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#1
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Word should catalog misspelled words to study.
And I emphasize that by this I meant a third-party add-in, not something
provided by Microsoft. There is a thriving community of Word developers outside of Microsoft, people like Bill Coan, with his DataPrompter add-in (which I find very helpful since I'm VBA-less). In addition to commercial add-ins (sold to anyone who's interested), these developers also provide custom solutions to those who require them (and are willing to pay). The bottom line on all of this is economic: we've been told repeatedly that every proposed function requires a business case, that is, what is the ratio of the cost to develop to the demand for the feature? Would a feature be attractive to enough people to sell enough extra copies of Office to make it worth the cost to develop 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 ... Thank you Suzanne. "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: Following up on this, the spelling function would be a perfect application for a Word add-in, to be added in only by those interested in using it (and willing to take the performance hit that would inevitably result). -- 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. "Tony Jollans" My Forename at My Surname dot com wrote in message ... I'm not going to quibble over words. Yes, I *choose* to agree with Suzanne I'm not sure that the argument that Word already does things it probably shouldn't is grounds for suggesting that it do more. In particular I would say that it should leave web page design to other dedicated software (very few people actually like what Word does with web pages and I've never seen it recommended as a tool for this). What it can do with images is pretty limited. What it does with embedded objects (not actually as much as you might think) is almost a requirement for the creation of many documents. I don't think it's a difficult point to argue, and the reason, of course, is that I enjoy a good argument :-) Word is not a study aid and what you are suggesting would put quite a heavy load on everyday activity; it would have to keep track of every word you typed and whether or not you corrected it (or maybe just changed it later - because not all misspellings result in invalid words) or it was autocorrected or it was picked up by the spellchecker (or the grammar checker) - and if so, what you did with it. In fact the more I think about what it would have to do to effectively implement such a facility, the more I am certain it shouldn't be done. OK - maybe the washer analogy was extreme, but the point stands. Word does a certain type of manipulation of words and other document content and there are other programs which do other types of manipulation. The more that's bundled together, the more it would cost to produce and to buy. Perhaps a better analogy would be this: I have just got broadband Internet access and I looked at the various packages that were available. I bought one for £15 a month. I could have bought one for £30 a month (AOL, say) but I didn't want most of the facilities (all, loosely, related to internet connection) that were included in the AOL package; I didn't want them running on my machine and I didn't want to pay for them. Your suggestion (not unreasonable for a separately purchased addon) would be attractive to a fairly small subset of current, or prospective, Word users but all would have to pay for it. -- Enjoy, Tony "rndthought" wrote in message ... Tony, First, don't debase yourself. You do not "half to", you choose to. Second, neither you nor Suzanne has established how "word processing" 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. |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Word should catalog misspelled words to study.
Suzanne,
I bow to you the MS bean counters and pray that third party bean counters have less acumen. Thank you for the clarification lest I believe you yielded even one small point to me! (Flurries of arms and deepest of bows) Can we have that pint now? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: And I emphasize that by this I meant a third-party add-in, not something provided by Microsoft. There is a thriving community of Word developers outside of Microsoft, people like Bill Coan, with his DataPrompter add-in (which I find very helpful since I'm VBA-less). In addition to commercial add-ins (sold to anyone who's interested), these developers also provide custom solutions to those who require them (and are willing to pay). The bottom line on all of this is economic: we've been told repeatedly that every proposed function requires a business case, that is, what is the ratio of the cost to develop to the demand for the feature? Would a feature be attractive to enough people to sell enough extra copies of Office to make it worth the cost to develop 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 ... Thank you Suzanne. "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: Following up on this, the spelling function would be a perfect application for a Word add-in, to be added in only by those interested in using it (and willing to take the performance hit that would inevitably result). -- 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. "Tony Jollans" My Forename at My Surname dot com wrote in message ... I'm not going to quibble over words. Yes, I *choose* to agree with Suzanne I'm not sure that the argument that Word already does things it probably shouldn't is grounds for suggesting that it do more. In particular I would say that it should leave web page design to other dedicated software (very few people actually like what Word does with web pages and I've never seen it recommended as a tool for this). What it can do with images is pretty limited. What it does with embedded objects (not actually as much as you might think) is almost a requirement for the creation of many documents. I don't think it's a difficult point to argue, and the reason, of course, is that I enjoy a good argument :-) Word is not a study aid and what you are suggesting would put quite a heavy load on everyday activity; it would have to keep track of every word you typed and whether or not you corrected it (or maybe just changed it later - because not all misspellings result in invalid words) or it was autocorrected or it was picked up by the spellchecker (or the grammar checker) - and if so, what you did with it. In fact the more I think about what it would have to do to effectively implement such a facility, the more I am certain it shouldn't be done. OK - maybe the washer analogy was extreme, but the point stands. Word does a certain type of manipulation of words and other document content and there are other programs which do other types of manipulation. The more that's bundled together, the more it would cost to produce and to buy. Perhaps a better analogy would be this: I have just got broadband Internet access and I looked at the various packages that were available. I bought one for £15 a month. I could have bought one for £30 a month (AOL, say) but I didn't want most of the facilities (all, loosely, related to internet connection) that were included in the AOL package; I didn't want them running on my machine and I didn't want to pay for them. Your suggestion (not unreasonable for a separately purchased addon) would be attractive to a fairly small subset of current, or prospective, Word users but all would have to pay for it. -- Enjoy, Tony "rndthought" wrote in message ... Tony, First, don't debase yourself. You do not "half to", you choose to. Second, neither you nor Suzanne has established how "word processing" 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 |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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Word should catalog misspelled words to study.
Got to keep a clear head now--I'm working on my Rotary bulletin for
tomorrow's meeting--but thanks! -- 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, I bow to you the MS bean counters and pray that third party bean counters have less acumen. Thank you for the clarification lest I believe you yielded even one small point to me! (Flurries of arms and deepest of bows) Can we have that pint now? "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: And I emphasize that by this I meant a third-party add-in, not something provided by Microsoft. There is a thriving community of Word developers outside of Microsoft, people like Bill Coan, with his DataPrompter add-in (which I find very helpful since I'm VBA-less). In addition to commercial add-ins (sold to anyone who's interested), these developers also provide custom solutions to those who require them (and are willing to pay). The bottom line on all of this is economic: we've been told repeatedly that every proposed function requires a business case, that is, what is the ratio of the cost to develop to the demand for the feature? Would a feature be attractive to enough people to sell enough extra copies of Office to make it worth the cost to develop 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 ... Thank you Suzanne. "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote: Following up on this, the spelling function would be a perfect application for a Word add-in, to be added in only by those interested in using it (and willing to take the performance hit that would inevitably result). -- 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. "Tony Jollans" My Forename at My Surname dot com wrote in message ... I'm not going to quibble over words. Yes, I *choose* to agree with Suzanne I'm not sure that the argument that Word already does things it probably shouldn't is grounds for suggesting that it do more. In particular I would say that it should leave web page design to other dedicated software (very few people actually like what Word does with web pages and I've never seen it recommended as a tool for this). What it can do with images is pretty limited. What it does with embedded objects (not actually as much as you might think) is almost a requirement for the creation of many documents. I don't think it's a difficult point to argue, and the reason, of course, is that I enjoy a good argument :-) Word is not a study aid and what you are suggesting would put quite a heavy load on everyday activity; it would have to keep track of every word you typed and whether or not you corrected it (or maybe just changed it later - because not all misspellings result in invalid words) or it was autocorrected or it was picked up by the spellchecker (or the grammar checker) - and if so, what you did with it. In fact the more I think about what it would have to do to effectively implement such a facility, the more I am certain it shouldn't be done. OK - maybe the washer analogy was extreme, but the point stands. Word does a certain type of manipulation of words and other document content and there are other programs which do other types of manipulation. The more that's bundled together, the more it would cost to produce and to buy. Perhaps a better analogy would be this: I have just got broadband Internet access and I looked at the various packages that were available. I bought one for £15 a month. I could have bought one for £30 a month (AOL, say) but I didn't want most of the facilities (all, loosely, related to internet connection) that were included in the AOL package; I didn't want them running on my machine and I didn't want to pay for them. Your suggestion (not unreasonable for a separately purchased addon) would be attractive to a fairly small subset of current, or prospective, Word users but all would have to pay for it. -- Enjoy, Tony "rndthought" wrote in message ... Tony, First, don't debase yourself. You do not "half to", you choose to. Second, neither you nor Suzanne has established how "word processing" 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 |
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