but the colleague told me later he regretted not having used LaTeX.
I guess my suggestions would be to keep lots of incremental backups (maybe that's what you mean by version control), don't let an individual document get too large, and test the final format before you get too far along.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
Sorry to be ad hominem. What I perhaps misunderstood was your comment about LaTeX requiring you to think about formatting. I wrote a 900 page book using LaTeX, and I gave almost no thought to formatting.
I have been going through Office 2007 hell and it infuriates me. I have a co-author that switched form 2003 to 2007, thereby forcing me to switch (you probably know about the equation editor incompatibilities between versions). I deeply resent the incompatibilities that Microsoft builds in with each release. Office IMO is far more viral than the GPL!
It's true it's just a word processor but the 2007 upgrade has literally taken days out of my life and my colleagues lives and for most of us it was completely unnecessary but for compatibility.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 1
As some of the other posters have pointed out, you don't understand LaTeX. Moreover, it doesn't sound as if you understand Word either. Here (from a Microsoft blog) is the completely asinine method of numbering equations in Word 2007. Equation numbering just happens in LaTeX. Microsoft has blown off technical word processing for 20 years and this is what they come up with? What a joke.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Why is it necessary to have a single user interface? Why can't keystrokes continue to work as they did before *and* there could be a ribbon? It's not like there's been a conceptual leap in the design of Word. (And before someone jumps in to say that the old keystrokes are there, they aren't. If I type Alt-T-U in Excel I should see a list of the auditing commands --- that was the function of that keystroke in 2003. In 2007, that keystroke does nothing unless I know the final keystroke, which I didn't need to remember in 2003.)
If your anecdote is correct, it just shows how little regard the Microsoft powers that be have for their *existing* users.
It does seem perfectly reasonable to give ribbons a try. But why can't I turn them off if I don't want them? Why isn't there a menu option to give me the old-fashioned menu bar? Why does every Office user in the world *have* to participate in this experiment? (And they do have to participate, because Microsoft has once again created incompatabilities that ensure widespread upgrades.) To follow up with your analogy, suppose that Vista only worked with Dvorak keyboards. Would that be a good thing?
Microsoft has hired some of the smartest people on the planet. No one can claim that they couldn't have engineered more flexibility into the UI.
Personally I always liked context menus (the box that comes up when you right click). Great idea. Microsoft's implementation was always half-hearted and inconsistent. I expect to see "ribbon-drift" in the next version. Microsoft just isn't good at ruthlessly consistent implementations.
I have used the memorized shortcut keys and they totally interrupt my workflow (because of the help messages you describe). Why couldn't they just have had an option "Use old keystrokes" and gotten rid of the hesitation? Then folks could take their time getting used to the new keys. At the same time I do applaud Microsoft for a willingness to break with the past, however misguided. I know there are lots of reasonable people who do like the ribbon and the new approach to menus.
Stepping back from my personal issues with this, I find it amazing that every few years Microsoft rolls out upgrades of marginal incremental value to millions of users, and these millions of people have to endure hours of installation, relearning, document translations, etc. The cost of the software is the least of it. Personally I would be perfectly happy with Office 97. The upgrades are a *huge* social cost, and I just don't see it as worth paying, except in the narrow sense of keeping Microsoft running, so they can do it to us all over again three years later.
The good news is that I spend relatively little time in Word. The better news is that I have VBA-intensive Excel spreadsheets that I ported to StarBasic last week. I finally see the glimmerings of a way out.
Yes, I'm aware of the keystroke equivalents. But the hesitation is a pain (I know that's there so you can see the little letters pop up, but geez I hate icons, and I hate having to look for the little letters; what's wrong with underlining the damn menu item letter), and why should I have to ***relearn*** keystrokes?? The whole point of keystrokes is that they're automatic. I will gladly do if it's beneficial, but I have yet to see that this rearrangement benefits *me*, so it's pure cost. And Quattro Pro had multiple keystroke sets 20 years ago --- lotus modes, native modes, etc.
