From: Ann Barcomb Date: 15:06 on 15 Oct 2003 Subject: MS Word I had to write a document in Word recently. I hate it when an application think it is smarter than I am. It kept 'correcting' my capitalization. Somewhere, it has this belief that bullet-point lists must begin with a capital letter. This is not true if it is a list of file names on a case-sensitive filesystem. As soon as I typed a space at the end of the word, it made the first letter a capital. After that I could change it back to lowercase. It was worse when it decided that the names of artists must be proper nouns. This is not appropriate when the servers are named after artists. In this case, as soon as I put a period after a server, it changed the first letter to a capital. I made it lowercase and went back to the end of the line to continue typing. It made it a capital again. Finally, I had to finish the entire line, then go back to change it. I thought that I had all the autocorrection crud off, since it doesn't otherwise automatically change my grammar or spelling. But somewhere, in a menu I can't find, there's probably something about capitalization. It's a lame default setting. I was also second-guessed when it came to italics. It kept reverting to plaintext as soon as I typed a period. Not sensible when I want to italicize a filename. This is only a few minutes with Word. I'm glad I don't have to use it on a regular basis.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 15:09 on 15 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: MS Word > I hate it when an application think it is smarter than I am. Err, 'thinks' ;)
From: Simon Wistow Date: 15:07 on 15 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: MS Word On Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 07:09:30AM -0700, Ann Barcomb said: > Err, 'thinks' ;) I see you are trying to write a hate would you like me to ...
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 18:42 on 15 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: MS Word > I had to write a document in Word recently. I feel your pain. > [...] As soon as I > typed a space at the end of the word, it made the first letter a capital. While that's annoying, it's unfortunately near universal. Just part of the growing background noise of software suck that makes every day "hate day". Of course Word does manage to implement every possible suck source (suck feature? suckture? bug?). So you're quite entitled to assign this hate to Word for the nonce. > It was worse when it decided that the names of artists must be proper > nouns. This is not appropriate when the servers are named after artists. Now THAT is a glorious new kind of suck, Thanks for drawing our attention to it. > This is only a few minutes with Word. I'm glad I don't have to use > it on a regular basis. Unfortunately Dilbert only keeps a couple of week online, I think the comic for Feb 16 2003 explains it all, but googling for "dilbert 20030216" should come up with a hit or two [1]. Using Word is like applying capsaicins to your clue centers. Eventually the pain starts generating endorphins and you get this kind of "Runner's High". After that you're in a happy place, and you actually start thinking that writing VB macros to work around apalling design flaws is productivity. [1] I rarely have reason to hate Google, and the last time I did they fixed the problem the same day I mailed them about it, and sent me a personal email to let me know it was fixed. Isn't it sad that kind of response is rare enough that it's worth commenting on?
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 21:06 on 15 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: MS Word On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Peter da Silva wrote: > Unfortunately Dilbert only keeps a couple of week online, I think > the comic for Feb 16 2003 explains it all, but googling for "dilbert > 20030216" should come up with a hit or two [1]. I'm impressed that you remember the date of the comic in question. > [1] I rarely have reason to hate Google, and the last time I did they > fixed the problem the same day I mailed them about it, and sent me > a personal email to let me know it was fixed. Isn't it sad that kind > of response is rare enough that it's worth commenting on? I have a hate about Google--their annoying country-forward. If I go to google.com, it shunts me off to google.nl unless I let it store a cookie saying that I prefer google.com. If I wanted to go to google.nl, I'd have typed google.nl! I was not impressed with their response. I complained when the feature was first implemented (and I know I wasn't the only one). The advice I got was to type in www.google.com/en (I should type three extra characters to get around a bad idea that was designed to save an idiot from typing -1 extra characters). For a while that worked, and then it stopped working and I had to accept the cookie. If they're going to try to be so clever, why don't they check my locale instead of my IP? But what I really want, of course, is for them to realize that my IQ is high enough to allow me to click on the bold link 'Go to Google Nederland' if for some reason I wasn't smart enough to type in google.nl if that was the URL I wanted.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 22:52 on 15 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: MS Word > > Unfortunately Dilbert only keeps a couple of week online, I think > > the comic for Feb 16 2003 explains it all, but googling for "dilbert > > 20030216" should come up with a hit or two [1]. > I'm impressed that you remember the date of the comic in question. I'd like to take credit for it by my buddy Google did it for me. > I have a hate about Google--their annoying country-forward. If > I go to google.com, it shunts me off to google.nl unless I let it > store a cookie saying that I prefer google.com. If I wanted to go > to google.nl, I'd have typed google.nl! I *have* heard that complaint before, as it turns out. But I wasn't aware they were doing it by IP... I mean I can see switching to a different page by locale, and forgive if not approve of hopping to a different domain, but by IP? What does your IP have to do with anything? What do they do about multinationals where everyone connecting from an entire continent shows up at the same /24 or even /32? You cad, you bounder, there I was floating along in my little pink cloud believing that here was a company that doesn't suck, and you dash all my illusions. Illusion-dashing of that magnitude is probably illegal in Utah, Ireland, and two out of three third-world countries.
