Next version of Office for Mac

Do you mean this coming December/January or next year's?

> On 10/19/09 2:28 PM, in article OBlnkMQUKHA.1268.TakeThisOut@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl,
> "Justin" wrote:
>
> > Which holiday?
>
> They don't say, but I would assume that it's in December or early January.
>
> --
> Diane
>
>

Diane Ross wrote:
> On 10/18/09 12:32 PM, in article 59b7ede0.-1.TakeThisOut@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
> "codywilliams@officeformac.com" <codywilliams.TakeThisOut@officeformac.com> wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know when Office 2010 for Mac will be ready for the public to buy?
>
> They are saying holiday season 2010.
>

Which holiday?

On 10/19/09 2:28 PM, in article OBlnkMQUKHA.1268.DeleteThis@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl,
"Justin" <justin.DeleteThis@nobecauseihatespam.com> wrote:

> Which holiday?

They don't say, but I would assume that it's in December or early January.

--
Diane

Diane Ross wrote:
> On 10/19/09 2:28 PM, in article OBlnkMQUKHA.1268 RemoveThis @TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl,
> "Justin" <justin RemoveThis @nobecauseihatespam.com> wrote:
>
>> Which holiday?
>
> They don't say, but I would assume that it's in December or early January.
>

Sounds like Microsoft is ignoring the Muslim world.
Infidels!

On 10/19/09 5:03 PM, in article 59b7ede0.7.TakeThisOut@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"codywilliams@officeformac.com" <codywilliams.TakeThisOut@officeformac.com> wrote:

> Do you mean this coming December/January or next year's?

2010

--
Diane

Jim Gordon MVP wrote:
>
>
> I don't presume to know what the vast majority of people on the Mac side
> think. However, if you are correct about their motivation, then I think
> the reason is a valid one. Microsoft Office on the Mac is far more
> compatible with Microsoft Office on Windows than any of the free
> applications.

I would hope so; as it is supposed to be the same application, just for
a different platform.
That's like saying for an American, driving in Canada is easier than
driving in the UK; even though Canada uses the Metric system.

>>
>>
>> I understand where you're coming from and what you're saying makes
>> sense, however I don't think you're entirely correct.
>> The fonts - I haven't encountered any fonts that others have and I don't.
>
> Let's start with the default font for Office 2007 and Office 2008. I
> think it's Calibri, which comes with Microsoft Office. Without the same
> font, OpenOffice and Google Docs will look slightly different.
> Spreadsheets may produce #### instead of cell values because the column
> widths might be off. Minor, but annoying and some people won't know why
> their documents don't look exactly the same or how to fix these minor
> differences.

Yes, Calibri didn't exist before - Microsoft basically screwed with
Arial and made up its own font.
Why? What was wrong with Times New Roman? How about Arial?
TNR used to be the default font. What changed?

>
>> Wouldn't Microsoft fonts by definition only be available on Microsoft
>> systems?
>
> No. Microsoft includes fonts with Microsoft Office on both the Mac and
> the PC. It's part of what you pay for.
>

That's fine its part of the suite. But why?

> If the standard font is one of the Microsoft fonts (and it is -
> Calibri), then whenever an office document is opened in an application
> on a computer that doesn't have the Microsoft font, then the application
> wlll substitute a font from whatever font family it thinks is closest.
> Apple, Microsoft, and LINUX provide different versions of the same fonts
> (Arial is one) so even if the font has the same name it could be
> slightly different from one OS to another. I bet if you run the Font
> Book application on your Mac you'll find several duplicate, yet
> non-identical fonts.

I should have taken that bet.
http://img10.imageshack.us/i/picture1bj.png/

No duplicate fonts.
I will go on IRC and ask some people there if they have any dups.
Note, after I deep sixed Office it left the fonts behind.
I also disagree with the slightly different part of the above comment.
Arial is Arial. TNR is TNR. Otherwise one could still accidentally set
the font to a bastardized version of Arial even in Office; then send the
document to somebody else who has the normal font. So the only way to
ensure the fonts are correct is to use Microsoft fonts? I can't accept
that.

> By providing fonts with Microsoft Office, Microsoft
> is taking steps to ensure that documents will look identical on Macs and
> PCs. If only there were such a thing as a "standard font" this problem
> could be reduced. Adobe and Microsoft have collaborated to create
> OpenType fonts that should display the same on Macs and PCs, but they're
> not free, either.

No, Microsoft is taking steps to ensure slight incompatibilities between
itself and other office suites. Then the guy using Corel, OoO, or iWork
looks like the odd man out because he has the audacity to use something
other than MS Office.

>
> She'll laugh. And you've picked the safest 2 fonts, Arial and Times New
> Roman are the best to use for compatibility, so your chances of font
> issues cropping up are quite small.

Ok, I'll be really crazy and use Helvetica.

>
>> There are plenty of templates available outside MS Office - down
>> loadable from anywhere.
>
> This is a good thing!
>
>> You're right about the interface, however geeky is a strong word. I
>> think the term spartan fits.
>
> I think of it as a blending of Microsoft Office versions 3 through 5.

That's pushing it. I'd say its easily on par with Office XP.
Then again, I used Office 97 until 2002.

