Talk:Microsoft Word
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[edit] Alternatives
I think we should create a list of alternatives for Word, we could use the List_of_word_processors as a starting point.
Ooh and what is the difference between word processor and List_of_word_processors?
There has been some talk about this: --seweso 12:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
There are some free alternatives, like KWord, AbiWord, TeX and Openoffice.
I removed this, as this is an article about MS Word. Adding free alternatives is quite close to advocating free software. Also, none of the programs listed is a true alternative to Word. TeX is a typesetting system, not a wordprocessor. Kword and AbiWord are nowhere near Word's functionality, and OpenOffice is incomplete (last I checked, it had no spellchecker, as Sun did not hold the copyright on StarOffice's spellchecker code). A better approach would be to list other wordprocessing programs (not just open source ones!) in a "see also" section. --Stephen Gilbert
- The release versions (1.0+) of OpenOffice.org do have a spell checker, though some early developer's releases did not. --Brion
"I think that MS Word is one of the best applications I used if not the best of all." 82.114.178.3 19:15, 18 May 2006
[edit] MS-DOS Ruler?
Question: Did Microsoft Word for MS-DOS have a "ruler", or did that feature appear first in the Macintosh version?
Yes it did (I used WordDOS from 1.0 onward), and it looked something like this:
|----|----|----|----|
I think there was a numerical option as well:
0....5....10....15....20
...as it was a character-based display. Later DOS versions had a graphical version as well, depending on what kind of a graphics card you had. (Mine wasn't supported...) --ProhibitOnions 21:44, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
[edit] Photo IBM PC running Word
- FYI: for a photo of original IBM PC running Word, see here. --tyomitch 21:29, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Other ramblings
Stephen Gilbert: Ok, better let them be listed in word processor (tuxisuau)
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A side-thought: it'd be nice for someone to develop a discussion on the Microsoft Mouse and its history. Compare its development with that of the one-button Apple mouse. No contest.
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Word and MS' first spreadsheet program MultiPlan both shared a very similar look when they came out, using the same two-line command interface at the bottom of the screen; the 'feel' of the two programs was very similar, implying that Word was first developed by Bill's MultiPlan team. MultiPlan was boosted by Bill Gates who envied Lotus 1-2-3, but was disappointed by MultiPlan's inability to compete. Buoyed by his successes in writing early programs for the Macintosh, I think Bill gritted his teeth and resolved to bring out graphically based versions of Word and Excel/MultiPlan to leapfrog Lotus. An early sign of this resolve was the introduction of the Microsoft Mouse (which, btw, worked with the text version of Word). Other attempts at mouse products for the PC were unsuccessful. Bill's resolve to make Excel and Word probably motivated the development of Windows.
- MultiPlan predates 1-2-3, if I recall correctly. An early version of Multiplan was even available for CP/M machines. --Robert Merkel
Most of Microsoft's products have been bought from other companies. Anyone know the origin of Word and whether this is true for it?
- On the Microsoft Mac Business Unit [1] website, it says that "In 1984, Microsoft releases Word 1.0 and it becomes one of the world’s most popular word processing programs." It doesn't say they actually developed it so I do not know. 1189 19:40, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This PDF [2] states that BravoX, a predecessor to the Star it's Document Editor, was the direct predecessort of MS Word. You do not always need to buy such products as you can simply hire the orginal developers.
Removed (in reference to Word 6 for Windows) numbered to indicate that it also superceded Word 5 for DOS because it is obviously untrue. Word 5 for DOS was replaced by Word 6 for DOS. Replaced it with an explanation that fits much better with the observable facts. Tannin
- I don't think 'numbered "6" to imply a superiority to Word Perfect 5.1' in the Word 6 for Windows bullet is NPOV. Microsoft claims they numbered it 6 to line up its versioning numbers with the Mac version of Word. Word 6 for Windows had a modified file format that, for the first time, matched Word for the Mac. I don't really care if we include the file-format info or not, but the statement as it stands doesn't seem NPOV. Anyone else? -Frecklefoot
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- AFAIK it was to bring Win / DOS / Mac version into line. DOS was up to 5.5, so the first combined version was 6 -- Tarquin 19:22 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)
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- Yes, the version 6 was to bring the Windows version number to parity with the DOS and Mac version numbers. This should be changed. -- Talk:Fireball1244 4:07 Nov 2, 2003 (CST)
Wrom: WIGYOKSTTZRCLBD
While the article may be considered correct in terms of sequence, it is my perception that the original Word for Macintosh was an independently created program with a different set of features than that of Word for DOS. So, considering Word for the Mac as a 'port' is not actually correct. My (biased!) interpretation & recollection is that the current Word is based on Word for the Mac, at least as comes to features and user interface. Cannot comment on code (!) but at the time of Word for the Mac 1.x, Pascal (MPW) was the dominating programming language for the Macintosh.
