On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:54:51 +0300, Michael S wrote:
There are few things Intel would wish more than to "suffer"
financially like Microsoft.
It is true that Microsoft is not (yet) losing money, ...
According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>:
On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:54:51 +0300, Michael S wrote:
There are few things Intel would wish more than to "suffer"
financially like Microsoft.
It is true that Microsoft is not (yet) losing money, ...
Windows is shrinking but Azure and both commercial and personal Office
are hugely profitable.
I think MS has long ago stopped viewing desktop Windows as a cash cow.
But it still gets in a lot of money from server versions, as well as
server software such as MS SQL server. (The client access licences for
these cost far more than Windows desktop ever did.) Their main cash
cow, I believe, is subscriptions to Office365 and associated software
where they have a near-monopoly for business use. (I expect Azure and >everything there also makes money, but it has to compete with other
cloud companies.)
On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:41:50 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>:
On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:54:51 +0300, Michael S wrote:
There are few things Intel would wish more than to "suffer"
financially like Microsoft.
It is true that Microsoft is not (yet) losing money, ...
Windows is shrinking but Azure and both commercial and personal Office
are hugely profitable.
That’s not disputing anything I said.
No mention of games?
They say that last year, server products and cloud services were $98B,
Office products and cloud services were $55B Windows was $23B Games was
$22B Linkedin was $16B Other stuff was about $30B together
So yes, they're making a lot of money from Windows, but they're making
more from Azure. It's competetive but they're surprisingly good at it.
It appears that Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> said:
On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:41:50 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>:
It is true that Microsoft is not (yet) losing money, ...
Windows is shrinking but Azure and both commercial and personal Office
are hugely profitable.
That’s not disputing anything I said.
Microsoft is stupendously profitable.
On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 20:37:01 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
It appears that Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> said:
On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:41:50 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>:
It is true that Microsoft is not (yet) losing money, ...
Windows is shrinking but Azure and both commercial and personal Office >>>> are hugely profitable.
That’s not disputing anything I said.
Microsoft is stupendously profitable.
Take a closer look at what they’re profitable *in*. Microsoft 365 (not “Office” any more) is a rentware business. Azure is also a service business. And look at Windows itself, with attempts to insert adware/ rentware mechanisms into the OS. So you see this move away from one-off products sales towards ongoing payments.
Which is a classic sign of a company trying to squeeze more and more
revenue out of a stagnant or declining user base.
According to David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>:
I think MS has long ago stopped viewing desktop Windows as a cash cow.
But it still gets in a lot of money from server versions, as well as
server software such as MS SQL server. (The client access licences for
these cost far more than Windows desktop ever did.) Their main cash
cow, I believe, is subscriptions to Office365 and associated software
where they have a near-monopoly for business use. (I expect Azure and
everything there also makes money, but it has to compete with other
cloud companies.)
They say that last year, server products and cloud services were $98B,
Office products and cloud services were $55B
Windows was $23B
Games was $22B
Linkedin was $16B
Other stuff was about $30B together
So yes, they're making a lot of money from Windows, but they're making
more from Azure. It's competetive but they're surprisingly good at it.
No, it is a classic sign of a company that has found a way to get a
fairly stable revenue stream with a predictable path for the future.
When their main income was selling Windows and Office licenses, they
were dependent on a continuously increasing market - that model was
doomed as they approached saturation. A subscription model does not
have such limitations, even if the user base is not growing
significantly.
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
No, it is a classic sign of a company that has found a way to get a
fairly stable revenue stream with a predictable path for the future.
When their main income was selling Windows and Office licenses, they
were dependent on a continuously increasing market - that model was
doomed as they approached saturation. A subscription model does not
have such limitations, even if the user base is not growing
significantly.
1996 MSDC Moscone, all the banners said "Internet" ... but the constant refrain in the sessions were protect your investment (data file embedded
VS Basic automagic execution, evolved in the days of small, safe,
business LANs ... but no new protections opening networking to the wild anarchy of the internet).
