April 1999
May 1999
Temporary
Pieces
Addiction
Aversion
July 1999
August 1999
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MS Word 7.0 Frustrations
- Pasting Pictures
- The Paste principle hasn't changed for years: Put the cursor on the right spot and off you paste.
That was nice and easy, but
Bill Gates
has a different point of view.
Pictures appear at random, but not on the right spot.
Most of the time they end up on another page, out of view.
Drag and drop does not help.
'Frames', who came to the rescue in the previous version, do not exist any more.
Pasting pictures into tables is a sheer disaster. It seems like that is just impossible. Whatever I try, tables don't accept pictures any more.
Help...- Seasick from typing Text
- The Spellchecker underwaves every unknown word. In a technical document, full of jargon, you'll rapidly get seasick. The real spelling errors pass unnoticed.
In addition, the programs puts other words into the text, not the ones that I want. For almost 20 years I type without looking. I don't care a lot about what happens on the screen. My mind is focused on text to come, not on the text that has been. The screen sometimes shows a tool tip, with a 'suggestion'. If I happen to strike Enter, I accept that suggestion without knowing it.
Sigh...- Save a Document
- The Devil is in the detail.
At every save for a new document, a vicious metal monster appears.
It looks at my typed work with disdain and talks nonsense:
I'd better save my work with the previous version.
It drives me crazy.
That monster is called the assistant, but I'm better off without it. It is impossible to ignore the thing. His 'advice' is compelling. It is modal on the screen and obstructs further work. I try to get the evil back to his home with a forceful click on his cross. Shame, as soon as I try to save again, the idiot reappears.
The help text does give hope for a moment, but no solution. Whatever check marks I unselect, the creature keeps reappearing. Somebody obviously expected this kind of frustrations with satanic pleasure, as the help text offers a chapter: "You can't switch off the Office Assistant". No, I sure can't. This is not a bug, it appears this is designed on purpose. I must start a deinstallation procedure to kill the beast. Tired of fighting, that is what I try to do. But: The deinstallation runs into an error.
I go nuts... - The Paste principle hasn't changed for years: Put the cursor on the right spot and off you paste.
Note that these paperclip killers are software specialists, experts in Object Orientation. Yet they run into trouble with something simple as text processing. They release their anger on a box of paper-clips. Every time their electronic cousin pollutes the screen, one physical paper-clip is slaughtered. It doesn't help, but it is a bit of a relieve.