peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) (05/04/89)
I've been using Microsoft Word for a few days now and my general impression
is that I really like it. They've fixed up some things I felt were missing
or poorly implemented and they added some nice brand new features. Here are
some random comments.
The GOOD
1. Background repagination
I *love* it. It great being able to see those page breaks *now*. And if
there is a reason that background pagination is slowing things down, you
can turn it off. How many wordprocessors can do this?
2. Page View
Very nice as well. This sort of thing can be very helpful when making
up transparencies--you get a better "feel" for how much info you're packing
on a page. My biggest complaint is that there seems to be no way to
have half of one page on the screen and the half of the next page
immediately below it. It always snaps the next page to the top of
the screen (I'm referring specifically to a full page display, although
the same is true for smaller screens). The only reason I can see that
they would do this is for better performance.
I also noticed that when I turned page numbers on with the Section
command they did not appear on the screen in Page View. Putting page
numbers in headers or footers does work however. Is this behaviour
the way it's supposed to work?
3. Tables
Luv'ly. I have a document with some very large tables created in Word 3
using column tabs. From what I can tell, Word 4's table feature
will be ideal for me to use instead. They appear to be *very* flexible,
although the dialog to set them up is a little awkward.
4. Paragraph Borders
I always *hated* the way this was done in version 3. I hardly ever
need to box just a single paragraph. More often, I had to put a box
around several distinct pieces of text. This usually meant I had to
use side by side paragraphs and that looked ugly on the screen. The
way they do it now is exactly the way I've felt it should have been
done in the first place--select the paragraphs you want to box, and
a box appears around the entire group, not each paragraph separately.
The user interface for this is also nicely consistent with the table
feature.
5. Customization
I like this. I know some people have complained, but let's fact it.
You can't put every command in a menu, and this at least let's you
pick which ones you want. It will be a pain if I have to go to
another person's machine and use their Word 4.0 with different menus
but it's no different when I go to a machine that doesn't have an
extended keyboard or does have an extended keyboard but doesn't have
their macros set up like mine. That's the price of individuality.
6. Double clicking...
They've added a few little things to the user interface to make things
a little nicer. For example, double clicking on the page number window
asks you to enter a new page number; double clicking on the split screen
spot splits the screen and double clicking on it again closes it; double
clicking on a footnote number automatically opens the footnote window
with the cursor on the corresponding footnote. Little things like that
were sorely missing in the previous version.
7. Support for standard printer dialogs!
That was one thing that burned me a lot in version 3. Now I can tell
Word I want tall adjusted on by default and we won't get students
printing their whole thesis with messes up margins. This will save
be a lot of headaches.
That enough good points. I could add more, but who really cares. So now for
the BAD:
1. Find/replace command
What if I want to find all occurrences of Bookman bold and replace it with
Times italic. I couldn't do it before and I can't fo it now. Accept of
course by using the awkward cmd-option-R/cmd-option-A sequence, but that
can be pretty time consuming in a large document and I don't really see
it as the same thing. It's annoying to have to keep Fullwrite around
just to use its powerful find/replace command for this purpose. I can't
believe it would be so difficult to at least let you look for a piece of
text that in a particular font. They obviously have the logic implemented
in a fashion with the cmd-option-R command, so why not make it more
accessible?
2. Superscripts/Subscripts on/off
The joke here is that there is no "off" option, just "on". You can turn
everything off, and return to the "plain" for the current style, but
what if I'm doing something in italics bold and start a superscript.
Switching back to plain not only turns off superscripts, but italic and
bold as well. It even switches the font if that's something other than
normal. Am I missing something here or is there in fact a sub/superscript
toggle like in Fullwrite (and many others)?
3. Custom page sizes
They seem to have gotten rid of this, or at least buried it somewhere I
can't find it. You apparently can still do it for the imagewriter, but
I have a document that I wrote in 14 point times on a 10.5 by 12 page
which I then printed at a reduction on the laserwriter to give 8.5x11.
Can this still be done?
Enough for the bad. Now the UGLY:
1. Using negative numbers in the page margin to indicate you want footers/
headers to overlay the main text is the ugliest user interface feature
Word has (in my opinion). Why not have a check box that says "Overlay
header/footers" on the document or section dialogs. It was ugly in
version 3. It's ugly in version 4.
