Re: Real World News.."And so it goes"

["Erick Andrews" <eandrews@star.net>]

On Wed, 15 Apr 1998 19:11:44 -0400 (EDT), Mitch Stone wrote:

>In reply to Erick Andrews's message sent 4/15/98 9:55 AM:
>
>>One of the biggest and confusing aspects about Word, perhaps I should say
>>a "cute trick", is when someone new to Word does bring in a file other than
>>the "current *.doc" type, makes changes, saves the changes, then exits Word.
>>A message window now pops up that warns you that the current one is not
>>a Word document:  Do you want to save it??  <yes>  <no>  <cancel>.
>>
>>What's confusing to newbies is that they've made changes to it (say it's
>>a text only file) and they're afraid they'll lose their changes.  So they 
>>click on 
>><yes>, and lo'n'behold, now they have a Word *.doc when they only wanted 
>>the plain old text version.
>>
>>A small point perhaps, but certainly a coercive one that's bugged me for 
>>years.
>
>I think most Microsoft applications do this. I've been frequently annoyed 
>by the same "feature" in Excel. I don't suppose it's intentional so much 
>as just another example of Microsoft's lousy human engineering.
>
>   Mitch Stone
>   Editor, Boycott Microsoft
>   http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
> +---
>   An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.--- Michael Korda
>
Possibly.  But I think I'm often too giving of the benefit of the doubt when
it comes to drawing that line in the sand.  Given MS's practices the past
coupla' years, I think it's more like the tiger spraying out its territory.

Erick