Atlantis Word Processor

[BillW50]

I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
be portable too. ;-)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8 Pro w/Media Center

[Ed Cryer]

BillW50 wrote:
> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
> tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
> all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
> hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
> word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
> be portable too. ;-)
>

Nice one.
Like a previous version of MS Word with typewriter clicks.

Ed

[Silver Slimer]

On 04/02/2014 10:22 AM, BillW50 wrote:
> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
> tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
> all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
> hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
> word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
> be portable too. ;-)
>

Does it have a thesaurus?
--
Silver Slimer
GNU/Linux is Communism

[BillW50]

Yes it does. Although it is an extra free download.

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/thesaurus.htm

[mechanic]

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:45:22 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

>> Does it have a thesaurus?
>
> Yes it does. Although it is an extra free download.
>
> http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/thesaurus.htm

Seems to be Windows only and the application itself is not free -
$35 license fee. Why do they bother?

[Silver Slimer]

On 04/02/2014 12:45 PM, BillW50 wrote:
> On 2/4/2014 11:37 AM, Silver Slimer wrote:
>> On 04/02/2014 10:22 AM, BillW50 wrote:
>>> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
>>> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
>>> tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
>>> all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
>>> hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
>>> word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
>>> be portable too. ;-)
>>
>> Does it have a thesaurus?
>
> Yes it does. Although it is an extra free download.
>
> http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/thesaurus.htm

And I notice that it supports ODT as well. Looks like I'll be able to
remove LibreOffice.

[Silver Slimer]

Well, if it's worthwhile, the 35$ is a small price to pay. However,
LibreOffice is free. Hard to say no to that.

[Ed Propes]

Because you get the application for free during the 24 hour
period it appears on giveawayoftheday.com. Down load it and
install. What you get is the normal application not a trial
version. Of course there is the upgrade option though 8-). This
is the first time I've used the web-site so I shouldn't sound so
much like a shill I guess.

Ed from E Texas

[BillW50]

Yes, but Atlantis Word Processor is free for the next 13 hours and that
is hard to beat. And yes, if you wait too long it will cost $35. But
even that price is cheap for all that you get.

And to mechanic, yes I too use many OS too. But it isn't any surprise to
me the good stuff is only available for Windows. It has been this way
for a couple of decades now. Even when there are multiple versions
available for multiple OS, the better one always seems to be the Windows
one.

[BillW50]

Sounds fine to me Ed.

[dadiOH]

"mechanic" <mech...@example.net> wrote in message
news:1jhia4n047anv$.d...@example1357.net

They bother because it is free today. See OP.

--

dadiOH
____________________________

Winters getting colder? Tired of the rat race?
Taxes out of hand? Maybe just ready for a change?
Check it out... http://www.floridaloghouse.net

[dadiOH]

"BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:lcr0ir$uou$1...@dont-email.me

> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word
> processor which I tried dozens of them in the past and
> almost none of them impress me at all. But I must say
> just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few hours
> has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non
> MS Word word processors like me, this one is definitely
> worth a look. And it can be portable too. ;-)

I've used it for a number of years. It is a good program and reasonably
versatile. FWIW, I like it.

[BillW50]

On 2/4/2014 2:46 PM, dadiOH wrote:
> "BillW50"<Bil...@aol.kom> wrote in message
> news:lcr0ir$uou$1...@dont-email.me
>> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
>> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word
>> processor which I tried dozens of them in the past and
>> almost none of them impress me at all. But I must say
>> just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few hours
>> has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non
>> MS Word word processors like me, this one is definitely
>> worth a look. And it can be portable too. ;-)
>
> I've used it for a number of years. It is a good program and reasonably
> versatile. FWIW, I like it.

OMG! I never heard about it until today. And you never mentioned it
before? From what I have heard about it today, even v1.0 was quite good.

[Ken Springer]

Unless the features you want to use in LO are buggy or don't work.
That's why I've given up on LO.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 24.0
Thunderbird 24.0

[Silver Slimer]

Open-source in general is buggy or doesn't work.

[Good Guy]

On 05/02/2014 01:07, Silver Slimer wrote:
> Open-source in general is buggy or doesn't work.
>

Apart from Mozilla FF or TB, I don't use any other open source products
and I have no plans to change my habits.