>
>> As an accounting student I did some research and found several medium
>> sized accounting firms that use OpenOffice rather than MS Office and
>> they do some pretty intensive hard core accounting - from inventory
>> valuation, to international taxes, to shareholder reports. I even
>> know three law firms who use nothing but Apple, Linux and OoO. Some
>> of both firms respective clients are Fortune 500 - so you know they
>> have to be on their game. So I don't think an "OK" product would cut
>> it for them.
>
> I'm not sure if OO now supports the same number of rows and columns that
> Excel does for Excel 2007 and 2008. A popular thing is 366 columns (one
> for each day of the year including leap year). OO used to simply ignore
> extra columns and destroy data and formulas without warning in the past.
>
>> I'm trying to find out some things MS Office '08 can do that
>> OpenOffice can't.
>
> Project Gallery, Project Center
I'll lump those two together.
You're right, there's no Project Management in OoO - but there are
plenty of others. Daylight.
PG, is a proprietary Microsoft only solution - there's no such thing as
a generic project management format.


> AppleScript.

Same deal, it is an OS specific scripting language.

Does Windows support perl?

>Automator actions.

Automator is partof Office - of course its not cross suite. That's why
the Orb didn't make it to Office '08.

>Special effects on pictures.

Correct, not the MS implementation of special effects on pictures but as
you can see, I can put all sorts of stuff on a jpg imported into a Text
Document.
http://img188.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/

I can then save it as a doc, docx, or ODT - OpenDocument (Office '08
doesn't support so I can't test).
Here I am opening the file in Word after saving is as a doc (97,2000,XP)
Doesn't quite work - there are differences, but it opens.
http://img11.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/

Here is Word opening it as a docx - which failed.
http://img197.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/

Word trudged through it and the file opened - again with some more
differences.
http://img21.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/

I also saved it as an OpenDocument - but as we all know Office '08 for
Mac does not support OpenDocument.
Which brings me to my next point.
You have to understand that doc and docx are not standards - they are
Microsoft formats and other suites are trying to support them due to
their popularity.

OpenDocument (od*) solves that problem, and probably the font issues
discussed earlier as well.

>SQL GUI (Micosoft Query),

Yes, OoO doesn't support the Microsoft version of SQL querying.
However, you do realize SQL is not Microsoft, right?
There are other ways to connect to a SQL database. ODBC, J(ava)DBC, mySQL.
There are also other databases such as Oracle - which OOo supports
I just noticed all this time I was capitalizing the wrong Os.

>VBA add-ins (Office 2004)

VBA add ons don't work on the Mac version off Office '08.
What happened there? Did they loose the jump drive that had the OSX VBA
implementation?
And Visual Basic is a Microsoft programming language - NOT a standard.
If Microsoft wanted to they would release something for OSX and 'nix
that allows for VB support. Similar to the various perl implementations
available for Windows.


> Although Mac Office 2008 doesn't support VBA, Microsoft has seen the
> error of their ways and is restoring it next time around. OpenOffice has
> minimal VBA support, and they have some hard-headed ideas that will keep
> their version of VBA from ever being useful. VBA is for automation.

VBA is a proprietary Microsoft programming language. Is it not a standard.
Why is there no AppleScript support on Windows?

> OpenOffice will not all allow AUTO-OPEN or calling of one VBA routine
> from another because they have declared these two actions security
> risks. Without these two things, VBA is nearly useless.

Well, yes. It violates the 'nix security edict. VBA is specifically
designed from the ground up for Windows.
If I were a developer I would go about a different way and translate the
VBA into something native for that platform.


> I think the OO
> concerns are exaggerated to the point where if it were phobia about
> diseases, then I would call OO VBA phobia a mild disease in itself.

I somewhat disagree. How many VBA Macro viruses are there? How many
written in perl? AppleScript?

> The
> set of VBA that OO supports only works with spreadsheets, not word
> processing or presentations. VBA has been a critical aspect of Microsoft
> Office for nearly 15 years. The OO folks don't want to be compatible
> with VBA.

Because it is specifically designed for Windows. Trying to implement
VBA on any 'nix would be like trying to fit a cam from a Ford V6 engine
into a Honda V6. Of course its not going to work. You would be better
off screwing with the engine using native/OEM parts.

> And I'm not anti-OO or Google docs. The concept is fine, but there's
> just not enough "there" there to make these products worth bothering
> with, yet. Sun doesn't have the cash to make OO the product it needs to
> be to defeat Microsoft Office. They spent millions on OO only to come up
> short with an inferior product.

I disagree with inferior - in many ways OOo is superior to MS Office.
The main being its adherence to standards. doc, xls, ppt, mdb are NOT
standards. SQL, rtf, xml, od* are freely available standards. You can
go to the ISO website, download the specification and write a program
that saves in that format.
Microsoft didn't release the specs for the doc, xls, ppt, format until
February of last year.
Office Open XML - the successor was supposed to solve this issue by
being an open standard. However Microsoft's implementation did not
comply with the standard (IEC 29500:2008). Perhaps that's why when I
saved my test docx it failed to open in Word; OOo complied with the
standard whereas Word didn't.