2. I'll let the rest of you fill the rest in...
--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDUpaul@aucs.UUCP (Paul Steele) (05/04/89)
In article <1860@aucs.UUCP> peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) writes: >I've been using Microsoft Word for a few days now and my general impression > ... stuff deleted ... > >Enough for the bad. Now the UGLY: > .... > >2. I'll let the rest of you fill the rest in... > How about the third party macro maker and thesaurus. Why MS couldn't have written their own is beyond me. Would MicroSoft care to comment? Paul H. Steele UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!dalcs!aucs!Paul Acadia University BITNET: Paul@Acadia or PHS@Acadia (preferred) Wolfville, NS Internet: Paul%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU CANADA B0P 1X0 (902) 542-2201x587 -- Paul H. Steele UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!dalcs!aucs!Paul Acadia University BITNET: Paul@Acadia or PHS@Acadia (preferred) Wolfville, NS Internet: Paul%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU CANADA B0P 1X0 (902) 542-2201x587
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/05/89)
>3. Tables > Luv'ly. It's been a real lifesaver for me, too. Also very intuitively implemented and powerful. >6. Double clicking... > They've added a few little things to the user interface to make things > a little nicer. Some of the little things nobody ever mentions about word are the things I really like -- the small interface enhancements that I find really useful. Things like extending selections based on the size of the first selection (double-click to select a word, then every extension will also be by word boundaries); being able to type 'y' or 'n' to a dialog instead of having to click the 'yes' or 'no' buttons; little things -- but things that I keep trying to use in other programs and bitching about because the other programs *don't* support them. These are the things I really like about Word. >1. Find/replace command > What if I want to find all occurrences of Bookman bold and replace it with > Times italic. here's a way to work-around it (yes, it'd be nice to do this the way FullWrite does it). "Save as" the file in RTF format. Then Word will let your load the RTF text into the WP. You can then track down and change the appropriate entries (RTF is sort-of human readable with practice), save the changes to a TEXT file and then read the file back in. Word will evaluate the RTF file and load it in with the changes. I just tried that, changing Bookman bold to N Helvetica Narrow Italic. It works. >2. Superscripts/Subscripts on/off > The joke here is that there is no "off" option, just "on". You don't seem to be missing anything. You can add Superscripts to a menu to turn them on, but it doesn't toggle. You *can* toggle them by switching off superscripts in the "Character" dialog, but it doesn't reset the font size. It turns off the superscripting, but leaves the character 3 points smaller. ugh. >3. Custom page sizes > They seem to have gotten rid of this, or at least buried it somewhere I > can't find it. It seems to be gone. That may be something that fell prey to coming in line with Apple's standard print dialogs and printer system. >1. Using negative numbers in the page margin to indicate you want footers/ > headers to overlay the main text is the ugliest user interface feature > Word has (in my opinion). Well, you do get used to it. Sort of. Chuq Von Rospach =|= Editor,OtherRealms =|= Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com =|= CI$: 73317,635 =|= AppleLink: CHUQ [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.] Bookends. What a wonderful thought.
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/05/89)
>How about the third party macro maker and thesaurus. Why MS couldn't have >written their own is beyond me. Would MicroSoft care to comment? Since I use QuickKeys, I've never touched the macromaker. But I have used the thesaurus, and it's not bad. As to why MS didn't implement their own -- well, I'm not Microsoft, but I can give one reason: why re-implement the wheel when a decent product is already available off the shelf? Do we really need billions of different thesaurus products, each with their own quirks and incompatible data files? Chuq Von Rospach =|= Editor,OtherRealms =|= Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com =|= CI$: 73317,635 =|= AppleLink: CHUQ [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.] Bookends. What a wonderful thought.
levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin) (05/05/89)
In article <30155@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: |Things like extending selections based on the size of the first selection |(double-click to select a word, then every extension will also be by word |boundaries); being able to type 'y' or 'n' to a dialog instead of having to |click the 'yes' or 'no' buttons; little things -- but things that I keep Nothing new here; double clicks extending drags by word sized increments are just about everywhere now, even plain old MacOS TextEdit! It even works in the Standard File dialog in the item for the file name. I agree about the 'y' and 'n', but its use is spreading; MORE provides it, as do one or two other things (can't recall for sure what without going back to try... maybe Excel? maybe MPW?). /JBL UUCP: {backbone}!bbn!levin POTS: (617) 873-3463 INTERNET: levin@bbn.com
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/05/89)
>Nothing new here; double clicks extending drags by word sized >increments are just about everywhere now, even plain old MacOS >TextEdit! It sure doesn't work in the *other* text oriented program I live with -- Ready Set Go (throught 4.5). Which is a real hassle. Having to switch mindsets every time I switch from Word to RSG was driving me crazy... Actually, used to drive me crazy. I'm switching over to PageMaker because I got tired of 4.5 crashing on me. Chuq Von Rospach =|= Editor,OtherRealms =|= Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com =|= CI$: 73317,635 =|= AppleLink: CHUQ [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.] Bookends. What a wonderful thought.
ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams) (05/05/89)
[] I got my free upgrade (I bought the full version of 3.02 in mid august) and it came with all the manuals, superpaint 1.1, coupon for $50 to superpain 2.0 and all that. In the 24 hours I have been playing with it (well, less than that, I *did* sleep :-) I have noticed a few quirks. 1) The menus take FOREVER to draw! What are they doing to the poor menu manager??? 2) When I first opened the font menu all of my LaserWriter fonts (Avante Garde, Bookman, and the other 9 that come with the LaserWriter Plus disks) were all in the menu. FOUR TIMES EACH! My menu read like this: Avant Garde Avant Garde Avant Garde Avant Garde Bookman Bookman ... You get the idea. I had to go in with the Commands dialog to nuke all but one copy of each. Why is this happening? Scrolling is a bit slow in page view, but not as slow as Fullwrite (not that this is saying very much). In three column mode, the text updating is fast! I typed a retrun in column one at the top of the page and columns two and three shifted down very quickly. All in all, it's pretty good. I still have my Word Wish list, but it is getting smaller. -ajw Andy J. Williams '90 | <hello> | ack@dartvax.dartmouth.edu 31 North Main Street | set $NAME='inigo_montoya' | Systems Programmer Hanover NH, 03755 | You kill -9 my ppid | Kiewit Computation Center 603-643-2177 | prepare to vi | Dartmouth College
s160041@castor.ucdavis.edu (Greg DeMichillie) (05/06/89)
No one has commented on what I think is a problem... speed. Put Word 4.0 into PageView and it's speed drops by an order of magnitude. Include some tables and it's gets worse. I've got an SE/30, so I can deal with it. I feel sorry for people using it on a Plus. It's not as bad as FullWrite, but I would be looking at WriteNow or MacWrite II instead. Greg DeMichillie * Apple Student Rep - UC Davis lgdemichillie@ucdavis.edu * AppleLink : ST0178 Disclaimer: If you've seen one disclaimer, you've seen them all.
drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen) (05/06/89)
> I agree about the 'y' and 'n', but its use is > spreading; MORE provides it, as do one or two other things (can't > recall for sure what without going back to try... maybe Excel? maybe > MPW?). Yes, MPW. Also dBASE Mac (I liked this feature three years ago and put it in) and many others. -- Dennis Cohen Claris Corp. ------------ Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed above are _MINE_!
krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) (05/06/89)
"And in this corner, wieghing in at $249 retail, the challenger, MacWrite II!" From article <1860@aucs.UUCP>, by peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele): > I've been using Microsoft Word for a few days now and my general impression > is that I really like it. They've fixed up some things I felt were missing > or poorly implemented and they added some nice brand new features. Here are > some random comments. > > The GOOD > > 1. Background repagination > I *love* it. It great being able to see those page breaks *now*. And if > there is a reason that background pagination is slowing things down, you > can turn it off. How many wordprocessors can do this? And to think that MicroSoft pushes this as a FEATURE!! (snicker) > 2. Page View > Very nice as well. This sort of thing can be very helpful when making > up transparencies--you get a better "feel" for how much info you're > packing on a page.... Ditto ditto. MWII is *always* in the mode that MicroSoft calls "Page View". We are *always* WYSIWYG. Pagination is *always* maintained. Footnotes are *always* on the correct page. Standard operating procedure, not special neato feature. > ...My biggest complaint is that there seems to be no > way to have half of one page on the screen and the half of the next page > immediately below it. It always snaps the next page to the top of > the screen (I'm referring specifically to a full page display, although > the same is true for smaller screens). The only reason I can see that > they would do this is for better performance. You betcha "better performance". If you put a header and a footer and maybe a table or a footnote or two and then try to do Page View Mode, you'll see why they *needed* better performance. I'd guess that it's just a little faster than, say, MacWrite 5.0. MWII is fast. All the time. And you can see more than one page at once. And you can edit in "reduced view" mode. [Word calls this "Page Preview", and you can't do anything with the text but look.] > [page number question deleted] > 3. Tables > Luv'ly. I have a document with some very large tables created in Word 3 > using column tabs. From what I can tell, Word 4's table feature > will be ideal for me to use instead. They appear to be *very* flexible, > although the dialog to set them up is a little awkward. Here Word has us cold. We don't do anything like this. [Yet. :-)] I (gasp!) really like the flexibility it offers. I have problems with the interface, but to my knowledge no one's ever done this before (someone correct me!). This is a good first generation implementation. > 4. Paragraph Borders > I always *hated* the way this was done in version 3. I