Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!claris!krazy From: krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: MS Word 4.0: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Message-ID: <10094@claris.com> Date: 6 May 89 07:17:19 GMT References: <1860@aucs.UUCP> Organization: Claris Corporation, Santa Clara CA Lines: 171 "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.