My website runs on Linux but it is maintained by my host and I have
involvement with it.

--
Good Guy
Website: http://mytaxsite.co.uk
Website: http://html-css.co.uk
Email: http://mytaxsite.co.uk/contact-us

[Ken Springer]

After 3 or 4 years of using it, I'm afraid I have to agree with you for
the programs I've tried to use "in depth". Have some others I'm trying,
jury is out on them.

[Silver Slimer]

On 04/02/2014 9:41 PM, Ken Springer wrote:

>> Open-source in general is buggy or doesn't work.
>
> After 3 or 4 years of using it, I'm afraid I have to agree with you for
> the programs I've tried to use "in depth". Have some others I'm trying,
> jury is out on them.

Technically, all people should be using open-source simply because the
code is transparent. However, people should only be accepting to use
operating systems which are entirely free (as in freedom) as well as
free third-party software, free formats and free codecs. For privacy as
well as security, there are nothing but benefits. However, there are
only a handful of GNU/Linux distributions which are fully free and
they're not that good. A lot of people would have trouble doing what
they're used to doing in Windows and they'd be disgusted at how their
computers have trouble going to and waking from sleep as well as how web
sites dependent on Flash wouldn't work at all.

[VanguardLH]

BillW50 wrote:

> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
> tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
> all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
> hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
> word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
> be portable too. ;-)

Do it come with GOTD's wrapper that you can use the start & abort
install trick to get rid of it so it no longer exists for the real
installer? That gets rid of it phoning home to GOTD to check if you are
installing within the giveaway day.

The trick, as I recall, is you start GOTD's fake installer, let it
extract the real installer into the %temp% directory, grab a copy of the
real installer to store elsewhere, abort GOTD's fake installer, and
thereafter you have the real installer to run on any day you want.

Their online manual mentions their editor creates RTF files. Since they
mention Microsoft in that description, it looks like they support
Microsoft's TNEF format (which Microsoft incorrectly labelled "RTF"
despite HTML is also an RTF format). Can you load and save other the
other file formats and make one of them the default one?

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/supported_formats.htm

The GOTD download is only 2.4MB in size. This isn't a web-only
installer is it? That is, you don't get the real installer but instead
a web installer that has to retrieve the real installer and then runs
the real installer. The Kinsoft Office download is 46MB and Softmaker
FreeOffice is 60MB. Although this Atlantis download is only the word
processor (i.e., you don't get the other components of a suite, like
spreadsheet and presentation), 2.4MB seems too small for both the word
processor component along with an installer wrapped around it. When
searching in the setup.exe in the downloaded .zip file, I did see the
string "Welcome to the Atlantis Word Processor Setup" but I couldn't
tell if I was looking at a string in GOTD's wrapper or for a real
installer (and, if so, if it was a web-only installer and not the real
or full installer). Then I found "This "Giveaway-of-the-day" offer has
expired." inside the setup.exe file so, yep, this is the GOTD wrapper
but is it a web-only wrapper or does it contain the full Atlantis
product?

If their word processor is really this tiny for its installer (and not a
web-only installer), maybe because it lacks some important
functionality. Read:

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/faq.htm

No table or frames support. Really, no table support? If you open a
doc someone else created using Word, table formatting is lost. Geesh,
have fun using monospace fonts and the tab key to emulate tables.
Reviewers noted lack of imaging support (pictures) but those were 2-year
old reviews. Since their online help describes how to add pictures,
maybe they got around to adding it in the last couple of years (a bit
late for a product that started back in 2003 as Atlantis Ocean Mind).
There is no PDF support but instead they have you install a PDF printer
and use that. No version control or change tracking like in MS Word,
Kingsoft, and Open/LibreOffice. So what else does it lack when compared
to the word processors available in the free Kingsoft, Softmaker, and
Open/LibreOffice suites? They claim to be an MS Word alternative, and
they charge for it, but it is a weak alternative. No point to pay when
you can get other better alternatives and for free (and all the time).

I guess if you like this word processor (and only want a word processor)
but miss out on the GOTD offer, you could buy it for only $10 with a 70%
discount offer at softpedia.com.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Text-editors/Atlantis-Word-Processor.shtml

As of version 1.6.5.8, this product dropped support for Windows 9x and
Windows NT4. It's been awhile since I've seen anyone using NT4 but I
still see plenty of users of Windows 9x.

