Periodically (at least a few times a week) Word and Safari just crash. Splat! Sometimes, the crash takes unsaved work with it, despite my being careful to save often in Word. I'm running OS X 10.2.6 and there's nothing odd, to my knowledge, about my installation. Thoughts, ideas, resources? OS X itself seems rock solid, i.e., it hasn't crashed on me yet in about a month.
I got iSync and ICal working together via my .Mac account, which solved one of my problems - how to have a calendar editable by multiple people. Now Esther and I can both edit my calendar. Doing this though loses one of the nice features of publish/subscribe, which is the ability to selectively publish individual calendar. With iSync/iCal, it's an all or nothing proposition. You can bet Chandler will do this right.
However, there were a whole series of very strange and unhelpful error messages the first time it tried to synchronize. I'm guessing that some of the events I originally exported from Outlook into iCal have a format which iCal likes but iSync doesn't. I'm ignoring these, probably at my own peril, but superficially, everything looks ok.
Word periodically seizes up for 2-3 seconds after I delete an item in an outline. It's not an overall RAM problem, I'm pretty sure. No excuse for this.
I'm incredibly baffled by some of Word's formatting. Why in Normal view does one of my outline headings sit flush left but the others are indented, even though they appear to have exactly the same formatting?
In general, how do I fixed up the formatting of the outline to get longer lines in either outline view or normal view? Word breaks the lines. Partly it has to do with margins, but there are, I am afraid, deeper mysteries. Why are some lines longer than others – they appear to have the same style applied to them?
Nothing new here. Word is baroque. Just thought I'd let everyone know I suffer from it too.
Make note: look at other options for creating documents on the Mac.
Mitch, I have exactly the same problems. I simply abandoned the outline features some years ago. Word will crash whenever it feels like it, and it often seizes for 30 seconds or more when I boot it up (by doubleclicking on a Word document) - it seems to be loading up a bunch of unneccessary features, or something. This does feel like a RAM issue. I await the day they do to Office X what they did to Explorer....and man, i am waiting for the day I can use another application, other than Word, that will still allow me to send docs in Word format to folks who live in Windows land. Thanks for the tip on iCal sharing.
Posted by: John Battelle at September 29, 2003 01:01 PM
Mitch:
If you have not, you might wish to run software update in OSX and update to 10.2.7 along with a meriad of security updates. MS Office now has updates up to 10.1.5 available on Mactopia.com. I have found that these updates improve the stability of Word use on OSX.
While I know it is not standard, I have taken the update early and often approach to OSX and have yet to be disappointed. Apple should be rereleasing the 10.2.8 soon and it has known updates to Safari.
Posted by: Colin Scroggins at September 29, 2003 05:31 PM
I switched from Word to Nisus Writer 4 years ago - and have never regretted it (I am still in OS 9); Nisus has never once crashed on me in 4 years. Of course, Nisus for OS X is still in its infancy, but given Nisus' track record, it will be a true powerhouse in the near future.
Of course, Mellel and Mariner are viable options in OS X as well.
The outline feature tends to be problematic in Word since its introduction. Word's style sheets went wacko with Word 2001 in many ways, and unfortunately Word X has not cleaned up the mess.
I know - not much help, but I empathize with you!
Posted by: Rich at September 30, 2003 10:01 AM
It is a real pity that one of the most visible OpenSource options in the field, OpenOffice, does not get to speed with the Mac-version.
I have given up on Word a long time ago because I used Xpress a lot anyway and might now explore Indesign for its even better typographical engine. Outlining is fortunately not an issue I need to deal with.
It did not helps Word's case that I strongly dislike its editor, the Macro-Viri, its crappy typography, annoying noises and assistants, let alone its general wonkiness you mention.
I do agree with what John Battelle said:
> I await the day they do to Office X what they did to Explorer
...and to PowerPoint...
It would be such a relief to have a viable alternative to the incredible piece of brittle bloatware that Office is.
BTW, I just read your 13 year old paper
http://www.kapor.com/homepages/mkapor/Software_Design_Manifesto.html
Would you care to comment on how you feel things have evolved since then ?
Obviously, even moving to the best available platform today and having some prominent Apple and NeXt people on board left you with quite some issues to blog about...
Posted by: Fabien Mounier at October 17, 2003 04:24 PM
hey -
If you're making outlines, Word is terrible. at least that's what I decided after a few minutes of trying to make one with it.
go to omnigroup.com, and look at omni outliner instead. it makes much nicer outlines, and they export to a number of formats, including XML, and RTF, even Keynote. Plus you can just print to PDF if you are just distributing it.
I don't work for them or anything. Just thought it was a good program.
Good luck with the Chandler project.
MT
Posted by: Michael Tuminello at October 22, 2003 08:48 AM
I have given up on Word a long time ago because I used Xpress a lot anyway and might now explore Indesign for its even better typographical engine. Outlining is fortunately not an issue I need to deal with.
Posted by: David Donul at December 4, 2003 10:45 AM