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and
the company wasn't sure what to do next).
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and
the company wasn't sure what to do next).
In particular, MS has not added anything I want in Office since 2003 and
in the OS in particular since 2005. Windows 7 is still better than
windows 10 or 11 or 12...
MS would make more money by allowing old OSs to keep running and sent
the employees home...
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest
releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the
releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and
the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft
Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
Think about it. ;)
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:44:48 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest
releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the >>> releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and
the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft
Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
I bought a hammer in 1977, I can still use it today...
As far as I know, the only feature I use (and an unnecessary one) is
the coloring of URL text blue and underlining it, that was added this century.
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:01:34 +0000, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
In particular, MS has not added anything I want in Office since 2003 and
in the OS in particular since 2005. Windows 7 is still better than
windows 10 or 11 or 12...
Would you entrust mission-criticial business operations to obsolete, unsupported software?
Open-source software is more responsive to community needs.
MS would make more money by allowing old OSs to keep running and sent
the employees home...
They’re going to charge businesses who want to stick with Windows 10 a steadily increasing support fee. Charging lots of money to those who want
to stick with old versions of your proprietary software sounds like a business model with a much more promising future, don’t you think?
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest
releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the
releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and
the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
Think about it. ;)
On 20/09/2024 01:47, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:01:34 +0000, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
In particular, MS has not added anything I want in Office since
2003 and in the OS in particular since 2005. Windows 7 is still
better than windows 10 or 11 or 12...
Would you entrust mission-criticial business operations to obsolete, unsupported software?
His suggestion was to /continue/ the support and updates for existing systems, rather than making new ones.
But would /I/ trust mission-critical business operations to Windows 7
over Windows 11 ? Well, I wouldn't trust it to anything Windows, but
I certainly trust Windows 7 more than Windows 10 or 11. The more
useless crap added to the system, the more scope it has for failures
or security issues. (The only Windows systems I currently have are
Windows 7.)
I am not sure I can think of anything I want to do on Windows, and
which I can do with Windows 11 that I could not do with Windows 2000
- excluding running programs that refuse to run on earlier systems
without good reason, or hardware that does not have drivers for older systems. (In Mitch's dream world where MS continued to support old
systems, those would not be issues.) There are a few things that
newer Windows does better than older ones - it makes better use of
more ram and more cores, for example.
Open-source software is more responsive to community needs.
Absolutely. It is not perfect either, but it is a lot better in many
ways.
MS would make more money by allowing old OSs to keep running and
sent the employees home...
They’re going to charge businesses who want to stick with Windows
10 a steadily increasing support fee. Charging lots of money to
those who want to stick with old versions of your proprietary
software sounds like a business model with a much more promising
future, don’t you think?
MS can't make a business from supporting old software. While there
is a proportion of more technical people who are happy with "if it
ain't broke, don't fix it", a much larger proportion of potential
purchasers are in the "the latest is greatest" camp.
On 20/09/2024 01:47, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:01:34 +0000, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
In particular, MS has not added anything I want in Office since
2003 and in the OS in particular since 2005. Windows 7 is still
better than windows 10 or 11 or 12...
Would you entrust mission-criticial business operations to obsolete, unsupported software?
His suggestion was to /continue/ the support and updates for existing systems, rather than making new ones.
But would /I/ trust mission-critical business operations to Windows 7
over Windows 11 ? Well, I wouldn't trust it to anything Windows, but
I certainly trust Windows 7 more than Windows 10 or 11. The more
useless crap added to the system, the more scope it has for failures
or security issues. (The only Windows systems I currently have are
Windows 7.)
I am not sure I can think of anything I want to do on Windows, and
which I can do with Windows 11 that I could not do with Windows 2000
- excluding running programs that refuse to run on earlier systems
without good reason, or hardware that does not have drivers for older systems. (In Mitch's dream world where MS continued to support old
systems, those would not be issues.) There are a few things that
newer Windows does better than older ones - it makes better use of
more ram and more cores, for example.
