4 ms·

I'm guessing this whole section of the thread went over a few people's heads....hn always does have a bit of a problem detecting ironic sarcasm...

notkaiho 6y ago
And yet I've seen more than one thread comment say the humanities and media literacy are "not worth teaching"
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I wasn't being sarcastic. I still use Word 97 for writing, because in Word 97, it always takes me two keystrokes to save a new document (Ctrl+S, Enter), whlie in LibreOffice it is an exercise in frustration, because every new document is titled Untitled 1, and that causes a problem when I've already saved Untitled 1. This is just one example of a basic feature, used on a regular basis, which has obviously been tested thoroughly by the Office 97 developers, but has seemingly barely received any attention from LibreOffice. I use a very basic laptop, and through the wonders of virtualization have a Windows ME VM with Office 97 on it, and it runs just as fast as LibreOffice does natively, if not faster. In a VM, being used for an hour or two at a time, Win ME has no stability issues. Win ME came with IE 5.5, and I eventually upgraded it to 6.0. Because I built my site to be compatible with both, I can easily copy and paste what I wrote into my blog. Office 97 and IE 6.0 support Unicode well enough that I can do all this in two different character sets. I rarely print anything, and I'd probably still use LibreOffice for that. But if I really wanted to, I could probably figure out how to print, too. The Win 9x series is remembered for being unstable and crashy, but I think it's also a marvel of engineering and UI design. And when you take away malware, random utilities, registry decay, hardware malfunctions, and so on, it's a comfortable, almost typewriter-like experience.
- grawprog 6y ago
  Whoops my bad. I was reading all the other comments here in response to this and I responded to yours. I can't disagree. Older versions of word were a lot more stable than newer versions. About the Ctrl-s thing, maybe it's specific to windows, I use libre office on linux and have for years and Ctrl-s on a new document has always brought up the save-as dialog for me. Either way, I'd rather use an older version of word or libreoffice over new versions of office. I grew up using older windows, I don't really remember it being overly good or bad, it just kind of was. I remember lots of crashes, but used to do a lot of things I probably shouldn't have been and I do remember it working for everything I tried to do so I don't really have any complaints really. I don't really have any fond nostalgia either though to be honest. I stopped using windows entirely outside work over a decade ago so none of it really matters all that much to me.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    >About the Ctrl-s thing, maybe it's specific to windows, I use libre office on linux and have for years and Ctrl-s on a new document has always brought up the save-as dialog for me. I'm using LibreOffice on Fedora, and I've used it on Mac and Windows too. Yes, it brings up the Save As dialog, but the name is not pre-filled with an intelligent choice. In Office 97, it typically pre-fills the suggested file name with the first line of the file. If that's not available, it tries to think of something else. But never does it ever suggest a file name that is either invalid or would overwrite an existing file. It ensures that the suggested filename is not too long, and doesn't contain unacceptable characters. If there's already a file with the first name it thinks of, it appends a number, so that you don't accidentally overwrite an existing file. In case you don't care about the filename, and just want to save the document, you are never forced to change the default, and it always works. Many of my files begin with "I'm ..." and sometimes the best that Word 97 can come up with is "I7.doc". Well, that "I7.doc" is a whole lot better than LibreOffice's "Untitled 1", which will overwrite the last "Untitled 1" it already had me save. After how many years of development is LibreOffice still not smart enough to do any of these things? Surely, LibreOffice today has been in development longer and by more people than Office 97 had been in '97? What is the cause of this unfortunate circumstance?
    - grawprog 6y ago
      >Yes, it brings up the Save As dialog, but the name is not pre-filled with an intelligent choice. No, but it's usually helpfully preselected so a single keystroke, changes the name. >Many of my files begin with "I'm ..." and sometimes the best that Word 97 can come up with is "I7.doc". >Well, that "I7.doc" is a whole lot better than LibreOffice's "Untitled 1", which will overwrite the last "Untitled 1" it already had me save. Personally, I dislike that feature of word because typically I do not want my files saved by the first thing i've written and yes I care about file names and take the time to name things sensibly and even put them in related folders. Also, it should automatically detect an untitled1 and enumerate to untitled2 if untitled1 exists, again this is how it's always worked for me. So your file overwriting example seems a tad dubious to me. I have to be honest, of all the gripes i've heard, this one's just a bit ridiculous. The save feature works exactly as it should. A program should allow me to choose a name for a file or choose a reasonable generic default, not decide what it thinks I want. If I see an untitled1.doc around, I know I forgot to rename a file and I investigate, if I see I7.doc or a my name is.doc, I dunno what the hell it is. Maybe it's something I forgot to rename, maybe it's something I wrote before and forgot about, who knows?

