Wd2002 - Why it is making me hate Word more each day!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

This is my first in-depth project with Word in a few years, and
the more I work with Wd2002 the less I like the so-called
improvements that have been made:

1) no full-text search in help (if MSFT forgot to index a topic,
it's not accessible to me)

2) dumbed-down help locally and online ... going to the MSFT site
for help just gets me the same info as they have on the CD, which
is to say, damned little.

3) loss of useful features for no apparent reason

4) Objects with differing methods for doing the same thing (like
setting an option box in the dialog)

5) Objects without methods that would be extremely useful
("Exists", for example, should be universal across the software,
but isn't, forcing some really wierd techniques for finding out
about existence by forcing errors and recovering from them ...
not exactly what I would call advanced software development.

6) No way to fix any of this: I'm rapidly becoming a fan of Open
Source Software. So far the OpenOffice developers have fixed
three bugs I brought to their attention, and have added several
features I requested. MSFT? Hah!


Tsu Dho Nimh

 

[Rob Schneider]

This is my first in-depth project with Word in a few years, and
the more I work with Wd2002 the less I like the so-called
improvements that have been made:

1) no full-text search in help (if MSFT forgot to index a topic,
it's not accessible to me)

2) dumbed-down help locally and online ... going to the MSFT site
for help just gets me the same info as they have on the CD, which
is to say, damned little.

3) loss of useful features for no apparent reason

4) Objects with differing methods for doing the same thing (like
setting an option box in the dialog)

5) Objects without methods that would be extremely useful
("Exists", for example, should be universal across the software,
but isn't, forcing some really wierd techniques for finding out
about existence by forcing errors and recovering from them ...
not exactly what I would call advanced software development.

6) No way to fix any of this: I'm rapidly becoming a fan of Open
Source Software. So far the OpenOffice developers have fixed
three bugs I brought to their attention, and have added several
features I requested. MSFT? Hah!


Tsu Dho Nimh

Are you asking for help on anything in particular, or just a rant?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Tsu,

5) Objects without methods that would be extremely useful
("Exists", for example, should be universal across the software,
but isn't, forcing some really wierd techniques for finding out
about existence by forcing errors and recovering from them ...
not exactly what I would call advanced software development.

Actually, the "correct" way to do this would be to loop through
all the objects in a collection (For Each...Next) and test if the
one you want is there. But that's a lot slower than the "let's see
if it triggers an error" workaround you describe.

How many programming languages have you encountered that have an
Exists method (because that's what it is in word, a method, not a
property) for all their object collections?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30
2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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[Klaus Linke]

I don't care much about most changes that were made between Word2000 and
Word2002, either.

But what really makes me hate Word2002 is that it's orders of magnitude less
stable for me than Word2000 used to be.

Today was a rather typical day with many more than a dozen crashes while
running macros.
The document was recovered in every case, but it is still really annoying.

While I was usually able to track down crashes to certain lines of code in
Word2000, many of the crashes in Word2002 aren't reproducible.
Something might work from the user interface, and while single-stepping
through the code, but often crash when running the macro.
Wildcard searches in macros seem especially prone to problems.

In some tests I did, Word2003 seemed to crash more often than Word2000, too.
But maybe I'll switch anyway. Can't get worse.
At first, I suspected the hardware, but Word2002 is the only problematic
program, and I run it on two different machines.

If it weren't for the limitation to 100% Word compatibility, I'd spend some
time investigating OpenOffice, too.

:-( Klaus

 

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Are you asking for help on anything in particular, or just a rant?

Just a rant, hoping that the developers and documentors might
take notice.

Tsu Dho Nimh

 

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Actually, the "correct" way to do this would be to loop through
all the objects in a collection (For Each...Next) and test if the
one you want is there. But that's a lot slower than the "let's see
if it triggers an error" workaround you describe.

That's the "poke the pile of objects with a stick and see if
anything moves" school of object detection.

How many programming languages have you encountered that have an
Exists method (because that's what it is in word, a method, not a
property) for all their object collections?

It's not the language's fault (any object-oriented language could
have the method, if the software developers put them there), it's
software with collections lacking the methods required to
effectively and consistently manipulate those collections that
are annoying me.



Tsu Dho Nimh

 

[Jay Freedman]

Just a rant, hoping that the developers and documentors might
take notice.

Unfortunately, the developers and documentors almost never read the
newsgroups. They do periodically ask the MVPs -- among many other
stakeholders -- for suggestions, usually two to three years in advance of a
new version. We put forward issues we see repeatedly in the newsgroups. Some
of those suggestions are adopted, some aren't. We do our best...

Keep in mind that new feature work -- even when it's in the class of things
that should have been there from the beginning -- has to pass the test of
"will this help Microsoft to sell more copies?" If there's no solid business
case, there's no feature.

 

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Keep in mind that new feature work -- even when it's in the class of things
that should have been there from the beginning -- has to pass the test of
"will this help Microsoft to sell more copies?" If there's no solid business
case, there's no feature.

Which is why I keep handing out copies of OpenOffice ... maybe if
they lose their monopoly position they will become more eagre to
keep customers happy.




Tsu Dho Nimh

 

[Jay Freedman]

Which is why I keep handing out copies of OpenOffice ... maybe if
they lose their monopoly position they will become more eagre to
keep customers happy.

But *which* customers? You, me, and the other onesies-twosies, or the
purchasing agents for companies that will by 10 000 licenses at a
time? I think for the most part we're just along for the ride...

 

[Marek Williams]

If it weren't for the limitation to 100% Word compatibility, I'd spend some
time investigating OpenOffice, too.

I've converted completely to StarOffice 7.0. I bought the StarOffice
suite instead of the free OpenOffice.org suite because I wanted a
manual, the extra goodies that Sun throws in, and I wanted to do my
part to give Sun a couple bucks for their efforts.

I know the Word compatibility is always at the top in the
OpenOffice.org list of priorities. So far I haven't found any Word
documents that it doesn't do an acceptable job with, but my needs may
be less stringent than yours. I still have Word 2000 installed, but I
haven't launched it at all since converting to StarOffice.

I'm a Microsoft shareholder, but in business it is axiomatic that a
company becomes stronger when it has serious competition, or else it
goes under completely. Microsoft isn't going to fail, so in the end
the stronger OpenOffice.org becomes, the more everyone will win --
stockholders, stakeholders and users.