Open-source software is more responsive to community needs.
Absolutely. It is not perfect either, but it is a lot better in many
ways.
MS would make more money by allowing old OSs to keep running and
sent the employees home...
They’re going to charge businesses who want to stick with Windows
10 a steadily increasing support fee. Charging lots of money to
those who want to stick with old versions of your proprietary
software sounds like a business model with a much more promising
future, don’t you think?
MS can't make a business from supporting old software. While there
is a proportion of more technical people who are happy with "if it
ain't broke, don't fix it", a much larger proportion of potential
purchasers are in the "the latest is greatest" camp.
On 20/09/2024 01:47, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:01:34 +0000, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
In particular, MS has not added anything I want in Office since 2003 and >>> in the OS in particular since 2005. Windows 7 is still better than
windows 10 or 11 or 12...
Would you entrust mission-criticial business operations to obsolete,
unsupported software?
His suggestion was to /continue/ the support and updates for existing systems, rather than making new ones.
But would /I/ trust mission-critical business operations to Windows 7
over Windows 11 ? Well, I wouldn't trust it to anything Windows, but I certainly trust Windows 7 more than Windows 10 or 11. The more useless
crap added to the system, the more scope it has for failures or security issues. (The only Windows systems I currently have are Windows 7.)
I am not sure I can think of anything I want to do on Windows, and which
I can do with Windows 11 that I could not do with Windows 2000 -
excluding running programs that refuse to run on earlier systems without
good reason, or hardware that does not have drivers for older systems.
(In Mitch's dream world where MS continued to support old systems, those would not be issues.) There are a few things that newer Windows does
better than older ones - it makes better use of more ram and more cores,
for example.
Open-source software is more responsive to community needs.
Absolutely. It is not perfect either, but it is a lot better in many ways.
MS would make more money by allowing old OSs to keep running and sent
the employees home...
They’re going to charge businesses who want to stick with Windows 10 a
steadily increasing support fee. Charging lots of money to those who want
to stick with old versions of your proprietary software sounds like a
business model with a much more promising future, don’t you think?
MS can't make a business from supporting old software. While there is a proportion of more technical people who are happy with "if it ain't
broke, don't fix it", a much larger proportion of potential purchasers
are in the "the latest is greatest" camp.
- I don't know if
MS Office can yet make good pdfs (with table of contents, clickable
links, etc., but if so, it's recent).
On 9/20/2024 5:02 AM, David Brown wrote:
- I don't know if
MS Office can yet make good pdfs (with table of contents, clickable
links, etc., but if so, it's recent).
Yes, it can. I don't know in which version it was added, but you're
right, it was post 2000.
On Fri, 20 Sep 2024 16:44:17 +0000, Stephen Fuld wrote:
On 9/20/2024 5:02 AM, David Brown wrote:
- I don't know if
MS Office can yet make good pdfs (with table of contents, clickable
links, etc., but if so, it's recent).
Yes, it can. I don't know in which version it was added, but you're
right, it was post 2000.
It is present in "Student Office 2003"
... the new formula editor is better than the old one,
especially since you can paste LaTeX source into it.
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:44:48 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest >>>> releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the >>>> releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and >>>> the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft
Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
I bought a hammer in 1977, I can still use it today...
As far as I know, the only feature I use (and an unnecessary one) is
the coloring of URL text blue and underlining it, that was added this
century.
I don't use it daily (that would be Saturdays and Sundays, too)
but often enough - the new formula editor is better than the
old one, especially since you can paste LaTeX source into it.
To make up for it, the new method of writing equation references
is braindead.
But bricking the old formula editor... that was Not Nice (TM).
On 20/09/2024 07:53, Thomas Koenig wrote:
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:44:48 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest >>>>> releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the >>>>> releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and >>>>> the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft
Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
I bought a hammer in 1977, I can still use it today...
