It didn't back in the late '80s, which is the setting for my story. And as for recently, I am deplorably slow in installing updates. I never let it do them automatically, and when the update notice rolls around I sometimes procrastinate for weeks before doing anything about it. Partly that's real procrastination, and part of it is waiting to see what everyone else says about the update. No one pays me to be thoughtlessly trusting. Come to think of it, it wouldn't do them any good if they did.
I'm not a Microsoft basher, really I'm not. But I confess I don't use Word much. I used to use it for documentation if I needed anything more complicated that WordPad, but recently I decided I wanted a markup language instead; I got myself a copy of LaTeX (I think it was partly due to recommendations offered here) and learned how to use that instead. I think the problem with some of those Office apps is that they used to be really good, but they keep adding stuff to it. There's a point, isn't there?, at which you can't pile on more stuff without breaking other things. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* -attributed to Alexander Pope: Be not the first by whom the new is tried Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. */ -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2024 18:58 It didn't? Every new release since Word 1.1a had more bugs than the previous one, and MS didn't fix the bugs that were in the previous version. Word 6 changed the values generated with the ALT key and 3 keystrokes with the number pad; but the killer was changing a document from footnotes to endnotes. Word 6 crashed, and you lost the lot. Over the years, more and more functionality disappeared from Word. The first to go was the ability to generate an index automatically; next to go were formulas. Then MS introduced .docx files. --- On 2024-07-22 06:23, Bob Bridges wrote: > I get that, I really do. But, darn it all... > > Years ago I worked for Volvo Truck NA (we built the big long-haul > tractors). We were a WordPerfect shop, and one of my unofficial > responsibilities was to struggle with each new version of WP. I'd > report all problems, work with their customer support, and after a > while (usually a month or so) I'd tell my boss it was ready to > distribute to everyone else. > > "But wait", you ask, "was it really so buggy? Didn't that bother you?" > Yes, it was, and I always said well, just how do you test for every > combination of machine and OS and likely use in the world? It can't > be done. So I wasn't surprised or dismayed at the process. > > One year I was busy with something else and just didn't have the time > to go through it. Somehow in the delay, the company changed to MS > Word. Many of us hated the change ("where's reveal-codes mode?!"), > and I still have major complaints with some aspects of Word. But a) > it's too late; it's taken over the world, and anyway b) it was too > late, it took over Volvo. But the main point here is that despite > what I argued in WP's defense, Word didn't have those bugs to struggle > with at each new release. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
