Comments on Word 2004

On 7/4/04 at roughly 6:09 PM, thus spake Michael B. Schnitzer
<azuremedianyc.rr.com>:

>For starters, the Find File command, present in Word since
>version 5 all the way through to Word X, had been
>inexplicably deleted. In addition, the current Thesaurus
>has hundreds fewer entries than the one that came with
>Word 98, and those that remain aren't all properly
>cross-indexed

These are very odd reasons for rejecting Word 2004 entirely, especially when
laid against fundamental things like handling long file names, Unicode
support, and the new scripting model (not to mention the fact that, unlike
your current version, Word 2004 is OS X-native). It's like buying a turbo
car and returning it because you found some schmutz in the ashtray. m.
--
matt neuburg, phd = matttidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/
pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei
AppleScript: the Definitive Guide! NOW SHIPPING...! (Finally.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571/somethingsbymatt
Subscribe to TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com/

I find Michael B. Schnitzer's issues about Microsoft Word 2004 to be rather
humorous as a software developer. It really highlights the struggle that
developers face when cutting bloat, and adding features.

Let's look at the issues:

-"Find File was cut." Yes, Microsoft Word actually had a file search
capability built into it. Approximately 12 people outside of MacBU knew
this. And guess what? Some customers actually cited this as an example of
the "awful bloat" in Word. After all, why would Word even have this
functionality when MacOS X has such a better find built in? Find File in
Word didn't even support unicode. And so, finally in Word 2004 this prime
example of bloat that few people ever use was eliminated - drawing
complaints of Word now being crippled. Damned if you do, damned if you
don't.

-"The Thesaurus was changed and is now no longer properly cross indexed."
Alas this is not true. The Thesaurus was not changed dramatically (the
English language hasn't changed too much since Word X). If you launch Word X
and search for Synonyms for "stupid", you'll quickly see that not all the
synonyms of "stupid" have "stupid" as a synonym. I suspect a real paper
Thesaurus doesn't either (but I don't have one because they're extinct...
being a *saurus and all.)

-"Word is slow and the file sizes are bigger". Word 2004 now is Unicode
compliant and uses Apple's ATSUI routines for displaying text. This is major
advancement considering that one of the major outcries in Word X was that...
well... Word X was not Unicode compliant. And if you've ever been to a WWDC,
you'll know that ATSUI performance is not exactly speeding bullet.

Software development is all about trade offs. You can't please everyone all
of the time... You can only hope to enable richer, more relevant scenarios
for your customers. Unicode is the right direction. And by eliminating
bloat, features like the new nifty print preview in the print dialog can be
added.

Nonetheless, I'm glad you were able to get a refund for your troubles -
especially considering that Office 2004 does not use any "product
activation" technologies. It's not clear how many companies offer opened
software refunds anymore for truly truly dissatisfied customers (potential
future Tidbits article?). Microsoft really is trying harder to satisfied
customers.
 

On 7/4/04 6:09 PM, "Michael B. Schnitzer" <azuremedianyc.rr.com> wrote:

> I read with interest TidBITS' detailed review of Word 2004, an application
> which I bought, tried out, and was so disgusted with that I opted to return it
> directly to Microsoft for a refund, under a program that they apparently
> maintain (with a low profile unless you complain so vigorously that they
> reveal it to you) for disgruntled users of their products.
>
> However, my gripes about the newest release of Word were different than the
> ones delineated in Matt Neuburg's review. I, like he, found Word 5.1 to be a
> very compact, stable and reliable rendition of Word, but I had upgraded
> several years ago to Word 98 because the Find File command, which I used
> frequently, no longer worked in v5.1 under OS 9. Acclimating to Word 98, I
> came to appreciate its own virtues, particularly its handling of table
> formatting, which I thought represented a huge leap over what was offered in
> Word 5.1.
>
> Finally upgrading to OS X a couple of months ago, I decided to bring my word
> processor up-to-date and in line with the new system, and so purchased Word
> 2004.
>
> Initially impressed by its lovely-to-look-at Aqua interface, I soon found
> myself groaning over some unpleasant and unexpected surprises.
>
> For starters, the Find File command, present in Word since version 5 all the
> way through to Word X, had been inexplicably deleted. In addition, the
> current Thesaurus has hundreds fewer entries than the one that came with Word
> 98, and those that remain aren't all properly cross-indexed, so that entering
> word "a" may return word "b" as a synonym, but then using that word "b" as the
> entry word won't necessarily do the reverse and yield word "a" as one of ITS
> resulting synonyms. Ridiculous! If "a" is a synonym for "b", then of course
> it only logically follows that "b" has to be a synonym for "a".
>
> What's more, even simple functions like saving a file and making formatting
> changes are noticeably slower than in previous versions. Meanwhile, file sizes
> have blown up to gargantuan proprtions.
>
> A call to Microsoft Tech Support about these shortcomings brought confirmation
> of all of them, as well as bafflement and disbelief on the part of not only
> the rep with whom I spoke, but his supervisor -- who was also made aware of
> the problems -- as well.
>
> Though I fortunately never made the mistake of upgrading to it, from all that
> I have read, heard and experienced for myself, this new release seems
> reminiscent of Word 6. It's a Beautiful But Dumb app that should send
> Microsoft's Mac Divison software engineers back to the drawing board (or at
> the very least, back to the vault to dig out and and restore some of the
> functionality from earlier versions that they ripped out of this one).