[mechanic]

On Tue, 4 Feb 2014 15:44:30 -0500, dadiOH wrote:

> "mechanic" <mech...@example.net> wrote in message
> news:1jhia4n047anv$.d...@example1357.net
>> On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:45:22 -0600, BillW50 wrote:
>>
>>> > Does it have a thesaurus?
>>>
>>> Yes it does. Although it is an extra free download.
>>>
>>> http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/thesaurus.htm
>>
>> Seems to be Windows only and the application itself is
>> not free - $35 license fee. Why do they bother?
>
> They bother because it is free today. See OP.

The 'they' in the quoted post refers to the developers of the app.
How do they expect to compete with MS-Office on features, or
Libre/Open Office on price?

[mechanic]

On Tue, 4 Feb 2014 23:17:01 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

> As of version 1.6.5.8, this product dropped support for Windows 9x
> and Windows NT4. It's been awhile since I've seen anyone using
> NT4 but I still see plenty of users of Windows 9x.

I hope you advised them to upgrade to WinXP! Though, wait,...

[Ken Springer]

While your thoughts on free software and operating systems is noble,
it's also a utopia that will never exist.

Think about it, the people doing the coding have to eat. If they spent
8 hrs/day doing coding, got paid $0, how do they pay bills? If they
have a job somewhere, then they don't/won't have another 8 hrs. to do
this. If nothing else, the spouse and family won't be there. The coder
has no life.

And since they do not get their income from coding, there's 0 incentive
to fix bugs other than pride. This is what I ran into with Libre
Office. And you'll find them with Firefox and Thunderbird if you check
Bugzilla. Bugs go back for years. You'll note in my sig I use FF and
TB, and at the moment, considering getting Office for Mac so I can use
Outlook, and thus avoid a lot of bugs in TB.

I will agree, that at the moment, it is the most secure. But that's
because open source operating systems are just not popular enough. At
one time, there were no malware for the Mac. That's no longer true.
And I know of one piece of malware that exists for Linux. I can't
remember the name, but it actually attacked Windows, OS X, and Linux, if
the report was accurate.

But... Even more importantly, it has to work. And as you noted, things
don't. The average user simply will not accept a system that, while
more secure, doesn't work.

I still want to give Linux a try, I even created a partition on my boot
drive for that. Haven't had time and energy to do it. I've read some
nice things about Netrunner (I think) and it's attempt to make switching
from Windows less painful. It's supposed to include Flash, Java, and
who knows what else.

[Ken Springer]

You provide a product that works for a group of users, and is rock solid
with bugs getting fixed. A simple concept many simply seem unable to grasp.

Both Kingsoft Office and Softmaker Office have free and paid for
versions. Obviously, the paid for versions have more features.
Personal theory, those free versions will have fewer bugs than competing
software that free, no paid for versions. Why? Do you think someone
that tries the free version, finds them buggy, will even consider the
paid version?

[mechanic]

On Wed, 05 Feb 2014 04:40:48 -0700, Ken Springer wrote:

> On 2/5/14 2:59 AM, mechanic wrote:
>> On Tue, 4 Feb 2014 15:44:30 -0500, dadiOH wrote:
>>
>>> "mechanic" <mech...@example.net> wrote in message
>>> news:1jhia4n047anv$.d...@example1357.net
>>>> On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:45:22 -0600, BillW50 wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Does it have a thesaurus?
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes it does. Although it is an extra free download.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/thesaurus.htm
>>>>
>>>> Seems to be Windows only and the application itself is
>>>> not free - $35 license fee. Why do they bother?
>>>
>>> They bother because it is free today. See OP.
>>
>> The 'they' in the quoted post refers to the developers of the
>> app. How do they expect to compete with MS-Office on features,
>> or Libre/Open Office on price?
>
> You provide a product that works for a group of users, and is
> rock solid with bugs getting fixed. A simple concept many simply
> seem unable to grasp.

Oh it's that easy is it? Do you have any idea how much effort it
takes to develop, test and distribute this kind of product? Why
would any group even consider putting up that kind of capital when
the barriers to entry into that market are so high?

