Adventures in Word...
Jul. 10th, 2008 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpWhen the scrofulous cretins who "upgraded" Microsoft Word for Vista talk about "Compatibility Mode," they're talking about file compatibility and not menu compatibility. Apparently, it never occurred to them that some users might not appreciate the complete rearrangement of the farblegargling menu system using a logic that only they - and newcomers to the application - might find apt, at least not without offering some bone to long-time users.
Some years ago, a company called Paperback Software invoked the ire of the Lotus Corporation by coming out with VP-Planner, a comparatively inexpensive spreadsheet program whose "look and feel" (i.e., menu structure and keystrokes associated with said menu) were identical to that of Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus sued, and won.
Soon after, Borland came out with their Quattro spreadsheet, which included a feature that allowed menus and keystrokes to be defined and saved in a configuration file. One such file that came with the product and provided compatibility with 1-2-3 was the target of yet another Lotus lawsuit, which prevailed as well.
You would think there might be a lesson in Lotus' vigorous defense of its user interface, but it would also appear that any such lesson was lost on Redmond.
Admittedly, if you have internalized the Alt-keystrokes of previous versions, you can still use the program, mostly (the "print preview," for example, used to be Alt-F, V, but is now Alt-F, W, V). Myself, I generally used a combination of Alt-keystrokes and arrow keys, and even occasionally used the mouse to navigate Word menus, so I'm kind of caught in the middle.
Microsoft's engineers also figured that every user of the program needs to have their work reformatted automatically, under circumstances that I do not fully understand as yet (although it is painfully clear that such reformatting changes the effect of some macros). The end result is to make sure that legacy documents look like they were produced by drooling morons who can't tell a space bar from a tab key and who wouldn't know a paragraph style if one walked up to them in broad daylight and relieved itself on their shoes.
I am grateful that Microsoft included a trial of the 2007 product with my HP, because I might have been tempted to buy this poor excuse for an upgrade based on my experience with previous versions. Working with Word 2007 is the first time in a long time that I've found a new version of a program to be palpably painful and cumbersome.
Ye gods.
Cheers...
Some years ago, a company called Paperback Software invoked the ire of the Lotus Corporation by coming out with VP-Planner, a comparatively inexpensive spreadsheet program whose "look and feel" (i.e., menu structure and keystrokes associated with said menu) were identical to that of Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus sued, and won.
Soon after, Borland came out with their Quattro spreadsheet, which included a feature that allowed menus and keystrokes to be defined and saved in a configuration file. One such file that came with the product and provided compatibility with 1-2-3 was the target of yet another Lotus lawsuit, which prevailed as well.
You would think there might be a lesson in Lotus' vigorous defense of its user interface, but it would also appear that any such lesson was lost on Redmond.
Admittedly, if you have internalized the Alt-keystrokes of previous versions, you can still use the program, mostly (the "print preview," for example, used to be Alt-F, V, but is now Alt-F, W, V). Myself, I generally used a combination of Alt-keystrokes and arrow keys, and even occasionally used the mouse to navigate Word menus, so I'm kind of caught in the middle.
Microsoft's engineers also figured that every user of the program needs to have their work reformatted automatically, under circumstances that I do not fully understand as yet (although it is painfully clear that such reformatting changes the effect of some macros). The end result is to make sure that legacy documents look like they were produced by drooling morons who can't tell a space bar from a tab key and who wouldn't know a paragraph style if one walked up to them in broad daylight and relieved itself on their shoes.
I am grateful that Microsoft included a trial of the 2007 product with my HP, because I might have been tempted to buy this poor excuse for an upgrade based on my experience with previous versions. Working with Word 2007 is the first time in a long time that I've found a new version of a program to be palpably painful and cumbersome.
Ye gods.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 03:23 pm (UTC)...for OpenOffice.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 12:51 am (UTC)Still, it'll be stunts like this that'll push shops to think seriously about whether they need to stick with Word. In my case, I haven't much choice, as my central tool for translation (Wordfast) is, essentially, a macro that runs in Word.
I can, however, be pushed too far.
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:28 pm (UTC)I road tested Office 2008. What a terrible piece of code. Even when it was idling it was gobbling up 25-30% time on both MacBook Pro CPUs. Apple Pages, with the same document, was taking up ~7%. This means, my laptop battery would last about an hour if I run Office, and around two and a half hours with Pages.
Progress? Don't think so.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:42 pm (UTC)A classic case of adding unwanted features just to make the declaration that everything is 'new and improved'.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 01:02 am (UTC)Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 01:10 am (UTC)Cheers...