MacTech 1 to 12/MacTech-vol-1-12.toast/Source/MacTech® Magazine/Volume 03 - 1987/03.08 Aug 87/misc word 3.0 bug posts

Text File | 1987-07-02 | 17.2 KB | 333 lines | [TEXT/EDIT]

Here is a report of Word users and their findings.  Myself, I have
found a bomb every other day.  Today I bombed during a 'Save Glossary'?
I clicked on yes, and bomb.  Yesterday I pasted into the Header and
bomb, same with the Footer.  This one bombs every time.

Oh well, here's what the rest of us say.
Jim Reekes

======================================================================

Microsoft Word 3.0 is not a bad product.  But it certainly isn't the product
I'm reading about in all the rags.  I think 3.05 might be, but they
certainly didn't ship ME the software all the reviewers are drooling over.

this is a quick list of the problems I know about from reading delphi, here,
and talking to folks (if you don't care, stop now):

o Bombs with ID=84 (purged menu) in short memory situation.  Evidently an
        optimizer went overboard somewhere and set something purgeable they
        shouldn't.

o If you open and close lots of files, Word can hang, forcing a reboot.

o Word leaves lots of temp files in various places (have you looked in your
        System folder recently?)

o the spell checker is primitive, and I think it is buggy -- I've seen it
        let words through that I don't see HOW they could be in the
        dictionary, but I haven't had time to track this. It is not quite
        bad enough for me to re-load Spellswell (a mediocre spellchecker in
        the WP is better than a separate application, but ask me again after
        I get 2 Meg and load them both into switcher) but close.

o the outliner is useless.  Thank god for Acta.

o If you're running a LW, and switch to manual feed, Word STAYS on manual
        feed, rather than switching back to tray feed.  You have to switch
        it back manually.  This is different from every other application
        in the world, and has to be considered a bug.

o I've had it randomly switch back from landscape mode to portrait mode
        when my back was turned.  Not sure how or why.

o The menu modification is neat, but woefully limited.  You can't add all
        the menu items you might want, especially in the font and style
        areas. foo.  And you can only change certain menus -- if you never
        plan on using the outliner, for instance, you can't pull it from the
        menu.  A neat feature half done.

o They mucked with all the dialog boxes, especially for page setup and
        printing. And they are all so crowded as to be basically impossible
        to read.  Try to bring up Page Setup and quickly see if you are in
        portrait or landscape mode.  Then get asprin for eyestrain.  whoever
        'designed' the dialog boxes has no sense for user interface.
        They're ugly.

o Word isn't just unhelpful if you're trying to use a file format other than
        3.0, it is downright antagonistic.  Since all layout programs need
        to be revised to read the new file format, if you want to import
        into PageMaker or RSG, you need to save stuff in 1.05 format.  When
        you open a 1.05 file, it converts it, and turns it into an Untitled
        file.  When you save it, you have to go in and change the file
        format, then tell it YES DAMMIT I DO WANT TO OVERWRITE THE STUPID
        FILE and then it saves it and TURNS THE WINDOW BACK INTO AN UNTITLED
        WINDOW.  If you save it as a word 1.05 file and then immediately
        close it, it ASKS YOU IF YOU WANT TO SAVE IT. (do this on 15 files,
        one after another, and you can understand why I'm a bit ticked.
        This liturgy gets old, fast).  Why Microsoft doesn't allow a default
        file format to be defined (and WHY won't they remember that I
        clicked the stupid "Make Backup" box?  It is basically useless,
        since I have to remember to use 'save as' to make a backup every
        time.  Once I set it, it should STAY SET.)

o And yes, converting 1.05 files to 3.0 seems okay, but going the other way
        has problems.

o I've yet to figure out how to redefine styles, despite their mountains of
        documentation.  Delete the old style, redefine it, and store the new
        version under the old name.  Of course, when you do, any stlyes that
        depend on the style you deleted get mucked up...

o They changed a number of keyboard commands. You now can't get a glossary
        entry without the mouse, since you can't type the glossary name
        and then hit the keystroke to activate it - you now activate the
        glossary and type the glossary name down in the corner.

chuq
Chuq Von Rospach        [e-mail]            [I don't read flames]

Subject: Word 3.0 - bugs and anomalies

Following are several bugs and/or anomalies in MS Word 3.0.  My various
telephone conversations with MicroSoft indicate that they are aware of all
of these problems.

1.  The most important problem is that the appliction can simply freeze
during a "Save As" command.  I have not yet determined exactly the
conditions that produces the freeze, but, just after 100% arises in the
lower left-hand box, nothing more happens.  The watch cursor remains and
can be moved with the mouse, but no other response is forthcoming.  This
behavior would suggest the problem to be an infinite loop (including
SystemUpdate) rather than a real freeze up.  The results are just as bad,
however, since it can only be corrected with a reset with the potential for
a serious information loss.  Again, this happens (so far) only with the
"Save As" command; I have not had it happen with "Save".

2.  The "Save any Changes?" box that occurs when you Quit Word is
ambiguous, or can be, as to its consequences.  If you forget during the
session whether you've made any changes to a glossary or the dictionary,
you can easily get into a situation where you can loose information
regarless of whether you answer "yes" or "no".  Suppose you make changes in
the dictionary, for example, and alter the document.  Suppose further that
you later forget the dictionary changes, which you nevertheless want to
save, but don't want to save the changes to the document.  Upon quitting,
you will get "Save any Changes?"  Having forgotten the dicitonary, if you
answer no, you'll loose everything.
  Or, suppose you've made changes to the document, which you don't want to
keep and you forget whether a dicitionary change has been made but in
fact none has been.  Now, if you answer "yes" to see what further saves
come up, it will simply save the document (which you don't want) without
giving any further chance.

3.  The LaserWriter driver is stupid about copy numbers.  When you make
more than one copy, it does so by making the first copy, and then
completely reinitializing to make each subsequent copy.  You will, of
course, loose your place in the queue between each copy.  This was a
silliness of Word 1.0 that was fixed in 1.05.  Why it should be with us
again in inexplicable.  The guy on the phone indicated he thought they were
working on a new LW driver.  Let's hope so.

4.  Word 3.0 seems incompatible with RamStart.  Placing the system in a
ramdisk results in frequent crashes (ID 02).  This suggests that Word
somehow doesn't respect the bounds of the RamDisk while it is writing its
Temp files, which are directed to the Blessed Folder.  They know about
this, but who knows when or how it will be fixed.  I have only had
personal experience with RamStart.  I do not know if the same type of
problem occurs with other Ram Disk applications.  I would appreciate any
evidence that may arise.

Otherwise, I think the application is fantastic.  Unfortunately, it is less
tolerant of WhackHack use than was Word 1.05.  One must really spend time
with the reference manual, and it is clear that means one must **really**
spend time.  For serious use, however, it is worth it.  There is much about
its use that does not become naturally obvious from usual operation.

david a. belsley
boston college          [e-mail]


Subject: Import bug in Word 3.0

As Microsoft now apparently admits this problem exists ( I wasn't the one
who called them, though I've been bitten) I thought it would be of general
interest to all the new Word 3.0 owners: There is a problem with importing
Word 1.00/1.05 files which have fancy paragraphing information, e.g. extra
spaces after paragraphs. The "Untitled" document created upon import is
left in some kind of inconsistent state with respect to the paragraphing
information, such that, for instance, the on-screen interparagraph
spacing will not concur with that when printed. Direct attempts to reset
the spacing may appear to work, and the problem can resurface later. My
proposed fix, which is slow but works, is to output the file in RTF format,
and then reimport it, as this forces the document to be consistent in its
paragraph information. A faster and easier fix which Microsoft now recommends
is to immediately do a SHIFT-Repaginate (forced full repagination) after
importing the document, before doing anything else, which doesn't hurt
and is supposed to correct the problem. Hope this saves everyone some grief.
-Barry Eynon


As I read it, the documented procedure seems to work:

Pull up "define styles," select the style to be redefined, then go through
whatever machinations are needed to describe what you now want. Click on
"define," and all instances of that style are updated with the new definition.

>o They changed a number of keyboard commands. You now can't get a glossary
>       entry without the mouse, since you can't type the glossary name
>       and then hit the keystroke to activate it - you now activate the
>       glossary and type the glossary name down in the corner.

Right, but command-backspace (the same old keychord) also prompts for
glossary name; only the sequence has changed (keys, _then_ name).

I learned both of these things the hard way last night, and hope I have
the details right (the Mac is at home), but both can definitely be done.

Cheers, Pc^2


Dear fellow netters!

I just can't believe this. Just paid $99 to upgrade from version 1.05 to
version 3.0 of MS Word, and after two weeks of intensive usage I must
confessed that I am appalled by the behavior of this program...
Here are a couple of features I think shouldn't occur in a $395 piece of
software (some packages at one-tenth the price are just as powerful and
handle some of these better, e.g. SuperPaint):

