Why do you want to embed a spreadsheet for gods sake? I mean you can represent tabular data without embedding a giant excel sheet into your giant doc file can't you.
Because you want the tabular data to automatically update in your Word document when you update the spreadsheet. This is great for, say, business plans when you are embedding summary information from a financial model spreadsheet.
The spider is much tricker to write than a simple script that downloads a file, runs a hash, or even unzips it and scans for a particular string.
I'm not sure why you would assume anyone who doesn't agree with your philosophy must be technically incompetent.
--
Re:Hate to say this, but...
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 2
Unfortunately, It's an arms race you would be destined to lose. First of all, it's inevitable that there wouldn't be that many different versions. Second, there has to be something in the code that's identifiable, so it's not that hard to scan for it (heck, how about just the help string?).
I had the same thought, but all you have to do is check the hash on the file. Then I had the thought, "well, put in random garbage and make as many hashes and file sizes as possible so that they can't keep a comprehensive list."
The problem with that scenerio is all you have to do is scan the zip file and check the file names.
--
Hate to say this, but...
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 3
It's a cute idea, but it's not that hard to defeat. If I was writing a 'bot to search for DeCSS, I would just check the file size and a hash, and keep a list of "real" DeCSS hashes.
And it would be really useful if it could perform a section sort. By that I mean sort the entire document (or part thereof), based on paragraph styles -- each section (delimited by a given paragraph style) remains intact, but the sections themselves are sorted to be in alphebetical order, based on the text in the chosen style.
Good God, it actually can do that, I just tried. What you do is go into Outline View, select the text, and select Table->Sort. Unbelievable.
Not to turn the discussion into a Word tutorial, but you can change the Table of Contents styles by changing the "TOC#" styles. For example, "TOC 1" corresponds to "Heading 1". That's why rebuilding the TOC changes the styles back.
Word does support Hyperlinking, at least as of Word 98 (I think).
Sometimes it's easier to see those sort of weird problems if you switch to "normal" view rather than page layout view. But I agree, that's a case where it's non-intuitive.
pause... Actually, I just tried it in Word2K and it appears to be fixed.
Actually, I agree with you. I think there are two kinds of document publishing: "flow" style (like word), and "markup" style like Quark, PageMaker, etc.
For doing newsletters and that sort of thing, a markup-style tool works much better. Flow-style works better when you're doing reports, business plans, and such when you're less concerned with where stuff ends up on a page, but more concerned with the big picture of sections, headers, footers, etc.
I felt exactly the same way when I switched from Wordperfect to Word after the WP 6.0 fiasco (what a piece of garbage THAT thing was).
I was incredibly frustrated until I figured out how Styles work in Word. Once you've got the philosophy, the lightbulb flashes and you realize (I know, I know... you're not going to believe this) that Reveal Codes is not necessary, and is in fact a kludge to make up for an inelegant interface. Wait! I can already hear your complaint, because I was saying many of the same things before becoming a believer and understanding the power of Styles. It may be the Borg implants, I'm not sure.:)
Well, I have to agree with that. Master Docs in previous versions of Office have been, well, a little flaky. I will say this... I haven't played with them yet, but it looks like Master Docs have been overhauled in Office/2000. The interface has been greatly simplified, so it wouldn't surprise me if they've (finally) fixed it.
Also, when was the last time that you saw Explorer embed a Word document? In a frame? How about PostScript or PDF? Spreadsheets?
IE has already been doing this for years.
But onto you're main point... I have high hopes for KOffice, but what kills me about them is their absolute stupidity (sorry, but it has to be said) when it comes to their stand on compatibility with Office. Unless they've changed their mind recently, they've gone on record saying that compatibility is not a priority. This is just ludicrous. The industry standard document interchange format is Word. Period. Not providing compatibility is not just shooting your foot, but blowing your whole leg off.
Now, what might actually save them is that Microsoft has made noises in the past about moving to XML as the Office file format. If that happens, it will be a lot easier to import Office docs into KOffice. But until that day, they need to change their attitude or KOffice will have very little penetration in the "normal" world.
Apple would be dead today if Microsoft suddenly dropped support for Office on the Mac a few years ago. But Apple is a niche player for a whole slew of reasons that we don't need to rehash for the n'th time.
The point is that what made Microsoft was having all the best applications written for Windows. An Office suite is the core application set for any operating system (and recently, a browser can be added to that list). What if Office was available for BeOS, as an example? That would instantly make it a useful platform for probably 85% of the market (particularly business). As it stands, what you can do with BeOS? Not a whole helluva lot, which is why it languishes in obscurity.
