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Invisible wrote:
> The paperclip at least can be disabled. The other unecessary
> helpy-helper features seem to be unavoidable.
Here's what typing "turn off automatic capitalization" into the help box
brings up:
Turn on or off AutoCorrect options
On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options.
To select the options, do one or more of the following:
To show or hide the AutoCorrect Options buttons, select or clear the Show
AutoCorrect Options buttons check box.
To set the capitalization options, select or clear the next five check boxes
in the dialog box.
To turn on or off the AutoCorrect entries, select or clear the Replace text
as you type check box.
To turn on or off the spelling checker corrections, select the Replace text
as you type check box, and then select or clear the Automatically use
suggestions from the spelling checker check box.
Note To select the Automatically use suggestions from the spelling checker
check box, you must first turn on automatic spell checking (On the Tools
menu, click Options, and on the Spelling & Grammar tab, select the Check
spelling as you type check box.
Tip
You can undo a correction or turn AutoCorrect options on or off by clicking
an option on the AutoCorrect Options button . The button first appears as a
small, blue box when you rest the mouse pointer near text that is
automatically corrected, and it changes to a button icon when you point to it.
+=+=+=+
"Turn off automatic formatting:"
On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options, and then click the AutoFormat
As You Type tab.
Select or clear the options you want.
Seems pretty straightforward for an expert to understand. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Ouch ouch ouch!"
"What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
"No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."
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>> Unless, that is, you join the PC to a domain during setup. Then it
>> doesn't ask you for an account and puts in the correct settings. But
>> if you want to, say, install Windows, load SP3, and *then* join the
>> domain... sorry, can't easily do that.
>
> So put SP3 on the CD before you install it? It's called "slipstreaming"
> the disk. It's pretty straightforward if you have something that can
> burn a CD.
I guess I'm just weird in that I like to finish installing the OS and
make sure it's bootable and all working and stuff *before* I join it to
the domain.
> Otherwise, how would you expect to install SP3 if it doesn't make an
> account for you to run the install from?
How about the local admin account? You know, since it asks for a
password for that during setup anyway...
> When you're done, delete or
> disable the account, and you're good. (You can't auto-login to an
> account by default unless there's only one account and it has no
> password, so even adding a password would take care of it.)
The name of the deleted account still shows up as who this copy of
Windows is "registered to". And even once you've deleted the account and
the profile, you still have to go into the Control Panel to enable the
logon prompt. (Otherwise Ctrl+Alt+Del just gives you task manager rather
than the menu.) It's just irritating.
>> All I know is that several KB articles mention tools that are only
>> available in the resource kit, and I have tried multiple times to
>> obtain this kit, yet never actually succeeded.
>
> Go to msdn.microsoft.com
> type "resource kit" into the search bar.
> You'll get back a page of entries for downloading all the resource kits
> for different software packages.
>
> Again, what's hard? Where did you look for the resource kit before?
I was reading some KB article, and it said something like "see
KB384728374 for how to obtain the resource kit". And I don't remember
what happened from there. There was lots of time-consuming link chasing,
but I never did find a download. IIRC, I managed to download a user
guide for the resource kit, but not the kit itself. It appeared that you
have to be an M$ volume customer in order to obtain it.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Sure. But why couldn't they have added a button that says "yes, I
>> actually know how to operate a computer, please stop screwing up all
>> my formatting and just do what I tell you to do, not what you 'think'
>> I want you to do".
>
> They did. You're apparently not expert enough to know where the button
> is. :-)
Apparently. :-P
>> Or maybe released a seperate version of the software for experts or
>> something.
>
> They did. It's called LaTeX.
Cute. But LaTeX is a typesetter, not a word processor.
Regardless, I use LaTeX far more than I ever use Word. At least LaTeX
doesn't crash at you if you make a mistake. But, unfortunately, my job
requires me to use Word from time to time.
>> It's maddening trying to build a document with complex formatting and
>> having to constantly revert the automatic, non-deterministic changes
>> that Word keeps applying.
>
> Hmm. I find Word's automation in that area quite useful and usually
> exactly what I want and expect. When it isn't, the little drop-down menu
> on each automatic change makes it easy to fix whatever is wrong.
Lots of people keep saying this; where is this menu, OOC?
>> Well, I guess it depends who you think Access is actually aimed at.
>
> I think the idea was it would be a back-end database for simple data
> collection programs.
I always thought of it as a way for inexperienced people to throw
together small databases. And in a way, it actually works quite well for
that.
If you want to do serious database work, Access is a joke; it doesn't
support multiple users using the database at once, the performance is
horrible, and it has a habit of "corrupting" your database.
