Tony,
First, dont debase yourself. You do not €śhalf to€ť, you choose to. Second,
neither you nor Suzanne has established how €śword processing€ť explicitly
excludes building a personalized list of misspelled words for further study,
personal development.
You and Suzanne have chosen a difficult point to argue (and for no reason).
If MS Word can manipulate HTML with web page previews, embed Excel tables
able to be edited from within the document and manipulate image
characteristics; the word processor has shattered the complexity barrier it
would take to build a simple list file - if the option was selected €“ of
misspelled words. The text to voice feature is already in place. The
argument that my request would add too much complexity is simply absurd and
baseless. My suggestion is not unreasonable and certainly not close to the
horrible washer parallel. Trying to negate a "spelling is to word
processing" relationship? You will half to try very hard.
While MS Word is ubiquitous, not just CEOs and MPV use the program daily but
it is on essentially every school computer in my district, it is not always
possible to rely on the crutch of spell check and auto replace in the real
word. This spelling tutor feature is one from which my children and I
believe many children and adults would greatly benefit.
The cause for so much resistance and the need to voice it still baffling€¦ It
is just a list of misspelled words. Why would this be so disconcerting?
As always, except for the washer thing, thank you for the thoughtful comments.
"Tony Jollans" wrote:
I'd have to agree with Suzanne here. Word Processing is what Word does. Just
because it uses words does not mean that it does, or should, provide every
imaginable function that might also use words; before you know it someone
will be suggesting that it solve crosswords.
It is generally true that adding essentially unrelated functionality is
likely to bring problems. Imagine trying to add a dish-washing facility to
your washing machine; they both use water and detergent to get things clean,
so why not?
--
Enjoy,
Tony
"rndthought" wrote in message
...
Suzanne, spelling is Fundamental to this purpose. Period.
Again, why so much resistance and the need to voice it?
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
A word processor is a way for people who know what they want to say and
how
to say it to put those words on paper. Some of the functions you mention
(such as automatic creation of TOCs) are fundamental to this purpose.
Auto
formatting certainly facilitates it. Keep in mind that a huge target
market
for Microsoft is "knowledge workers" (secretaries and the like) and
executives in large corporations. They need to be able to create letters
and
reports and easily and quickly as possible. It is assumed that they
either
know how to spell or will depend on spell check to correct their
spelling.
I'll grant you that this is an unreasonable assumption in the first
instance
and a dangerous one in the second, but there you have it.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"rndthought" wrote in message
...
Suzanne,
You make a good observation in regards to trying to be all things. As
for
keeping MS Word from loosing sight of the "primary functions" (or
focus)... I
believe even a cursory overview of the options and abilities in Word
show's
the ship has set sail (Invoicing with macros, auto creation of TOC,
auto
formatting, Auto fill forms, creating HTML documents, altering Image
attributes - all on a word processor???). It seems to me that MS
Word
most
definitely has higher aspirations than that of a functioned word
processor
or
computerize type writer.
If a spelling tutor, I like that term Suzanne, doesn't belong in a
program
whose primary purpose is to type words in the creation of documents,
presumably for purpose of communicating information accurately...where
then?
This isn't a fundamental change in the program or a complete change in
the
interface (which is coming in the next version)...simply an option (or
if
possible a macro as Greg has shown in a limited fashion) that could be
enabled for those that wish to expand their spelling abilities. Why
so
much
resistance and need to voice it?
Thank you again for the thoughtful comments.
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
Where Word most often gets into trouble is through trying to be all
things
to all people. I don't imagine, however, that the Word developers
will
ever
so far lose sight of the primary functions of Word as to incorporate
features that make it a spelling tutor.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.