My book editor and I are going crazy trying to track changes in our
drafts using Microsoft Word on Mac OS X. The program has some absurd
bugs, or perhaps conflicts with other software, that cause a variety
of problems including:
Tracking-text color changes for no apparent reason, creating the
impression that yet another person is working on the copy;
Overwritten text where strike-outs and insertions should appear;
Corrupted files that caused Entourage to misbehave when I tried to
send a file.
The first two are mainly annoying, though they consume time I don't
really have. Microsoft tech support offered a workaround (use RTF
only) for the last one, and charged me $35 for the tip.
If I had any realistic alternative I'd grab it, though we're too far
into this book to start fresh now. For future reference, any
suggestions? Post a comment or send me e-mail at dgillmor@mercurynews.com. The only crucial
requirement is the ability to track our changes and save as a
Word-readable file.
Microsoft Word's Baroque era05/20/2004 08:41 PM For those of us working primarily on the Web, Microsoft Word's various
"Smart" features (smart quotes, auto correct, auto format, etc.) have
always been hydras whose heads one had to repeatedly lop off. Even if
you didn't work in Word yourself, colleagues would submit copy
composed in it, and you'd have to deal with the problem of introducing
junk characters. Some of us have become reasonably familiar with
exactly which boxes and buttons you need to press to "web-safe" a Word
installation.
Smart Buttons, descended from a similar feature in Word for Windows,
are tiny pop-up menus that appear in your text whenever Word has
something to offer you. For example, one appears whenever Word
auto-formats something you've typed (a chronic sore spot with
Microsoft customers): turning a Web address into a difficult-to-edit
Web link, for example, or automatically numbering a list. You've
always been able to turn off these intrusions in a dialog box or undo
individual changes by pressing Command-Z. But Smart Tags put "Undo"
and "Stop doing this" commands right in front of you where you can't
miss them.
I broke out laughing when I read this. Consider the baroque logic:
Microsoft has now reached that rarefied state of software existence in
which it can offer "improvements" in the form of new features that
make it easier to turn off those annoying "improvements" of yesteryear
that were hitherto too difficult to discard!
But how deep within Word's menus must one hunt to turn off "Smart
Buttons" if they get annoying? And is anyone at Microsoft going
to flip the page of the newspaper section in which Pogue's review
appears and read "A
Design Epiphany: Keep It Simple"?
A word's worth: cash, if it clicks
A word's worth: cash, if it clicks11/15/2003 07:49 PM Advertisers bid on millions of search terms that are auctioned
constantly, around the clock, by Overture, Google and other search
engines. ...
Getting over the language barrier
usually requires the services of a human translator, but handheld
computers are getting powerful enough, and speech recognition software
accurate enough, that travelers, soldiers and aid workers in foreign
countries could soon have automatic speech translation in hand. A
prototype Arabic-English medical translator is a significant milestone
on the long road to universal translation.
Google IPO translates into multiple billions (SiliconValley.com)
Google IPO translates into multiple billions (SiliconValley.com)05/06/2004 01:17 PM SiliconValley.com - The 1,900 employees of Google could be forgiven
for getting giddy over the company's plans to sell its stock to the
public for the first time. Some of them are going to get very, very
rich -- at least on paper.
German Buys Rights to Communist East German Emblem (Reuters)
German Buys Rights to Communist East German Emblem (Reuters)04/21/2004 10:02 AM Reuters - A western German businessman who bought
the rights to the official emblem of communist East Germany
defended his move Tuesday, saying critics were jealous they
hadn't thought of it before he did.
Easy-to-Spot Air Security Might Be Easy Target (Los Angeles Times)
Easy-to-Spot Air Security Might Be Easy Target (Los Angeles Times)05/31/2004 05:38 AM Los Angeles Times - WASHINGTON — As they settled into first
class on American Airlines Flight 1438 from Chicago to Miami, they
were supposed to be the last line of defense against terrorists
— two highly trained U.S. air marshals who would sit unnoticed
among the ordinary travelers but spring into action at the first sign
of trouble.