[Ken Springer]

Hmmm, I don't see where I said it was easy to do, just what you have to do.

[Yousuf Khan]

Well, I'd been using Libre Office and prior to that it's predecessor
Open Office, and it's predecessor Star Office. They were okay, I was
impressed with the fact that they could open up Microsoft Office docs
pretty well. Lacked a few features here and there, but was okay with
that. It was especially useful under Linux, Ubuntu. I was running Open
Office under Windows for many years too.

A few years ago, picked up a package deal of Windows 7 Ultimate and
Office 2007 Ultimate, and have been happy with that ever since. I can't
say the same thing about Ubuntu Linux. They've forced so many changes
down the throats of their users without any proper consultation, or at
least giving them much options, that I've now given up on it. So since
I've given up on Linux, that means that I've also given up on Libre
Office. I also used to keep Linux around in the XP and previous years,
just in case Windows crapped out, but since Windows 7, Windows has been
much much stabler, so the need for Linux as a fallback is lessened.

On the other hand, still using Firefox and Thunderbird all of these
years. I'd like to see other open source alternatives to Thunderbird,
but I haven't found anything comparable yet. So Thunderbird and Firefox
are my entrenched programs, much like Windows itself is, and MS Office.

Yousuf Khan

[Silver Slimer]

On 05/02/2014 4:59 AM, mechanic wrote:

> The 'they' in the quoted post refers to the developers of the app.
> How do they expect to compete with MS-Office on features, or
> Libre/Open Office on price?

The biggest gripe I have with Atlantis is that it saves to .RTF by
default. I can understand that they would avoid .DOC or .DOCX due to
their proprietary nature and the high potential for them to screw up the
format due to lack of compatibility but there's no reason for them to
ignore a format like .ODT which is open to everyone and superior to .RTF.

[dadiOH]

"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
news:lcshgf$mbr$1...@dont-email.me

> If their word processor is really this tiny for its
> installer (and not a web-only installer), maybe because
> it lacks some important functionality.

My ancient version is 3.75 MB installed. The exe is about 2.1 MB. It is
Atlantis Ocean Mind (the previous name) v 1.5.1.4 and is probably 10 years
or more old.

> Reviewers noted
> lack of imaging support (pictures) but those were 2-year
> old reviews.

No problem inserting pictures in my way more than two year old version.

I can't comment on your other concerns as they aren't things I use, need or
want. I am sure there are more full featured word processors but simplicity
decreases with features.

One thing I do like about it is the ability to save in htm. I have and can
use html editors but rarely use them as I don't have much need for them.
The web pages in my sig were made with Atlantis and IrfanView.

[Silver Slimer]

On 05/02/2014 6:35 AM, Ken Springer wrote:

>> Technically, all people should be using open-source simply because the
>> code is transparent. However, people should only be accepting to use
>> operating systems which are entirely free (as in freedom) as well as
>> free third-party software, free formats and free codecs. For privacy as
>> well as security, there are nothing but benefits. However, there are
>> only a handful of GNU/Linux distributions which are fully free and
>> they're not that good. A lot of people would have trouble doing what
>> they're used to doing in Windows and they'd be disgusted at how their
>> computers have trouble going to and waking from sleep as well as how web
>> sites dependent on Flash wouldn't work at all.
>
> While your thoughts on free software and operating systems is noble,
> it's also a utopia that will never exist.

Oh, I agree with you. That's why I sign every one of my messages
reminding people that GNU/Linux is Communism.

> Think about it, the people doing the coding have to eat. If they spent
> 8 hrs/day doing coding, got paid $0, how do they pay bills? If they
> have a job somewhere, then they don't/won't have another 8 hrs. to do
> this. If nothing else, the spouse and family won't be there. The coder
> has no life.

Agreed again. One GNU/Linux zealot, Bryan Lunduke, learned this the hard
way. He made applications for all systems including GNU/Linux but was
eventually pressured into open-sourcing each one of his products due to
the fact that requiring payment was incompatible with the philosophy of
his operating system of choice. He went ahead and open-sourced but
accepted donations. Within a month or two, he saw his revenue drop
significantly (because even donations are too much for GNU/Linux users)
and he decided to code full-time for iOS where his efforts were
compensated. This is also around the time he left his hosting duty on
the Linux Action Show, probably because he was disillusioned with the
clientele though I notice that he still hasn't learned.