Regarding "accept all changes", I thought the previous poster was talking about Office 2003, and that's what I was referring to. I do not believe there is a menu item there. I'm sure you're right about the 2007 keystrokes.
Just FYI, I remap my keyboards so the control key is left of the A, I constantly use the command shell (and cygwin), and I use emacs and LaTeX and Word only when forced to. I just want to get my work done. Microsoft does not help me do that. (neither does slashdot for that matter:-)
Suppose you are writing a technical paper with a coauthor at another institution who uses Word 2003. You upgrade to 2007. You discover that in compatibility mode you can't edit the equations in your own paper (they're graphic images). And if you switch out of compatibility mode, your coauthor will be unable to edit the equations you create. WTF??? How much time is being wasted on this kind of crap for people who were happy with 2003. And if you think I'm making this up, here it is from Microsoft:
And the ribbons? I'm sorry. I'm glad you're happy, but for many of us who knew the keystrokes, and took the time to learn the capabilities of the software, it's a huge step backward. I heard the hype and I gave it a chance, but I agree with PC World on this one. If the ribbons are optional, I have no complaint. But they take up a huge amount of precious screen real estate (esp on a small notebook) and they practically force you to use a mouse, which some don't mind, but it slows me down enormously.
And WRT those little icons that you claim have menu counterparts: where is the menu item "Accept all changes in document" when you're tracking changes? Seriously. If it's there I would like to know.
Speaking of unintended consequences, the CAFE rules led to the creation of SUVs, which are treated like trucks and thus exempt from the passenger car standards.
The *only* sensible policy is one that charges users the true cost of their usage. A gas tax is not perfect, but it sure addresses a lot of issues at once, far better (IMO) than congress trying to micromanage specific details about vehicles (such as mileage), the source of our energy (renewable vs not) etc.
You're right that VBA compatability is a huge issue. However, there is a real opportunity for OpenOffice because Microsoft has dropped VBA from Office 2008 for OS X. If the OpenOffice developers can improve VBA compatability, I could see OpenOffice becoming a true cross-platform standard.
The good news is that porting VBA to StarBasic is feasible (I just ported a handful of functions that I use in teaching). The available documentation is not good, but the help available on the OpenOffice forums is first-rate.
I think that calling this an alliance is just PR. Maybe I'm missing something, but they don't all have to produce the same thing. They don't have to use exactly the same application software, they don't have to use the same form factor, they don't have to agree on which features to ship or enable.
This seems more to me like the industry following Compaq and standardizing on the IBM BIOS in the early 1980s. With that decision out of the way, you could produce computers in a variety of form factors with whatever software you wanted. There was a base on which to build.
In this case, Google seems firmly in control because they've already built a basic and extensible software platform. They're not asking for agreement, they're saying here it is, who wants to use it, and who wants to extend it?
It seems to me that what's critical is gaining critical mass before the platform forks (which it will eventually).
Maybe you can clear something up for me. I built a Myth frontend using an ASUS board (M2 NPV-VM) that supposedly had hdtv out on board, but I never got the fancy video options to work. I've ended up just using the VGA out (my 42" Panasonic HDTV has a computer input). It actually looks really good -- at 10' it's hard to distinguish the PVR signal from broadcast HDTV. I was surprised.
So I guess the two questions are: 1. Are you sure VGA won't do the job, and 2. What am I missing?
There is something comparable for powerpoint but the problem is that the equation is treated as a graphic rather than an integral (pardon the pun) part of the text.
So for example suppose you insert a displayed equation into a powerpoint presentation. Everything looks great. Now you add some text above it. Oops, the equation is now in the wrong place on the slide and (if the text has autoresized to become smaller) the equation font is the wrong size. If you want to compose a single slide with an equation, powerpoint is fine. If you have a 50-page presentation packed with equations, this behavior can drive you nuts. Perhaps there are workarounds I'm not aware of and perhaps powerpoint 2007 addresses this, although I would be surprised if it did. I should add that I am far from a powerpoint expert, but my colleagues who know it better are largely abandoning word and powerpoint when dealing with technical material.