Fully Featured German Webspace and Customizable .de Domain Registration Services at Retail Rates Provided to End Users by German - Ukrainian Co-operation MZL & Novatech
Easy Come, Easy Go: Antigua Loses To US Over Gambling
Easy Come, Easy Go: Antigua Loses To US Over Gambling04/07/2005 05:39 PM Antigua has been battling the US for some time over the US's ban on
online gambling. For many years, Antigua-based online casinos have
run into problems with US laws. Two years ago, they went to the
WTO claiming that the US ban on online gambling was a
violation of a fair trade agreement the two nations had signed.
It took the WTO almost exactly one year to point out that Antig
ua was probably right. Of course, that wasn't acceptable for
politicians who seem to think gambling is pure evil (except, of
course, when it contributes to local tax coffers) -- so, while they
planned to ignore the ruling completely (we're the US, we don't follow
international rulings unless we agree with them), they did file an
appeal, just for fun. It turns out that appeal worked, and the WTO
has changed its mind, saying that banning
gambling is a "moral issue," and therefore not subject to the fair
trade agreement the two nations signed. So, sorry for all you online
gambling addicts in the US, but you're back to breaking the law again.
Backup Hard Drives: CMS ABSplus And Maxtor OneTouch Offer Easy Backup And Easy Storage
Backup Hard Drives: CMS ABSplus And Maxtor OneTouch Offer Easy Backup And Easy Storage12/19/2003 11:33 AM Both drives do a fine job of simplifying backup and providing external
storage space. The ABSplus is a focused backup device that's easy to
use, right out of the box, for backup and restoration, whereas
Maxtor's cheaper and quieter drive is better for people who want extra
disk space and more backup flexibility. By Adam Engst (Macworld via
MyAppleMenu)
Shift in focus?04/30/2004 03:02 PM CNET Asia Apr 30 2004 6:13PM GMT
Fix broken shift+down/up/8/= in X11 and KDE
Fix broken shift+down/up/8/= in X11 and KDE04/19/2004 10:58 AM I had the following X11 keymap problem in KDE applications like Kate
(Emacs, xterm, and xev all exhibited the expected behavior):If I
pressed Shift+Down, it acted as if I'd pressed Shift+Left.
If I pressed Shift+Up, nothing h...
Indian shift
Indian shift12/30/2003 09:58 PM CNET Asia Dec 30 2003 7:52PM ET
Paradigm shift
Paradigm shift06/30/2004 01:04 AM Reading through Tim O’Reilly’s articles is always fun.
Not that I mean any disrespect to the man himself (after all,
I’ve never met him), but sometimes I do wonder where he gets his
ideas from. The article I am looking at right now uses the concept of
“paradigm shift” ...
Rally Shift
Rally Shift03/08/2004 11:24 PM A lot of the elements that make other games in this genre entertaining
are absent. By Perry Longinotti (Inside Mac Games via MyAppleMenu)
Rally Shift 1.0
Rally Shift 1.002/19/2004 12:00 AM Take the seat in high performance rally cars.
Other: IBM Strategy Shift
Other: IBM Strategy Shift02/05/2005 09:01 PM
Apple's G5 chip-maker made some critical strategy choices when things
were going poorly.
Media Made Easy Announces the Availability of the Media Made Easy Media Center PC
Shift From Traditional War Seen at Pentagon (washingtonpost.com)
Shift From Traditional War Seen at Pentagon (washingtonpost.com)09/02/2004 11:34 PM washingtonpost.com - Top Pentagon officials are considering a new,
long-term strategy that shifts spending and resources away from
large-scale warfare to build more agile, specialized forces for
fighting guerrilla wars, confronting terrorism and handling less
conventional threats, officials said yesterday.
DoCoMo Set to Shift Focus- UPDATE
DoCoMo Set to Shift Focus- UPDATE05/14/2004 03:21 AM Wireless Watch Japan May 14 2004 7:03AM GMT Grok Description matches for Word's propensity to shift into German translates into easy fix GrokA matches for Word's propensity to shift into German translates into easy fix
Word's propensity to shift into German translates into easy fix
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
