[thelist] Re: thelist digest, Vol 1 #2318 - 45 msgs

Techwatcher techwatcher at accesswriters.com
Tue May 21 23:32:01 CDT 2002


> From: "Michele Foster" <michele at wordpro.on.ca>
> To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
> Subject: Re: [thelist] OT Microsoft Word is driving me insane
> Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 17:16:18 -0400
> Organization: WordPro Services
> Reply-To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
>
> Michelle wrote:
> Rudy,
>
> You don't say what version of Word .. if it's 97 .. then the options might
> be different or not at all the same.  Give me a shout off list if that's the
> case and I'll try to dig deeper in the memory bank.
>
> For Word 2000:
>
> Insert, AutoText, AutoText, go to Auto Correct.;  Deselect the second
> option... and any other helpers you don't want.  Also check autoformat as
> you type and autoformat to turn off other annoying helpers.  Ok/close all
> the way out.
>
> Check under Tools, AutoCorrect and make sure the above is also applied
> there.  (Don't ask me why its in more than once place.Why it's in more than one place is a BIG part of what's wrong with MS products
generally. I figured this out from the infuriating behavior of their many products I used to have to work with, and my knowledge of
organizations; I've never worked for them (I interviewed in a NY office once, in the early '80's, but shied away in horror from the
Bill-worship):

Suppose you're supposed to be a macho coding team, and you're assigned part of a project, and the part(s) you're depending on to
TEST your part isn't (aren't) ready yet. What do you do? Of course! You do a quick and dirty (very dirty) parse of the other team's
code, so you can test yours. Just for context, right? And what happens then? Well, you're in a very macho environment
(nerdy-macho, as in "I worked 14 hours yesterday. I only slept 9 hours last week!"), so of course things fly by, there's little control
over version changes and other non-macho stuff (like, quality control, or beta testing, or listening to the customer)... So the bits
of code get squashed together to meet the deadline. You know this because you see the result: NO consistency in the interface,
and multiple (conflicting!) ways of turning things on and off; the dead giveaway is: documentation almost never matches the product.
 The documentation describes something consistent and reasonable, while the product is just partly there....

<tip type="writing for the Web" author="Carol Stein">
White space. White space. White space. And it should be light, not truly white, if you are hoping
someone will read the text bits. You don't have to save costs on the paper or postage anymore...
</tip>



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