Quo usque tandem abutere, Microsoft, patientia nostra?

[Patricio Mason]

After updating to Leopard on our Macintosh computers, we find out to
our dismay that the Thesaurus window in Word 2004 no longer displays
text as normal.

My perusal of this and other user forums shows that this is a well-
known issue, with a kludgy workaround -i.e., force the window to
refresh to get at least one more usable line of text, then do it
again, and again, and again, for as long as you're hunting for a term.
This is, to say the least, aggravating.

I lead a large translation team in a high-pressure international
setting. As writers and translators, we must resort to Word's built-in
Proofing Tools, including the Thesaurus function, many times a day. To
put it mildly, we just do not appreciate being forced to resort to
time-wasting workarounds in order to recover normal use of the
software on which we rely for our daily work.

This is especially irritating to me personally as a guest contributor
to the Spanish proofing tools built into all versions of the Office
Suite. Here's hoping against hope that the MacBU will place a solution
to this unwarranted monkey wrench in our productivity among its top
priorities.

And yes, I have already sent feedback through the official channels.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Patricio:

This is an incompatibility with OS 10.5. If you roll back to OS 10.4, the
issue will be resolved.

Sadly, the only promise a software company gives you is that it is
compatible with the version of the operating system that was current when
the application was designed.

I hate to be he bearer of "bad news", however, Word 2004 has now been
superseded. The only updates you can expect now are for "Security" issues,
and this is not one of those.

So I doubt if it will ever be fixed.

Sorry!

After updating to Leopard on our Macintosh computers, we find out to
our dismay that the Thesaurus window in Word 2004 no longer displays
text as normal.

My perusal of this and other user forums shows that this is a well-
known issue, with a kludgy workaround -i.e., force the window to
refresh to get at least one more usable line of text, then do it
again, and again, and again, for as long as you're hunting for a term.
This is, to say the least, aggravating.

I lead a large translation team in a high-pressure international
setting. As writers and translators, we must resort to Word's built-in
Proofing Tools, including the Thesaurus function, many times a day. To
put it mildly, we just do not appreciate being forced to resort to
time-wasting workarounds in order to recover normal use of the
software on which we rely for our daily work.

This is especially irritating to me personally as a guest contributor
to the Spanish proofing tools built into all versions of the Office
Suite. Here's hoping against hope that the MacBU will place a solution
to this unwarranted monkey wrench in our productivity among its top
priorities.

And yes, I have already sent feedback through the official channels.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[etcstgo]

Hi Patricio:

This is an incompatibility with OS 10.5.  If you roll back to OS 10.4, the
issue will be resolved.

Sadly, the only promise a software company gives you is that it is
compatible with the version of the operating system that was current when
the application was designed.

With all due respect, that's disingenuous at best. The lowliest
shareware developers have updated their software to run on Leopard,
and you are telling me that the mightiest software purveyor on the
planet won't? When you have a customer base the size of Microsoft's,
not to mention Microsoft's prices, forcing people to "just buy the
next version" is not a simple matter, not by any stretch of the
imagination. In most of this globalized planet of ours, the Office
Suite costs the equivalent of a month's wages or more. This renders
getting the next version whenever Microsoft decides to drop support
for current products all but unaffordable.

We are not talking about supporting Word 5.1. This is Word 2004, for
crying out loud. It is precisely this sort of cavalier disregard for
the customer that is turning people off to Microsoft products around
the world.

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[etcstgo]

Hi Patricio:

I hate to be he bearer of "bad news", however, Word 2004 has now been
superseded.  The only updates you can expect now are for "Security" issues,
and this is not one of those.

So I doubt if it will ever be fixed.

Sorry!

John,

A month ago, on another thread you referred to Office 2004 as "still a
supported product":

Such users are better advised to sit this release out. Office 2008 has limited functionality. Office 2004 is still a supported product.
Professional users and power users can afford to wait for the next version, and in most cases, they should.

I'm perplexed. Can you explain these two apparently contradicting
statements?

Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Patricio:

With all due respect, that's disingenuous at best. The lowliest
shareware developers have updated their software to run on Leopard,
and you are telling me that the mightiest software purveyor on the
planet won't?

Can you point to the text that I typed that said that? I never used the
word "won't".

Products are designed for operating systems. In GUI applications such as
Word, something like 80 per cent of CPU time is spent executing code that is
part of the operating system, not Word.

So, as you can imagine, changing the operating system away from the one the
product was designed for has a major impact.

Apple tries to con its users that "OS X" is all the same thing. It's not.
About the only thing "the same" between OS 10.0 and OS 10.5 is that they are
each based on a flavour of Unix. But even that changed between versions.
Effectively, we have Mac OS 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. Office 2008 was
designed for OS 14, and with little knowledge of how OS 15 would work.

When you have a customer base the size of Microsoft's,
not to mention Microsoft's prices, forcing people to "just buy the
next version" is not a simple matter, not by any stretch of the
imagination. In most of this globalized planet of ours, the Office
Suite costs the equivalent of a month's wages or more. This renders
getting the next version whenever Microsoft decides to drop support
for current products all but unaffordable.

I'm just a user, nothing to do with Microsoft. I have to buy them too. If
you have a comment about Microsoft's commercial policies, use Help>Send
Feedback and put "Attention Steve Ballmer" as your first line.

Cheers

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Patricio:

Below...

John,

A month ago, on another thread you referred to Office 2004 as "still a
supported product":


I'm perplexed. Can you explain these two apparently contradicting
statements?

Yes.

"Superseded" means "there is a new version available."

"Supported" means "We will work to repair errors in the code that prevent
the user using the existing functionality."

"Displaying the Thesaurus in a new operating system that uses a new text
display engine" would be introducing "new" functionality. The ONLY time any
software vendor would introduce new functionality to an old product would be
for a serious security issue. This is not one of those.

Within "Supported" a product has two phases: Primary (it is currently
on-sale) and "Secondary" (It was the previous version).

During Primary support, the company will work to fix anything, in order of
customer impact and fix cost. In Secondary support, they will fix only
data-loss or security issues. And then, only if it affects a very high
percentage of users.

Microsoft also offers a "Tertiary" support phase, during which no new fixes
will be offered, but the old fixes will remain available for download until
such time as a security issue affects them, when they will be withdrawn.

If you look around the Microsoft website, you will find the dates defined
for the various products, but basically the policy is "n - 2", where "n" is
the version on sale now. Primary support extends to the on-sale date of the
next version. Secondary support generally stretches back two versions from
there. Tertiary support so far stretches back "forever".

Cheers

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip Jones]

Hi Patricio:



Can you point to the text that I typed that said that? I never used the
word "won't".

Products are designed for operating systems. In GUI applications such as
Word, something like 80 per cent of CPU time is spent executing code that is
part of the operating system, not Word.

So, as you can imagine, changing the operating system away from the one the
product was designed for has a major impact.

Apple tries to con its users that "OS X" is all the same thing. It's not.
About the only thing "the same" between OS 10.0 and OS 10.5 is that they are
each based on a flavour of Unix. But even that changed between versions.
Effectively, we have Mac OS 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. Office 2008 was
designed for OS 14, and with little knowledge of how OS 15 would work.

So far as I know up until the switch over to Intel they used two version
of UNIX.

BSD Unix prior to OSX.3 and FreeBSD for X.3 and 4. as for for X.5 I have
no idea. for all I know its probably XFree86? (Unix written specially
for the X86 code built into all Intel Chips).

I'm just a user, nothing to do with Microsoft. I have to buy them too. If
you have a comment about Microsoft's commercial policies, use Help>Send
Feedback and put "Attention Steve Ballmer" as your first line.

Cheers

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
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[John McGhie]

Hi Phillip:

So far as I know up until the switch over to Intel they used two version
of UNIX.

BSD Unix prior to OSX.3 and FreeBSD for X.3 and 4. as for for X.5 I have
no idea. for all I know its probably XFree86? (Unix written specially
for the X86 code built into all Intel Chips).

Yeah. And when did they drop the Mach Kernel in there? The Mach Kernel was
an updated to the NextOS Kernel. If you change the Unix Kernel, you get a
very different operating system

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip Jones]

Hi Phillip:


On 20/04/08 5:15 AM, in article ex2fgoloIHA.548@TK2MSFTNGP0


Yeah. And when did they drop the Mach Kernel in there? The Mach Kernel was
an updated to the NextOS Kernel. If you change the Unix Kernel, you get a
very different operating system

AS far as I can remember OSX has always been a 3 layer system.

at the very , very core was the Mach kernel (NextOS Mach Kernel was what
it was).

Then you have UNIX sitting on top of that, finally you have the Mac OS
(Finder, and GUI) on top of that.I

I went to Project that designed AppleJack and found they have bug report
about OSX.5 compatibility in fact its top priority.

So there definitely a change somewhere.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>