- I'm going from memory too, but as I recall the sequence was:
- 1: Word written and marketed for the Mac by a non-Microsoft company
- 2: Microsoft buy them out
- 3: Microsoft produce a DOS version
- 4: Microsoft produce a Windows version
- 5: DOS version is dropped
- 6: Mac version is dropped, restored, ignored, forgotten about until no-one cares anymore
[edit] Future versions
The article contained this:
- Word 2004, also known as Word 12 and officially titled Microsoft Office Word 2004
- Word 2005, also known as Word 13 and officially titled Microsoft Office Word 2005
I wondered if they should really be in that list - are they speculative, confirmed, or what? Certainly you can't buy them, can you? If not, I think it makes the list misleading. Maybe, if someone feels they are good and accurate content, they should be reintroduced under a separate subhead? Or something?? Nevilley 00:50, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- I would guess it was a newbie test. It's 217.81.175.4 sole contribution. --Mrwojo 03:04, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Ah. Good point, thank you. Nevilley 07:45, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
[edit] meta data
Someone with a better knowledge of the history than I have should perhaps write a section on how the 'meta data' (I believe it's called) stored in .doc files has occasionally been newsworthy: aspects of the Hutton Inquiry became public when Downing Street documents were searched for older-version information, and a similar thing happened with SCO's plan for their lawsuit against UNIX-derivatives.
[edit] advice
However, this capability can also be used to embed viruses in documents, as was demonstrated by the Melissa worm. Because of this, users having Microsoft Word installed should refrain from having it configured to open Microsoft Word documents received -- by email or otherwise -- from untrusted sources. Are we in any position to say this? I would say it should be rephrased with a thing saying "Most analysts agree that users having Microsoft Word installed should refrain..." [maestro] 09:44, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Better advice would be to adjust your security settings in such a way that only macros from trusted sources can be executed. Shinobu 03:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Headings
Would anyone be in favor of the occasional heading or title in this article? Ojw 19:13, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Books
A book has been newly listed at the end of this article
Amazon lists 1404 books about MS-Word, what's special about this one? Ojw 13:06, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- I suggest that if any books are linked from here, they should be general books on the development of office, office interoperability, and/or the history of the office suite (assuing we can't get books on Word specifically) -- I don't see what's special about the book either, and suggest deletion unless someone substantiates it. EggplantWizard 19:59, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Format and Headings
This article badly needs more segregation -- I've added some headings with my most recent revision, and I feel that the article is now better -- however, it still needs a lot more work, and I don't think that the categories I chose are the best way to approach this in the long run. I'd like to start a dialogue about how best to format the article, and then ideally get the right pieces moved into the right sections based on consensus opinion of what's easiest to follow. EggplantWizard 19:56, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] in addition
[edit] Office 6
I wonder if it should be mentioned that on the Mac, Office 2001 wasn't actually smaller or faster than Office 6, just that the hardware had improved over 5 years or whatever it was. --Steven Fisher 06:26, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Determining the Word Version of a Document
I'm not sure but I think this link would be interesting. Should I add it?
- Don't know how useful it is. I also wonder wether it is the kind of information you'd expect in an encyclopedia. External link? Shinobu 03:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] "Features" section?
Doing a parallel read between the entry for MS Word and Apple's Pages I noticed that the former lacks a proper "Features" section while the latter has one. While the difficulty of working with the .doc format is thoroughly discussed, there is no mentioning in the actual capabilities of the program (like for example the ability to automatically generate a contents table or "accept data from Excel, Powerpoint or Access") nor are any shortcomings mentioned that make it's use uncomfortable (like it's instability as a program or the heavy requirements given that it is a word processor).