Sorry, but I am not a savage. I use WYSIWYG tools. When someone bolts a civilized interface on TeX, then we'll talk. Until then, I have work to do.
Now, This is not to say that the output from TeX can't be much better than Office; just that the inefficiency of the interface makes it not worth it for 99.99% of document creation. If you are creating a complex mathematical textbook, by all means TeX is your tool. But if you're creating a business plan with imbedded charts, financial model spreadsheets, etc., well... let's just say it's not worth some slightly better-formatted paragraphs.
Given the choice, I would rather have Microsoft open source Office, rather than Windows. Personally I think that's their real monopoly. The only thing that keeps people on Windows are the applications, and Office is by far the biggest reason.
Say what you will about Microsoft, but Office is a great product. There is nothing even close to comparable. I know a lot of you people are of the mind that "Hell, I can write letters just fine using BogoOfficePerfect!", but if you want to do a complex document beyond the "Hi mom" level, the power of Office really shines.
If you don't like Office, then you haven't learned to really use Office.
Sorry - I wasn't sure where the line came from, but it sounded lounge singerish.
In future usage, I will be sure and credit BB King.:)
I've configured zillions of ascii-based configuration files. As BB King once said, "The thrill is gone, baby."
Better? I should make that sig someday.
--
Re:Look for something amazing from this project
on
New Desktop for Linux
·
· Score: 3
Because a lot us have better things to do with our time than figure out crufty interfaces. I've configured zillions of ascii-based configuration files. As the lounge singer said, "the thrill is gone, baby."
/bin/bash (vs. command.com anyone?)... emacs/vi -- they really are *everything*, and customizeable.
You can get those for Windows.
As for enlightenment, well, maybe the newer versions are better, but the last time I tried it was RedHat 6.0 and enlightenment was a buggy piece of crap.
But even so, you can clearly find a feature here or a feature there that you might like better. But on balance, any desktop on Linux is light years away from Windows' GUI. You mention drag and drop, but how about cut/paste? I can copy cells out of Excel, and paste it into Frontpage, and it will convert to an HTML table automatically. Let's not even get into OLE functionality.
The hair style and pants/skirt length of teenagers are the classic examples of memes -- they are apparently random parameters of fashion whose spread can be easily seen.
Thank you. That actually makes some amount of sense. You couldn't easily describe that phenomenon using "idea" or "concept".
Based on this, I agree that the author of the story's use of "meme" is gratuitous. "Memetic Warfare"? I think the other term for that is "propaganda". But that's far less l33t.:)
Well, Win/98 gives a bit more stability, but there are more features than you think. Some that come to mind are USB support, Multi-monitor support, and the task manager is much improved. It's mostly a lot of small improvements, but it's significant.
There is no question that GIMP can do a lot, but... let's face it. It doesn't have nearly the feature set that Photoshop has. Granted, if you stick to basic bread-and-butter stuff, then you can get by with GIMP. But don't kid yourself that it can do what Photoshop can do in the hands of a professional.
I also might add that Photoshop might be a memory hog, but it's very, very fast. GIMP is dog slow. (enough with the animal metaphors)
As has been quite well documented, Microsoft's dominiation was with preloads. Businesses bought PCs, they came with Windows, chicken comes out of egg, etc.
I think most of what you're saying can be summed up by that paragraph. You're both right and wrong -- Yes, Microsoft won by winning at the corporate level. However, they did that by getting the best applications written to Windows. Microsoft pandered to developers like no one else (particularly Apple who spat on developers right and left). Businesses wants solutions, and solutions means applications.
As for OS/2, that proves my point. IBM used to sell PCs preloaded with both OS/2 and Win 3.1 (that's 3.1, mind you). It booted up to OS/2. The user had to actively click on an icon to remove OS/2, and switch to Win 3.1. Guess what they did? You got it: people blew away OS/2 in droves even when it was given away for the clearly inferior Win 3.1. Why? Because OS/2 wasn't completely Windows compatible.
Actually, I chalked that up to the cluelessness of the reporter. I mean, what does "barely" mean? They don't slowly increase the "throttle" until it hits top speed; it either runs or it doesn't. That the device they were using to measure the clock speed had some minor fluctuations is not a huge deal. 1.492 is within 0.6% of 1.5G, well within typical measurement error.