OTOH, if you just want to, say, record how many hours you spent working
on each project this week, throwing together a small Access database is
worlds simpler than setting up an Oracle server instance, configuring a
security context, designing a database schema and writing a GUI to
interface to it.
>> Presumably products like SQL Server are designed to be used by experts
>> - and, correspondingly, don't have the irritating wizards.
>
> SQL Server has the helpful wizards, instead.
Uh... do I even want to ask which tasks it automates?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I guess I'm just weird in that I like to finish installing the OS and
> make sure it's bootable and all working and stuff *before* I join it to
> the domain.
Ooookey. I mean, if it really bugs you, install the OS, make sure all the
hardware works, then wipe the disk and reinstall and join the domain during
that install.
>> Otherwise, how would you expect to install SP3 if it doesn't make an
>> account for you to run the install from?
>
> How about the local admin account? You know, since it asks for a
> password for that during setup anyway...
Yeah. You'd need to be more expert at configuring Windows setups before
modifying what accounts it creates during setup and such.
>> When you're done, delete or disable the account, and you're good. (You
>> can't auto-login to an account by default unless there's only one
>> account and it has no password, so even adding a password would take
>> care of it.)
>
> The name of the deleted account still shows up as who this copy of
> Windows is "registered to".
So use the name of the company. Or leave an account out there with a
password in case you ever need to get into the machine after it's on the
domain. :-)
> It's just irritating.
But that's your job. It's obviously not irritating enough to work out how to
avoid the problem. :-) Not in the way it would be, were you in charge of
5000 computers.
>> Again, what's hard? Where did you look for the resource kit before?
>
> I was reading some KB article, and it said something like "see
> KB384728374 for how to obtain the resource kit". And I don't remember
> what happened from there. There was lots of time-consuming link chasing,
> but I never did find a download.
And you didn't think to go to microsoft's search engine and type in
"download resource kit"?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Ouch ouch ouch!"
"What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
"No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."
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>>> Otherwise, how would you expect to install SP3 if it doesn't make an
>>> account for you to run the install from?
>>
>> How about the local admin account? You know, since it asks for a
>> password for that during setup anyway...
>
> Yeah. You'd need to be more expert at configuring Windows setups before
> modifying what accounts it creates during setup and such.
As it is, it decides whether to create a local account based on whether
you join a domain or not. I don't see why it can't just *ask* you
whether you want it to create a local account or not...
>> It's just irritating.
>
> But that's your job. It's obviously not irritating enough to work out
> how to avoid the problem. :-)
Uh, didn't this thread start out with "M$ doesn't document things well
enough"?
>>> Again, what's hard? Where did you look for the resource kit before?
>>
>> I was reading some KB article, and it said something like "see
>> KB384728374 for how to obtain the resource kit". And I don't remember
>> what happened from there. There was lots of time-consuming link
>> chasing, but I never did find a download.
>
> And you didn't think to go to microsoft's search engine and type in
> "download resource kit"?
I think I might have. But in general, Microsoft's own search engine
tends not to find anything useful. Google typically works better. Like I
said, I think I managed to download a Word document explaining how to
use the resource kit, but not the resource kit itself.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Lots of people keep saying this; where is this menu, OOC?
See attached images. When it makes a correction, it puts a little blue box
under the correction if you mouse close to it. Hover over the box to get the
drop-down menu. (Or maybe click the box?) In any case, if you correct the
same auto-correct several times, it stops correcting that. Like, if "cisco"
is supposed to be lowercase, the second or third time you lower-case that
word manually it turns off the corrections too. Surprisingly clever.
> I always thought of it as a way for inexperienced people to throw
> together small databases. And in a way, it actually works quite well for
> that.
It's that too. But it's also a nice embedded database for small programs
that need an embedded database a little more sophisticated than a file
system. Sort of the Windows equivalent of Berkeley database manager.
> If you want to do serious database work, Access is a joke; it doesn't
> support multiple users using the database at once, the performance is
> horrible, and it has a habit of "corrupting" your database.
Yep. While I'm not sure about the "corrupting" part, it's not supposed to be
the right tool for big things.
> OTOH, if you just want to, say, record how many hours you spent working
> on each project this week, throwing together a small Access database is
> worlds simpler than setting up an Oracle server instance, configuring a
> security context, designing a database schema and writing a GUI to
> interface to it.
Yep. Or even an excel spreadsheet.
>>> Presumably products like SQL Server are designed to be used by
>>> experts - and, correspondingly, don't have the irritating wizards.
>>
>> SQL Server has the helpful wizards, instead.
