Hi Tony:
I wonder whether it's worth gently shattering one or two illusions
You want a simple "Write"-style application such as MacWrite Pro? That's
great: what about iWork?
There's a huge variety of "Basic" text handling applications out there.
Some of them are free. Even Microsoft has two. They don't bring either of
them over to the Mac because the field is crowded already with suitable
alternatives.
But this is not the market Microsoft Word is designed for.
Microsoft Word is the largest, most complex, and most powerful word
processing application on the planet. I know FrameMaker and Interleaf
pilots will be spluttering in their teacups hearing that: but that's only
because they have not tried to learn Word properly, or haven't tried it in
the past five years.
The new kid on the block grew up rather suddenly
Tony: Word is NOT simple. Those of us who reply on it for complex
35,000-page information suites in short release cycles do't want it to be.
Word is NOT intuitive. Not really. See: tere's no such thing as
"intuitive" when it comes to major, complex, structured documentation. You
either know what you're doing, or you should stay out of that partcular
kitchen
Word is NOT particularly Mac-like. Sorry about that: it's a PC application
that has been ported. Get over it
Adobe PPhotoshop is anything BUT
Windows-like. It's a Mac app that got ported. We got over it
The point I am trying to make is that Word is a serious "tradesman's tool"
designed for the big jobs. I happen to be a specialist in Word, so I use it
even for "Letters to Mom". But YOU don;t have to. You should choose the
application that suits YOUR needs.
I am sure that Office 2008 will be a little more Mac-like than Office 2004.
Having seen the published screen-shots, I have to say that I find that a
little underwhelming
I don't WANT it "Mac-Like"
I want it the same
on both platforms. I suspect that if you were to collect all of the
documentation professionals in the world in a single bar, and ply each with
a few soothing ales, you would not only go broke (have you ANY idea how much
Doc Pros DRINK???) you would learn something very interesting: We work very
nomadically. We wander from company to company as their needs for us ebb
and flow. Some companies have PCs. Some have Macs. Some have a mixture.
We all travel the world with our trusty USB Key full of "tools". (It used
to be a floppy, but inflation set in...). We need those tools to work on
whichever platform we're using today, without problems or fussing around.
They're not paying us $650.00 a day to sit there re-assigning keystrokes and
re-coding macros -- they want work out now!!
It's a different environment from the usage planned for MacWrite or iWork.
Different market segment.
Microsoft was trying to strip-down and dumb-down Microsoft Office to suit
what someone told them was "The Mac audience". I think that someone was
wrong. I think what happened was that the Mac users who WERE buying Office
Mac took one look and said "Excuse me?? I don't want a toy version: I need
the real thing!!" And they stopped buying it!! The low-end Mac audience
still looked at it and said "Oooh, that's complicated: I don't need that for
my school project!" And they didn't buy it either.
Of course, Microsoft will never admit that. But I suspect you may find that
over the next few versions, Office on the Mac will get back to being a bit
closer to Office on the PC. Powerful, fast, and complex. Just don't expect
"easy": it's not going to happen. Don't expect "intutive" -- your average
corporation does not entrust production of it's $550,000.00 book to someone
who flies by "Intuituion"
In the meantime: stop kvetching about this thing and learn to USE it
I
can't imagine why you spent so long deleting bookmarks, for example: It
takes me a few seconds...
(Yeah, OK, I'm being evil again: this is a very complex macro that checks to
see what KIND of bookmark each one is. It creates an array of all the
bookmarks in the document, then marks the ones that should be deleted.) I
send you this, because I think you will find that when actually deleting
bookmarks from a document, you need relatively fine-grained control over
which ones, else you will break the document.
There's a much simpler macro below that actually does remove ALL bookmarks
without checking. Do NOT say I haven't WARNED you: that macro may utterly
destroy a document, depending on what's in it
Sub PurgeBookarks()
' Removes unused REF bookmarks
' Macro written 21 March 2005 by John McGhie
Dim allXRefs() As String
Dim allBookmarks() As Variant
Dim anXref As Field
Dim aBookmark As Bookmark
Dim XRefText As String
Dim i As Long
Dim n As Long
Dim doIt As Long
ActiveDocument.BookMarks.ShowHidden = True
ReDim allXRefs(ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(wdMainTextStory).Fields.Count)
ReDim allBookmarks((ActiveDocument.BookMarks.Count), 1)
For Each aBookmark In ActiveDocument.BookMarks
If Left(aBookmark.Name, 4) = "_Ref" Then
allBookmarks(i, 0) = aBookmark.Name
allBookmarks(i, 1) = False
i = i + 1
End If
Next ' aBookmark
n = 0
For Each anXref In ActiveDocument.Content.Fields
If anXref.Type = wdFieldRef Then
n = n + 1
StatusBar = "XRef number " & Str(n)
XRefText = Trim(Right(anXref.Code.Text, Len(anXref.Code.Text) - 4))
i = InStr(XRefText, " ")
If i > 0 Then XRefText = Left(XRefText, i - 1)
allXRefs(anXref.Index) = XRefText
End If
Next ' anXref
For i = 0 To UBound(allXRefs)
' If Left(allXRefs(i), 4) = "_Ref" Then
For n = 0 To UBound(allBookmarks)
If allXRefs(i) = allBookmarks(n, 0) Then
allBookmarks(n, 1) = True
Exit For
End If
Next ' n
' End If
Next ' i
i = 0
For n = 0 To UBound(allBookmarks)
If allBookmarks(n, 1) = False Then
i = i + 1
End If
Next ' n
doIt = MsgBox(Str(i) & " bookmarks will be deleted. OK?", vbExclamation +
vbOKCancel)
If doIt = 1 Then
For i = 0 To UBound(allBookmarks)
If allBookmarks(i, 1) = False Then
StatusBar = "Deleting " & allBookmarks(i, 0)
If ActiveDocument.BookMarks.Exists(allBookmarks(i, 0)) Then
ActiveDocument.BookMarks(allBookmarks(i, 0)).Delete
End If
End If
Next ' i
End If
End Sub
Sub BookmarksDelete()
' Removes Bookmarks from document
' Macro written 1 Aug 2001 by John McGhie
Dim i As Long
For i = ActiveDocument.BookMarks.Count To 1 Step -1
ActiveDocument.BookMarks(i).Delete
Next i
End Sub
--
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:
[email protected]> mailto:
[email protected]