From: Steve Date: 00:57 on 16 Oct 2003 Subject: Re: MS Word Peter da Silva said: > > Illusion-dashing of that magnitude is probably illegal in Utah, > Ireland, and two out of three third-world countries. I thought Utah _was_ a third world country. -- steve
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 06:57 on 16 Oct 2003 Subject: Google (was: Re: MS Word) Peter da Silva wrote: > I *have* heard that complaint before, as it turns out. But I wasn't > aware they were doing it by IP... I mean I can see switching to a > different page by locale, and forgive if not approve of hopping to > a different domain, but by IP? What does your IP have to do with > anything? What do they do about multinationals where everyone > connecting from an entire continent shows up at the same /24 or > even /32? Obviously I haven't asked for their technical specifications, but I'm pretty sure they're doing it by IP, based upon the fact that every computer I've connected with since they added this 'feature' has been forwarded, and every computer I use is certainly not set to Dutch. > You cad, you bounder, there I was floating along in my little pink > cloud believing that here was a company that doesn't suck, and you > dash all my illusions. Bah, the Reg's been bashing them on blog noise for months now. The only perfect software hasn't been written, and as soon as it's written it won't be perfect. Think of software as being like Plato's horse.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 08:42 on 19 Aug 2004 Subject: MS Word Yesterday I had to use MS Word to write a specification document for some partners. I was partway through when I realised I'd used 'ID' instead of 'code' so I did a find/replace. Obviously, what I meant was s/ID/code/g when I typed in 'ID' to 'Find what' and 'code' in 'Replace with' and clicked 'Replace All'. Word decided I meant "find all instances of 'id' regardless of case, and replace them with the word 'code' in whatever case the original word was in", which not only left me with 'CODE' throughout the document but also gave me such words (which it later underlined in red) as 'codeentify' and 'scodee'. This is a really dumb default, made by a program that assumes I'm too stupid to indicate precisely what I want to do. Nor is there any convient 'Match case' button that would give some indication that the default won't do the obvious. To get that button, I have to expand the options by clicking on 'More'. Oh, and the first few times I tried to do a replace the program froze and redrew repeatedly. I finally had to use the task manager to kill it. Obviously find and replace is a very complex matter in Word-world.
From: Juerd Date: 09:04 on 19 Aug 2004 Subject: Re: MS Word Ann Barcomb skribis 2004-08-19 0:42 (-0700): > Oh, and the first few times I tried to do a replace the program froze and > redrew repeatedly. I finally had to use the task manager to kill it. Kill? Unfortunately, you don't get to kill programs in Windows. Instead, you can terminate tasks :( Killing is so much more fun. I especially like what KDE lets me do: press C-A-Esc, the cursor turns into a skull and the first thing you click gets killed. Works wonderfully, but I wish I had this in Windows. The kill function isn't needed very often on my desktop, but I still use it to kill software when I start hating it. Juerd
From: Philip Newton Date: 09:26 on 19 Aug 2004 Subject: Re: MS Word On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:42:51 -0700 (PDT), Ann Barcomb <ann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: [MS Word find and replace is case-insensitive by default] > This is a really dumb default, made by a program that assumes I'm > too stupid to indicate precisely what I want to do. Well, many typical Word users *are* too stupid to indicate precisely what they want to do. For them, having case-insensitivity be the default is good. (It also helps them find a word whether it's at the beginning of a sentence or not, for example.) If you want something for the power-user, maybe MSWord is not it - perhaps you're not the right user for the program :p Though it would be useful if one could specify such changed default settings in a personal .mswordrc or something... Cheers, -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@xxxxx.xxx>
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 10:39 on 19 Aug 2004 Subject: Re: MS Word On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Philip Newton wrote: > If you want something for the power-user, maybe MSWord is not it - > perhaps you're not the right user for the program :p Believe me, I don't use MS Word for any personal document writing. > Though it would be useful if one could specify such changed default > settings in a personal .mswordrc or something... I would even go through changing the settings in Word itself, if I were able to save them. But it doesn't even seem to remember what directory I tend to save files in.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 12:00 on 19 Aug 2004 Subject: Re: MS Word > Though it would be useful if one could specify such changed default > settings in a personal .mswordrc or something... [HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SecretSettings] MakeWindowsNotSuck = (DWORD) 1 SecretSettingsPassword = (STRING) aIbedjaf6ywE0 SecretSettingsClearance = (STRING) "Gold July Boojum"
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 14:34 on 18 May 2005 Subject: MS Word So I open a document in Word. Later on I minimise it. Some time after that I click on another Word document. Why does it first unminimise the first document before opening the second document in a new window directly above the first document? Why would I want that window expanded? And if you're going to expand that one, why isn't the document I opened between the two also enlarged? ...
From: Bruce Richardson Date: 15:00 on 18 May 2005 Subject: Re: MS Word On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 07:34:53AM -0600, Ann Barcomb wrote: > > Why would I want that window expanded? And if you're going to expand that > one, why isn't the document I opened between the two also enlarged? I'm sure the design team that decided to eliminate MDI from Word but keep it for Excel will have a good answer for that one.
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