>
> Google, on the other hand, has lots of cash and plenty of ambition.
> Google docs makes you pay for their products with privacy sacrifices
> rather than cash, so it's hard to say how the marketplace will react.
> Microsoft is not sitting by the sidelines, and they have the upper hand
> right now. If Google doesn't bring their on-line offerings up to
> Microsoft Office functionality, I think they'll wind up like Sun and
> will have wasted a lot of money for a tiny slice of the market pie. I
> think OO is a better deal for the consumer than Google docs right now.
> OO has more functionality and keeps your private stuff private.

Google has this online fetish. There are times when I'm not connected
to the internet and have to run stuff from my local machine. Google has
a hard time understanding that little fact.

>
>> One last thing, do you agree that there are more problems (per capita)
>> with the Mac side of Office than Windows?
>
> I have no way of knowing for sure. I'm not even sure you could come up
> with a way to measure this. Windows users who come to the Mac seem to
> think they made a wise decision, so I suspect the Mac version is a lot
> more stable than the PC version of Microsoft Office. No version of any
> of these Office programs are trouble-free. Office programs are among the
> largest and most complicated of any software products available.

Is it possible Microsoft's software engineers are not used to developing
on OSX and simply aren't as good at it? During Undergrad, Masters and
my second (current) masters degree classes, people who used Office on
the Mac seemed to have more problems than their Windows counterparts.
This is going back to 1996 too. From 2003 to 2007 while I was getting
my MBA, the Mac users I worked with experienced the same thing. At the
time I was using my work laptop which was Windows so I didn't think
anything of it. Here I am today and I'm talking to people in my classes
- same deal, a few experienced the same looping crash in Excel with the
toasted excel file. Remember, in my case the file went from 400k to 12k.
So the MS developers not being accustomed to engineering on OSX is feasible.
However, I take it a step further and say Microsoft intentionally
crippled/rushed/put their "C-Team" engineers on the project and created
a very pricey and buggy piece of software. It makes perfect sense. A
mac user who is having stability issues with '08 talks to his Windows
coworker/classmate who doesn't have that many issues and makes the
determination his more expensive Apple machine isn't worth it - which
despite the trolls is not the case. Why? Because to the average user
Office for Windows is the same as Office on the Mac. The average user
doesn't know VBA, from AppleScript from a hole in the ground.

Is it possible the Mac users were so accustomed to the MS Office
interface they were glad to have it on their Mac?
People like using older versions of Office for a reason - they get used
to it and don't want it to go away.
Alot of people don't like the Orb interface.

> Then you're not using Time Machine and/or AutoRecovery. These are very
> good features of Mac OS and Office.

Time Machine was, and still is enabled.

I Created an xls file in Excel 2008. I worked for a few hours and
manually saved it. When I manually hit save Excel crashed and then
tried to recover my work. When it loaded up it reloaded the "recovered"
file - I could see all my day's work. I was happy for a split second
because Excel crashed immediately after recovering. Excel restarted,
recovered my file, I saw my work - crash. Cycle repeats.
After 15 iterations I had to force Quit. All of the Excel files created
in $HOME/Documents/ were blank. Not corrupt, but blank and of size 12k.

I was a computer science major for my undergrad. That is a blatant
violation of basic file storage philosophies. Under no circumstances
should a crashed app destroy a file in non-volatile storage. How would
it even accomplish this? Once the app crashes it should release the
file. I can't produce the same effect in other apps - I tried force
quitting all the apps in OOo, TextEdit, Thunderbird, all that happens is
the changes I made after the last save were not saved - duh.
Not with Excel! Oh no, crash, loop wipe the file save.
I ran Disk Utility, Verified the disk, booted from the Leopard DVD did
the same thing - no problems. I booted from Hitachi's utility and did a
surface scan - no issues. The disk was fine, the operating system was
fine; it was a problem with Office '08 - period. Yes, Office was
updated but forget about that; ask any sophomore CS student who took
FileSystems what an app should do to a file when it crashes. Data
volatile storage (RAM) is fair game. When an app crashes the memory
space occupied by that VM will be released back into available space.
So yeah, I'm slightly jaded on Office for Mac.


>
> -Jim
>

However, I did enjoy this conversation. It is one of the only cordial
conversations I've ever had on usenet in what I call the modern era. I
first got on usenet back in 1992 - I was 14. One was actually able to
put one's real email address into the reply to field. From 1995 to 2002
was what I called the Golden Era. Machines were fast enough to do
certain things, but still not enough people knew how to get on usenet or
IRC. Now here we are in a spam, troll infested, spyware bot, filtered
content, viral DMCA (Zune) digital junkyard. As a 31 year old who hits
his home gym every other day - I don't need Cialis! Contrary to the emails.
Thank you,
Justin

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:32:26 -0400, Justin
<justin.RemoveThis@nobecauseihatespam.com> wrote:

>The vast majority of people on the Mac side think they *need* MS Office
>to be compatible with everyone else.

I don't "need" a computer. But it would be very nice if the
spreadsheets I use at work would run at home. And those spreadsheets
use VB macros.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:28:45 -0400, Justin
<justin.RemoveThis@nobecauseihatespam.com> wrote:

>> They are saying holiday season 2010.
>>
>
>Which holiday?

