[Am-info] Word Processing Features

[Dan Strychalski]

Echoing many Microsoft supporters I have known (so my bitterness will
show, and I apologize beforehand), Geoffrey (esoteric@3times25.net)
wrote --

> I maintain that macros are not worth the effort of the software company.
> Why?  Because, unfortunately, macro users are a huge minority.  I'd bet

This is the excuse given -- no, not given directly by those who did it,
but offered by their apologists -- for the elimination, beginning in
1982 and lasting until 1992, of certain keystrokes from mass-market user
interfaces. Not to mention a million other failings of commercial
software of the past twenty years.

Simple text editors have macro functions. A word processor should have
one too. The ability to record, replay, save, and bind sequences of
keystrokes doesn't seem like a terribly hard feature to implement.

> less than 5% of word processor users even know what a macro is.

Yes, of course. People who've been using a word processor to earn their
livelihood for years and years don't know it. This needs explaining.

Long ago, one company, cognizant that "macro" is a jargon word, called
the feature "shorthand" and made it one of the six top-level menus in
the help panel that appeared by default above the space you were typing
in.

(Sorry, I keep forgetting that command keystrokes are always hidden.)

I used that company's product, and I had a shedload of shorthand
commands. The feature had its flaws, but at least I could press one key
(shown in the main menu), get a list of my shorthand commands *with my
own explanations of what each one did*, and press another key (shown in
the Shorthand menu) to invoke the one I wanted.

I encountered the term "macro" only later, hidden deep inside a more
"advanced" word processor. The term was scary, but not half as scary as
the process of creating a macro -- and forget about getting a list of
your macros, much less one with explanations. That sort of thing had to
be hidden, it had to be hard, and it had to be terrifying. Macros could
be part of your "keyboard definition" or separate from it. Just LOOKING
at the keyboard definition screen and backing out generated a "Save
changes?" query. And this was the most "popular" word processor in the
world before Microsoft Word for Windows took that slot.

And, as I've said, in both WordPerfect and Microsoft Word for MS/PC DOS,
the macro feature was the only place you could find a documented command
keystroke involving Ctrl and a letter key. Coincidence? Too many other
phenomena suggest not.

Ah, but keystrokes don't matter. It's only word processors we're talking
about, and only a minority of people even know that you can change which
key or combination of keys does what. So screw 'em.

Dan Strychalski