--
Dennis T Cheung | dtcpobox.com | AIM: dtc | http://dennistcheung.com

This message is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights.

I'm glad, Mr. Cheung, that I gave you a good laugh with my criticisms of Word 2004. If you investigate some of the negative reaction to this latest iteration of Word that has been posted on a variety of sites and comes from everyday users of the application rather than professional reviewers of computer software and hardware, you'll no doubt be thrown into stitches.

I appreciate your individualized responses to each of the points that I made, but I'm afraid that at least two of your answers were either disingenuous or play fast and loose with the facts.

Your citing of Find File as a "prime example of bloat that few people ever use" represents a sweeping generalization that is at odds even with the response that I encountered from Microsoft's own customer service personnel when I called to inquire about the feature's omission from Word 2004. Both the tech support rep with whom I spoke, and the supervisor whom he, in turn, consulted about the matter, expressed surprise and bewilderment that the function had been deleted -- a view virtually identical to the one articulated by the employee at the Microsoft Product Returns Program who provided me with information on sending the software back to Microsoft. All three stated that they made frequent use of the feature and lamented its removal, though they were unaware of the change because they were still using older versions of the app. So perhaps it might be worthwhile to do a little internal polling of some your company's own low- and mid-level staffers about their software feature preferences before making broad declarations about what does and does not constitute a valuable component of a program for the rest of us.

Even more ludicrous is your reply to my comments about Word 2004's Thesaurus. For starters, before even giving your answer, you misquote me as saying "The Thesaurus was changed and is now no longer properly cross indexed", when in point of fact my sentence reads: "the current Thesaurus has hundreds fewer entries than the one that came with Word 98, and those that remain aren't all properly cross-indexed." There's a large and substantive difference between those two sentences, and contrary to your contention, Mr. Cheung, the corrected version is, alas, all too true. Taking the liberty of presupposing that you might want to discover this for yourself, I'll give you some guidance for doing so.

But first, we have to get our program versions straight. The next sentence in your post maintains: "The Thesaurus was not changed dramatically (the English language hasn't changed too much since Word X)." Well, either you didn't read what I wrote very carefully or simply chose not to address it, because the version of Word that I was comparing to the latest was Word 98, not Word X.

And indeed, if you care to look, you'll see that there is a vast difference between the thesauri in the two releases. You could begin with a batch of words for which NO synonyms can be found in the Word 2004 thesaurus, including "optimize", "coruscate", "divagate", "clodhopper", and "ineluctable", though these same words yield plentiful results in Word 98’s Thesaurus.

No, Mr. Cheung, indeed the English language has not changed that dramatically, even since Word 98. In fact, as far as I'm aware, all of the words that I listed above (not to mention hundreds more that I checked) are still a part of the lexicon, even if they're no longer deemed worthy of inclusion in Microsoft's Thesaurus. No, it's not the language that's changed, it's Microsoft's Thesaurus -- which was my original point. Or is the removal of these words simply Microsoft's attempt to rid the language of "prime examples of bloat that few people ever use"?