I haven't used Keynote, which is why I'm being specific about powerpoint's behavior. Does Keynote address these problems? For example, does the graphic equation flow and resize with the text?
Slashdot Mirror
Out of curiousity, have you (or has anyone) actually seen *any* version of OpenOffice that will open and run spreadsheets with VBA? I keep hearing vague claims about VBA compatibility (what the heck is "partial VBA support"??), but every version of OO I've tried (including 3.0 beta for Windows) chokes on my VBA spreadsheets. I was able to port these spreadsheets to Starbasic leaving 90% of the code unchanged (and with a *lot* of help from the forums at Openoffice.org). But I have yet to see any reasonable out of the box compatibility.
For the record, my spreadsheets primarily contain user-defined functions (and a few subroutines) that call built-in Excel functions that exist in OO (such as NormSInv), and they read and write to named cells. Not trivial, but not rocket science, as VBA goes.
Look into google groups. Each user can decide what to do with new messages, including forwarding messages to their own accounts.
This sounds like an ideal application for a Google or Yahoo groups account. You would have a private group for the board. All of the e-mail would be available in a central location, with individual messages accessible by search, and each board member could forward each mail to their own personal account or not, as they see fit.
I've already yelled :-). Maybe you can help me make a more constructive request. I have several objections to the EE blogging module; perhaps these can be addressed:
1. If you cut and paste from a word processor into the EE screen, you lose all links and formatting. Not true with Blogspot.
2. Handling of graphics is just terrible. I couldn't figure out how to place a graphic where it should go so I posted in blogspot and our sysadmin ported my post over. The sysadmin apparently struggled for a while with graphic placement (it needed to go in the middle of the post).
3. The formatting icons are physically far removed from the blog content input box. In the publish form screen I see the Title entry, followed by the formatting bar, then author, then date published, then opening blurb, then blog content. So while working on a small monitor, I found I was constantly scrolling the screen to go from the blog content to the formatting bar. I suppose I could have just entered the HTML, but it was very clumsy. Are you saying that these individual pieces can be moved around (e.g., appear in a different order)?
My point of comparison is blogspot, which I considered so-so until I encountered EE. Thanks in advance for any pointers you can provide. It would be great to have it working better.
If you're going to be hosting blogs be sure to look closely at the blogging component of Expression Engine. It's all I've seen of EE (I'm a user, not a developer), and it's got a horrendous user interface. I can't speak about the rest of EE.
Monty's choice of a door to open is not random -- he has to pick a door that doesn't have a car. Say you pick door 1. Here are the three equally-likely possibilities:
If 1 has the car, he can pick either door. If you switch, you lose. Prob 1/3
If 2 has the car, Monty *has* to open 3. If you switch, you get the car, Prob 1/3
If 3 has the car, Monty *has* to open 2. If you switch, you get the car, Prob 1/3
Thus, there's a 2/3 chance of getting the car when you switch.
The other way to think about this is that Monty is revealing no information about *your* door when he opens one of the other two. Thus, the probability that your door has the car must be 1/3 both before and after Monty opens one of the other doors. Since there's only one closed door left, the car is behind it with prob = 2/3.
As an historical addendum to your comment, I believe it was Alan Kay who once pointed out that the revolution in books occurred not with Gutenberg's press but with Aldus Manutius's typefaces. Manutius created fonts readable at small sizes and published the first personal books, leading to widespread dissemination of the classics. The original use of the Gutenberg press, by contrast, was to recreate the large and immovable tomes that had been produced by monks.
The revolution occurred when a book became something you could misplace.
First, I assume it was clear that I'm not in IT. I'm a user.
:-)
Your suggestions are very sensible. As it happens, data on desktops is automatically backed up, in addition I sync important files to my laptop every night. And everyone has a network drive available. I personally have an idiosyncratic setup and a lack of confidence in our IT folks so I'm happy with the desktop. And the interesting thing is that the IT folks haven't managed to get the non-idiosyncratic folks among faculty and staff to do things the sensible way you suggest. There simply isn't leadership or clear technological vision. (I believe that students do make heavy use of their network drives, but they're otherwise not backed up.)
