Track changes function in Word 2002? Take II.

Subject: Track changes function in Word 2002? Take II.
From: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:40:23 -0400


T. Miles sought more information. I'd said "My understanding is that
Microsoft has done considerable
Re: damage to the way revision tracking works": <<Are you willing to
elaborate briefly on this?>>

Brief is all I can be until I have time to assess this personally and form
my own educated opinion on the matter. Not going to do that anytime soon,
since Word 97 works so well for me that I have no incentive whatsoever to
"upgrade".

In summary, my feeling is that they've changed how things work in an attempt
to make the revision process simpler for newbies, and in so doing, made some
things that used to work very well indeed into things that are far more
awkward for pros to use. It seems that they ignored a significant chunk of
their audience during their usability testing and thereby compromised
usability for people who use the software heavily.

Again, I'm basing this secondhand on comments I've heard from professional
users of the software. Much of the commentary on this issue revolves around
how to trick Word into restoring the functionality of the older version. As
noted in my previous message, some of this is undoubtedly the normal human
resistance to change, but some of it must also be decreased functionality.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada

"It's one thing to see death coming at the hands of your own creation.
That's part of the human epic tradition, after all. Oedipus and his father.
Baron Frankenstein and his monster. William Henry Gates and Windows
'09."--David Brin, _Kiln People_

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