Next version of Office for Mac

[Justin]

Well, I'm jealous. My analogies don't work nearly as well.


Don't pick on the font-loving people. They're pretty powerful.


You can choose to believe that the font changes are for sinister
reasons, but the newer versions have more glyphs to support more
languages. I think is the main reason why they have been updated.

So MS had to change (for example) the Latin Q just to add the Chinese
letter Chwang?
That doesn't make sense.

Yea. I'm old-fashioned.


I win! LOL. Time for an ice cream.


Add more glyphs to support more languages and special characters.


The people who wanted improved language support might disagree.

Those same people are probably wondering why Arial was changed.
When will MS change Calibri?

New York does that with I-90. It worked well for 30 years until 1996
when Mario Cuomo needed some cash and diverted millions. Now I-90
maintenance money pays for the high-tech Erie Canal and other follies
and the organization that's supposed to maintain I-90 is forced to do
other roads for free.

But no purple lines?

You mean the upper left. Microsoft calls it the "office button."
Everyone I know calls it the "pizza button." It goes away in Office 2010.

I call it annoying.

Once you've applied a special effect to a picture it's still a picture.
It's as compatible as any other picture.

If it's bad compatibility you seek, make some graphs and customize them.

I know Microsoft made a special effort to make ODF compatibility a
priority in Office 2010. That's the version I would use as a benchmark.

It's a long story. This is a good place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Office_Open_XML_ISO_Standardization_Ballot_Results

I don't think you can drag and drop headers and joins in OO. I would be
delighted to learn that I am wrong about that if I am incorrect.


The complication was that the Mac VBA compiler is hardware specific.
Without a PPC chip, the existing compiler was useless. MacBU is building
a new compiler for the Mac Intel platform. Here's some background from
one of the MacBU folks involved with the VBA decision:
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/comment-page-1/



LOL. Not really. You'd be surprised to learn how much Microsoft and
Apple work together on Mac Office. They have an efficient, cordial, yet
arms length process to iron out bugs.

Security down the hall still might be nice; when the discussion about
VBA's AUTO-OPEN command and security comes up.

It's coming back. Be patient!


OO recently made a significant effort to improve their VBA
compatibility. At least they heard from users how they would like it to
be. Perhaps they will change their minds about what is desirable.

They were forced to due to the prevalence of Office.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

So MS had to change (for example) the Latin Q just to add the Chinese
letter Chwang?
That doesn't make sense.

I'm pretty sure a lot more than that was involved. I'm not a font
specialist, but I think there was a format change, as well.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/AboutFontsOverview.mspx

But no purple lines?

We get lines on the wrong side of crosswalks and lines in bizzare
configurations that make no sense. Drivers pay little attention to them
anyway.

Security down the hall still might be nice; when the discussion about
VBA's AUTO-OPEN command and security comes up.

Security geeks fret about some things, when other things seem far more
insecure to me. Now that the code inside documents is plain text for all
to see, how do you know if it has been changed along the way?

They were forced to due to the prevalence of Office.

Market forces. Economists love this sort of stuff.

 

[Justin]

I'm pretty sure a lot more than that was involved. I'm not a font
specialist, but I think there was a format change, as well.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/AboutFontsOverview.mspx


We get lines on the wrong side of crosswalks and lines in bizzare
configurations that make no sense. Drivers pay little attention to them
anyway.


Security geeks fret about some things, when other things seem far more
insecure to me. Now that the code inside documents is plain text for all
to see, how do you know if it has been changed along the way?

Isn't that true about anything? How do I know somebody didn't intercept
your post and screw with it?

Market forces. Economists love this sort of stuff.

I think sales reps love it more than economists. If OpenOffice of Corel
had been bundled with all these laptops for the past 13 years would we
be having this conversation - except complaining about OOo's formatting?