As far as I know, the only feature I use (and an unnecessary one) is
the coloring of URL text blue and underlining it, that was added this
century.
I don't use it daily (that would be Saturdays and Sundays, too)
but often enough - the new formula editor is better than the
old one, especially since you can paste LaTeX source into it.
To make up for it, the new method of writing equation references
is braindead.
But bricking the old formula editor... that was Not Nice (TM).
To me, the answer is just to use LaTeX.
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> schrieb:
On 20/09/2024 07:53, Thomas Koenig wrote:
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:44:48 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest >>>>>> releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the >>>>>> releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and >>>>>> the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft >>>>> Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
I bought a hammer in 1977, I can still use it today...
As far as I know, the only feature I use (and an unnecessary one) is
the coloring of URL text blue and underlining it, that was added this
century.
I don't use it daily (that would be Saturdays and Sundays, too)
but often enough - the new formula editor is better than the
old one, especially since you can paste LaTeX source into it.
To make up for it, the new method of writing equation references
is braindead.
But bricking the old formula editor... that was Not Nice (TM).
To me, the answer is just to use LaTeX.
Not always possible if you're working in a company.
But LaTeX has its own issues; typst can actually be a viable
alternative for some of the things that are difficult with LaTeX,
due to its limitations as a macro on top of TeX (separate BibTeX
runs, for example).
On 23/09/2024 12:24, Thomas Koenig wrote:
But LaTeX has its own issues; typst can actually be a viable
alternative for some of the things that are difficult with LaTeX,
due to its limitations as a macro on top of TeX (separate BibTeX
runs, for example).
Sure, LaTeX has its own challenges. It is not very WYSIWYG, even with
tools like LyX.
Macro programming for LaTeX is not always the simplest
task (though there are packages that make it a lot easier).
And it's
not hard to make a small typo with the result of reams of
incomprehensible errors instead of nice document.
But you can also do a
lot of nice stuff with it, and produce very high quality results. And
unlike word processors or online systems like typst, it's easy to
generate combined sources for LaTeX from other tools -
I've put together
systems using templates, data from logger systems, databases, generated graphs, etc., controlled by Python code to make automatic reports that
are well beyond what can be done with many other tools.
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> schrieb:
On 23/09/2024 12:24, Thomas Koenig wrote:
But LaTeX has its own issues; typst can actually be a viable
alternative for some of the things that are difficult with LaTeX,
due to its limitations as a macro on top of TeX (separate BibTeX
runs, for example).
Sure, LaTeX has its own challenges. It is not very WYSIWYG, even with
tools like LyX.
I wrote my PhD thesis in LaTeX, a few decades ago (plus I snuck
in a few research report in LaTeX, made to look like the Word
templates that were in use at the time).
Macro programming for LaTeX is not always the simplest
task (though there are packages that make it a lot easier).
I always stayed away from that.
And it's
not hard to make a small typo with the result of reams of
incomprehensible errors instead of nice document.
Been there, done that :-)
But you can also do a
lot of nice stuff with it, and produce very high quality results. And
unlike word processors or online systems like typst, it's easy to
generate combined sources for LaTeX from other tools -
I didn't use (and don't particularly recommend) the online, I
use the one that you invoke very much like LaTeX, just use your
favorite text editor and issue the command "typst complile foo.typ".
And because typst actually has a fairly decend command language, many
things that would be torture to write in LaTeX are much easier.
And being able to write a/b instead of \frac{a}{b} _is_ much nicer.
I've put together
systems using templates, data from logger systems, databases, generated
graphs, etc., controlled by Python code to make automatic reports that
are well beyond what can be done with many other tools.
That, you could do as well with typst. It even contains a decent
scripting language, see https://typst.app/docs/reference/scripting/ .
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> schrieb:
To me, the answer is just to use LaTeX.
Not always possible if you're working in a company.
