Microsoft battles piracy... sort of
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| Fr0zen1 wrote: |
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| ... and that's the reason I may use excel then, because I'm used to the layout etc. |
The rate at which people use MS Office was not hampered in the least bit by the complete overhaul in the layout between Office 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013. The reason that you're being taught how to use Excel is that there is flat out no comparison between Excel and Calc. Nobody is paid to upkeep spreadsheets anymore, but that's all Calc wants to be is a spreadsheet program. Excel can do so much more.
Even look at MS Word, do you realize how astounding of an accomplishment a grammar checker is? Especially for a language that is as mutable as English.
Outlook can go burn in hell. Any "advantage" it offers over another mail client is derived directly from MS Word. It fails astoundingly as an IMAP client, it's API is bloated and incomprehensible and it has far too large of a memory footprint for what little it actually does.
Libre and Open office are adequate for day to day use. But in a professional environment, MS Office is undisputed so far.
| Even look at MS Word, do you realize how astounding of an accomplishment a grammar checker is? |
eh its never worked well for me. i catch more mistakes than it does when im reviewing a friends paper
The fact that there is a grammar checker at all is great.
Also, while Google Docs is great, it's pretty lightweight. Office has a lot of integration and tons of features that seem like bloat but do actually get used in the working world.
Also, while Google Docs is great, it's pretty lightweight. Office has a lot of integration and tons of features that seem like bloat but do actually get used in the working world.
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| MS Office is undisputed so far. |
Unless you are using a little bit of non-trivial math formulas in word.
What they have done the last 20 years with math formulas has been utterly terrible (I could do alone a better job than the entire MS math equation team in less than a year of programming, but luckily I don't have to because it has been done long ago).
My only explanation for the incompetent input/display of math formulas in word is that it is intentional. My guesses range from internal team disputes and bitterness over the rejection of mathematicians to some weird hate of the math community.
By the way, most math and physics professional journals do not accept submissions in Word.
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@tition: would you elaborate? I'm interested to know the terrors of Word formulas. I mean, I don't expect them to be LaTeX quality, but surely they're not as bad as you're making them sound? I've used them myself for classes...
Well, I haven't used word formulas since 2005. Between 1995 and 2005 word equation editor used to crash once every half an hour for me. I believe it hasn't improved, but correct me if wrong.
Back in 2000 I was editing a large formula with lots of sums and binomial coefficients. I was keeping no rough draft, was doing all the math directly in the word equation editor. The piece of crap crashed after 30 minutes of tricky transformations. I reopened my file (autosave hadn't worked, neither did restore) only to find an old and wrong intermediate formula displayed. I had lost **real** math work. When I double-clicked my huge formula to fix it, word crashed immediately. Every single time. Royal piece of crap. The formula itself was very long (half a page or so), and it took me several hours to typeset (nowadays I'd type such a formula in LaTeX in a few minutes, but word equation editor had and still has the most neanderthal input method). I had neither the time nor the nerve to redo the formula (especially expecting it could still crash). I fixed the error by overlaying a white square over the wrong places and overlaying even more objects on top to make it right.
After that terrible experience I wrote everything by hand for the first 4 years of university. Although my handwriting is not excellent, it still looks much better than what word produces (word math formula fonts are all messed up, the exponents and indices are huge and make everything difficult to read, disproportionate and ugly).
Don't ever attempt to copy and paste a part of a word formula. Don't ever attempt to copy and paste a word math formula between different versions of word. Well, best don't use math with word at all. Or even better: use math but not word!
Back at the time I had no access to internet to download LaTeX, and I didn't know it existed (this shows the terrible damage done by Word - people are forced to use it, without ever learing much better things exist). At the start of grad school I was told: math texts are written only in LaTeX. Word is not allowed in mathematics.
This is what all students should be told at day one they step in their Universities. I do tell mine but most are sophomores and juniors; many of them have already produced word midterm papers and lab reports, and are well locked-in the crappy microsoft office.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention: you cannot paste microsoft formulas into a webpage. Guess what, you can paste latex. You add the jsmath script (one line of html code), then use <span class="math"> \text{type your \LaTeX formula here and it displays correctly} </span>.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention. Have you tried to copy and paste your word formula in a calculator or computer algebra system? Tough luck. What about LaTeX? Well, guess what, at least 2 computer algebra systems parse (a reasonable subset of ) LaTeX and will directly work with your formulas.
Back in 2000 I was editing a large formula with lots of sums and binomial coefficients. I was keeping no rough draft, was doing all the math directly in the word equation editor. The piece of crap crashed after 30 minutes of tricky transformations. I reopened my file (autosave hadn't worked, neither did restore) only to find an old and wrong intermediate formula displayed. I had lost **real** math work. When I double-clicked my huge formula to fix it, word crashed immediately. Every single time. Royal piece of crap. The formula itself was very long (half a page or so), and it took me several hours to typeset (nowadays I'd type such a formula in LaTeX in a few minutes, but word equation editor had and still has the most neanderthal input method). I had neither the time nor the nerve to redo the formula (especially expecting it could still crash). I fixed the error by overlaying a white square over the wrong places and overlaying even more objects on top to make it right.
After that terrible experience I wrote everything by hand for the first 4 years of university. Although my handwriting is not excellent, it still looks much better than what word produces (word math formula fonts are all messed up, the exponents and indices are huge and make everything difficult to read, disproportionate and ugly).
Don't ever attempt to copy and paste a part of a word formula. Don't ever attempt to copy and paste a word math formula between different versions of word. Well, best don't use math with word at all. Or even better: use math but not word!
Back at the time I had no access to internet to download LaTeX, and I didn't know it existed (this shows the terrible damage done by Word - people are forced to use it, without ever learing much better things exist). At the start of grad school I was told: math texts are written only in LaTeX. Word is not allowed in mathematics.
This is what all students should be told at day one they step in their Universities. I do tell mine but most are sophomores and juniors; many of them have already produced word midterm papers and lab reports, and are well locked-in the crappy microsoft office.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention: you cannot paste microsoft formulas into a webpage. Guess what, you can paste latex. You add the jsmath script (one line of html code), then use <span class="math"> \text{type your \LaTeX formula here and it displays correctly} </span>.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention. Have you tried to copy and paste your word formula in a calculator or computer algebra system? Tough luck. What about LaTeX? Well, guess what, at least 2 computer algebra systems parse (a reasonable subset of ) LaTeX and will directly work with your formulas.
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| I believe it hasn't improved, but correct me if wrong. |
LaTeX is still best for science texts.
tition: This sounds like you are angry at MS Word for not being LaTeX.
Ultimately, you were using the wrong tool for the wrong job. That's not something you should be mad at Office for -- and it doesn't discount the merits of Word.
Word is a word processor. LaTeX isn't. It's like trying to compare Word and Notepad++ -- they're not at all designed to do the same thing, so any comparison is totally unfair and meaningless.
LaTeX is better at what it does. Word is better at what it does.
Though I will agree that Word crashing like you describe is entirely inexcusable. Though as has been said -- I have not had that problem with Word for years.
Ultimately, you were using the wrong tool for the wrong job. That's not something you should be mad at Office for -- and it doesn't discount the merits of Word.
Word is a word processor. LaTeX isn't. It's like trying to compare Word and Notepad++ -- they're not at all designed to do the same thing, so any comparison is totally unfair and meaningless.
LaTeX is better at what it does. Word is better at what it does.
Though I will agree that Word crashing like you describe is entirely inexcusable. Though as has been said -- I have not had that problem with Word for years.
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closed account (Gvp9LyTq)
Word is not very good for publishing anything. The best you can honestly say about Word is that it's adequate for most work.
Mark-up languages are a much better choice for anything that needs to be published. When I need to control how something is rendered I would never send a word document , I'd send a pdf. When I need to share a working document I use Word because people are comfortable with it, but it causes nothing but problems. In fact when I get a Word document my first step is to save it as text, so I can prevent the formatting hell that is likely to come.
That said, MSExcel is something I find I use on a daily basis and truly like.
Mark-up languages are a much better choice for anything that needs to be published. When I need to control how something is rendered I would never send a word document , I'd send a pdf. When I need to share a working document I use Word because people are comfortable with it, but it causes nothing but problems. In fact when I get a Word document my first step is to save it as text, so I can prevent the formatting hell that is likely to come.
That said, MSExcel is something I find I use on a daily basis and truly like.
Dafuq
Is Win 10 even released >_<
Also,win 10 for FREE?
just because downloading pirated stuff?
I regret my choice about buying Windows
Jk too
Is Win 10 even released >_<
Also,win 10 for FREE?
just because downloading pirated stuff?
I regret my choice about buying Windows
Jk too
The Windows 10 technical preview is available, and has been for quite some time.
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Has anyone ever even tried to use word for including more than one image?
During college we had to use word for maths, pasting in graphs from autograph, and commenting about the formulas used, root search method, etc...
As soon as you go over 1 page you're in for a world of trouble as moving 1 image by a single pixel will spot your whole document back out at you in the most stupid format.
I think I ended up stopping at a couple of pages and just created a new document for more of the same work, and printed them off and stapled them as one document.
Also the maths function does take an age for even small (ish) formulas that may include a trig function, a quotient, a power... Meanwhile MS is shirting itself.
I'd hoped that I could copy the formula and paste it in a plain text format so I could ask for help from friends or use an online formula capable calculator but nope.
EDIT: I think my problem with word is that it tries to do too much and still can't do a lot of it to a decent level. When I can get away with it and I don't need pictures or tables or whatever I always use notepad and wordpad (depending on whether I still need rich text formatting or not)
During college we had to use word for maths, pasting in graphs from autograph, and commenting about the formulas used, root search method, etc...
As soon as you go over 1 page you're in for a world of trouble as moving 1 image by a single pixel will spot your whole document back out at you in the most stupid format.
I think I ended up stopping at a couple of pages and just created a new document for more of the same work, and printed them off and stapled them as one document.
Also the maths function does take an age for even small (ish) formulas that may include a trig function, a quotient, a power... Meanwhile MS is shirting itself.
I'd hoped that I could copy the formula and paste it in a plain text format so I could ask for help from friends or use an online formula capable calculator but nope.
EDIT: I think my problem with word is that it tries to do too much and still can't do a lot of it to a decent level. When I can get away with it and I don't need pictures or tables or whatever I always use notepad and wordpad (depending on whether I still need rich text formatting or not)
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| EDIT: I think my problem with word is that it tries to do too much |
Nope it doesn't: LaTeX does much more than Word, and much better. The problem of word is that it is, well, a crappy program.
My advice: simply learn LaTeX. This is the type of document you can generate with LaTeX:
https://piazza.com/class_profile/get_resource/i2rt5t8ogh72l/i7yf90pb4vz3ku
This is 76 pages (100+ with regular margins) of formulas and scientific plotting. All references are hyperlinked, and so is the table of contents. Everything is properly cross-referenced and clickable. The file contains no external images - all graphics is generated from the .tex source. The entire compilation time is 24 seconds (on my netbook, while watching a youtube video). The compilation includes the scientific plotting/graph generation. The .tex source fits easily in one file which opens with proper syntax highlighting and spell-check in about 1 second. Here's the source:
https://piazza.com/class_profile/get_resource/i2rt5t8ogh72l/i7yfqxk8lba1zz
All formulas are done in LaTeX. You can use them directly in Wikipedia (excluding possibly some super-fancy symbols, once in a blue moon). You can paste them directly in your webpage inside a <span class=math> </span> and get them beautifully displayed (you may need to include an extra line of javascript, but that will likely not be needed in the future when the html math standards get fixed). The LaTeX formulas work in wolfram alpha. They also work in the most popular graphing calculator I know (https://www.desmos.com/calculator) and in a bucketload of computer algebra systems. Everything can be copied+pasted as simple text. You don't need to modify anything or ask Bill Gates for his highness' permission to do mathematics. Even you have bought his permission, you don't need to wait for the incompetent math equation team of Word to learn how to program.
[Edit:] Links hopefully work now. Grrr.... I need to learn to use the internet...
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@tition: I think you forgot to properly share those files as public - I'm getting access denied XML errors.
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