>
> Uh... do I even want to ask which tasks it automates?
Stuff like setting up cluster replication, configuring automated backups,
things like that. I'm sure Gail has at least one or two wizards she starts
out with when setting things up. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Ouch ouch ouch!"
"What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
"No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."
Post a reply to this message
Attachments:
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>> 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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>> Lots of people keep saying this; where is this menu, OOC?
>
> See attached images. When it makes a correction, it puts a little blue
> box under the correction if you mouse close to it. Hover over the box to
> get the drop-down menu. (Or maybe click the box?)
Well, I've never seen that happen. Which version of Office is this?
> In any case, if you
> correct the same auto-correct several times, it stops correcting that.
> Like, if "cisco" is supposed to be lowercase, the second or third time
> you lower-case that word manually it turns off the corrections too.
> Surprisingly clever.
What you call "clever", I call "unpredictable". I like software that
behaves in exactly the same way every single time I use it. (And HCI
studies have repeatedly demonstrated that such behaviour greatly
facilitates learnability.)
>> OTOH, if you just want to, say, record how many hours you spent
>> working on each project this week, throwing together a small Access
>> database is worlds simpler than setting up an Oracle server instance,
>> configuring a security context, designing a database schema and
>> writing a GUI to interface to it.
>
> Yep. Or even an excel spreadsheet.
Dude, do you have *any idea* how many people think that using an Excel
spreadsheet is an appropriate way to have multiple users input data into
the same file?? *shivers*
>>> SQL Server has the helpful wizards, instead.
>>
>> Uh... do I even want to ask which tasks it automates?
>
> Stuff like setting up cluster replication, configuring automated
> backups, things like that. I'm sure Gail has at least one or two wizards
> she starts out with when setting things up. :-)
Oh, OK. So stuff that geniunely *is* difficult to set up by hand then?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> you join a domain or not. I don't see why it can't just *ask* you
> whether you want it to create a local account or not...
Because that's a question that would confuse 95% of their customers, and the
5% who might not want it are expected to be able to find the documentation
on how to stop that from happening.
> Uh, didn't this thread start out with "M$ doesn't document things well
> enough"?
Sure. I'm pointing out that they document it OK if you dig hard enough.
You would look up something like this...
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/1/0/b106fc39-936c-4857-a6ea-3fb9d1f37063/Step-by-Step_Guide_for_Windows_Deployment_Services_in_Windows_Server_2008.doc
... only for your own OS version. You might, for example, search for "remote
installation services" or "unattended install windows xp".
That might lead you to a link like
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294801
wherein it tells you what to set to avoid the "out of the box experience",
which I assume is probably what asks you about setting up accounts.
"""
For more information about answer files and performing an unattended
installation, see the Windows XP deployment documentation Ref.chm Help file
that is located in Support\Tools\Deploy.cab on the Windows XP CD-ROM.
"""
> I think I might have. But in general, Microsoft's own search engine
> tends not to find anything useful.
You know you need to go to msdn.microsoft.com right? Not just microsoft.com?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Ouch ouch ouch!"
"What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
"No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Well, I've never seen that happen. Which version of Office is this?
I think it's new with 2003. I find 2003 far more friendly than the earlier
versions I've used.
> What you call "clever", I call "unpredictable". I like software that
> behaves in exactly the same way every single time I use it. (And HCI
> studies have repeatedly demonstrated that such behaviour greatly
> facilitates learnability.)
Yet, oddly enough, when the IDE enforces repeatability across projects, you
complain it's not flexible enough. ;-)
In any case, now you know how to turn off the features that most people
actually want.
> Dude, do you have *any idea* how many people think that using an Excel
> spreadsheet is an appropriate way to have multiple users input data into
> the same file?? *shivers*
Yes, and it works pretty well when you set it up right. You have to tell it
the file will be shared, and it works nicely.
I've seen entire online newspapers with buttloads of readers manage their
content in an access database, bellowing "does anyone have the database
open?" between cubicles every once in a while.
> Oh, OK. So stuff that geniunely *is* difficult to set up by hand then?
For me, yes. On the other hand, I expect you might consider any GUI
interface to be "a wizard", considering the database really only takes SQL
input and output, so I do set up tables with a wizard and such, if you want
to call it that. And I write stored procedures that way, and draw pretty
pictures, and all that. The database is secondary to the applications that
use it. If I can use a tool that makes it look like it's part of my app, all
the better. It's nice to be able to add a column to the database and get
back (1) a new database, (2) a new interface to the database, and (3) a
script to change the schema of the production database from the old version
to the new version, all in one step.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Ouch ouch ouch!"
"What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
"No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."
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