Hopefully, New Year's Day, although I might be able to wait until
MLK's birthday.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison

Justin wrote:
> Jim Gordon MVP wrote:
>>
>>
>> I don't presume to know what the vast majority of people on the Mac
>> side think. However, if you are correct about their motivation, then I
>> think the reason is a valid one. Microsoft Office on the Mac is far
>> more compatible with Microsoft Office on Windows than any of the free
>> applications.
>
> I would hope so; as it is supposed to be the same application, just for
> a different platform.
> That's like saying for an American, driving in Canada is easier than
> driving in the UK; even though Canada uses the Metric system.

That's an excellent analogy!

>>> I understand where you're coming from and what you're saying makes
>>> sense, however I don't think you're entirely correct.
>>> The fonts - I haven't encountered any fonts that others have and I
>>> don't.
>>
>> Let's start with the default font for Office 2007 and Office 2008. I
>> think it's Calibri, which comes with Microsoft Office. Without the
>> same font, OpenOffice and Google Docs will look slightly different.
>> Spreadsheets may produce #### instead of cell values because the
>> column widths might be off. Minor, but annoying and some people won't
>> know why their documents don't look exactly the same or how to fix
>> these minor differences.
>
> Yes, Calibri didn't exist before - Microsoft basically screwed with
> Arial and made up its own font.
> Why? What was wrong with Times New Roman? How about Arial?
> TNR used to be the default font. What changed?

There's a bit of truth to Don's font analysis in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB7S-KOJIfE

Generalizing & paraphrasing: Using one font over and over all the time
indicates you are boring and apathetic.

>>> Wouldn't Microsoft fonts by definition only be available on Microsoft
>>> systems?
>>
>> No. Microsoft includes fonts with Microsoft Office on both the Mac and
>> the PC. It's part of what you pay for.
>>
>
> That's fine its part of the suite. But why?

If you love new fonts and enjoy variety in life and hope for better
cross-platform compatibility then you applaud the new fonts. If you are
a cynic in search of conspiracy you might say Microsoft is doing it to
lock you into their product because the exclusive font makes Microsoft's
product less compatible with competing products. The new fonts are nice
and they are the default so most people use them.

>> If the standard font is one of the Microsoft fonts (and it is -
>> Calibri), then whenever an office document is opened in an application
>> on a computer that doesn't have the Microsoft font, then the
>> application wlll substitute a font from whatever font family it thinks
>> is closest. Apple, Microsoft, and LINUX provide different versions of
>> the same fonts (Arial is one) so even if the font has the same name it
>> could be slightly different from one OS to another. I bet if you run
>> the Font Book application on your Mac you'll find several duplicate,
>> yet non-identical fonts.
>
> I should have taken that bet.
> http://img10.imageshack.us/i/picture1bj.png/

> No duplicate fonts.

Click on one of the fonts in the list, then use Apple+a to select all of
them. Then use the Resolve Duplicates command in Font Book. Then click
the triangles of the fonts to reveal any duplicates that were found.
Caution: Font Book will enable only one version of each font name in
this process, but you can right-click or control-click on individual
fonts to enable, disable, or remove them.

> I will go on IRC and ask some people there if they have any dups.
> Note, after I deep sixed Office it left the fonts behind.
> I also disagree with the slightly different part of the above comment.
> Arial is Arial. TNR is TNR. Otherwise one could still accidentally set
> the font to a bastardized version of Arial even in Office; then send the
> document to somebody else who has the normal font. So the only way to
> ensure the fonts are correct is to use Microsoft fonts? I can't accept
> that.

Well, there are even different versions of Arial that have come out over
the years just from Microsoft. In MS Office on the PC, the Arial font in
2003 has glyphs that are slightly different from previous versions and
in Excel some cells won't display the same as with older Arial. I think
Snow Leopard has an even newer version. The font situation is pretty
messy at the moment.

>> By providing fonts with Microsoft Office, Microsoft is taking steps to
>> ensure that documents will look identical on Macs and PCs. If only
>> there were such a thing as a "standard font" this problem could be
>> reduced. Adobe and Microsoft have collaborated to create OpenType
>> fonts that should display the same on Macs and PCs, but they're not
>> free, either.
>
> No, Microsoft is taking steps to ensure slight incompatibilities between
> itself and other office suites. Then the guy using Corel, OoO, or iWork
> looks like the odd man out because he has the audacity to use something
> other than MS Office.
>
>>
>> She'll laugh. And you've picked the safest 2 fonts, Arial and Times
>> New Roman are the best to use for compatibility, so your chances of
>> font issues cropping up are quite small.
>
> Ok, I'll be really crazy and use Helvetica.

It's a very handsome font.

>>> There are plenty of templates available outside MS Office - down
>>> loadable from anywhere.
>>
>> This is a good thing!
>>
>>> You're right about the interface, however geeky is a strong word. I
>>> think the term spartan fits.
>>
>> I think of it as a blending of Microsoft Office versions 3 through 5.
>
> That's pushing it. I'd say its easily on par with Office XP.
> Then again, I used Office 97 until 2002.

There's still no formatting palette, and OO tends to mimic Windows
Office more than I would like.

