![]() ![]() ![]() MS has a very simply philosophy with Word: Don't break what it does. Now, that *sounds* simple, but it's a bit like the IRS taking the philosophy of simplifying the tax code without changing how much everybody pays. MS absolutely will not fix behavior that currently exists in the product - good or bad, expected or not - they will not introduce a change that either changes how an old document will display, or how a user interacts with the doc. They learned this lesson from the previous two productivity leaders: Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect.Įxcel could not make headway against Lotus for the longest time because people that did Lotus 8 hours a day would not learn the Excel functions and commands. So, MS introduced an option for Excel to use Lotus functions, etc. Wordperfect tried to move their users off of the old tried-and-true commands that so many users were accustomed to, that provided predictable results every time, to a much more GUI type interface to keep pace with Word. Migrating from DOS Wordperfect to Windows Wordperfect was as difficult as migrating to Word. MS is also horribly trapped in their file formats by their decision to allow any file format to contain any other - so you can put a spreadsheet in a powerpoint in a word doc and display it. It's retarded as all get-out, but it also means that you have to support a billion different things just to get 100% Word compatibility. It also means for MS that the number of variables involved in displaying a Word file is virtually unlimited. It basically means that they can't touch anything without breaking something in the process. My understanding is that it really is a problem for MS, and of course nobody else can navigate through their maze either. One reason why Office is SO bloated is that old code never leaves the product, it just gets conditionalized. If it does this really quirky thing in a certain situation, that code stays, and any new code needs to route around that without disturbing the status-quo. It's not that a word processor is hard (though the document model that Word users is really retarded in this day and age) but preserving the integrity of billions of documents is mind-blowingly hard. People like me have a really hard time with Word because I'm very open to relearning if it makes things easier. Most people LOVE Word because the 12 functions that they learned in 1986 still work exactly like they did, and they're not going to learn function #13 for love or money. But you can't sell products that don't have new functions, so MS has to keep shoving them in there. Framemaker's Change Bars might substitute in a pinch, but Track Changes is the king for collaboration - at least right now. I worked on a grant proposal that involved about 20 people, all experts in their fields, each with their own idea of how (and what) to write. Went through about 50 revisions of what wound up being about 40 pages (started out closer to 100). ![]() That simply would not have been possible without Track Changes. I agree, track changes is a great feature. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |