Data Microsoft collects

On 5/23/15 6:28 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/22/15 10:29 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
I know that folks can run software on non-standard OSes. The
question is, is it worth it (The answer is already determined by the
marketplace)?

In those days, the Atari file format and the PC file format for Word
Perfect were the same.

That is because it was the same program!

The Mac format wasn't, because the Mac format
had graphic capabilities the PC couldn't do.

Not so, by a long shot. I was doing graphics using PCs long before the Mac
was introduced, and when it was, it used the established graphic file
formats. The difference was that the Mac used "little endian" coding and
forked file formats, so its files couldn't be read by PCs unless one had a
translator. But, even those existed.

Not my best writing... LOL According to WP back then, there were
graphics abilities the Mac could perform but the PC could not. So the
contents of a document created by WP could have graphics features that
were not possible on a PC. Over and above that file forking which I
never understood the reason for. Then again, I wasn't a Mac user back then.

On one hand the file format is always the issue. Many people are
willing to use software that can read another app's format and save
a file in that format. The problem is, this only works for
elementary-level work and screws up anything else. Businesses are
not going to go through that, and one great way to lose a customer
is to screw up their file after you edit it.

The problem is likely to be the proprietary file format that is the
problem. If everyone switched to the same file format, and followed
the rules for that format, I don't see where there would be a
problem. But that doesn't include the issues that arise due to buggy
software.

Proprietary file formats aren't going to go away. People want apps with the
capability to do a complete job with their tasks, even when those tasks are
unreasonable. A few years ago, I resolved an issue that a company using
MS-Word got into when they created a 700+ page instruction manual with
graphics, charts, etc. That is the wrong app for that job, but if one knows
Word's quirks, it can be done, and it cost them less for me to "fix" it than
to convert it to Ventura or FrameMaker. OTOH, trying to do those documents
with an open format, such as SGML or XML would be a real PITA, because those
formats have serious limitations.

Proprietary stuff probably won't go away, agreed, unless outside forces
come in to play. A few years ago, France told businesses that if they
wanted to do business with the government, you would submit documents in
an open file format. I.E. .odt,not .doc/docx, etc. I don't know about
PDF in this case.

I haven't heard if that's changed.

Wrong tool for the job, page layout was needed. I've a friend that was
in a similar position. Trying to do stuff at work in a word processor,
having no luck. She was using Open Office (No $ for MS Office) and her
computer at the time, since the company didn't supply her with a
computer. I bought her a copy of an older version of a page layout
program for $25, and now she won't go back. LOL The company has
supplied her with a computer and Office 2010 Professional, which
includes MS Publisher. She won't use that after trying it out. The
program I bought is easier to use, and has more features. Even her boss
has acknowledged that.

If you're the last step in the process, no problem. But, if it's an
interactive process, forget it (see above).

IMO, an interactive process shouldn't be a problem either. Rather
than having X number of people return X number of files all in
.doc/.docx file format, just have them use the annotation function of
the a PDF reader, and return the annotated PDF. Then, you have only
one .doc/.docx file to combine the edits in.

If the document has any sophisticated formatting, forget it. That isn't the
intended use of PDFs, and only works with very elementary layouts.

For drafts, which is what I would use the initial PDFs for, formatting
wouldn't be the issue. Content would be.

History shows that
the PC was and still is the winning concept for professionals, so
it's hard to argue that it wasn't a deserved outcome.

I don't think you are on solid ground by saying the PC is the
winning concept. Today, it's the only concept.

The last one standing is a good definition of winning, AFAICT.

But on what basis did you become the last one standing? If it's on
the merits of your product, then I agree. But if you got there by
breaking agreements and MS broke many and lost in court, or the other
guys were badly managed, underfunded, whatever, then you didn't
become the last one standing because of a superior product.

Everything you mentioned are the dynamics of the marketplace. Just as Apple
tried to sue MS for having a GUI in Windows when they ripped it off from
PARC in the forst place, or has "patented" rectangles and sued Samsung for
having rectangular phones, it's all a catfight.

I think if computer users in general were more knowledgeable, MS
wouldn't have it as easy as they do.

That's a tough speculation to supportn with facts.

I don't know how you would ever devise a method of testing this. But
I know, based on simply talking with people, that once their
knowledge has been increased about the options, You can see the light
bulbs go on. G The simple fact is, a lot of people think they need
MS Office, when the truth is for what they are going to try to do, it
can be done with less expensive and even free software. Not to
mention, a lot of these folks may have better places to spend their
money than on MS software.

I agree that most people's needs don't exceed open-source capabilities, but
there are other things to consider. I gave one of my customers with very
basic needs OpenOffice, which he tried for about a year but wound up buying
MS-Office because he already knew how to use it. In short, OO stumped him
from doing his work because of poor and inaccurate documentation. As for the
cost, what is more expensive, spending a couple hundred once, or spending
many hours in perpetuity trying to accomplish what you already knew how to
do in another program? I think one needs to be much more knowledgable to
work around unexpected, undocumented bugs in open-source than to use
software that just works as intended. ;-)

I never recommend Open Office, read too many negatives. Libre Office,
OTOH, while having it's own problems, seems to have fewer issues.

In all of this discussion, budgetary issues also need to be considered.
If you're a business, the purchase becomes tax deductible, and you
should be able to afford Office. But many individuals cannot, and the
right free software becomes the best answer. Many of the free suites
look and work like Office 2003, so there's not that much of a learning
curve.

But unless the user has needs for a suite like MS Office, I don't
recommend even Libre Office. There are a lot of free office suites out
there that probably meet the average person's needs. And they don't all
look like MS Office, especially that W#W$^%&$*$ ribbon. LOL

I wouldn't give anybody pluses on documentation. :-(

As for working as intended... Did you ever try to create larger docs in
Office XP? What a piece of crap. Trashed so many of my docs and had to
start all over, I was ready to kill. Almost literally.

I'd have no objection to someone staying with the program they have,
unless it doesn't do what they want. I.E. a word processor vs. page
layout. Many users seemingly would rather give up on getting what they
want because they don't want to take the time to learn something different.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 5/23/15 8:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 07:28:17 -0500, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/22/15 10:29 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
I know that folks can run software on non-standard OSes. The
question is, is it worth it (The answer is already determined by the
marketplace)?

In those days, the Atari file format and the PC file format for Word
Perfect were the same.

That is because it was the same program!

Didn't the Atari and the PC have completely different CPUs and memory
structures? How would the same program run in both environments?

PC's had Intel, AMD, and there were a couple other chips. Atari's and
Macs had Motorola, I don't remember what the Amiga use.

Unless you only meant to say that the two programs had the same name.





--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 2015-05-23 12:24 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/23/15 8:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 07:28:17 -0500, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/22/15 10:29 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
I know that folks can run software on non-standard OSes. The
question is, is it worth it (The answer is already determined by the
marketplace)?

In those days, the Atari file format and the PC file format for Word
Perfect were the same.

That is because it was the same program!

Didn't the Atari and the PC have completely different CPUs and memory
structures? How would the same program run in both environments?

PC's had Intel, AMD, and there were a couple other chips. Atari's and
Macs had Motorola, I don't remember what the Amiga use.

Amiga used Motorola as well. It's one of the reasons why the Atari and
the Amiga competed directly for the home market.

--
Slimer
Encrypt.

"Like NTFS, which is at best at beta stage right now?" - Peter "the
Klöwn" Köhlmann suggesting that NTFS is an unfinished filesystem in
defense of ext4 being shown to corrupt data in Linux's 4.0 kernel

On Sat, 23 May 2015 09:17:56 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:


I have never understood the idea of editing a PDF file. If you're going
to do that, why not just send the original around for editing?


Suppose, for example, that you download a pdf file that's
documentation for some hardware or software product. And further
suppose that you want changes to that documentation (to make
improvements, to add pointers that are missing, to delete sections of
no interest to you, etc.). You're not going to get the vendor to make
the changes, and the only way to get them is to make them yourself.

On 5/23/2015 10:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 07:28:17 -0500, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/22/15 10:29 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
I know that folks can run software on non-standard OSes. The
question is, is it worth it (The answer is already determined by the
marketplace)?

In those days, the Atari file format and the PC file format for Word
Perfect were the same.

That is because it was the same program!

Didn't the Atari and the PC have completely different CPUs and memory
structures? How would the same program run in both environments?

Unless you only meant to say that the two programs had the same name.

What I meant is that, since it was "the same program" from the
originating company any cross-platform issues proprietary file formats
were a non-issue.
--
best regards,

Neil

On 5/23/2015 12:22 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/23/15 6:28 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
Proprietary file formats aren't going to go away. People want apps
with the
capability to do a complete job with their tasks, even when those
tasks are
unreasonable. A few years ago, I resolved an issue that a company using
MS-Word got into when they created a 700+ page instruction manual with
graphics, charts, etc. That is the wrong app for that job, but if one
knows
Word's quirks, it can be done, and it cost them less for me to "fix"
it than
to convert it to Ventura or FrameMaker. OTOH, trying to do those
documents
with an open format, such as SGML or XML would be a real PITA, because
those
formats have serious limitations.

Proprietary stuff probably won't go away, agreed, unless outside forces
come in to play. A few years ago, France told businesses that if they
wanted to do business with the government, you would submit documents in
an open file format. I.E. .odt,not .doc/docx, etc. I don't know about
PDF in this case.

Even .odt is a proprietary format, so if they're saying that is OK,
they're being quite hypocritical. SGML, XML and HTML are open formats,
but they all have serious limitations that would frustrate most users.
For example, if a paragraph style isn't in the DTD, it can't be in the
document. I'd bet that, even here amongst more knowledgeable users, most
folks don't know what a DTD is, much less where to look for it or what
to do with it if they found it.

I agree that most people's needs don't exceed open-source
capabilities, but
there are other things to consider. I gave one of my customers with very
basic needs OpenOffice, which he tried for about a year but wound up
buying
MS-Office because he already knew how to use it. In short, OO stumped him
from doing his work because of poor and inaccurate documentation. As
for the
cost, what is more expensive, spending a couple hundred once, or spending
many hours in perpetuity trying to accomplish what you already knew
how to
do in another program? I think one needs to be much more knowledgable to
work around unexpected, undocumented bugs in open-source than to use
software that just works as intended. ;-)

I never recommend Open Office, read too many negatives. Libre Office,
OTOH, while having it's own problems, seems to have fewer issues.

I saw very little difference after trying them both. Libre seems to be
aimed at the European market, and OO at the North American market. Other
than that, they both fall quite a bit short of MS-Office in terms of
functionality and quality.

As for working as intended... Did you ever try to create larger docs in
Office XP? What a piece of crap. Trashed so many of my docs and had to
start all over, I was ready to kill. Almost literally.

That 700+ page document was _pre-XP_, and the international company
trying to do their manual wasn't up to sorting out the issues. IMO, that
is not atypical. MS-Word was never intended for book-making.

--
best regards,

Neil

On 5/22/15 5:26 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Fri, 22 May 2015 11:56:40 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:

On 5/22/15 11:05 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Fri, 22 May 2015 18:19:59 +0200, Jonas Klein
wrote:

Am 22.05.2015 um 15:58 schrieb Ken Springer:
The world started slowly moving that way when Adobe created
and released the PDF file format. Now you have the open
file formats (odt, ods, etc.). Who cares what program the
originator of a file used? When you get a PDF file do you
really care if Adobe Acrobat created the file? Or Word? Or
Word Perfect? AutoCAD? MicroCAD? No. You just want to be
able to read it.

Wrong! I am a translator and I usually want to overwrite PDF
files in order to give my customers a translated file with
the same formats. Always a pain in the ass if all I get is
an image PDF.


That is where Acrobat portfolios come in handy, but the vast majority of people
are not familiar with them.

I've never heard of it. LOL Which means I've never used it. Then,
I'd never heard of Curl either, until a need came up and that was the
cat's meow for a solution.

I had never heard of cURL before you mentioned it above, so, I spent a few
minutes and looked it up. Interesting tool, one which apparently is a part of
many products.

http://curl.haxx.se/

It may be part of a "package" of some sorts, but I'm using it for a
specific purpose. Downloading digitized books from early times of our
history.

Take this book...
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?i...w=1up;seq=2582

The book is 2582 pages long. On the left side, click on "Download whole
book". What??? You have to be a member of a partner institution??????
Those partner institutions are major colleges and universities, as in
Ivy League caliber.

That's certainly not me.

But, I could download this book, one page at a time, 2582 times.
Imagine how long that will take. LOL

But wait... OS X comes with the Automator. It's included with OS X,
and Windows has never had anything like it that comes with the OS. The
only thing that's kind of like it is the macro recorder in Windows for
Workgroups.

I decided to try my first Automator workflow, to do the repetitive
downloading of one page at a time. And I wanted help and guidance, so
signed up for the Automator mailing list. I explained what I wanted to do.

One respondent replied, "That sounds like a job for curl." What's that?
After a couple of email exchanges, the respondent gave me a starting
point for using cURL.

It's a command line program and is run in Terminal, the OS X version of
the Command Window. But with a whole lot more capability, as I
understand it.

His initial command line worked, sort of. I had to play with it, and
learn what the parameters did, add a couple of parameters, and finally
found a command line that's almost perfect. The only failures are when
Hathi Trust resets the connection, or my internet connection fails.

I had the parameters worked out by the time I got to this book. It took
a day and a half for cURL to download the book. I went to work, ate,
slept, etc. LOL How long do you think it would take to download manually?

BTW, cURL is also included with OS X. No downloading or installing the
program. And available for 10-15 operating systems, including the Amiga.





--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 5/23/15 11:14 AM, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 09:17:56 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:


I have never understood the idea of editing a PDF file. If you're going
to do that, why not just send the original around for editing?


Suppose, for example, that you download a pdf file that's
documentation for some hardware or software product. And further
suppose that you want changes to that documentation (to make
improvements, to add pointers that are missing, to delete sections of
no interest to you, etc.). You're not going to get the vendor to make
the changes, and the only way to get them is to make them yourself.

Assuming it's not a file of scanned images, and is actual text,
copy/paste everything to your word processor. This also assumes the
original PDF is not locked, which would/should keep you from making any
changes.

If the current Notepad functions much like earlier ones, I'd try to load
the PDF there, see if it strips out the stuff you don't need.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 5/23/15 1:02 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:

snip

Sounds interesting and I understand the value you see in the utility.

Just for grins and chuckles I took a look at the book, I then found it on Google
Books and downloaded the entire thing as a PDF with Adobe Digital Editions. The
entire process took less than 10 minutes.

This may very well be, and for a couple of reasons.

Sometimes I downloaded a book from both sources, until I was sure I was
getting the "meat" of the book, minus the extra stuff both places added
to the beginning and then end. Google was the worst, as you might
expect, for fiddling with things.

Sometimes, I downloaded from both places because the originals were from
two different sources.

All books are not automatically available from both sources. A lot of
the time, the old books I wanted I was only able to find on Google. But
for some reason, you were only allowed a snippet view, and downloads
were not possible. Hahti Trust was kind enough to contact Google about
this. It seems the system to determine if there may be copyright issues
is automated. At HT"s request, Google manually reviewed the books I was
interested in, and all those books are now available for download from
Google books.

Mind you, I am not interested in the topic, but I was curious if there was an
easier way to obtain it.

There are a number of good sources for locating old books. WorldCat is
great, and I found a book I was interested in at the Library of
Congress. They didn't have a digital copy, so I inquired about getting
it scanned. Darned if they didn't scan it and I now have a copy. In a
few months, LOC's words, you'll find copies at Hathi Trust as well as
the Internet Archive.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On Sat, 23 May 2015 09:48:07 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:

When I wrote the comment, I was thinking of a situation where a group of
people are collaborating on a project, and need to create a report,
plan, drawings, something as a group, not as individuals.

Only one person should have control of the document creation. You
preferably or someone writes the original. Create a PDF from the
original, and send it to the other members individually. They should be
instructed to use the annotation feature to send feedback of what they
would like to see changed. *NO* editing of the original text. That
leaves you with the original text to compare with the changes that
individual wants.

You realize, of course, that when you send a document to someone to solicit
their input, you're generally sending a "copy". Most people wouldn't work on
a document, send a copy to a colleague, delete their local copy, and then
hope for the best. ;-)


Sophisticated word processors have the ability to manage edits,
tracking, etc. Been there, done that, and more often than not, the end
product was deficient and/or in error somewhere.

I worked for a large corporation as a network design engineer in a cube farm
for 10 years, and we collaborated on our design documents using Word (XP,
2003, then 2007). One person was responsible for the document and would
write the bulk of it, then send copies around for collaborative editing,
using Word's Track Changes feature. I can't recall a single instance of
errors or deficiencies when using that approach, but our documents were
probably smaller than what you're used to. A large-ish document for us was
about 400 pages, with 80-120 full page Visio diagrams and numerous tables,
charts, and graphs. There was a standard TOC, a TOC for the diagrams and
illustrations, an index, footnotes, a references section, etc.

At one point, a senior engineer joined a sister team and decided he'd do
things his own way. He still created his documents in Word, but he'd send
copies of a locked PDF, expecting the rest of us to email him with any
changes we'd like to see. I think everyone played along with him, but I
would simply unlock his PDF, dump the text into Word, make my edits, export
it back to PDF and send it back to him, locked, of course. After about the
third time, he made a visit to my cube. From then on, he sent me Word docs,
just like everyone else. ;-)

In another post you mentioned having issues with Word 2002 (part of Office
XP), but I never saw that. I started using Word at 2.6, I believe, but that
was too long ago for me to have any distinct memories. Starting with Word 6,
(the next version after 2.x), I never ran into stability issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microso...elease_history

On Sat, 23 May 2015 12:46:30 -0400, Slimer wrote:

On 2015-05-23 12:24 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/23/15 8:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 07:28:17 -0500, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/22/15 10:29 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
I know that folks can run software on non-standard OSes. The
question is, is it worth it (The answer is already determined by the
marketplace)?

In those days, the Atari file format and the PC file format for Word
Perfect were the same.

That is because it was the same program!

Didn't the Atari and the PC have completely different CPUs and memory
structures? How would the same program run in both environments?

PC's had Intel, AMD, and there were a couple other chips. Atari's and
Macs had Motorola, I don't remember what the Amiga use.

Amiga used Motorola as well. It's one of the reasons why the Atari and
the Amiga competed directly for the home market.

Thanks to both of you for your input, but do you know how lawyers usually
only ask questions in the courtroom to which they already know the answer?
That was one of those. ;-)

I was attempting to (subtly) point out that, although a software package
might be released for two or more platforms, it's not a foregone conclusion
that those two packages will be 100% identical. In fact, they usually
aren't.

On Sat, 23 May 2015 13:40:40 -0400, Neil wrote:

On 5/23/2015 10:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 07:28:17 -0500, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/22/15 10:29 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
I know that folks can run software on non-standard OSes. The
question is, is it worth it (The answer is already determined by the
marketplace)?

In those days, the Atari file format and the PC file format for Word
Perfect were the same.

That is because it was the same program!

Didn't the Atari and the PC have completely different CPUs and memory
structures? How would the same program run in both environments?

Unless you only meant to say that the two programs had the same name.

What I meant is that, since it was "the same program" from the
originating company any cross-platform issues proprietary file formats
were a non-issue.

I think I know what you mean, and I don't buy it as a general principle, but
I'm not willing to do the research required in order to provide specifics.
Thanks for clarifying.

On 5/24/2015 4:08 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
I was attempting to (subtly) point out that, although a software package
might be released for two or more platforms, it's not a foregone conclusion
that those two packages will be 100% identical. In fact, they usually
aren't.

Although I have seen some problems in special cases over the years, it's
pretty rare that cross-platform programs have incompatible file formats.
--
best regards,

Neil

On 5/24/2015 4:10 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 13:40:40 -0400, Neil wrote:

On 5/23/2015 10:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 07:28:17 -0500, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/22/15 10:29 AM, Neil Gould wrote:
I know that folks can run software on non-standard OSes. The
question is, is it worth it (The answer is already determined by the
marketplace)?