212.205.234.7 22:22, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Mac Word history
I've updated the history of Word for the Macintosh based on personal involvement with the project. Sorry I don't have as much detail on the other versions.
The code history:
DOS Word 2 was the basis of Mac Word 1
- So DOS Word 2 was written in Pascal? Lars T. 22:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Mac Word 4 was the basis for Windows Word 1 (they actually shared about half the Mac Word code; that was a disaster)
Mac Word 5 and Windows Word 2 were the bases for Pyramid, which was cancelled
Mac Word 6 was Windows Word 6 running on a Windows emulator for the Mac
[edit] de facto standard
I snip the part about "de facto standard" because it reveals nothing about the program. Here it is:
- Microsoft Word is the dominant word processor in current use, making Word's proprietary document file format (DOC) the de facto standard which competing products must support to interoperate in an office environment.
[edit] Word 2006??
The article says: "Versions for Microsoft Windows include ... Word 2006, known as Word 12."
I see no hint of the existence of such a product at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857991033.aspx or elsewhere on the MS site. —Urielw 20:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
- Try Office 2007. It's unoffically called Office 12. See http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx --Jkonrath 19:25, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
- Actually that is its BETA Release name before it was named Office 2007--Oliver Davison 23:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge "The present" and "File format"
A proposal. Atatncnu 02:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Just a bit of discontent
Word's Thesaurus has a slight problem, which is that it doesn't realize that if A is a synonym of B then B is a synonym of A. Anyone know why this is? (I am having difficulty maintaining NPOV - my copy of MSWord crashes after you have typed three characters or so)88.109.15.239 19:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Will the real Word guru please stand up?
... and message me on my talk. I want to do a weird customization of Word for Mac 2001; I want to change the "Backup of" string but I don't know where this is stored. John Reid 10:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] RTF
This is incorrect: "RTF remains an optional format for Word that retains all formatting and content of the original document."
AFAIK, many things like diagrams and charts are lost through RFT conversion. Layout is also not faithfully maintained. (columns are broken etc.) --Espoo 08:35, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Nav bar
Why does the navbar at the bottom not include Entourage or Messenger? - ElAmericano (dímelo) 02:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Article Title
Why is this article named Microsoft Office Word, when all the other office apps have the word Office omitted? I think that Office should not be included in the title. Most people know the product as Microsoft Word rather than Microsoft Office Word. Word is, indeed, the name of the application and Office is simply the package within which it is sold. Has anyone else an opinion on this? Ralphy 18:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
- MS does now refer to this app as "microsoft offfice word" (look in the about dialog for instance. Is there a policy on what to do when the estabilished name for a product differs from the makers current name? Plugwash 18:24, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
- Not all of the other Office applications have the word "Office" ommitted. The article names should be as accurate as possible in its naming. Redirects along with some prose can explain older names like "Word for Windows" and "Microsoft Word". Warrens 19:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
- Regardless of how this particular discussion turns out, the article should be updated to mention the name issue. For instance, the 2004 Mac version is named (in various places) Microsoft Word, Microsoft® Word 2004 for Mac and Word:Mac, but never Microsoft Office Word 2004. --Steven Fisher 22:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree the title should be Microsoft Word -- I've also started a discussion on the Microsoft Excel talk page| Cliffb 01:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Just so everyone knows, Microsoft Word is not always sold with office. It can be be purchased either by itself, or with Microsoft Works, as not all people want all of the office programs, but still need a word proccessor. So, putting "office" in the title is not neccessary, because although it is technically microsoft office word, it doesn't always come bundled with office. --Kormerant 23:02, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
- Agreed. The "Office" is a form of emphasis of the product's inclusion in Office, not a formal part of the product name; but as it is also sold separately, with Works, and for the Mac, the inclusion of Office in the title is incongruous. Microsoft itself refers to it as "Word" not "Office Word" [3]. I shall rename the article. ProhibitOnions (T) 09:27, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Word 2007 Link?