With respect to cross-indexing, I did not assert that the entire thesaurus was no longer cross-indexed, as you misquote and/or misread me, but that many of the words in it no longer were. And again, no amount of obfuscatory denials can change the fact that there is no symmetrical linkage where there should be between certain pairs of words. For example, when the verb "market" is entered in the thesaurus, and the meaning "advertise" is offered, selecting that meaning brings up the synonyms "advertise", "promote" and "sell". But above and beyond those choices, the thesaurus in Word 98 also returned, among others, the highly apt verb "merchandise". And indeed, in Word 2004, if one enters the word "merchandise", and then selects the meaning "sell", guess what comes up in the list of synonyms? That first word, "market"!

The point is this: If "market" is given as a synonym for "merchandise", then the reverse logically must apply, as well, and "merchandise" should come up as a synonym for "market". That held true in the thesaurus in Word 98, and it is hard to fathom why it isn’t still the case in Word 2004.

Your own invocation of the word "stupid" as an illustration would surely bear out the above point, as well. And since you doubtless chose that word for its ironic subtext, you might wish to experience like treatment and, while on the subject of consulting reference volumes, look up the word "sciolist". Its definition, in light of some of the fallacies contained in your post, might prove quite self-revelatory.

And now that we've both gotten in our sarcastic licks, I'd add -- on a more congenial note -- that I take your point about the value of the tradeoffs that resulted in Word 2004's speed reduction and girth expansion. And I appreciate Microsoft's willingness to offer refunds to dissatisfied customers (by the way, I'm a pretty loyal one, at that -- I've been using Word on the Mac since 1986 and version 1.5). I would, however, argue that a company with the kind of hammerlock that Microsoft has on the office suite market should not (and need not) be so defensive over criticism of its wares.

On 7/7/04 7:44 PM, "Michael B. Schnitzer" <azuremedianyc.rr.com> wrote:

> But first, we have to get our program versions straight. The next sentence in
> your post maintains: "The Thesaurus was not changed dramatically (the English
> language hasn't changed too much since Word X)." Well, either you didn't read
> what I wrote very carefully or simply chose not to address it, because the
> version of Word that I was comparing to the latest was Word 98, not Word X.

Having reread your original message, I apologize for confusing you with
having upgraded from Word X.

Welcome to OS X, btw. As an aside, if you run most apps in OS 9 (or even
classic), they are far faster than their OS X counterparts on the same
hardware - especially the Finder (until recently). This was much like the
old days during the System 6->System 7 transition.

> Your citing of Find File as a "prime example of bloat that few people ever
> use" represents a sweeping generalization that is at odds even with the
> response that I encountered from Microsoft's own customer service personnel
> when I called to inquire about the feature's omission from Word 2004.

Alas this is an example of quantitative data versus anecdotal, filtered
data. The "Find file" feature, especially in recent years, has been less
than optimal. There's a reason why product support has heard a lot about it
- and it's not a good reason. :)

I installed the Office Demo a few days after release, and within about
3 hours I was figuring I'd be picking up the full upgrade within days.

Then I didn't get around to it, and after a week's use of Office 2004,
the whole thing got deleted and I'm sticking with v.X for the near
future.

I was quite excited about the Word notebook feature, having tried to
use both flavors of NoteBook/NoteTaker without much success in the
past. Looked great, until I tried to use it at the EPIC '04
conference. Brought my entire laptop to a screaming halt, and with a
1Ghz G4 I'm very intolerant of applications that do that. In Word's
defense, the audio quality of the recordings I made were stellar -- far
better than what came out of the shareware tools I'm running. I assume
that there's some nifty, high-CPU usage audio scrubbers in play here.
But that didn't make up for waiting minutes for other apps to come to
the foreground.

But the recordings weren't all that *useful*. I assumed that I could
turn on a recording, and then have my notes timestamped along with what
was being said at the time. Er, no -- the recording icon just moves
along with what you type, so you end up with a 60 minute recording
tacked onto the end of your notes. Typing "look into this" at minute
fifteen won't do you any good.

Word 2004 also seriously upped the "idle CPU suckage" ante. I'm used
to seeing an Office app eat 10-15% of my CPU just sitting in the
background with no windows open, just a cost of doing Microsoft
business. Word and Entourage could spike that up to 50% or more for no
good reason. That's a lot of cycles.