You looking for a job?
I'm at a university and many of my colleagues leave their machines on overnight because they sometimes need access to their machine, either to retrieve a file or to run a program. If the IT folks provided everyone with a wake-on-lan script then everyone could turn off their machine. For years this has seemed to me like a no-brainer.
Is there some security or other downside I'm not aware of? Is WOL not reliable?
I agree with the other poster. Things have changed.
;-)
1. I just got an e-mail from a student who couldn't use our Blackboard discussion group. Switching from IE to Firefox solved the problem.
2. My son the other day was creating a birthday invitation (part had to be rotated 180). In all truth, he found it easier to use OO than Word (we were both scratching our heads about Word's help on this issue). We started with Word and switched to OO to complete the task.
3. My school is rolling out MS Exchange, but it's been slow and my department has effectively (and happily) standardized on Google calendar for the time being. This is user driven.
4. I have written VBA spreadsheets to accompany a text and have grateful Mac users because they're usually ignored. A few weeks ago I ported everything to OpenOffice in anticipation of Office 2008. Painful (because documentation is poor) but not too bad and it all works great.
5. My facebook-using daughter is happy with our XO laptop.
There are too many alternatives now for Microsoft to get away with being obnoxious. My own view is that MS is going to be hit by a tidal wave in the home and small office market, and that this will portend much more gradual but significant slippage in the corporate market. (Full disclosure: my predictions are usually lousy
I think you're completely right about the fit and finish of OO being klunky, and it is slow for some tasks. But I have recently started to wonder: so what? I really think it's now good enough for most people for most tasks. My wife's new laptop has OO rather than office, and it's fine. When my son had to make a birthday party invitation, he started in Word, grew frustrated (as did I trying to help him -- it was a two-fold card so we had to rotate part of the page 180 degrees). We tried OO and found that the help was clearer and he was able to finish the task.
As far as speed, I have some macros I ported from VBA to OO basic. One macro that does internal computation takes 10x longer on OO. Another that does the same computation but also writes extensively to the screen is consistently twice as fast on OO. So Office has its slow spots too. I agree that OO is not snappy, but once it's up and running it's been fine for me.
Office 2007 is very slick, but I find it a total pain to use because I can't stand the ribbon. I used to roll my eyes at OO advocates. No more. I think OO has arrived.
I'll also pass along two cautionary anecdotes, also about Word 2003. No clue about Word 2007.
1. A few years back I wrote a 30 page or so document (for a third party, so I needed to use Word) and I resolved to really use the program correctly. I auto-numbered the sections, structured everything appropriately, and it looked fine and seemed to be working fine. The third party told me it needed a table of contents. Inserting the table of contents **deleted** all of the section numbers and stripped out all bullets and enumerated lists. It happened for them, it happened for me. The text was all still there, the indents were there, but the autonumbering and bullets had vanished. Reverting to earlier versions and inserting the TOC caused this to happen every time. The only fix either of us could find was to generate the TOC and then reinsert everything manually that had been deleted.
I asked if this kind of thing happened often. I was told yes, with a sigh. "Why do you use Word?" I asked. "It's what everyone uses."
2. Two colleagues writing a book wanted to use Word because of version tracking. (You can guess that I had suggested LaTeX). This was a *long* book, probably 1000 pages of manuscript. At some point well into the project, the document went nuts. (I don't know how they had it organized with respect to multiple files, automatic cross-references, and so forth.) Graphics and tables floated to who knows where, section numbering was off. In the colleague's words, it was a disaster. The publisher hired a consultant to fix the document so it would be suitable for review. In the end it got patched back together, but the colleague told me later he regretted not having used LaTeX.
I guess my suggestions would be to keep lots of incremental backups (maybe that's what you mean by version control), don't let an individual document get too large, and test the final format before you get too far along.
Sorry to be ad hominem. What I perhaps misunderstood was your comment about LaTeX requiring you to think about formatting. I wrote a 900 page book using LaTeX, and I gave almost no thought to formatting.
I have been going through Office 2007 hell and it infuriates me. I have a co-author that switched form 2003 to 2007, thereby forcing me to switch (you probably know about the equation editor incompatibilities between versions). I deeply resent the incompatibilities that Microsoft builds in with each release. Office IMO is far more viral than the GPL!
It's true it's just a word processor but the 2007 upgrade has literally taken days out of my life and my colleagues lives and for most of us it was completely unnecessary but for compatibility.
As some of the other posters have pointed out, you don't understand LaTeX. Moreover, it doesn't sound as if you understand Word either. Here (from a Microsoft blog) is the completely asinine method of numbering equations in Word 2007. Equation numbering just happens in LaTeX. Microsoft has blown off technical word processing for 20 years and this is what they come up with? What a joke.
Why is it necessary to have a single user interface? Why can't keystrokes continue to work as they did before *and* there could be a ribbon? It's not like there's been a conceptual leap in the design of Word. (And before someone jumps in to say that the old keystrokes are there, they aren't. If I type Alt-T-U in Excel I should see a list of the auditing commands --- that was the function of that keystroke in 2003. In 2007, that keystroke does nothing unless I know the final keystroke, which I didn't need to remember in 2003.)
If your anecdote is correct, it just shows how little regard the Microsoft powers that be have for their *existing* users.
It does seem perfectly reasonable to give ribbons a try. But why can't I turn them off if I don't want them? Why isn't there a menu option to give me the old-fashioned menu bar? Why does every Office user in the world *have* to participate in this experiment? (And they do have to participate, because Microsoft has once again created incompatabilities that ensure widespread upgrades.) To follow up with your analogy, suppose that Vista only worked with Dvorak keyboards. Would that be a good thing?
Microsoft has hired some of the smartest people on the planet. No one can claim that they couldn't have engineered more flexibility into the UI.
Personally I always liked context menus (the box that comes up when you right click). Great idea. Microsoft's implementation was always half-hearted and inconsistent. I expect to see "ribbon-drift" in the next version. Microsoft just isn't good at ruthlessly consistent implementations.
I have used the memorized shortcut keys and they totally interrupt my workflow (because of the help messages you describe). Why couldn't they just have had an option "Use old keystrokes" and gotten rid of the hesitation? Then folks could take their time getting used to the new keys. At the same time I do applaud Microsoft for a willingness to break with the past, however misguided. I know there are lots of reasonable people who do like the ribbon and the new approach to menus.
Stepping back from my personal issues with this, I find it amazing that every few years Microsoft rolls out upgrades of marginal incremental value to millions of users, and these millions of people have to endure hours of installation, relearning, document translations, etc. The cost of the software is the least of it. Personally I would be perfectly happy with Office 97. The upgrades are a *huge* social cost, and I just don't see it as worth paying, except in the narrow sense of keeping Microsoft running, so they can do it to us all over again three years later.
The good news is that I spend relatively little time in Word. The better news is that I have VBA-intensive Excel spreadsheets that I ported to StarBasic last week. I finally see the glimmerings of a way out.
Yes, I'm aware of the keystroke equivalents. But the hesitation is a pain (I know that's there so you can see the little letters pop up, but geez I hate icons, and I hate having to look for the little letters; what's wrong with underlining the damn menu item letter), and why should I have to ***relearn*** keystrokes?? The whole point of keystrokes is that they're automatic. I will gladly do if it's beneficial, but I have yet to see that this rearrangement benefits *me*, so it's pure cost. And Quattro Pro had multiple keystroke sets 20 years ago --- lotus modes, native modes, etc.
:-)
Regarding "accept all changes", I thought the previous poster was talking about Office 2003, and that's what I was referring to. I do not believe there is a menu item there. I'm sure you're right about the 2007 keystrokes.