On Mon, 23 Sep 2024 10:24:43 -0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:
David Brown<david.brown@hesbynett.no> schrieb:
To me, the answer is just to use LaTeX.
Not always possible if you're working in a company.
Theres always troff/groff. Remember that the Unix folks at Bell Labs got
the initial funding for their project on the basis of producing a high- quality typesetting system. That system still lives on today.
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual material (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup system.
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
On 24/09/2024 05:05, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
My experience with MS Word (mainly supporting it and helping others) is
that a major missing feature is "can handle large documents without
trashing them or exponential growth of file sizes". Perhaps that's been improved in the last decade or so, but it certainly used to be the case
that any Word document of more than about 20 pages was a gamble. If the
same file was edited by people using different versions of MS Office, or
on machines where the fonts used in the document were not available, you
were pretty much guaranteed disaster.
The most impressive case I have seen of file size explosion was from
Excel, rather than Word. There was a common file on one of our servers
that was used for lists of some type of document and numbers. There
were perhaps a half-dozen people that edited that file on occasion, over
a period of many years. Then someone asked me for help because they
couldn't open the file. It turned out the file was over 600 MB in size.
I opened it with LibreOffice without trouble, saved it again in xlsx format, and it was now about 40 KB and worked fine with Excel again.
Word is okay for quick, short and low-quality documents. It's rare to
see good typography in a Word document because it is a lot of effort, or
at least a lot of effort to learn. You /can/ use outline mode and make
a half-decent structured document, but few people do.
There are, of course, other WYSIWYG tools that do a better job. But
learning to make quality documentation is a skill few people seem to appreciate, regardless of the tools they use.
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
I intensely dislike jpeg drawings in Word. They blow up the
file size and are still limited in resolution. Vector files
are better.
Hmm... a feature that Word has added in the last decade, that is
quite good: It is now possible to import *.svg files.
I have found a convoluted way for creating graphics: Write a
Fortran program that creates PostScript for output. Convert the
PostScript into PDF with a suitable tool, Adobe or ghostscript.
Open the PDF with Inkscape, adjust the bounding box, and save it
as *.svg. Import into Word (or PowerPoint). Ready!
Directly importing PDF into Word is a nightmare, you get blocky
graphics, and nothing works if somebody else uses a different
PDF viewer.
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 8:58:56 +0000, David Brown wrote:
On 24/09/2024 05:05, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
My experience with MS Word (mainly supporting it and helping others) is
that a major missing feature is "can handle large documents without
trashing them or exponential growth of file sizes". Perhaps that's been
improved in the last decade or so, but it certainly used to be the case
that any Word document of more than about 20 pages was a gamble. If the
same file was edited by people using different versions of MS Office, or
on machines where the fonts used in the document were not available, you
were pretty much guaranteed disaster.
I happen to be using Word from Student 2003 CD-ROM
I have used it to create documents up to 500 pages in length
Nobody but me does any editing
These contain:
a) headers and footers
b) Paragraph index
c) Figures index
d) Table index
e) lots of cross references
f) appendixes
But I do notice that when converted to *.pdf the file shrinks by 5×
The most impressive case I have seen of file size explosion was from
Excel, rather than Word. There was a common file on one of our servers
that was used for lists of some type of document and numbers. There
were perhaps a half-dozen people that edited that file on occasion, over
a period of many years. Then someone asked me for help because they
couldn't open the file. It turned out the file was over 600 MB in size.
I opened it with LibreOffice without trouble, saved it again in xlsx
format, and it was now about 40 KB and worked fine with Excel again.
I had one case where I broke my 500 page document into 2 (later 3)
documents that the combined size dropped by a factor of 2.5×. The
original had become large than I could e-mail (and before I discovered
the 5× size advantage of *.pdf.)
Word is okay for quick, short and low-quality documents. It's rare to
see good typography in a Word document because it is a lot of effort, or
at least a lot of effort to learn. You /can/ use outline mode and make
a half-decent structured document, but few people do.