Add in the wonderful Entourage project feature that looked great, and
ended up being not quite all that and a bag of chips. I liked the
3-pane implementation, but the killer app here was the fading pop-ups
when new mail arrived. THAT was fantastic, since I use Desktop Manager
and my mail program is off on another desktop most of the time. But in
the end, that feature wasn't worth $230.

Best,
Jeff

> But AquaMinds also has a free NoteTaker Reader app, so you can share a
> NoteTaker document directly without exporting it. So if the ability to let
> others *read* your document and use it as a true NoteTaker document is
> what's at stake, this argument is not so strong.
>
> If the ability for others to *edit* is what's at stake, then obviously
> that's a different kettle of fish (though it's one heck of a lot cheaper for
> all your communicants to buy NoteTaker than for them all to buy Word if they
> don't already have it).

And that's (editing) is what it's all about. Well that and the ability for
multiple people to edit and get the same result when printed. Reading these
debates over and over I realize that the folks offering alternatives do not
have to trade documents between large numbers of people and have them all
get the same result. Plus allow them all to edit the documents, thus PDF
doesn't cut it. The people who find alternatives only need to trade words
or final readable copy, not intermediate, formatted information. I work
with architects. On a current project one firm has partnered with 5 major
firms located in 3 cities to developer a $200 million government owned
project. So in addition to the 5 major partners, there will be 100 to 200
major and minor contractors over the next few years, a dozen or so agencies
with ownership interests, and a slew of permitting and inspection agencies
to deal with. If you want to play in this game, you play with the selected
tools. Just using a Mac tends to make it hard to enter the club.

Microsoft spent 20 years getting Office into every nook and cranny of the
business world and now that it's here it might be 40 years before it
vanishes. (Or maybe just a few, who knows with computers. :) )

I appreciate your prompt and direct reply to my post.

One of the reasons that I miss Find File is that Apple's current Find utility in OS X, while quick as lightning for performing most types of searches, is dreadful at hunting for content in files. In addition to having to index (and keep up-to-date the indexes of) any and all volumes through which one wants to search, the results are slow to come and very inconsistent.

Happily, after some trawling of the Web, I came across a marvelous piece of freeware, with which I'm sure you're already quite familiar, called EasyFind. If, indeed, you are acquainted with EasyFind, you know that while not a replacement for OS X's Find utility, it is an excellent supplement to it, and I've found it to be the best solution for searching the content of files because it produces fast, reliable results, and doesn't even require indexing. It even, much to my delight, can find text embedded in Word 98's Properties boxes. Now, if only Word 2004 were Services-aware, EasyFind could be used directly within the app just like the old Find File command.

With this workaround discovered, though, the one major obstacle that prevents me from re-embracing Word 2004 is the Thesaurus. While you were very gracious to acknowledge that you had mistaken which older version of Word I was discussing in my original message, you still did not address the vocabulary deficiencies that I cited in the Word 2004 Thesaurus, as compared to the one included in Word 98.

I know that there are third-party electronic reference works, and I have several, including Microsoft Bookshelf 98 (yes, I know it's another legacy Classic app, but regrettably, Microsoft has never updated it since the last year of its release). All the same, the Thesaurus in Word 98 is uniquely useful, not only because it is tightly integrated into the program itself, but also because it offers a rich, relevant, yet highly concise cornucopia of synonyms...and yes, it is completely and properly cross-indexed.

Given the treasure trove of verbal variety that it is, I cannot understand why Microsoft replaced it with content that is plainly sparser and inferior (and please understand, it's the actual content of the old Thesaurus for which I'm pining, not the interface, the design of which in Word 2004, I think, represents a definite improvement).

Can you tell me what was the reason for this change? Or perhaps, even more importantly, is there any chance that the old ingredients (that is, the Word 98 Thesaurus's word bank) might one day be brought back in a shiny new wrapper (e.g., Word 2004's aqua packaging), such as when a future upgrade to Word is released?

I'd be curious to know.

Thanks.

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:42:39 -0700, David Ross
<drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:
> And that's (editing) is what it's all about. Well that and the ability for
> multiple people to edit and get the same result when printed. Reading these
> debates over and over I realize that the folks offering alternatives do not
> have to trade documents between large numbers of people and have them all
> get the same result.