Shouldn't there be a link here to Microsoft Office 2007? The beta's out now, and Microsoft has called it the most significant update in a decade. I think this qualifies it for at least a bare mention. Auricfuzz 22:50, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Info box
I'd like to propose we split the Info box into one for each platform. The reason is that the box is already a little unwieldy, and is missing important information. The current version Microsoft Word for Mac OS X, for instance, is v2004 11.2.5 (2006-07-11). The two products also have different websites, different logos, and different screen designs. Having two infoboxes just makes sense to me. -- Steven Fisher 17:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
- I've gone ahead and made this change, plus added some additional details that were too awkward to add before. Note that I appear to have been wrong in my last comment; the 11.2.5 update doesn't seem to have included a new Word. -- Steven Fisher 17:41, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] truetype ligatures
I have never used Word in the past, but I have to deal with Word documents now at work. When I found that Word doesn't cope with TrueType ligature glyphs, I at first refused to believe it. I mean, TrueType has been in use since when, 1991? Then I found out that OpenOffice supports them without problem. It is simply beyond me how a $230 application can lack such basic functionality, especially seeing that it is provided byt its $0 competition as a matter of course. Now it appears that Uniscribe has some support for context shaping. It apparently just refuses to apply it to Latin script. Can I conceivably trick Word somehow into using a font's ligature/precomposed glyphs repertoire, e.g. by making it believe the script is not Latin or similar? This may not be straightforward, as the fontforge manual tells us that
- Microsoft tries to document what features they apply for which scripts in Uniscribe, but that isn't very helpful since Word and Office have quite different behavior than the default.
That seems to mean that Microsoft documents one thing, and their applications do something entirely different. This reduces me to trial and error. Is there any information available surrounding this? dab (ᛏ) 18:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Contradiction in section Word 1983 to 1990
Many concepts and ideas were brought from Bravo, the original GUI word processor developed at Xerox PARC, to the original Mac version, which was the first Word version to use a graphical user interface, and the later Word for Windows. Bravo's creator Charles Simonyi left PARC to work for Microsoft in 1981. Simonyi hired Brodie, who had worked with him on Bravo, away from PARC that summer.
seems to be contradicted by the next paragraph
Word for Macintosh, despite the major differences in look and feel from the DOS version, was ported by Ken Shapiro with only minor changes from the DOS source code,[citation needed] which had been written with high-resolution displays and laser printers in mind although none were yet available to the general public.
The confirmation for the port with only minor changes is also still missing — minor changes would include a rewrite in a different language/ISA. Lars T. 14:46, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Exporting mediawiki content to MS Word
Is this possible ? tools ? Wizzy…☎ 13:08, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- Why would you want it? The Word format is a proprietary format, you should use open formats instead. "Exporting" MediaWiki content to HTML is simple: simply use the "printable version" link. - Sikon 15:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- in firefox (or ie probbablly but i don't use IE) hit the printable version link then go to file save, make sure web page complete is selected and save it. Then load the result into word. The result will need some cleanup but it at least seems to be readable. Plugwash 01:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Mozilla Firefox and Word Web Pages
Do you know that Mozilla Firefox doesn't show properly web pages, created with Microsoft Word? Example: [4]
- When I look at that page in IE the images are not appearing. In Firefox the page displays correctly. Shinobu 17:37, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
- How odd to say I tested it in Internet Explorer, problems also appear in Opera Browser. Perhaps this is down to a mishap with HTML or just that Word isn't suppoted in the browser in know myself front page works sufficiently. Oliver Davison 18:21, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Complaints in the Word 1981-1990 section
In the second half of the third paragraph of this section, a list of complaints begins with the note that WordPerfect is "a superior program for word processing only," and proceeds to list a number of reasons why. This seems to belong elsewhere, or maybe nowhere considering there are no citations for it. --joeOnSunset 07:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Role in fighting crime
I like this section. However, I think the title for it is extremely lame. Does anyone have a better idea for it? Would "Word in the news" work? --Steven Fisher 05:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Word version 2–2003
In the formats section appears "Word version 2–2003". Is this correct? Shouldn't it be Word version 97-2003? mferreira
[edit] almost perfect
Almost perfect has a ton of tiny tidbits about word history: http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ And it's fun read. Fun and tragic. 212.213.204.99 19:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)