>> The paperclip at least can be disabled. The other unecessary 
>> helpy-helper features seem to be unavoidable.
> 
> I don't know what version of Word you're running, but... I dunno, maybe 
> the "Tools->Auto Correct" options is what you're looking for?
> 
> It looks pretty straightforward to me.

Do you know where I can turn off the option that tries to automatically 
format the current bullet point the same way as the last one?

(Your screenshot looks suspiciously like it's running on Vista...)

>> Computers are hopeless at figuring out what humans want!
> 
> I was surprised how good a job Word did with guessing what I wanted.

Maybe because I'm trying to type stuff that features program source code 
that has weird grammer and punctuation?

>>> Not necessarily. It gets everybody working the same way, which is good. 
>> I can see some value in that I guess.
> 
> It really is quite flexible. You just have to configure it how you want it.
> 
> Now I'm talking about Visual Studio for something other than Java. Maybe 
> Java has particular rules about where things go.

Or, more likely, they've made the IDE more flexible in the 10 years 
since I last used it.

>>> Since I can't guess what problems your hyperbole refers to, I 
>>> couldn't guess whether they fixed it or not.
>>
>> It insists that your files must be arranged in a certain way.
> 
> Um, no it doesn't.

Well, when I tried it, it did. I had a working Java project that 
compiled perfectly, but I couldn't do anything with it in VS until I let 
the program rearrange all the files the way it wanted. (This included 
manually importing all the classes, one at a time, by hand.)

>> It insists on autogenerating buckets of code that you then have to 
>> manually delete. 
> 
> Only when you ask it to.

I couldn't find a way to avoid it. Maybe they've redesigned this part now.

>> It must be really hard if you decide you want to use some sort of 
>> revision control, 
> 
> Actually, it's trivially easy and you almost never notice, because it's 
> built into the IDE.  When you start typing into a file, it automatically 
> checks it out for you.

Presumably this only works for one specific version control system though?

>> since the fixed file layout has human-written source code muddled up 
>> with VS configuration files, autogenerated cache files, object files, 
>> and so on.
> 
> They're all in different subdirectories. Honestly, I've done some fairly 
> large projects without ever looking at the layout of the files in the 
> directories, other than tracking down where the actual executables went.

Maybe this was my mistake - expecting to be able to make sense of the 
file layout from outside the IDE. Maybe they just assume you'll never 
want to do that? (I mean, it's not like you'd ever want to put just the 
source code into a Zip file so you can send it to somebody else or 
something like that...)

>> POV-Ray's manual teaches you every feature of the system.
> 
> I agree. POV-Ray's documentation is a shining star.

Finally, something we can agree on... ;-)

>> As far as I can tell, no such documentation exists for any M$ product. 
> 
> Of course it does. Heck, look at C#. There's sufficient documentation 
> that someone else could write a version of the compiler based on the 
> documentation that outputs the same bytecodes for the same programs.

Which is all the more amusing given that last time I looked, I couldn't 
even figure out what C# *is* from the information M$ provided. (It seems 
they have improved this now.)

>> It seems that if you want to know anything remotely "technical" about 
>> M$ products, the only way to find out is to go on a course. I find 
>> this very objectionable. I've paid money for this product, why can't 
>> you just tell me how to operate it? Why must I now pay even more money?
> 
> Because if it came with an 800-page manual, fewer people would buy it.

More likely it would cost a lot of money to print an 800-page manual. 
But they could supply it electronically, surely?

>> (I wonder how many courses you have to take before you really know 
>> what you're talking about?)
> 
> Lots of courses are like that, yes.  Sometimes you just have to sit down 
> and plow thru MSDN online.  Welcome to computers.

What does MSDN actually contain anyway? I've never looked at it. I 
usually just search the Microsoft support website - or, if that fails to 
turn up any information, there's always Google. (Finding suitable search 
terms is highly nontrivial though.)

> FSF doesn't like man pages for some reason I never figured out.

Er, yeah, I've noticed how 98% of all manpages say "please concult the 
infopage". Why?

>> The actual code is not remotely complex, but it took *days* to track 
>> down the magic command names. It really was ridiculously hard.
> 
> I don't know. As I said, I googled the obvious term, and number 12 on 
> the list of the first 20 hits was a tutorial on how to do it using VBA.

Didn't work for me back when I tried it. I wasted so much time trying to 
figure it out I almost gave up trying!

(Figuring out how to sign the VB code was almost as hard. I found 
several KB articles, but none appeared to work. Eventually I made it 
work, but then it broke when I changed to a later version of Office. I 
didn't even bother to fix it. I type in the date by hand now.)

>> can mostly guess how it works - again, I don't see a syntax 
>> description anywhere.
> 
>
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US/?query=visual%20basic%20syntax%20description&ac=3

> 
> 
> Dude. MSDN is your friend. I don't know how much easier it can be than 
> to type "visual basic syntax description" into MSDN and have the first 
> hit being "Visual Basic .NET Language Specification."  What are you 
> looking for?

Indeed, *everything* seems to be VB.NET. AFAIK, this is a different 
language to the VBA used in Office 2003.

The top link appears to be a reference document. Which is nice, but not 
for learning how to use something for the first time. (Also, is there a 
reason why none of these M$ documents allow you to nagivate properly 
whichout lots of trickery with tabs and trying to defeat the JS links?)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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