But you can't trade Word documents amongst several people and get
identical results. Word will change spacing and shift text fairly
randomly moving between machines. Sometimes seemingly at random.
Font issues? Printer issues? Word Issues? I don't know, but
consistent output is not a feature of Word.

--
gkreme at gmail or kreme at kreme or syth at mac

On 7/13/04 8:42 PM, "Michael B. Schnitzer" <azuremedianyc.rr.com> wrote:

> One of the reasons that I miss Find File is that Apple's current Find utility
> in OS X, while quick as lightning for performing most types of searches, is
> dreadful at hunting for content in files. In addition to having to index (and
> keep up-to-date the indexes of) any and all volumes through which one wants to
> search, the results are slow to come and very inconsistent.

I think you'll be very pleased with file searching in Tiger. File searching
is something that really should handled by the OS IMHO.

> Can you tell me what was the reason for this change [in the Word Thesaurus]?
> Or perhaps, even more importantly, is there any chance that the old
> ingredients (that is, the Word 98 Thesaurus's word bank) might one day be
> brought back in a shiny new wrapper (e.g., Word 2004's aqua packaging), such
> as when a future upgrade to Word is released?

It's been about 7 years since Word 98 was released. I think that the
contents of the thesaurus is component that is simply licensed. Changes may
or may not occur, but I somewhat doubt that it would be exactly the same as
the Word98 thesaurus.

On 7/14/04 9:36 PM, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:42:39 -0700, David Ross
> <drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:
>> And that's (editing) is what it's all about. Well that and the ability for
>> multiple people to edit and get the same result when printed. Reading these
>> debates over and over I realize that the folks offering alternatives do not
>> have to trade documents between large numbers of people and have them all
>> get the same result.
>
> But you can't trade Word documents amongst several people and get
> identical results. Word will change spacing and shift text fairly
> randomly moving between machines. Sometimes seemingly at random.
> Font issues? Printer issues? Word Issues? I don't know, but
> consistent output is not a feature of Word.

On the contrary: one of the top priorities in Microsoft Word is to ensure
that the page layout stays the same on any machine. If only you knew how
much this goal has influenced the development of this product...

Anyway, the biggest challenge, however, is the difference in fonts between
different machines. Mac users, more so than Windows users, tend to be more
creative with font usage.

With this in mind, one of the features of Word 2004 (and PowerPoint 2004,
and Excel 2004) is a new compatibility checker that will warn if you have
made changes that may look unusual or different in other versions of Word...
And more importantly how to correct them.

--
Dennis T Cheung | dtcpobox.com | AIM: dtc | http://dennistcheung.com
This message is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights.

On 7/17/04 9:39 PM, "Dennis T Cheung" <dtcpobox.com> wrote:
 
> On the contrary: one of the top priorities in Microsoft Word is to ensure
> that the page layout stays the same on any machine. If only you knew how
> much this goal has influenced the development of this product...
>
> Anyway, the biggest challenge, however, is the difference in fonts between
> different machines. Mac users, more so than Windows users, tend to be more
> creative with font usage.
>
> With this in mind, one of the features of Word 2004 (and PowerPoint 2004,
> and Excel 2004) is a new compatibility checker that will warn if you have
> made changes that may look unusual or different in other versions of Word...
> And more importantly how to correct them.

Wow, Dennis, that's news to me. I'm a lawyer with a practice that includes
appeals (extensive written arguments) and my printer refuses to accept
documents in Word format except as a last resort because the documents are
constantly repaginating themselves and making a mockery of tables of
contents, references to authorities etc. I generate the documents in Word
and then put them into PDF before I submit them, since they are such a
nuisance.

Don't know about Word 2004, so can't comment on whether it's still jumpy,
but Word X is a veritable grasshopper.

Stephen

--On Saturday, July 17, 2004 6:39 PM -0700 Dennis T Cheung <dtcpobox.com>
wrote:
> On the contrary: one of the top priorities in Microsoft Word is to ensure
> that the page layout stays the same on any machine. If only you knew how
> much this goal has influenced the development of this product...

If so then Microsoft has failed miserably at achieving this goal.

> Anyway, the biggest challenge, however, is the difference in fonts between
> different machines. Mac users, more so than Windows users, tend to be more
> creative with font usage.