Just FYI, I remap my keyboards so the control key is left of the A, I constantly use the command shell (and cygwin), and I use emacs and LaTeX and Word only when forced to. I just want to get my work done. Microsoft does not help me do that. (neither does slashdot for that matter
Suppose you are writing a technical paper with a coauthor at another institution who uses Word 2003. You upgrade to 2007. You discover that in compatibility mode you can't edit the equations in your own paper (they're graphic images). And if you switch out of compatibility mode, your coauthor will be unable to edit the equations you create. WTF??? How much time is being wasted on this kind of crap for people who were happy with 2003. And if you think I'm making this up, here it is from Microsoft:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100444751033.aspx
And the ribbons? I'm sorry. I'm glad you're happy, but for many of us who knew the keystrokes, and took the time to learn the capabilities of the software, it's a huge step backward. I heard the hype and I gave it a chance, but I agree with PC World on this one. If the ribbons are optional, I have no complaint. But they take up a huge amount of precious screen real estate (esp on a small notebook) and they practically force you to use a mouse, which some don't mind, but it slows me down enormously.
And WRT those little icons that you claim have menu counterparts: where is the menu item "Accept all changes in document" when you're tracking changes? Seriously. If it's there I would like to know.
Speaking of unintended consequences, the CAFE rules led to the creation of SUVs, which are treated like trucks and thus exempt from the passenger car standards.
The *only* sensible policy is one that charges users the true cost of their usage. A gas tax is not perfect, but it sure addresses a lot of issues at once, far better (IMO) than congress trying to micromanage specific details about vehicles (such as mileage), the source of our energy (renewable vs not) etc.
You're right that VBA compatability is a huge issue. However, there is a real opportunity for OpenOffice because Microsoft has dropped VBA from Office 2008 for OS X. If the OpenOffice developers can improve VBA compatability, I could see OpenOffice becoming a true cross-platform standard.
The good news is that porting VBA to StarBasic is feasible (I just ported a handful of functions that I use in teaching). The available documentation is not good, but the help available on the OpenOffice forums is first-rate.
Nope, it *is* the case. Everyone on Slashdot *does* think they're a nutritional expert.
You must be new here.
I think that calling this an alliance is just PR. Maybe I'm missing something, but they don't all have to produce the same thing. They don't have to use exactly the same application software, they don't have to use the same form factor, they don't have to agree on which features to ship or enable.
This seems more to me like the industry following Compaq and standardizing on the IBM BIOS in the early 1980s. With that decision out of the way, you could produce computers in a variety of form factors with whatever software you wanted. There was a base on which to build.
In this case, Google seems firmly in control because they've already built a basic and extensible software platform. They're not asking for agreement, they're saying here it is, who wants to use it, and who wants to extend it?
It seems to me that what's critical is gaining critical mass before the platform forks (which it will eventually).
Maybe you can clear something up for me. I built a Myth frontend using an ASUS board (M2 NPV-VM) that supposedly had hdtv out on board, but I never got the fancy video options to work. I've ended up just using the VGA out (my 42" Panasonic HDTV has a computer input). It actually looks really good -- at 10' it's hard to distinguish the PVR signal from broadcast HDTV. I was surprised.
So I guess the two questions are: 1. Are you sure VGA won't do the job, and 2. What am I missing?
There is something comparable for powerpoint but the problem is that the equation is treated as a graphic rather than an integral (pardon the pun) part of the text.
So for example suppose you insert a displayed equation into a powerpoint presentation. Everything looks great. Now you add some text above it. Oops, the equation is now in the wrong place on the slide and (if the text has autoresized to become smaller) the equation font is the wrong size. If you want to compose a single slide with an equation, powerpoint is fine. If you have a 50-page presentation packed with equations, this behavior can drive you nuts. Perhaps there are workarounds I'm not aware of and perhaps powerpoint 2007 addresses this, although I would be surprised if it did. I should add that I am far from a powerpoint expert, but my colleagues who know it better are largely abandoning word and powerpoint when dealing with technical material.
I haven't used Keynote, which is why I'm being specific about powerpoint's behavior. Does Keynote address these problems? For example, does the graphic equation flow and resize with the text?