hardly ever > need to box just a single paragraph. More often, I had to put a box > around several distinct pieces of text. This usually meant I had to > use side by side paragraphs and that looked ugly on the screen. The > way they do it now is exactly the way I've felt it should have been > done in the first place--select the paragraphs you want to box, and > a box appears around the entire group, not each paragraph separately. > The user interface for this is also nicely consistent with the table > feature. Once you get to the dialog, this is great. Nothing like it in MWII. I agree. Much better than Word 3.0. > 5. Customization > I like this. I know some people have complained, but let's fact it. > You can't put every command in a menu, and this at least let's you > pick which ones you want. It will be a pain if I have to go to > another person's machine [...] That's the price of individuality. Pardon. (retch!) Sorry. No, we don't do this either. Thank God. I'm really glad I'm not a Tech Support person at MicroSoft. ("Now WHERE's your Save command??") [Please, no flames. At least, don't post them.] > 6. Double clicking... > They've added a few little things to the user interface to make things > a little nicer. For example, double clicking on the page number window > asks you to enter a new page number; double clicking on the split screen > spot splits the screen and double clicking on it again closes it; double > clicking on a footnote number automatically opens the footnote window > with the cursor on the corresponding footnote. Little things like that > were sorely missing in the previous version. And little things like that are sorely missing in the current version. Word's user interface is one of the worst I've seen for any Macintosh program. (LaserPaint wins the Golden Turkey Award, but that's another flame for another day.) I've never head anyone say "I really like Word's interface". I hear quite a bit of "I don't really like it, but I'm used to it." and "It's too powerful to be easy to use." and "Look at all these neato features!!" [Ho boy. Look at my mailbox filling up! :-)] MWII doesn't have header/footer/footnote windows. Just one window, and it looks at the *page*. Unfortunately, we can't split it. Our user interface is one of the *best* (cleanest, most consitent, easiest to learn) I've seen for any Macintosh program. I have my share of problems with it, but overall I think the people who designed the interface did a wonderful job. [I wish I were one of those people. Oh well. There's always the next version.... :-)] > 7. Support for standard printer dialogs! > That was one thing that burned me a lot in version 3. Now I can tell > Word I want tall adjusted on by default and we won't get students > printing their whole thesis with messes up margins. This will save > be a lot of headaches. It's about farkin' time! > That enough good points. I could add more, but who really cares. So now for > the BAD: > > 1. Find/replace command > What if I want to find all occurrences of Bookman bold and replace it > with Times italic. I couldn't do it before and I can't fo it now. Accept > of course by using the awkward cmd-option-R/cmd-option-A sequence, but > that can be pretty time consuming in a large document and I don't really > see it as the same thing. [...] It has been noted that this can be done by saving as RTF, editing the result, and reimporting it. Yeah. Right. Sure. MacWrite II find/replaces fonts, styles, and/or sizes. > 2. Superscripts/Subscripts on/off > The joke here is that there is no "off" option, just "on". You can turn > everything off, and return to the "plain" for the current style, but > what if I'm doing something in italics bold and start a superscript. > Switching back to plain not only turns off superscripts, but italic and > bold as well. [...] We don't have this problem. Just pick "SuperScript" again. > 3. Custom page sizes > They seem to have gotten rid of this, or at least buried it somewhere I > can't find it. You apparently can still do it for the imagewriter, but > I have a document that I wrote in 14 point times on a 10.5 by 12 page > which I then printed at a reduction on the laserwriter to give 8.5x11. > Can this still be done? We don't do it either. > Enough for the bad. Now the UGLY: > > 1. Using negative numbers in the page margin to indicate you want footers/ > headers to overlay the main text is the ugliest user interface feature > Word has (in my opinion). Why not have a check box that says "Overlay > header/footers" on the document or section dialogs. It was ugly in > version 3. It's ugly in version 4. And it'll be ugly in version 5. A similar Word "feature" lets you choose between fixed and flexible line spacing. If the number of pixels is positive, it's flexible. If it's negative, it's fixed. Hot diggety damn! Again, we don't have these sort of problems. > 2. I'll let the rest of you fill the rest in... Oh yes!! Please do!! -- Jeff Erickson Claris Corporation | Birdie, birdie, in the sky, 408/987-7309 Applelink: Erickson4 | Why'd you do that in my eye? krazy@claris.com ames!claris!krazy | I won't fret, and I won't cry. "I'm a heppy, heppy ket!" | I'm just glad that cows don't fly.