>>> As an accounting student I did some research and found several medium
>>> sized accounting firms that use OpenOffice rather than MS Office and
>>> they do some pretty intensive hard core accounting - from inventory
>>> valuation, to international taxes, to shareholder reports. I even
>>> know three law firms who use nothing but Apple, Linux and OoO. Some
>>> of both firms respective clients are Fortune 500 - so you know they
>>> have to be on their game. So I don't think an "OK" product would cut
>>> it for them.
>>
>> I'm not sure if OO now supports the same number of rows and columns
>> that Excel does for Excel 2007 and 2008. A popular thing is 366
>> columns (one for each day of the year including leap year). OO used to
>> simply ignore extra columns and destroy data and formulas without
>> warning in the past.
>>
>>> I'm trying to find out some things MS Office '08 can do that
>>> OpenOffice can't.
>>
>> Project Gallery, Project Center
> I'll lump those two together.

That's like lumping mashed potatoes together with chives. They're
completely different things, although they can be good together.

> You're right, there's no Project Management in OoO - but there are
> plenty of others. Daylight.

Also Omni Group makes project software.

> PG, is a proprietary Microsoft only solution - there's no such thing as
> a generic project management format.

But OO could come up with an equivalent that leverages Spotlight like PG
does, but they don't.

>> AppleScript.
>
> Same deal, it is an OS specific scripting language.

Very true. Microsoft supports it. OO does not.

> Does Windows support perl?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/webcasts/windows-with-p...-and-ph

>> Automator actions.
>
> Automator is partof Office - of course its not cross suite.

Automator is not part of Office. It is part of Mac OSX. Microsoft Office
can use Automator actions. OO can not.

> That's why
> the Orb didn't make it to Office '08.

What's Orb?

>> Special effects on pictures.
>
> Correct, not the MS implementation of special effects on pictures but as
> you can see, I can put all sorts of stuff on a jpg imported into a Text
> Document.
> http://img188.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/

It isn't so much that you can add special effects to pictures in OO, you
can. It's that OO does not take advantage of the built-in image effects
available to it via Mac OS X. Microsoft does take advantage of this on
the Mac.

> I can then save it as a doc, docx, or ODT - OpenDocument (Office '08
> doesn't support so I can't test).

ODF support begins with Office 2010 on the PC. No mention has been made
about specific features for the next version of Mac Office except for
the announcement about VBA.

> Here I am opening the file in Word after saving is as a doc (97,2000,XP)
> Doesn't quite work - there are differences, but it opens.
> http://img11.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/
>
> Here is Word opening it as a docx - which failed.
> http://img197.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/
>
> Word trudged through it and the file opened - again with some more
> differences.
> http://img21.imageshack.us/i/specialeffectsonpicture.jpg/
>
> I also saved it as an OpenDocument - but as we all know Office '08 for
> Mac does not support OpenDocument.
> Which brings me to my next point.
> You have to understand that doc and docx are not standards - they are
> Microsoft formats and other suites are trying to support them due to
> their popularity.

Much to the chagrin of OO supporters, the new Microsoft XML formats are
indeed the new ISO standard. ODF is also an XML open format, but was
judged to be less desirable and open than Microsoft's offering.

> OpenDocument (od*) solves that problem, and probably the font issues
> discussed earlier as well.

Neither ODF or Microsoft XML cure the font issues. They are independent.

>> SQL GUI (Micosoft Query),
>
> Yes, OoO doesn't support the Microsoft version of SQL querying.
> However, you do realize SQL is not Microsoft, right?

You missed my point. There's no SQL graphical user interface in OO, but
there is in Microsoft Office. Both rely on the same ODBC query
mechanism, which is independent of both Microsoft and OO and relies on
3rd party ODBC drivers.

> There are other ways to connect to a SQL database. ODBC, J(ava)DBC, mySQL.
> There are also other databases such as Oracle - which OOo supports
> I just noticed all this time I was capitalizing the wrong Os.

All true, but OO doesn't have a SQL GUI and Microsoft Office does.

>> VBA add-ins (Office 2004)
>
> VBA add ons don't work on the Mac version off Office '08.
> What happened there? Did they loose the jump drive that had the OSX VBA
> implementation?

Microsoft at one point announced that VBA would be phased out. MacBU
(the Microsoft Mac business unit) included phase-out plans in Office
2008 to follow the planned phase out in Office 2007 for Windows. When
Windows customers made a large fuss about the discontinuance of VBA,
Microsoft backed off their phase-out plans for Office 2007. On the Mac
side, MacBU got hit with a major change in OS version and at the same
time had to deal with Intel instead of PPC professors, which caused the
VBA compiler to be useless on Mac Intel machines. MacBU faced a similar
fuss from their customers, but not in time to get VBA included in Office
2008. Personally, I think the decision not to include VBA in Office 2008
was the most costly, dumb decision MacBU has ever made.

> And Visual Basic is a Microsoft programming language - NOT a standard.

That is correct!

> If Microsoft wanted to they would release something for OSX and 'nix
> that allows for VB support. Similar to the various perl implementations
> available for Windows.

