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Yes, it's a rant, people.
I find it difficult to express just how much I detest Microsoft Word.
About seven years ago, some mental giant in what was then the Department of the Environment signed an exclusive use agreement with Microsoft ensuring that insofar as it was compatible with security needs, the Department would use Microsoft products only. The current incarnation of the Department has inherited that ill-considered decision.
Oh for the days of yore when cheerfully we would frolic through the digital uplands that were LOTUS 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. Two applications that did exactly what they said on the box. These days we are shackled to Excel and Word, two applications that not only fail to live up to their promises, but which appear if not to have minds of their own, certainly they have well-developed autonomic responses and instincts which fly in the face of any task you set out to complete using them.
One of my annual and less cherished tasks in thisHell Hole Office, is the updating and re-authoring of a dry little publication we like to call the Housing Revenue Account Manual. This catchily named little tome runs to twenty-three chapters and could, in extremis, be used to fell a charging Rhinoceros at ten paces.
As reading material goes it is drier than a pharaoh's sock.
Nonetheless, once a year, I work off immense amounts of karma on the bloody thing. This task is quite difficult enough, for the publication is a working document and highly technical to boot. It is complex and has to be accurate otherwise it is worse than useless.
Writing the updates and editing changes in and out is quite tiresome and demands a high degree of concentration.
So you will appreciate that I fail to see the humour inherent in chasing semi-sentient formatting changes around the screen and up and down the page. Who in God's name wrote this application? Why does it make assumptions on my behalf, more often than not incorrectly, on numbering and formatting, and then proceed to argue the point every time I go back into the document to repair the automatically generated carnage?
With a level of frustration bordering on tears, I have just spent two hours wrestling the formatting and numbering into submission. I turned the auto-numbering off.
Word turned it back on.
I turned it off again.
And then in revenge, Word proceeded to assign random numbers and remove indents and margins. When I correct those, it goes off and reformats another part of the document as some kind of cyber-reprisal.
I truly believe that whoever was primarily responsible for Word is related to Mack Sennet.
About seven years ago, some mental giant in what was then the Department of the Environment signed an exclusive use agreement with Microsoft ensuring that insofar as it was compatible with security needs, the Department would use Microsoft products only. The current incarnation of the Department has inherited that ill-considered decision.
Oh for the days of yore when cheerfully we would frolic through the digital uplands that were LOTUS 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. Two applications that did exactly what they said on the box. These days we are shackled to Excel and Word, two applications that not only fail to live up to their promises, but which appear if not to have minds of their own, certainly they have well-developed autonomic responses and instincts which fly in the face of any task you set out to complete using them.
One of my annual and less cherished tasks in this
As reading material goes it is drier than a pharaoh's sock.
Nonetheless, once a year, I work off immense amounts of karma on the bloody thing. This task is quite difficult enough, for the publication is a working document and highly technical to boot. It is complex and has to be accurate otherwise it is worse than useless.
Writing the updates and editing changes in and out is quite tiresome and demands a high degree of concentration.
So you will appreciate that I fail to see the humour inherent in chasing semi-sentient formatting changes around the screen and up and down the page. Who in God's name wrote this application? Why does it make assumptions on my behalf, more often than not incorrectly, on numbering and formatting, and then proceed to argue the point every time I go back into the document to repair the automatically generated carnage?
With a level of frustration bordering on tears, I have just spent two hours wrestling the formatting and numbering into submission. I turned the auto-numbering off.
Word turned it back on.
I turned it off again.
And then in revenge, Word proceeded to assign random numbers and remove indents and margins. When I correct those, it goes off and reformats another part of the document as some kind of cyber-reprisal.
I truly believe that whoever was primarily responsible for Word is related to Mack Sennet.
no subject
So these days, I use Adobe FrameMaker. Not much help to you, I know, but it's rock-solid stable and was designed for creating multi-chapter books.
Of course, these days I use it for most everything. I wouldn't write a letter using MSWord.
Best of luck...
no subject
I knew the people where I worked until 1998 used FrameMaker, but I thought it was just cos they wuz *nix heads.
I assume Word is now so crap because M& in their corporate infect-o-addict ploy ways, have bound it to some much other stuff.