I've found the differences between printer drivers to cause more issues
than font issues (other than simply not having the font.) Font naming
problems between machines (windows-windows, mac-mac, or mac-windows) would
be 3rd place.

The problem we see is that Word reflows everything when the printer driver
changes and different hardware margins for the page size are reported by
the driver. Encouraging users to use margins wider than the widest
hardware margin they are likely to see doesn't always work (both in that
they don't listen to this advice, and it doesn't always work). Even
different versions of the same driver for the same printer model cause
reflows.

Adding to the problem is Word's terrible anchoring system for text/graphics
boxes (especially when the re-flowing causes text with an anchor to move
over a page break.)

Kevin

On 18-07-2004 03:39:11, Dennis T Cheungwrote:

>On 7/14/04 9:36 PM, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:42:39 -0700, David Ross
>> <drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:

>>> And that's (editing) is what it's all about. Well that and the ability for
>>> multiple people to edit and get the same result when printed. Reading these
>>> debates over and over I realize that the folks offering alternatives do not
>>> have to trade documents between large numbers of people and have them all
>>> get the same result.
>>
>> But you can't trade Word documents amongst several people and get
>> identical results. Word will change spacing and shift text fairly
>> randomly moving between machines. Sometimes seemingly at random.
>> Font issues? Printer issues? Word Issues? I don't know, but
>> consistent output is not a feature of Word.
>
>On the contrary: one of the top priorities in Microsoft Word is to ensure
>that the page layout stays the same on any machine. If only you knew how
>much this goal has influenced the development of this product...
>
>Anyway, the biggest challenge, however, is the difference in fonts between
>different machines. Mac users, more so than Windows users, tend to be more
>creative with font usage.

If that's the case, then I must say Microsoft hasn't done a very good job of it. In Word,
selecting another printer often results in changes to the layout. A colleague of mine
recently tried opening the same Word document in different versions of Word (on machines
that all have the same fonts installed), and that resulted in layout changes as well.

If you want to see how it should work, check out FrameMaker. In the seven years I've
worked with it, I've had zero instances of layout changing due to a new printer/another
computer/a new FM version/moving to another OS.

Yes, when fonts aren't present on the machine, you get a layout change (because the
missing font is substituted with Times or Helvetica), but you also get a report telling
you which fonts are missing. And the substitution is temporary: as soon as you install the
correct fonts, or move to a machine that has the correct fonts, they will be used.

Harro de Jong

At 18:39 -0700 on 7/17/04, Dennis T Cheung indited:
> > On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:42:39 -0700, David Ross
><drdavidrossconsultant.com> > wrote:
> >> And that's (editing) is what it's all about. Well that and the ability for
> >> multiple people to edit and get the same result when printed.
>
>On the contrary: one of the top priorities in Microsoft Word is to ensure
>that the page layout stays the same on any machine. If only you knew how
>much this goal has influenced the development of this product...

I definitely believe that consistency was a very high priority, but
that doesn't mean that it was fully achieved :-). If it had been,
there would be no need for the new compatibility checker.

>Anyway, the biggest challenge, however, is the difference in fonts between
>different machines. Mac users, more so than Windows users, tend to be more
>creative with font usage.

Older versions of Word had an option to embed the fonts that were
used directly into the document, ensuring that the exact same font
would be available for use on other machines. This was a handy
feature, and although not a perfect solution, helped a lot when folks
used unusual fonts--or even differing versions of the same font.
Unfortunately, while I was hoping the feature would be added to the
other Office programs, it was instead altogether removed with the
transition to OS X.

Perhaps it was removed due to the fact that most people didn't know
the feature was available or what the benefits of it were. Whatever
the reason, it was removed, and Word thus took a step backward in the
area of consistent display.

And now, with all of the recent additions to the Windows version of
Office (e.g., DRM), it seems that things might only get worse, at
least for a while.

--
Robert E. Williams, Jr.
TriVectus, LC
bobtrivectus.com
www.trivectus.com

--On Monday, July 19, 2004 9:58 AM -0700 Bob Williams <bobtrivectus.com>
wrote
> Older versions of Word had an option to embed the fonts that were used
> directly into the document, ensuring that the exact same font would be
> available for use on other machines. This was a handy feature, and
> although not a perfect solution, helped a lot when folks used unusual
> fonts--or even differing versions of the same font. Unfortunately, while
> I was hoping the feature would be added to the other Office programs, it
> was instead altogether removed with the transition to OS X.