Would you care to read one of mine and address whether is it
"of quality" or not ??
There are, of course, other WYSIWYG tools that do a better job. But
learning to make quality documentation is a skill few people seem to
appreciate, regardless of the tools they use.
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to have
to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
It is now possible to import *.svg files.
I have found a convoluted way for creating graphics: Write a Fortran
program that creates PostScript for output. Convert the PostScript into
PDF with a suitable tool, Adobe or ghostscript. Open the PDF with
Inkscape, adjust the bounding box, and save it as *.svg. Import into
Word (or PowerPoint). Ready!
I have had problems with vector drawings where lines meet they don't.
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 8:58:56 +0000, David Brown wrote:
On 24/09/2024 05:05, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
My experience with MS Word (mainly supporting it and helping others) is
that a major missing feature is "can handle large documents without
trashing them or exponential growth of file sizes". Perhaps that's been
improved in the last decade or so, but it certainly used to be the case
that any Word document of more than about 20 pages was a gamble. If the
same file was edited by people using different versions of MS Office, or
on machines where the fonts used in the document were not available, you
were pretty much guaranteed disaster.
I happen to be using Word from Student 2003 CD-ROM
I have used it to create documents up to 500 pages in length
Nobody but me does any editing
These contain:
a) headers and footers
b) Paragraph index
c) Figures index
d) Table index
e) lots of cross references
f) appendixes
But I do notice that when converted to *.pdf the file shrinks by 5×
The most impressive case I have seen of file size explosion was from
Excel, rather than Word. There was a common file on one of our servers
that was used for lists of some type of document and numbers. There
were perhaps a half-dozen people that edited that file on occasion, over
a period of many years. Then someone asked me for help because they
couldn't open the file. It turned out the file was over 600 MB in size.
I opened it with LibreOffice without trouble, saved it again in xlsx
format, and it was now about 40 KB and worked fine with Excel again.
I had one case where I broke my 500 page document into 2 (later 3)
documents that the combined size dropped by a factor of 2.5×. The
original had become large than I could e-mail (and before I discovered
the 5× size advantage of *.pdf.)
Word is okay for quick, short and low-quality documents. It's rare to
see good typography in a Word document because it is a lot of effort, or
at least a lot of effort to learn. You /can/ use outline mode and make
a half-decent structured document, but few people do.
Would you care to read one of mine and address whether is it
"of quality" or not ??
There are, of course, other WYSIWYG tools that do a better job. But
learning to make quality documentation is a skill few people seem to
appreciate, regardless of the tools they use.
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:38:15 +0000, Thomas Koenig wrote:
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 0:53:14 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Anybody producing large amounts of high-quality, complex textual
material > (e.g. technical documentation) is inevitably going to
have to move beyond WYSIWYG tools and adopt some kind of markup
system.
I disagree.
Word is just fine as long as all your drawings are *.jpg.
What feature do you think is missing ??
I intensely dislike jpeg drawings in Word. They blow up the
file size and are still limited in resolution. Vector files
are better.
I have had problems with vector drawings where lines meet
they don't. *.jpg salves that problem. I also use *.jpg
out of eXcel as it is more compatible with Word than
direct.
And there is a control variable in Word that does *.jpgs
at 200 d/i which you can change to whatever you like.
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> wrote:
But I do notice that when converted to *.pdf the file shrinks by 5×
Word has unlimited undo and the file saves all versions of your doc.
Do a Save As and all that crap will be gone, shrinking the file by also 5x.
If you are talking about drawings, rather than photographs, then png
would be a better choice than jpg. (Assuming, of course, that Word
supports png...)
On 25/09/2024 20:23, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 9:38:36 +0000, David Brown wrote:
If you are talking about drawings, rather than photographs, then png
would be a better choice than jpg. (Assuming, of course, that Word
supports png...)
