Today saw another battle in my endless war with Microsoft Word. It does weird things even when it's working as it's meant to - I suppose what they'd call "properly." Properly my ass. It's a bunch of crap.
A couple of weeks ago I created my own template with the headings, typefaces, tables, and everything I need to meet the company's document standards. I spent much time adapting the document I was supposed to be revising to the template, so that the switch wouldn't cause all sorts of problems.
This was not easy, as the original author was dreadfully inconsistent. By changing how chapter titles appeared, I might end up changing something in the body of the text. Or the headers. Or anything unrelated to chapter titles.
But last Friday I finally got to start a new document. My very own. From scratch. So I fired up the template, and adhered to it meticulously. No stray styles for me!
And it worked superbly. Divinely, even. I was quite happy with it.
So I open up the document today, and not of my shortcut keys worked. I checked the template; they were still there. They just wouldn't work for that particular document. Can someone please explain to me how I can close the program on Friday with it working fine, and open it on Monday to find it fucked up?
So I thought I'd just start a new document, copy the stuff from the old, and paste it in the new one. This shouldn't be a problem. No conflicting styles or anything, since I stuck so well to my template, right?
Sure, the copying and pasting went fine. Everything looked as it should. Until I saved. Then it went through and screwed things up. If something should have been bold, it wasn't. If it shouldn't have been bold, it was. And all sorts of other strange stuff.
What the Hell?
I finally had to go back to the original document and manually assign all the shortcut keys - the keys that should have already been assigned - to whatever AutoText it was supposed to insert. This is a pain in the ass.
Good thing I wrote a manual to go with the template, or I'd have forgotten a few of them.
(Yes, I documented my template. I'm nerdy. But I did it so other people could use it without having to learn all the shortcut keys through experimentation. And I used all those keys because I hate taking my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse and go click on some damn little icon. Then put my hands back on the keyboard to actually type something. What a waste of time that is.)
And don't get me started on the cross-referencing feature in Word. Worthless.
I got spoiled using LaTeX all the time. It only does something you didn't want it to do if you made a mistake. It doesn't do weird things if you get things right. It keeps track of cross-references automatically, if you want it to.
Granted, it has a pretty steep learning curve. Getting things right so it does what you want takes a bit of practice. It can get a bit messy sometimes.
But it's well worth it. Screw you, Word! LaTeX kicks your ass.
A couple of weeks ago I created my own template with the headings, typefaces, tables, and everything I need to meet the company's document standards. I spent much time adapting the document I was supposed to be revising to the template, so that the switch wouldn't cause all sorts of problems.
This was not easy, as the original author was dreadfully inconsistent. By changing how chapter titles appeared, I might end up changing something in the body of the text. Or the headers. Or anything unrelated to chapter titles.
But last Friday I finally got to start a new document. My very own. From scratch. So I fired up the template, and adhered to it meticulously. No stray styles for me!
And it worked superbly. Divinely, even. I was quite happy with it.
So I open up the document today, and not of my shortcut keys worked. I checked the template; they were still there. They just wouldn't work for that particular document. Can someone please explain to me how I can close the program on Friday with it working fine, and open it on Monday to find it fucked up?
So I thought I'd just start a new document, copy the stuff from the old, and paste it in the new one. This shouldn't be a problem. No conflicting styles or anything, since I stuck so well to my template, right?
Sure, the copying and pasting went fine. Everything looked as it should. Until I saved. Then it went through and screwed things up. If something should have been bold, it wasn't. If it shouldn't have been bold, it was. And all sorts of other strange stuff.
What the Hell?
I finally had to go back to the original document and manually assign all the shortcut keys - the keys that should have already been assigned - to whatever AutoText it was supposed to insert. This is a pain in the ass.
Good thing I wrote a manual to go with the template, or I'd have forgotten a few of them.
(Yes, I documented my template. I'm nerdy. But I did it so other people could use it without having to learn all the shortcut keys through experimentation. And I used all those keys because I hate taking my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse and go click on some damn little icon. Then put my hands back on the keyboard to actually type something. What a waste of time that is.)
And don't get me started on the cross-referencing feature in Word. Worthless.
I got spoiled using LaTeX all the time. It only does something you didn't want it to do if you made a mistake. It doesn't do weird things if you get things right. It keeps track of cross-references automatically, if you want it to.
Granted, it has a pretty steep learning curve. Getting things right so it does what you want takes a bit of practice. It can get a bit messy sometimes.
But it's well worth it. Screw you, Word! LaTeX kicks your ass.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
crazywhitegirl:
That's quite an exciting adventure you had! 
aaardvark:
Boobs are pretty overrated, though I love mine. What I'm trying to get at is that most boobs are overrated, mine being excluded from that group.