Microsoft decided to support Apple's programmability offerings in order
to be as Mac-like as possible. VBA support is important for
cross-platform compatibility with office for Windows. VBA and
AppleScript can pass variables back and forth and can call each other's
routines. Microsoft made VBA work with Apple technologies, and vice-versa.

>> Although Mac Office 2008 doesn't support VBA, Microsoft has seen the
>> error of their ways and is restoring it next time around. OpenOffice
>> has minimal VBA support, and they have some hard-headed ideas that
>> will keep their version of VBA from ever being useful. VBA is for
>> automation.
>
> VBA is a proprietary Microsoft programming language. Is it not a standard.
> Why is there no AppleScript support on Windows?

You'd have to ask Apple. It's their product. If Apple chose to do so,
they could make Applescript work on Windows.

>> OpenOffice will not all allow AUTO-OPEN or calling of one VBA routine
>> from another because they have declared these two actions security
>> risks. Without these two things, VBA is nearly useless.
>
> Well, yes. It violates the 'nix security edict. VBA is specifically
> designed from the ground up for Windows.
> If I were a developer I would go about a different way and translate the
> VBA into something native for that platform.
>
>
>> I think the OO concerns are exaggerated to the point where if it were
>> phobia about diseases, then I would call OO VBA phobia a mild disease
>> in itself.
>
> I somewhat disagree. How many VBA Macro viruses are there? How many
> written in perl? AppleScript?

I know of only one or two VBA Macro viruses. The problem is that VBA is
sort of old and only allows 64,000 or so characters in a module. You can
have lots of modules, so to get around the character size limit you can
call routines in succession. Also, it's a good programming practice to
modularize, which makes calling various subroutines from executive
routines a good idea. The larger issue is compatibility. By leaving out
key functionality, OO VBA does not work in most cases, making OO not
compatible with Microsoft Office to a significant degree.

>> The set of VBA that OO supports only works with spreadsheets, not
>> word processing or presentations. VBA has been a critical aspect of
>> Microsoft Office for nearly 15 years. The OO folks don't want to be
>> compatible with VBA.
>
> Because it is specifically designed for Windows. Trying to implement
> VBA on any 'nix would be like trying to fit a cam from a Ford V6 engine
> into a Honda V6. Of course its not going to work. You would be better
> off screwing with the engine using native/OEM parts.
>
>> And I'm not anti-OO or Google docs. The concept is fine, but there's
>> just not enough "there" there to make these products worth bothering
>> with, yet. Sun doesn't have the cash to make OO the product it needs
>> to be to defeat Microsoft Office. They spent millions on OO only to
>> come up short with an inferior product.
>
> I disagree with inferior - in many ways OOo is superior to MS Office.
> The main being its adherence to standards. doc, xls, ppt, mdb are NOT
> standards.

ODF did not become the ISO standard.
ISO (International Standards Organizations) rejected ODF in favor of
Microsoft's XML .docx .xlsx and .pptx

> SQL, rtf, xml, od* are freely available standards.
> Yes.

> You can
> go to the ISO website, download the specification and write a program
> that saves in that format.
> Microsoft didn't release the specs for the doc, xls, ppt, format until
> February of last year.
> Office Open XML - the successor was supposed to solve this issue by
> being an open standard. However Microsoft's implementation did not
> comply with the standard (IEC 29500:2008). Perhaps that's why when I
> saved my test docx it failed to open in Word; OOo complied with the
> standard whereas Word didn't.

Again, the ISO standard is the Microsoft proposal, not OpenOffice ODF.
Microsoft chose to omit complying with a minor portion of the
spreadsheet standard in Excel 2007 and Excel 2008, but otherwise
Microsoft XML Mac and PC documents can be expected to be ISO standards
compliant (if all current service packs are installed when the document
is saved).

>> Google, on the other hand, has lots of cash and plenty of ambition.
>> Google docs makes you pay for their products with privacy sacrifices
>> rather than cash, so it's hard to say how the marketplace will react.
>> Microsoft is not sitting by the sidelines, and they have the upper
>> hand right now. If Google doesn't bring their on-line offerings up to
>> Microsoft Office functionality, I think they'll wind up like Sun and
>> will have wasted a lot of money for a tiny slice of the market pie. I
>> think OO is a better deal for the consumer than Google docs right now.
>> OO has more functionality and keeps your private stuff private.
>
> Google has this online fetish. There are times when I'm not connected
> to the internet and have to run stuff from my local machine. Google has
> a hard time understanding that little fact.

Keep your eye on Google.

>>> One last thing, do you agree that there are more problems (per
>>> capita) with the Mac side of Office than Windows?
>>
>> I have no way of knowing for sure. I'm not even sure you could come up
>> with a way to measure this. Windows users who come to the Mac seem to
>> think they made a wise decision, so I suspect the Mac version is a lot
>> more stable than the PC version of Microsoft Office. No version of any
>> of these Office programs are trouble-free. Office programs are among
>> the largest and most complicated of any software products available.
>
> Is it possible Microsoft's software engineers are not used to developing
> on OSX and simply aren't as good at it? During Undergrad, Masters and
> my second (current) masters degree classes, people who used Office on
> the Mac seemed to have more problems than their Windows counterparts.
> This is going back to 1996 too. From 2003 to 2007 while I was getting
> my MBA, the Mac users I worked with experienced the same thing. At the
> time I was using my work laptop which was Windows so I didn't think
> anything of it. Here I am today and I'm talking to people in my classes
> - same deal, a few experienced the same looping crash in Excel with the
> toasted excel file. Remember, in my case the file went from 400k to 12k.
> So the MS developers not being accustomed to engineering on OSX is
> feasible.

