TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: WORD97: is it worth upgrading? From:JIMCHEVAL -at- AOL -dot- COM Date:Fri, 29 Aug 1997 11:07:47 -0400
In a message dated 97-08-29 06:40:56 EDT,
John -dot- Cornellier -at- PARIS -dot- IE -dot- PHILIPS -dot- COM writes:
<< I am particularly concerned about having to convert my macros>>
You should be. I believe Word 95 was already converting them to Visual Basic
(not sure - I skipped that step). Supposedly they convert cleanly, but (oh
surprise) certain things don't. There's a table of equivalences between Word
Basic and Visual Basic in Help, but at times the fundamental structure of
Visual Basic is so radically different from Word Basic that you're still
lost.
I'm an ex-programmer myself. But I'm floored that they expect a simple word
processing user to plunge into an object-oriented language.
<<- is this something I'm going to have to face up to eventually anyway?>>
Oh yeah.
<< The help says the spellchecker is better. Is it?>>
Versus Word 6, you've got this handy feature that automatically puts red
squiggles under misspelled words and green ones under dubious grammatical
constructions. Yeah, it's handy. Chomps up memory, though.
<< Is Mr Animated Paperclip, using IntelliSense(tm) natural language of any
interest to advanced users?>>
He's damn good company when nights are late and writers are lonely.
The natural language is word match roulette. Sometimes it comes in
surprisingly close. Sometimes you end up straining your mind trying to
figure how the algorithim thought you wanted THAT.
<< Any functional advantages to the new macro language? >>
Well, if you can master the fundamental approach of Visual Basic, it's far
more generalized than straight application-bound macros. Basically, you'll
have learned to program.
Jim Chevallier
Los Angeles
=======================================================
Visit Chez Jim: Jim Chevallier's Home Page - http://www.gis.net/~jimcheval
=======================================================
TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send commands
to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/ or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html