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Why do you want to embed a spreadsheet for gods sake? I mean you can represent tabular data without embedding a giant excel sheet into your giant doc file can't you.
Because you want the tabular data to automatically update in your Word document when you update the spreadsheet. This is great for, say, business plans when you are embedding summary information from a financial model spreadsheet.
--
The spider is much tricker to write than a simple script that downloads a file, runs a hash, or even unzips it and scans for a particular string.
I'm not sure why you would assume anyone who doesn't agree with your philosophy must be technically incompetent.
--
Unfortunately, It's an arms race you would be destined to lose. First of all, it's inevitable that there wouldn't be that many different versions. Second, there has to be something in the code that's identifiable, so it's not that hard to scan for it (heck, how about just the help string?).
--
I had the same thought, but all you have to do is check the hash on the file. Then I had the thought, "well, put in random garbage and make as many hashes and file sizes as possible so that they can't keep a comprehensive list."
The problem with that scenerio is all you have to do is scan the zip file and check the file names.
--
It's a cute idea, but it's not that hard to defeat. If I was writing a 'bot to search for DeCSS, I would just check the file size and a hash, and keep a list of "real" DeCSS hashes.
It is kind of funny, though.
--
This is the ultimate "vaporware".
[Humor key: Fuel cells release water vapor]
--
And it would be really useful if it could perform a section sort. By that I mean sort the entire document (or part thereof), based on paragraph styles -- each section (delimited by a given paragraph style) remains intact, but the sections themselves are sorted to be in alphebetical order, based on the text in the chosen style.
Good God, it actually can do that, I just tried. What you do is go into Outline View, select the text, and select Table->Sort. Unbelievable.
Not to turn the discussion into a Word tutorial, but you can change the Table of Contents styles by changing the "TOC#" styles. For example, "TOC 1" corresponds to "Heading 1". That's why rebuilding the TOC changes the styles back.
Word does support Hyperlinking, at least as of Word 98 (I think).
--
Sometimes it's easier to see those sort of weird problems if you switch to "normal" view rather than page layout view. But I agree, that's a case where it's non-intuitive.
pause... Actually, I just tried it in Word2K and it appears to be fixed.
--
Make a link to a .doc file, click on it, and it will open up for viewing in your browser window exactly as if it was web page. Works fine.
--
Actually, I agree with you. I think there are two kinds of document publishing: "flow" style (like word), and "markup" style like Quark, PageMaker, etc.
For doing newsletters and that sort of thing, a markup-style tool works much better. Flow-style works better when you're doing reports, business plans, and such when you're less concerned with where stuff ends up on a page, but more concerned with the big picture of sections, headers, footers, etc.
--
I felt exactly the same way when I switched from Wordperfect to Word after the WP 6.0 fiasco (what a piece of garbage THAT thing was).
I was incredibly frustrated until I figured out how Styles work in Word. Once you've got the philosophy, the lightbulb flashes and you realize (I know, I know... you're not going to believe this) that Reveal Codes is not necessary, and is in fact a kludge to make up for an inelegant interface. Wait! I can already hear your complaint, because I was saying many of the same things before becoming a believer and understanding the power of Styles. It may be the Borg implants, I'm not sure. :)
--
Well, I have to agree with that. Master Docs in previous versions of Office have been, well, a little flaky. I will say this... I haven't played with them yet, but it looks like Master Docs have been overhauled in Office/2000. The interface has been greatly simplified, so it wouldn't surprise me if they've (finally) fixed it.
--
Also, when was the last time that you saw Explorer embed a Word document? In a frame? How about PostScript or PDF? Spreadsheets?
IE has already been doing this for years.
But onto you're main point... I have high hopes for KOffice, but what kills me about them is their absolute stupidity (sorry, but it has to be said) when it comes to their stand on compatibility with Office. Unless they've changed their mind recently, they've gone on record saying that compatibility is not a priority. This is just ludicrous. The industry standard document interchange format is Word. Period. Not providing compatibility is not just shooting your foot, but blowing your whole leg off.
Now, what might actually save them is that Microsoft has made noises in the past about moving to XML as the Office file format. If that happens, it will be a lot easier to import Office docs into KOffice. But until that day, they need to change their attitude or KOffice will have very little penetration in the "normal" world.
--
Apple would be dead today if Microsoft suddenly dropped support for Office on the Mac a few years ago. But Apple is a niche player for a whole slew of reasons that we don't need to rehash for the n'th time.