Outside of Apple, Microsoft has the largest cadre of Mac developers -
nearly 200 of them. Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) are
Macintosh applications that debuted on the first Macintosh in 1984 -
five years before there were Windows versions of any Microsoft Office
products. The only statistically valid way I know to quantify rates of
problems is to refer to reliability surveys taken by 3rd parties. Over
the years the Mac side has consistently rated significantly higher in
satisfaction than the Windows side, so my conclusion would be that your
observation is not the norm. Higher Ed is a very small part of the
overall market, so results in that segment may be atypical. That's not
to say that the problems you saw were not real - just not typical of the
overall market.

> However, I take it a step further and say Microsoft intentionally
> crippled/rushed/put their "C-Team" engineers on the project and created
> a very pricey and buggy piece of software. It makes perfect sense. A
> mac user who is having stability issues with '08 talks to his Windows
> coworker/classmate who doesn't have that many issues and makes the
> determination his more expensive Apple machine isn't worth it - which
> despite the trolls is not the case. Why? Because to the average user
> Office for Windows is the same as Office on the Mac. The average user
> doesn't know VBA, from AppleScript from a hole in the ground.

There's no "C-Team" at MacBU. There's just MacBU. They may make bad
decisions on occasion, but they never intentionally make bad software.
Product managers read every single feedback sent to them, know what
product support is encountering, and try to fix things that are broken
as fast and reliably as possible. Mac Office is for beginning users,
average users, and also for power users. Apple and Microsoft constantly
make changes that they hope will provide improvements to their products.

> Is it possible the Mac users were so accustomed to the MS Office
> interface they were glad to have it on their Mac?

No. You have it exactly backwards. It is Windows users who covet the Mac
interface. Microsoft Office came out on the Mac 5 years *before* Office
for Windows. Windows Vista and especially Windows 7 owe a lot of their
improvements to Apple's Mac OS.

> People like using older versions of Office for a reason - they get used
> to it and don't want it to go away.
> Alot of people don't like the Orb interface.

What is the Orb interface? Do you mean the ribbon in Office 2007?

>> Then you're not using Time Machine and/or AutoRecovery. These are very
>> good features of Mac OS and Office.
>
> Time Machine was, and still is enabled.

> I Created an xls file in Excel 2008. I worked for a few hours and
> manually saved it. When I manually hit save Excel crashed and then
> tried to recover my work. When it loaded up it reloaded the "recovered"
> file - I could see all my day's work. I was happy for a split second
> because Excel crashed immediately after recovering. Excel restarted,
> recovered my file, I saw my work - crash. Cycle repeats.
> After 15 iterations I had to force Quit. All of the Excel files created
> in $HOME/Documents/ were blank. Not corrupt, but blank and of size 12k.

I would have tried holding the Shift key down while Excel was recovering
the file. I would have also tried opening the recovery file in a new
user, or opening it in Excel for Windows using the "open and repair"
feature that is not in Mac Excel.

> I was a computer science major for my undergrad. That is a blatant
> violation of basic file storage philosophies. Under no circumstances
> should a crashed app destroy a file in non-volatile storage. How would
> it even accomplish this? Once the app crashes it should release the
> file. I can't produce the same effect in other apps - I tried force
> quitting all the apps in OOo, TextEdit, Thunderbird, all that happens is
> the changes I made after the last save were not saved - duh.
> Not with Excel! Oh no, crash, loop wipe the file save.
> I ran Disk Utility, Verified the disk, booted from the Leopard DVD did
> the same thing - no problems. I booted from Hitachi's utility and did a
> surface scan - no issues. The disk was fine, the operating system was
> fine; it was a problem with Office '08 - period. Yes, Office was
> updated but forget about that; ask any sophomore CS student who took
> FileSystems what an app should do to a file when it crashes. Data
> volatile storage (RAM) is fair game. When an app crashes the memory
> space occupied by that VM will be released back into available space.
> So yeah, I'm slightly jaded on Office for Mac.

The Excel autorecovery file is a file on the hard drive, not RAM. The
working file name of a recovered file is different from the name of the
recovery file itself (notice the word Recovered in the title bar). So
even if Excel crashes, the recovery file itself should remain
undisturbed (but there is the possibility of file corruption of the
autorecover file itself).

> However, I did enjoy this conversation. It is one of the only cordial
> conversations I've ever had on usenet in what I call the modern era. I
> first got on usenet back in 1992 - I was 14. One was actually able to
> put one's real email address into the reply to field. From 1995 to 2002
> was what I called the Golden Era. Machines were fast enough to do
> certain things, but still not enough people knew how to get on usenet or
> IRC. Now here we are in a spam, troll infested, spyware bot, filtered
> content, viral DMCA (Zune) digital junkyard. As a 31 year old who hits
> his home gym every other day - I don't need Cialis! Contrary to the
> emails.
> Thank you,
> Justin

I, too, long for the good 'ol days sometimes. I don't need Cialis or
enhancers either LOL.

