Comments on: Office suites and user interface http://www.arpia.be/2008/12/office-and-interface/ Website of Peter Craddock, novel writer and composer Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:57:45 +0000 hourly 1 By: JacaByte http://www.arpia.be/2008/12/office-and-interface/#comment-321 JacaByte Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:30:06 +0000 http://www.arpia.be/?p=125#comment-321 For now, I've got Word 2008 on a Windows machine and have to rely on it. It's frustrating that I still have to use M$ products when I've got a Mac of my own. If I ever do decide to buy some office suite software for my Mac, it'll probably have to be Word 2004/08, since I know it much better than iWork (I've never so much as touched it in my life) and it would afford some more peace of mind, since at my school, if the formatting in a document is screwed up, don't chalk it up to the computer gods, because it's all your fault, and it's your grade that will suffer. For now, I’ve got Word 2008 on a Windows machine and have to rely on it. It’s frustrating that I still have to use M$ products when I’ve got a Mac of my own. If I ever do decide to buy some office suite software for my Mac, it’ll probably have to be Word 2004/08, since I know it much better than iWork (I’ve never so much as touched it in my life) and it would afford some more peace of mind, since at my school, if the formatting in a document is screwed up, don’t chalk it up to the computer gods, because it’s all your fault, and it’s your grade that will suffer.

]]> By: Peter Craddock http://www.arpia.be/2008/12/office-and-interface/#comment-319 Peter Craddock Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:41:23 +0000 http://www.arpia.be/?p=125#comment-319 Actually, Pages has great .doc support. The main "exporting to .doc" problem I've noticed is that sometimes, text can end up being 1 point smaller than it's supposed to be (I've only encountered that with section headings though). Importing .doc changes the layout more so than when exporting from Pages to .doc, though. There's also a slight problem that I encounter for all my lecture notes, because in Pages, I have "Notes of Peter Craddock" in the middle of the footer, and in the right-hand corner of the footer, the page number. The resulting .doc doesn't copy over that layout, and puts the whole text to the right. Afterwards, you just have to tweak a little. In my experience, it's just easier to do the work in Pages (a non-frustrating program, especially when compared to Word), and then export to .doc and check in Word what it looks like. But you could choose to rely solely on iWork. Actually, Pages has great .doc support.
The main “exporting to .doc” problem I’ve noticed is that sometimes, text can end up being 1 point smaller than it’s supposed to be (I’ve only encountered that with section headings though).
Importing .doc changes the layout more so than when exporting from Pages to .doc, though.
There’s also a slight problem that I encounter for all my lecture notes, because in Pages, I have “Notes of Peter Craddock” in the middle of the footer, and in the right-hand corner of the footer, the page number. The resulting .doc doesn’t copy over that layout, and puts the whole text to the right. Afterwards, you just have to tweak a little.

In my experience, it’s just easier to do the work in Pages (a non-frustrating program, especially when compared to Word), and then export to .doc and check in Word what it looks like. But you could choose to rely solely on iWork.

]]> By: JacaByte http://www.arpia.be/2008/12/office-and-interface/#comment-318 JacaByte Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:19:26 +0000 http://www.arpia.be/?p=125#comment-318 In the short time that I played around with NeoOffice, I was disgusted by its user interface (as you were) and at the abysmal loading times that it presented. Loading the program took ages, the program itself was slow at times, and it was far too easy to launch parts of the suite that I didn't need, further bogging down the program. Slow, slow, slow. My machine isn't slow, by any stretch of the mind, with a 1.25 GHz G4 processor and 1.25 GB of RAM. OS X is meant to give users as broad a range of usable programs as possible, meaning that many modern day programs can still run on 500 MHz G4 computers. Whether or not this was intentional is beside the point, since now we always expect such a high standard from all (or most) of the programs we use on a day to day basis. NeoOffice doesn't meet this standard. It's really a shame, because the only program that I do know that meets these standards is iWork, and from what I hear, it doesn't have full support of the .doc files that Word uses, which I need for assignments at my school. I could be wrong, but it seems that M$ has dominated office suites in all areas of software. In the short time that I played around with NeoOffice, I was disgusted by its user interface (as you were) and at the abysmal loading times that it presented. Loading the program took ages, the program itself was slow at times, and it was far too easy to launch parts of the suite that I didn’t need, further bogging down the program. Slow, slow, slow.

My machine isn’t slow, by any stretch of the mind, with a 1.25 GHz G4 processor and 1.25 GB of RAM. OS X is meant to give users as broad a range of usable programs as possible, meaning that many modern day programs can still run on 500 MHz G4 computers. Whether or not this was intentional is beside the point, since now we always expect such a high standard from all (or most) of the programs we use on a day to day basis. NeoOffice doesn’t meet this standard. It’s really a shame, because the only program that I do know that meets these standards is iWork, and from what I hear, it doesn’t have full support of the .doc files that Word uses, which I need for assignments at my school. I could be wrong, but it seems that M$ has dominated office suites in all areas of software.

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