In those days, the Atari file format and the PC file format for Word
Perfect were the same.

That is because it was the same program!

Didn't the Atari and the PC have completely different CPUs and memory
structures? How would the same program run in both environments?

Unless you only meant to say that the two programs had the same name.

What I meant is that, since it was "the same program" from the
originating company any cross-platform issues proprietary file formats
were a non-issue.

I think I know what you mean, and I don't buy it as a general principle, but
I'm not willing to do the research required in order to provide specifics.
Thanks for clarifying.

I have seen cross-platform programs that have differing capabilities,
such as being able to incorporate files that are unique to each
platform, but in such cases, their files were still able to be read on
the other platform with the unique content either omitted or with
placeholder code instead.

As you say, it's really not worth the effort to be more specific than that.

--
best regards,

Neil

On 5/24/15 2:03 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 09:48:07 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:

When I wrote the comment, I was thinking of a situation where a group of
people are collaborating on a project, and need to create a report,
plan, drawings, something as a group, not as individuals.

Only one person should have control of the document creation. You
preferably or someone writes the original. Create a PDF from the
original, and send it to the other members individually. They should be
instructed to use the annotation feature to send feedback of what they
would like to see changed. *NO* editing of the original text. That
leaves you with the original text to compare with the changes that
individual wants.

You realize, of course, that when you send a document to someone to solicit
their input, you're generally sending a "copy". Most people wouldn't work on
a document, send a copy to a colleague, delete their local copy, and then
hope for the best. ;-)

G Yep. What would usually happen for me was someone would delete the
original text and simply insert their text, leaving me with nothing to
compare.


Sophisticated word processors have the ability to manage edits,
tracking, etc. Been there, done that, and more often than not, the end
product was deficient and/or in error somewhere.

I worked for a large corporation as a network design engineer in a cube farm
for 10 years, and we collaborated on our design documents using Word (XP,
2003, then 2007). One person was responsible for the document and would
write the bulk of it, then send copies around for collaborative editing,
using Word's Track Changes feature. I can't recall a single instance of
errors or deficiencies when using that approach, but our documents were
probably smaller than what you're used to. A large-ish document for us was
about 400 pages, with 80-120 full page Visio diagrams and numerous tables,
charts, and graphs. There was a standard TOC, a TOC for the diagrams and
illustrations, an index, footnotes, a references section, etc.

Those are larger docs than what I dealt with. But I suspect the most
likely cause for the problems were too many people involved simply did
not know how to use the tracking feature. Coupled with no clear
guidelines about what to do, what not to do, etc., it was a recipe for
disaster.

At one point, a senior engineer joined a sister team and decided he'd do
things his own way. He still created his documents in Word, but he'd send
copies of a locked PDF, expecting the rest of us to email him with any
changes we'd like to see. I think everyone played along with him, but I
would simply unlock his PDF, dump the text into Word, make my edits, export
it back to PDF and send it back to him, locked, of course. After about the
third time, he made a visit to my cube. From then on, he sent me Word docs,
just like everyone else. ;-)

G Well, he did it slightly different than I would. Don't email me
with a list of suggestions, annotate the file and return it. That way I
have the original and suggestions in one place.

If you pulled that with me? You'd find your suggestions would not be as
well received or accepted. Team players all abide by the rules.
Period. Seen to many issues when someone goes off in their only little
world, thinking the rules don't apply to them.

In another post you mentioned having issues with Word 2002 (part of Office
XP), but I never saw that. I started using Word at 2.6, I believe, but that
was too long ago for me to have any distinct memories. Starting with Word 6,
(the next version after 2.x), I never ran into stability issues.

It's been long enough back, I don't remember any details. But far too
often, Word simply crashed trashing the document. Sometimes the
recovery system would save me, but often I had to strip all the
formatting, then reformat, before adding new text. And these weren't
terribly long docs, either. Never figured it out before Word 2003 arrived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microso...elease_history



--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"