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RE: What Are the Main Problems You Have with MS Word?
Subject:RE: What Are the Main Problems You Have with MS Word? From:"Dan Hall" <dhall -at- san-carlos -dot- rms -dot- slb -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 May 2002 07:12:37 -0500
Dave Murray indicated a frustration with "'Assumed formatting'
and other instances of Word doing what it thinks the user
wants..."
This problem is so pervasive and egregious that we actually
implemented a "custom" numbering solution, that involved writing
VB to implement a "tokening" numbering scheme similar to the
one used by FrameMaker. It was the only way to keep our SOP
documents from getting all screwed up, since they are
originated with SMEs and passed along for editing.
Another weakness: the inability to show the "codes" that
Word Perfect had. Since you can't see the formatting, it's
impossible to determine exactly where to place the cursor
sometimes. That's why you can put the cursor in a document
and start typing and get an... unexpected format.
I believe that this may be part of Word's "bloat" problem. Ever
looked into the HTML produced FrontPage? There are (frequently)
places where formatting is applied over and over again - for
instance, the word "Bold" might appear <b>B</b><b>ol</b><b>d</b>,
even though <b>Bold<b> would work equally well. :-) My guess is
that this same type of thing is occurring in Word. I don't need
to be able to "edit" the formatting tags, but I'd at least like
to be able to _see_ them.
Personally, I see the instability of the program as it's
biggest weakness. I'm looking into Star Office/ Open Office
as well, for that very reason. I can't afford to spend the
amount of time it takes to recover and re-work files six or
seven times a day.
As an aside, did anyone see the "Death of Clippy" 'movies'
that MS released, with Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of
Clippy? The perfect choice!
Dan
It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the
degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits
and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is
possible. - Aristotle
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