I thought this was still available in Word 2003 for Windows, but I could be
wrong. I do know the feature has made it to PowerPoint on Windows and has
been available for quite sometime (and still is). Usually you get to it
through an Options button on the Save window.

The downside is that it only allows embedding of TrueType (and maybe
OpenType) fonts, and only if the font maker allows it (each font file has a
bit that indicates if the font can be embedded.)

Additionally back in the really bad old days of fonts, I don't think mac
fonts embedded on a Mac machine would work on a Windows machine (not sure
if this is still the case.)

PDF documents support this too, and is one of the things that make PDF a
superior format -- it can embed PostScript and TrueType, seems to ignore
the embed/do no embed indicator in font files (and can embed just the
characters needed for the document, although that can be a minus.)

Kevin

On 7/20/04 8:37 AM, "Kevin van Haaren" <kevinvanhaaren.net> wrote:

> PDF documents support this too, and is one of the things that make PDF a
> superior format -- it can embed PostScript and TrueType, seems to ignore
> the embed/do no embed indicator in font files (and can embed just the
> characters needed for the document, although that can be a minus.)

Actually, no, Acrobat most certainly does NOT ignore the 'embedding allowed'
indicator. It's just less binary about it, so if a font only allows
embedding for display, but not printing, it can handle that.

Adobe makes fonts, they aren't about to step all over their own IP, much
less everyone else's.

john

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

Just to wrap things up on this thread, unfortunately I've reached about the
limits of my knowledge of Microsoft Word.

I've forwarded on your feedback and questions to Rick, a developer on Word.
Perhaps responses and more details will show up on his blog one of these
days: <http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/>

I know he's hard at work on the next version already so it may take some
time.

>Word's capability to record changes made to a document (revisions)
>may not be important to everyone, but to folks who exchange a
>document with an editor, it's invaluable (again, this is crucial to
>how a Take Control ebook is developed). In the past, however, users
>who needed the revisions feature have had to wrestle with its
>shortcomings and inconveniences. The presence of changes was
>indicated only by markings such as colors, underlines, and
>strikethroughs; if you wanted to know who had made a change, you had
>to hover the mouse over your text to make a balloon appear, and even
>then all you learned was that something had been "inserted" or
>"deleted" by someone, with no further statement of exactly what had
>happened. Formatting changes (changing text from plain to bold, for
>instance) were not noted at all.

Regarding the changes for Tracking Changes, it's worth noting that
the improvements in Word 2004 largely reflect the features'
implementations in recent Windows versions: Word 2002/XP and Word
2003.

My first encounter with Word's Track Changes features was in Word
v:X, and I was so horrified by the interface that I loaded the
document in Word XP, hoping that that version might be less
unintelligible. Happily it was, and I'm pleased to see that Word
2004/Mac mirrors this implementation.

Office:Mac often improves on the most recent version of
Office:Windows, and vice-versa, with each leapfrogging the other on
alternate-year releases.

(The 2004 Mac version may be materially better/different than the
2003 Windows version in this regard, but at first glance they are
largely similar.)

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

On 7/27/2004 14:40, "Dennis T Cheung" <dtcpobox.com> wrote:

> Just to wrap things up on this thread, unfortunately I've reached about the
> limits of my knowledge of Microsoft Word.

And another attempted wrap: It appears that Microsoft has decided to ship
the "other" parts of Office Pro (everything except Virtual PC) now on orders
for Pro. And, at least for existing orders as of the time of the decision,
all billing is deferred until Virtual PC ships.

Now I have to decide whether to upgrade...I hadn't had to before because of
the delay of Virtual PC.

  --John

Just to provide some follow up on the conversation about Word 2004 a few
months ago, a developer on the Microsoft MacBU Word team has posted some
related entries addressing some of the issues and thoughts mentioned in the
thread:

http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/08/28/222124.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/08/31/223257.aspx

You may be interested in some of the behind-the-scenes information. There is
also an opportunity there to leave feedback.

--
Dennis T Cheung | dtcpobox.com | AIM: dtc | http://dennistcheung.com

This message is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights.