Software IQ. Microsoft's Mr. Bill Gates & The Boy Who Cried Worp

Shockingly innovative is Microsoft’s! i>Office 2007, and I’m convinced that its appearance is evidence that its rival, OpenOffice 2, is winning the game with its suite of application programs equivalent to those of Office 2003, which means that what is 4 years older is as good as new. Office 2007 with a unique user interface is in response to the redoubtable challenge of OpenOffice; Microsoft’s Gambit is: If the enemy is game, change the rules of the game. I’d say Microsoft has high IQ.

Having experimented with OpenOffice 2, I almost converted. OpenOffice 2 shipped last year, free; Office 2007 ships this month, but I’m not buying. I’m content with a test drive that Microsoft Office Online (MOO) (2007, office.microsoft.com/) offers me. This is because to me paying $500 for one DVD is out of sight. MOO, did you say test drive? Now, I know that that metaphor is out of place. Funny, but I don’t drive; I’m not driven. Much as I, user, would like to, I don’t drive software; it drives me, as Word 2007 does: It drives me crazy!

Is it insanity or is it genius? After studying Word 2007, let me count the ways:

One, MOO says the 2007 Microsoft Office System is ‘simplicity at your fingertips.’ I say it is definitely not; it is complexity at my fingertips, and I’m no novice at this. I’ve been using much Microsoft software for most of 20 years, especially Word for much of 2 decades.

Two, Microsoft cooks up a new menu and calls it The Ribbon – that’s bizarre. As the name of a bakeshop, The Ribbon may be appealing. The main menu of Word 2007 is unappealing, and it is this – so, what else is new?

[Home] [Insert] [Page Layout] [References] [Mailings] [Review] [View]

I don’t see any ribbon at all. The emperor has no clothes!

Three, I find this tab-menu eccentric if not zany; it is comical because of its incongruity. The Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View sub-menus relate to each other neither as identifiable members of one class, nor equivalent parts of a whole, which they should be. And they are an odd mixture of verbs (Insert, Review, View) and nouns (Home, Page Layout, References, Mailings). They provide a strange guide both to the beginner and the expert on what to do. In fact, that’s not surprising at all; the previous menu – [File] [Edit] [View] [Insert] [Format] [Tools] [Table] [Window] [Help] – was in the same quaint genre that nobody noticed!

Four, with Word 2007, you are beyond help: There is no Help. They must have realized it wasn’t any help at all. What they have now is a mini-toolbar when you select text (even when you simply right-click and not select text) – the mini-toolbar is icons and words, no explanations. If you hover the cursor over any icon on The Ribbon, there appears a brief note. Actually, Help is still there, hiding: press F1 and Help appears. But no more Clipit, the Office Assistant, no more running dog of Microsoft.

Five, there are more goofy things: Under Review is Research. And Translate. Also, Spelling & Grammar – you mean I have to wait till the manuscript is under review before I do the research, or translate, or check the spelling and the grammar? What happens if I don’t ask people to review my work? What happens to those who do not review even their work? You will be surprised at how many of them there are.

Six, there are other maddening things Microsoft did with Word 2007. No logic too. They couldn’t decide on how to combine commands under the old File and then they came up with the Microsoft Office Button, what I call the Belly Button. Decent, but not very smart.

Seven, an outlandish thing Microsoft has done is put Macros under View. You know macros of course; briefly, macros are shortcuts. If all I have to do is view macros, I’d rather be going.

Eight, they couldn’t decide how to re-present or re-name the Style sheet and they came up with Home. That’s a horrendous oversight, to say the least. This is the Home that doesn’t relate at all to the members! In computing, Home is where the hearth is, your starting point, where you can see where you want to go. With Word 2007, they are saying that Home is all style (formats), and that doesn’t make sense. Format Font (name, size, effects etc), Format Paragraph (indent, justify, align, space etc), Format Styles (automatic, programmable formats of fonts and paragraphs etc) – not home, by any stretch of a sorcerer’s imagination. Home, of all places. Why, does Microsoft think Home is where the Art is?

As if that is not enough, under Home there’s Editing (Find, Replace, Select, Select All). If that’s editing, then Editors are over-paid! Actually, all that is only clerical work; only correcting, and not even the whole of correcting. Perhaps Microsoft has forgotten that editing is finding fault with grammar, figures of speech, organization, finding fault even with the title; not forgetting the 4 Cs of communication: clarity, comprehensiveness, coherence, conciseness. Or perhaps, and this is worse, Microsoft doesn’t want to give credit to whom edit is due?

Kidding aside, Mr Gates, I think you and I both can learn about Home from writers, this time from those who lived in the dinosaur era of the typewriter, before the historic age of word processing. Surprise. Here’s one from GK Chesterton: ‘Home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.’ Clue: The world of rules and tasks, not just some rules and tasks, Mr Gates. That’s not irrational, is it? And from TS Eliot: ‘Home is where one starts from.’ Home is where you get directions, Sir; married or unmarried, you know what I mean.

That’s not outrageous, is it?

That should set the three directions of this easy-essay; so now, let me expound on:

(a) Microsoft trying to advance the world of word processing

(b) You trying to advance in the world of word processing

(c) Me trying to be the man in the middle.

Now, let’s see how far we can get.

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