notkaiho 6y ago

And yet I've seen more than one thread comment say the humanities and media literacy are "not worth teaching"

forgotmypw17 6y ago

I wasn't being sarcastic. I still use Word 97 for writing, because in Word 97, it always takes me two keystrokes to save a new document (Ctrl+S, Enter), whlie in LibreOffice it is an exercise in frustration, because every new document is titled Untitled 1, and that causes a problem when I've already saved Untitled 1. This is just one example of a basic feature, used on a regular basis, which has obviously been tested thoroughly by the Office 97 developers, but has seemingly barely received any attention from LibreOffice. I use a very basic laptop, and through the wonders of virtualization have a Windows ME VM with Office 97 on it, and it runs just as fast as LibreOffice does natively, if not faster. In a VM, being used for an hour or two at a time, Win ME has no stability issues. Win ME came with IE 5.5, and I eventually upgraded it to 6.0. Because I built my site to be compatible with both, I can easily copy and paste what I wrote into my blog. Office 97 and IE 6.0 support Unicode well enough that I can do all this in two different character sets. I rarely print anything, and I'd probably still use LibreOffice for that. But if I really wanted to, I could probably figure out how to print, too. The Win 9x series is remembered for being unstable and crashy, but I think it's also a marvel of engineering and UI design. And when you take away malware, random utilities, registry decay, hardware malfunctions, and so on, it's a comfortable, almost typewriter-like experience.

grawprog 6y ago
Whoops my bad. I was reading all the other comments here in response to this and I responded to yours. I can't disagree. Older versions of word were a lot more stable than newer versions. About the Ctrl-s thing, maybe it's specific to windows, I use libre office on linux and have for years and Ctrl-s on a new document has always brought up the save-as dialog for me. Either way, I'd rather use an older version of word or libreoffice over new versions of office. I grew up using older windows, I don't really remember it being overly good or bad, it just kind of was. I remember lots of crashes, but used to do a lot of things I probably shouldn't have been and I do remember it working for everything I tried to do so I don't really have any complaints really. I don't really have any fond nostalgia either though to be honest. I stopped using windows entirely outside work over a decade ago so none of it really matters all that much to me.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  >About the Ctrl-s thing, maybe it's specific to windows, I use libre office on linux and have for years and Ctrl-s on a new document has always brought up the save-as dialog for me. I'm using LibreOffice on Fedora, and I've used it on Mac and Windows too. Yes, it brings up the Save As dialog, but the name is not pre-filled with an intelligent choice. In Office 97, it typically pre-fills the suggested file name with the first line of the file. If that's not available, it tries to think of something else. But never does it ever suggest a file name that is either invalid or would overwrite an existing file. It ensures that the suggested filename is not too long, and doesn't contain unacceptable characters. If there's already a file with the first name it thinks of, it appends a number, so that you don't accidentally overwrite an existing file. In case you don't care about the filename, and just want to save the document, you are never forced to change the default, and it always works. Many of my files begin with "I'm ..." and sometimes the best that Word 97 can come up with is "I7.doc". Well, that "I7.doc" is a whole lot better than LibreOffice's "Untitled 1", which will overwrite the last "Untitled 1" it already had me save. After how many years of development is LibreOffice still not smart enough to do any of these things? Surely, LibreOffice today has been in development longer and by more people than Office 97 had been in '97? What is the cause of this unfortunate circumstance?
  - grawprog 6y ago
    >Yes, it brings up the Save As dialog, but the name is not pre-filled with an intelligent choice. No, but it's usually helpfully preselected so a single keystroke, changes the name. >Many of my files begin with "I'm ..." and sometimes the best that Word 97 can come up with is "I7.doc". >Well, that "I7.doc" is a whole lot better than LibreOffice's "Untitled 1", which will overwrite the last "Untitled 1" it already had me save. Personally, I dislike that feature of word because typically I do not want my files saved by the first thing i've written and yes I care about file names and take the time to name things sensibly and even put them in related folders. Also, it should automatically detect an untitled1 and enumerate to untitled2 if untitled1 exists, again this is how it's always worked for me. So your file overwriting example seems a tad dubious to me. I have to be honest, of all the gripes i've heard, this one's just a bit ridiculous. The save feature works exactly as it should. A program should allow me to choose a name for a file or choose a reasonable generic default, not decide what it thinks I want. If I see an untitled1.doc around, I know I forgot to rename a file and I investigate, if I see I7.doc or a my name is.doc, I dunno what the hell it is. Maybe it's something I forgot to rename, maybe it's something I wrote before and forgot about, who knows?