Adumbrating in Word

re: Adumbrating in Word

Mike Dimmick — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 22:05:00 GMT

I've used the outline view for organising my thoughts before - and during - writing essays and technical reports. Define the headings, shuffle them around in the outline view until it seems like the right order, then write the contents for those headings. If I change my mind, it's back into the outline view and I can reorder my existing document by picking up the headings. I'm a software developer by trade, but in a small company so I've written functional specifications and end-user documentation too.

Do you have any statistics on the number of users who actually understand and use styles properly? I've seen maybe four groups: users who only use bold, italic, underline and the font and font size drop-lists, formatting the document by spaces and tabs; those who understand the left-, centre- and right-justify options; those who also understand how to define their own tab stops and how to use the paragraph spacing options; finally those who use the built-in styles and define their own.

Recently I've been arguing that XHTML goes the wrong route by removing - and making illegal - the classic simple markup tags <b>, <i>, <u>, <color>, <font> and forcing stylesheets on end-users.

re: Adumbrating in Word

Bruce — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 19:09:00 GMT

I've used word since the original on an old Fat mac.

Word has had its ups and downs inclding the abomination of 6.0. I called tech suport at MS and was told that the reason it initially came on floppies only was that they knew there were problems and did not want to burn the CD run until 6.01 was finished.

Anyway, I digress. there are many hidden functions in Word for those who need features that are not present.

I am talking about VBA (visual basic for applications) and applescript. I also use autocorrect instead of autotext for most circumstances. In fact, I use autetext solely as a repository for formatted text and tables to be placed later by macros.

Most MS Office users are unaware that it comes with a built in macro language that is about 90% of the standard VBA package. About 1/30 or so things that are supposed to work but do not. There is also a built in bridge to applescript - I have worked around a few on the VBA issues by using applescript instead.

Uses of the VBA macros include automatic formatting or switching between different templates that I am working on and error correction and table and text formatting of documents I am proofreeeding. I even have macros to electronically sign and time stamp and move files from one folder to another when proofreading is done. The latter is pure applescript.

re: Adumbrating in Word

brianbec — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 19:10:00 GMT

Evidently, the ancient "ThinkTank" outliner has not been surpassed for DOS ergo Windows users. Sadly, simple outlining seems not to be a popular activity. Even the new "OneNote" application for the Tablet PC is weaker than ThinkTank. http://www.outliners.com

BTW, I don't use Word styles for the same reason I don't use Outlook contacts or IE favorites or any other customizations of any kind, for that matter. If I can't have all my customizations on every installation I will ever use, then I can't use the customizations. I currently use six different PCs on a daily basis (office desk, office roaming, home upstairs desk, home downstairs desk, home roamer, and tablet), and everything I need must be available and up-to-date on all of them. Synching data and environments is a quadratic process, and keeping six physically separated machines synchronized is infeasible for me. Everything I use must be turnkey out-of-the box or downloadable from a central server with high availability and reliability. Dunno if other people have these requirements, too.

re: Adumbrating in Word

Steven Collier — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 22:40:00 GMT

I use outlining for document construction, however the outline view in Word just doesn't work for me. The symbols are very strange and don't seem to follow any convertions. Dragging areas around always feel like dangerous activity, when it works you get an adrenaline kick like bungee jumping, a better insertion marker is required.

Word 2004 in NoteBook view is better, at least I get sensible arrows. If only the OneNote team on the PC would learn some lessons.

OnmiOutliner is still far easier to use, more natural, and so allows a greater feeling of control, even though I have a convoluted process for getting the end article into Word.

re: Adumbrating in Word

Greg Tomkins — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 22:18:00 GMT

Excel is great. Outlook is great. PowerPoint is great. WordPerfect is (was) great. These are all highly generalized products with a huge spectrum of user sophistication.

None of these products, (nor VI/Emacs which are great in their own way), routinely compel me to take some font (etc) that I don't really want, just to save myself the irritation of having to constantly correct the application's behaviour.

I think there is a reason O'Reilly has a 'Word Annoyances' book, but not one for Excel! (Last time I checked; maybe they have one by now).

Please transfer more developers from the Excel/Outlook teams to Word!!

re: Adumbrating in Word

Bill Goggin — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 14:50:00 GMT

I understand the design decisions that were made to make the feature less than ideal for producing pure outlines. I can live with that. My main problem with the feature has been that I have found it to be buggy. When I re-open a document, parts of the outline are often at different levels than when I last left them. This is very frustrating when working with others. I can't rely on them seeing the same thing I saved.

re: Adumbrating in Word

Jeff Atwood — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 00:36:00 GMT

Hey, it looks like you're writing a letter!

re: Adumbrating in Word

Adam Engst — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 17:28:00 GMT

Hey Rick. I'm glad to see we agree that Word isn't an ideal tool for professional writers, though I remain sad to see that the needs of the people who rely on the program for their actual livelihood, as opposed to those who could happily get by with just about any word processor, aren't given more consideration. It seems self-defeating too, since by meeting the needs of of the people who use the program constantly (at least in an app the scope of Word), you'll automatically be creating something that will work better for everyone else.

What I think we writers find the most annoying, though, is not that Word lacks the features we need, but that it continually goes 80 to 90 percent of the way there, and then just stops. It's frustrating to be given a tool that will almost do what you want, time and time again, and when you explain how those features could be expanded, to be told that since so few people use those features, they won't be improved. That immediately begs the question of why the features are there at all.

For instance, consider revision tracking. Why do balloons show only in Page Layout view? What if you're working on a complex document and wish to work in Normal view for faster page display? No balloons. And why can't insertion and deletion display be controlled separately? For editors, being able to see insertions in colored text (but not balloons), and deletions either hidden or in balloons, along with comments in balloons would be great. But since insertions and deletions are always displayed together, this combination isn't possible, and the number of balloons in the margin quickly increases until each individual balloon shows almost no text (or disappears altogether).

These aren't huge changes, at least conceptually, since Word can already do all the component aspects (yes, I'd like it if revision tracking could also show versions, but that might be a larger change).

cheers... -Adam

PS: At the moment, what I'd mainly like to see fixed is the bug that selects an additional word to the left when you double-click and drag down to select by word. If your cursor ever goes slightly to the left of the selected word, that word to the left remains in the selection incorrectly. This proves quite difficult for me to avoid.

The Peat Weblog » Is Word Too Smart?

TrackBack — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 16:56:00 GMT

The Peat Weblog » Is Word Too Smart?

The Case of the Missing Tab

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The Case of the Missing Tab

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