1) Why the &*%$# does Word 3.0 leave a large number of Temporary files
   in the System, and other folders....? From time to time I have to
   drag half a dozen of them in the trash...!
2) A terrible problem in version 1.05 has only partially be fixed: leading.
   In one used more than one type (or style or size) of font on one line
   in the old version, the spacing (leading) between lines [and I mean here
   the space between the BASELINES] became irregular. Now one can set the line
   spacing to a negative value to 'force' MS Word to retain constant spacing.
   Unfortunately this does not work correctly in all cases. It is still
   possible to have irregular spacing by changing fonts (in some cases) with
   a negative line spacing.
   [By the way: even PageMaker suffers from this problem! Only MacWrite 4.5 (!)
   seems to be able to handle this fully. Irregular line spacing is totally
   *unacceptable* in professional publications. Since papers in science
   involve many symbols, as well as many sub- and superscripts, this leads
   to results that are not satisfactory for offset publishing].
3) The documentation claims it can even by used for Page Layout, by allowing
   text and graphics to be mixed, even on one line. It does indeed allow
   that, but , unfortunately again, it doesn't handle PICT graphics as it
   should. Try pasting a drawing made in MacDraw into Word, reduce it to
   some fraction of its original size (say 30%) and print it on a LaserWriter.
   You will notice (yuk!) that it retains the *original line thicknesses*!
   [Pagemaker handles this one correctly, although it introduces other
   problems] If one reduces or enlarges a drawing, in my humble opinion,
   *everything* should scale the same way! It looks real bad as it is now.
   Again MacWrite handles this one better.
4) The spelling checker is totally worthless in any scientific writing. It
   is not interactive (I have no problem with that, I prefer to check after
   wards), but it forces one to go over the text misspelling by misspelling!
   If the text involves many mathematical expressions this becomes very
   tiring indeed. In addition it is relatively slow, so that one has a tendence
   to click the 'next' button a little to quickly, which leads to inadvertent
   skipping of real spelling mistakes. Useless.
5) When it prints, indexes or makes a table of contents of multiple linked
   documents (nice feature), it insists on opening all of the files (why not
   open them sequentially?). With very large documents I guess this might
   lead to memory problems [in fact this happened on several occasions with
   a prerelease version] But I have to admit that it has worked fine so
   far for documents < 60 pages. What makes this feature less useful though
   is that one has to set the starting pagenumber *individually* for each
   linked document... That is really the kind of thing a computer ought to
   do!
6) Here's what triggered this article (thank you for your patience if you
   read this far): Try printing a single page document, preferably with some
   graphics, and request multiple copies. I'm talking about the LaserWriter.
   This unbelievable program treats each copy as an individual job, i.e.
   it processes the page, prints it, then processes the page again, and
   prints it, then processes the page AGAIN, and prints it. With some
   complicated graphics the wait is excruciating! I'm amazed by the patience
   of my Macintosh! If you are still able to smile after printing that one
   page document, now try requesting 2 (just two) copies of a 60 page
   document... Sit back and relax... for a long time. If first prints out
   copy 1 of your 60 page document and then starts all over again!Aaarrrgghh!

I'm still using it. It has quite a collection of very nice features. But
unfortunately much more room for urgent improvements than one would hope to
find in software in this price range. Please don't send me mail saying that
I should use this or that processor, or that I should use TeX for mathematical
and scientific processing. I know, I know, I've heard it many times before.
I just wanted to say that I'm amazed to find such obvious and annoying
features/bugs in the release version of 'the most powerful word processing
available for any personal computer' (ipse dixit). The result is unfortunately
not (yet) 'polished, high-quality documents you can be proud of'.


Eric Mazur


Summary: When does Word 3.05 come out?

        Here are some more Word 3.0 bugs.  (Previously, I mentioned that
the word "hoses" appears in the dictionary, but is flagged as mispelled
when the spelling is checked)

        1) The program will not work unless it can find a finder, even
        if you set startup to be Word.  It does not recognize the
        minifinder as a substitute.  To get around this, rename the
        minifinder as Finder.  (Using a disk utility, Finder will not
        let you do this)

        2)If the header extends to the left of the margin, you cannot
        simply edit it, because you can't use the scroll bars to get to
        it.  The work-around--select a tab, then move it to the left.
        The ruler and the rest of the header will then scroll, revealing
        the hidden text.


                David Palmer
                [e-mail]

The three rules of video ergonomics:
        1)if you can see the pixels, it's too crude.
        2)if you can see the edges, it's too small
        3)If you don't get a tan, it's too dim

From: [e-mail] (Tony Jacobs)
Subject: Re: Still more Word 3.0 bugs
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 25 Mar 87 15:00:42 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 10
In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (David Robin
son) writes:
>
>       2)If the header extends to the left of the margin, you cannot
>       simply edit it, because you can't use the scroll bars to get to
>       it...

If you hold down the shift key while pressing on the scroll arrow, it will
let you scroll to the left of zero.

By the way, are there any other Word 3.0 Beta testers out there that MicroSoft
seemed to ignore their advice about some of these "bugs?"


Date: Mon, 23 Mar 87 10:29:55 EST
From: Mark Nodine <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: MS Word 3.0 problems

Folks, before you panic about MS Word 3.0 not being able to do all the
printing tricks you are used to, try holding down the shift key while you
select Page Setup... and Print....

In the case of the imagewriter, there is a choice for Tall Adjusted in the
Shift-Page Setup... dialog box.  Printing multiple copies on a Laserwriter
without having to re-image each page can be done by setting the number of
copies in the Shift-Print... dialog box (and having the number of copies in
the normal Print dialog box set to 1).  Note: Word 3.0 does not print when
you hit OK after a Shift-Print....  You have to do a real Print... first.

 Mark