The point is that what made Microsoft was having all the best applications written for Windows. An Office suite is the core application set for any operating system (and recently, a browser can be added to that list). What if Office was available for BeOS, as an example? That would instantly make it a useful platform for probably 85% of the market (particularly business). As it stands, what you can do with BeOS? Not a whole helluva lot, which is why it languishes in obscurity.
--
Sorry, but I am not a savage. I use WYSIWYG tools. When someone bolts a civilized interface on TeX, then we'll talk. Until then, I have work to do.
Now, This is not to say that the output from TeX can't be much better than Office; just that the inefficiency of the interface makes it not worth it for 99.99% of document creation. If you are creating a complex mathematical textbook, by all means TeX is your tool. But if you're creating a business plan with imbedded charts, financial model spreadsheets, etc., well... let's just say it's not worth some slightly better-formatted paragraphs.
--
Given the choice, I would rather have Microsoft open source Office, rather than Windows. Personally I think that's their real monopoly. The only thing that keeps people on Windows are the applications, and Office is by far the biggest reason.
Say what you will about Microsoft, but Office is a great product. There is nothing even close to comparable. I know a lot of you people are of the mind that "Hell, I can write letters just fine using BogoOfficePerfect!", but if you want to do a complex document beyond the "Hi mom" level, the power of Office really shines.
If you don't like Office, then you haven't learned to really use Office.
--
Sorry - I wasn't sure where the line came from, but it sounded lounge singerish.
In future usage, I will be sure and credit BB King. :)
I've configured zillions of ascii-based configuration files. As BB King once said, "The thrill is gone, baby."
Better? I should make that sig someday.
--
Because a lot us have better things to do with our time than figure out crufty interfaces. I've configured zillions of ascii-based configuration files. As the lounge singer said, "the thrill is gone, baby."
--
Any others?
--
You can get those for Windows.
As for enlightenment, well, maybe the newer versions are better, but the last time I tried it was RedHat 6.0 and enlightenment was a buggy piece of crap.
But even so, you can clearly find a feature here or a feature there that you might like better. But on balance, any desktop on Linux is light years away from Windows' GUI. You mention drag and drop, but how about cut/paste? I can copy cells out of Excel, and paste it into Frontpage, and it will convert to an HTML table automatically. Let's not even get into OLE functionality.
--
The hair style and pants/skirt length of teenagers are the classic examples of memes -- they are apparently random parameters of fashion whose spread can be easily seen.
Thank you. That actually makes some amount of sense. You couldn't easily describe that phenomenon using "idea" or "concept".
Based on this, I agree that the author of the story's use of "meme" is gratuitous. "Memetic Warfare"? I think the other term for that is "propaganda". But that's far less l33t. :)
--
Well, Win/98 gives a bit more stability, but there are more features than you think. Some that come to mind are USB support, Multi-monitor support, and the task manager is much improved. It's mostly a lot of small improvements, but it's significant.
--
Re: Gimp...
There is no question that GIMP can do a lot, but... let's face it. It doesn't have nearly the feature set that Photoshop has. Granted, if you stick to basic bread-and-butter stuff, then you can get by with GIMP. But don't kid yourself that it can do what Photoshop can do in the hands of a professional.
I also might add that Photoshop might be a memory hog, but it's very, very fast. GIMP is dog slow. (enough with the animal metaphors)
--
As has been quite well documented, Microsoft's dominiation was with preloads. Businesses bought PCs, they came with Windows, chicken comes out of egg, etc.
I think most of what you're saying can be summed up by that paragraph. You're both right and wrong -- Yes, Microsoft won by winning at the corporate level. However, they did that by getting the best applications written to Windows. Microsoft pandered to developers like no one else (particularly Apple who spat on developers right and left). Businesses wants solutions, and solutions means applications.
As for OS/2, that proves my point. IBM used to sell PCs preloaded with both OS/2 and Win 3.1 (that's 3.1, mind you). It booted up to OS/2. The user had to actively click on an icon to remove OS/2, and switch to Win 3.1. Guess what they did? You got it: people blew away OS/2 in droves even when it was given away for the clearly inferior Win 3.1. Why? Because OS/2 wasn't completely Windows compatible.
People use applications, not operating systems.
--
Actually, I chalked that up to the cluelessness of the reporter. I mean, what does "barely" mean? They don't slowly increase the "throttle" until it hits top speed; it either runs or it doesn't. That the device they were using to measure the clock speed had some minor fluctuations is not a huge deal. 1.492 is within 0.6% of 1.5G, well within typical measurement error.
--