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Sunday of the silly formats...
Oct. 11th, 2009 06:54 pmThe PowerPoint idiocy of some short time ago has given way to a series of flow charts implemented in... <drum roll, please>
...Microsoft Excel!
Yes, I know, Excel is the very first application that pops into my mind, too, when I'm faced with the task of cobbling together a flow chart. And pigs fly.
What makes these files so challenging is that the boxes denoting various stages of the process in these charts are text boxes, which are not only impervious to resizing, for some reason (always a plus when having them translated), but more important, their contents are utterly invisible to Excel's text search (and hence, also the replace) function.
Another job contains flow charts without text boxes. Instead, the artsy stuff was done painstakingly in Excel, the boxes and arrows actually formatted into the warp and woof of the spreadsheet page, so there is no easy way to add, remove, or shift individual elements of the chart.
Of course, you've guessed that my assignment is to edit an existing English translation to match a thoroughly new revised Russian version, haven't you?
It's going to be a long night.
Cheers...
...Microsoft Excel!
Yes, I know, Excel is the very first application that pops into my mind, too, when I'm faced with the task of cobbling together a flow chart. And pigs fly.
What makes these files so challenging is that the boxes denoting various stages of the process in these charts are text boxes, which are not only impervious to resizing, for some reason (always a plus when having them translated), but more important, their contents are utterly invisible to Excel's text search (and hence, also the replace) function.
Another job contains flow charts without text boxes. Instead, the artsy stuff was done painstakingly in Excel, the boxes and arrows actually formatted into the warp and woof of the spreadsheet page, so there is no easy way to add, remove, or shift individual elements of the chart.
Of course, you've guessed that my assignment is to edit an existing English translation to match a thoroughly new revised Russian version, haven't you?
It's going to be a long night.
Cheers...