My drawing tool does not support *.png
Why is *.png any better than compressed/compressible *.jpg and my
drawings look perfect at 200 dpi resolution--probably because I do
any zoom in or out before converting to*.jpg. An example: I have a
large pipeline drawing showing every single feature of a particular
implementation. By zooming in, each stage in the pipeline has the
width of a page, but because all the figures originate from the
large drawing (and the colors match across the whole document)
it is much easier to grasp the details.
png is better for drawings because it has lossless compression that
works well for pictures consisting of sharp lines and areas of solid
colour. jpg's compression is lossy and reduces noise, which is good for photos - but it sees lines and sharp boundaries between colour areas as noise. So drawings get blurred boundaries, fake shadows and ghosting.
What kind of drawing tool does not support png exports? The format has
been standard for bitmap drawings for over 25 years.
In any event, I have been doing it that way since 2000 (maybe before)
and see no particular reason to change. When the size of the disk on
the PC was 80 MB, you may have an argument, when the size of the disk
on the PC is 4TB and a 6 YO machine still has ½ of its free space let;
size doesn't matter, and when it does *.doc -> *.pdf does the job.
The main argument is for the quality of the picture, not the size of the file.
Note: *.doc not *.docx
My software is from 2 decades ago:: draw 1999, office 2003.
On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 9:38:36 +0000, David Brown wrote:
If you are talking about drawings, rather than photographs, then png
would be a better choice than jpg. (Assuming, of course, that Word
supports png...)
My drawing tool does not support *.png
Why is *.png any better than compressed/compressible *.jpg and my
drawings look perfect at 200 dpi resolution--probably because I do
any zoom in or out before converting to*.jpg. An example: I have a
large pipeline drawing showing every single feature of a particular implementation. By zooming in, each stage in the pipeline has the
width of a page, but because all the figures originate from the
large drawing (and the colors match across the whole document)
it is much easier to grasp the details.
In any event, I have been doing it that way since 2000 (maybe before)
and see no particular reason to change. When the size of the disk on
the PC was 80 MB, you may have an argument, when the size of the disk
on the PC is 4TB and a 6 YO machine still has ½ of its free space let;
size doesn't matter, and when it does *.doc -> *.pdf does the job.
Note: *.doc not *.docx
My software is from 2 decades ago:: draw 1999, office 2003.
Be very aware of word documents with VBA code!
On 20/09/2024 07:53, Thomas Koenig wrote:
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:44:48 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:I don't use it daily (that would be Saturdays and Sundays, too)
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest >>>>> releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the >>>>> releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and >>>>> the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft
Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
I bought a hammer in 1977, I can still use it today...
As far as I know, the only feature I use (and an unnecessary one) is
the coloring of URL text blue and underlining it, that was added this
century.
but often enough - the new formula editor is better than the
old one, especially since you can paste LaTeX source into it.
To make up for it, the new method of writing equation references
is braindead.
But bricking the old formula editor... that was Not Nice (TM).
To me, the answer is just to use LaTeX.
On Sa 21 Sep 2024 at 12:19, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 20/09/2024 07:53, Thomas Koenig wrote:
MitchAlsup1 <mitchalsup@aol.com> schrieb:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:44:48 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:I don't use it daily (that would be Saturdays and Sundays, too)
On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:20:56 -1000, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
MS employees were commenting that customers had been buying the latest >>>>>> releases for the new features ... but it had reached the point where the >>>>>> releases they were running now had 98% of the features they wanted (and >>>>>> the company wasn't sure what to do next).
Verity Stob once asked the question: “name one feature of Microsoft >>>>> Office that you use daily, that was added this century”.
I bought a hammer in 1977, I can still use it today...
As far as I know, the only feature I use (and an unnecessary one) is
the coloring of URL text blue and underlining it, that was added this
century.
but often enough - the new formula editor is better than the
old one, especially since you can paste LaTeX source into it.
To make up for it, the new method of writing equation references
is braindead.
But bricking the old formula editor... that was Not Nice (TM).
To me, the answer is just to use LaTeX.
+1
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