-JIM

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
Co-author of Office 2008 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies
http://tinyurl.com/Office-2008-for-Dummies

On 10/20/09 1:51 PM, in article i3urd55qml020smenivtudokqfkd35c7lt RemoveThis @4ax.com,
"Howard Brazee" <howard RemoveThis @brazee.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:32:26 -0400, Justin
> <justin RemoveThis @nobecauseihatespam.com> wrote:
>
>> The vast majority of people on the Mac side think they *need* MS Office
>> to be compatible with everyone else.
>
> I don't "need" a computer. But it would be very nice if the
> spreadsheets I use at work would run at home. And those spreadsheets
> use VB macros.
I agree completely! What you use at work ought to work at home. I am quite
certain that this is a major goal of the next version of Office. HOWEVER,
the authors of the macros that run in windows will HAVE to consider that the
macros will also need to run on the Macintosh platform. If they have hard
coded "\" for path delimiters and used other poor coding practices, the
macros may not run on the Mac without change.

--
Bob Greenblatt [MVP], Macintosh
bobgreenblattATmsnDOTcom

On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:25:02 -0400, Jim Gordon MVP
<goldkey74 DeleteThis @warmerthanwarmmail.com> wrote:

>>> I don't presume to know what the vast majority of people on the Mac
>>> side think. However, if you are correct about their motivation, then I
>>> think the reason is a valid one. Microsoft Office on the Mac is far
>>> more compatible with Microsoft Office on Windows than any of the free
>>> applications.
>>
>> I would hope so; as it is supposed to be the same application, just for
>> a different platform.
>> That's like saying for an American, driving in Canada is easier than
>> driving in the UK; even though Canada uses the Metric system.
>
>That's an excellent analogy!

But it doesn't work for me. The reason I have Office for the Mac is
so that I can edit the same documents on my Mac that I edit on
Windows. I want to go back and forth, which means, no translations,
just open them and edit them. If I can't do that - it's not easy
enough. (For spreadsheets, that means VB macros).

....

>> Is it possible the Mac users were so accustomed to the MS Office
>> interface they were glad to have it on their Mac?
>
>No. You have it exactly backwards. It is Windows users who covet the Mac
>interface. Microsoft Office came out on the Mac 5 years *before* Office
>for Windows. Windows Vista and especially Windows 7 owe a lot of their
>improvements to Apple's Mac OS.

What difference does it make which interface came first? Users get
used to one or the other.

While Windows is not quite caught up to OS in ease of its interface,
it does have a couple of things that I think work better - possibly
because it was designed later.
Better:
1. In Windows, I can click on a new window and paste immediately.
On a Mac I have to click on a new window, wait for the focus to
arrive, and then paste.
Arguably better:
2. In the Mac, the application's menu is at the top of the screen -
a design that seems to be made for single-tasking. Only one menu is
visible. This saves on real-estate. And it also fits the idea
that in Macs, apps often have multiple pop-up windows. But this
design may be the cause of #1 above.

>> People like using older versions of Office for a reason - they get used
>> to it and don't want it to go away.
>> Alot of people don't like the Orb interface.
>
>What is the Orb interface? Do you mean the ribbon in Office 2007?

I bet he does. I know that I spend lots more time looking for simple
menu items than I used to before the interface was upgraded. I think
I have Office 2007. I'm on my Windows machine right now, and I just
spent some time trying to find the "about" option to verify my
version. This fits the argument above - we get used to some
interface and we don't like to re-learn it. The new interface is a
huge time-waster to someone who already knew how to do stuff the old
way.


--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison

On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:58:31 -0400, Bob Greenblatt <bob DeleteThis @nospam.com>
wrote:

>> I don't "need" a computer. But it would be very nice if the
>> spreadsheets I use at work would run at home. And those spreadsheets
>> use VB macros.
>I agree completely! What you use at work ought to work at home. I am quite
>certain that this is a major goal of the next version of Office. HOWEVER,
>the authors of the macros that run in windows will HAVE to consider that the
>macros will also need to run on the Macintosh platform. If they have hard
>coded "\" for path delimiters and used other poor coding practices, the
>macros may not run on the Mac without change.

Same thing happens with HTML links in my browser - I need to figure
out where to put stuff and how to state stuff such as my browser's
home page:
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/brazee/My%20Documents/Home/home_page.html

I want it to work the same at home and at work (my bookmarks are
synchronized).

Although real smart software could have a feature to translate these
on different computers.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison

On 10/21/09 8:41 AM, in article 7qaud51dv3ld2114mqh5p4v1u94vv0jvh1.DeleteThis@4ax.com,
"Howard Brazee" <howard.DeleteThis@brazee.net> wrote:

> Same thing happens with HTML links in my browser - I need to figure
> out where to put stuff and how to state stuff such as my browser's
> home page:
>
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/brazee/My%20Documents/Home/home_page.htm>
l

"Easily open Windows UNC paths in Entourage using WinShortcutter"

<http://tinyurl.com/cw678m>

--
Diane