osmigo@ut-emx.UUCP (05/06/89)
[Word 4.0 vs. MWII] I don't know about the more obscure bugs in these programs, but one BIG advantage of Word 4.0 over WriteII is the ability to convert parts of a page into columnar format. If you want a regular block of text on the top half of a page, and 3 columns on the bottom half, it's a snap with Word4, but as far as I can tell, it's impossible (or at least not conveniently implemented) in Write II. Ron =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ > Ron Morgan {ames, utah-cs, uunet, gatech}!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!osmigo < > Univ. of Texas {harvard, pyramid, sequent}!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!osmigo < > Austin, Texas osmigo@ut-emx.UUCP osmigo@emx.utexas.edu < =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) (05/08/89)
From article <12830@ut-emx.UUCP>, by osmigo@ut-emx.UUCP: > [Word 4.0 vs. MWII] > > I don't know about the more obscure bugs in these programs, but one BIG > advantage of Word 4.0 over WriteII is the ability to convert parts of a page > into columnar format. If you want a regular block of text on the top half > of a page, and 3 columns on the bottom half, it's a snap with Word4, but as > far as I can tell, it's impossible (or at least not conveniently implemented) > in Write II. You're right. It's impossible in MWII. -- Jeff Erickson Claris Corporation | Birdie, birdie, in the sky, 408/987-7309 Applelink: Erickson4 | Why'd you do that in my eye? krazy@claris.com ames!claris!krazy | I won't fret, and I won't cry. "I'm a heppy, heppy ket!" | I'm just glad that cows don't fly.
fischer@arisia.Xerox.COM (Ronald A. Fischer) (05/09/89)
Tables, as in the convenient implementation seen in MS Word 4.0, were done similarly in Viewpoint from Xerox and I believe in the predecessor Star. Imagine what adding a (partial) syntactic parser to your english documents could do, change format of lists from inline with commas to bullets automagically, check plurality of sentences, etc. There's still plenty of room for real improvement instead of increasingly large feature lists. Sadly, the hardware manufacturers aren't quite proviing the right "OS level" (eh hem) toolkits to build applications. Apple has a start with MacApp. (ron)
stores@unix.SRI.COM (Matt Mora) (05/09/89)
In article <10094@claris.com> krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) writes: >"And in this corner, wieghing in at $249 retail, the challenger, MacWrite II!" > >From article <1860@aucs.UUCP>, by peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele): >> I've been using Microsoft Word for a few days now and my general impression >> is that I really like it. They've fixed up some things I felt were missing >> or poorly implemented and they added some nice brand new features. Here are >> some random comments. >> Stuff deleted >> 5. Customization >> I like this. I know some people have complained, but let's fact it. >> You can't put every command in a menu, and this at least let's you >> pick which ones you want. It will be a pain if I have to go to >> another person's machine [...] That's the price of individuality. > >Pardon. (retch!) Sorry. No, we don't do this either. Thank God. I'm >really glad I'm not a Tech Support person at MicroSoft. ("Now WHERE's your >Save command??") [Please, no flames. At least, don't post them.] More stuff deleted I thought the whole idea about customization was to put in or take out the features that you needed. If you took out a lot of unused features the program should load faster and run faster. Not Word 4.0. I never thought that an application would get slower as the version numbers increased. I tried word 4.0 on a mac II and it seems pretty slow. I think they've gone too far with there customizing. -- ___________________________________________________________ Matthew Mora SRI International stores@unix.sri.com ___________________________________________________________