> And since they do not get their income from coding, there's 0 incentive
> to fix bugs other than pride. This is what I ran into with Libre
> Office. And you'll find them with Firefox and Thunderbird if you check
> Bugzilla. Bugs go back for years. You'll note in my sig I use FF and
> TB, and at the moment, considering getting Office for Mac so I can use
> Outlook, and thus avoid a lot of bugs in TB.

I only use Thunderbird because it allows me to send encrypted mail
through GnuPG. In the case of Firefox, I use it because it supports
plug-ins and isn't as insecure as Internet Explorer is. LibreOffice is
my suite of choice because I like the classic interface and believe in
open formats (not necessarily open-source). I will never be dumb enough
to tell you that any of the aforementioned products is devoid of bugs
though.

[Ken Springer]

On 2/5/14 7:03 AM, Silver Slimer wrote:

<snip>

> I only use Thunderbird because it allows me to send encrypted mail
> through GnuPG. In the case of Firefox, I use it because it supports
> plug-ins and isn't as insecure as Internet Explorer is. LibreOffice is
> my suite of choice because I like the classic interface and believe in
> open formats (not necessarily open-source). I will never be dumb enough
> to tell you that any of the aforementioned products is devoid of bugs
> though.

Overall, LO is pretty good. The problems occur when the features you
tend to use a lot have issues. That's what happened to me. I tried to
support LO by filing bugs. I actually thought, since it was an issue,
they would fix it. But no-o-o, it wasn't used by many (that they know
of, obviously), so they never fixed any of them. The zealots kept
telling me those issues weren't important. But they never had an answer
when I said they were important to me, and why should I use and
recommend a program that doesn't work.

I actually had a list of problems here I was going to file, but since
that was their attitude, I never bothered.

After the last go around in this area, I posted I was done with LO, and
stopped reading their mailing list/newsgroup/Nabble. LO is still
installed for the occasional Word file that I get, but that's it.

[Ken Springer]

Maybe they don't default to .ODT because few commercial packages support
it, AFAIK. And making a Word format as the default may be seen by some
as tacitly saying Word is what you should be using.

[Silver Slimer]

On 05/02/2014 11:15 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
> On 2/5/14 7:03 AM, Silver Slimer wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I only use Thunderbird because it allows me to send encrypted mail
>> through GnuPG. In the case of Firefox, I use it because it supports
>> plug-ins and isn't as insecure as Internet Explorer is. LibreOffice is
>> my suite of choice because I like the classic interface and believe in
>> open formats (not necessarily open-source). I will never be dumb enough
>> to tell you that any of the aforementioned products is devoid of bugs
>> though.
>
> Overall, LO is pretty good. The problems occur when the features you
> tend to use a lot have issues. That's what happened to me. I tried to
> support LO by filing bugs. I actually thought, since it was an issue,
> they would fix it. But no-o-o, it wasn't used by many (that they know
> of, obviously), so they never fixed any of them. The zealots kept
> telling me those issues weren't important. But they never had an answer
> when I said they were important to me, and why should I use and
> recommend a program that doesn't work.

I have to admit that I would be very upset with that kind of lack of
collaboration. I've financially supported LibreOffice and Firefox in the
past. If they ever decided that one of my issues was not important, they
would never see money from me again. As it is, I find both of Mozilla's
products to be memory hogs. I don't mind since I have 8 gigs of RAM on
this particular machine, but I also find that they tend to go into a
non-responsive mode from time to time. If I knew what issue caused that,
I would file a bug but expect it to be resolved.

> I actually had a list of problems here I was going to file, but since
> that was their attitude, I never bothered.

It makes sense. You tried to collaborate with them but they didn't
collaborate back.

> After the last go around in this area, I posted I was done with LO, and
> stopped reading their mailing list/newsgroup/Nabble. LO is still
> installed for the occasional Word file that I get, but that's it.

I write a few .ODT documents so the suite is necessary for me.
Technically, I could work just as well with WordPad since my texts are
usually very simple but I liked knowing that the advanced features are
there if ever I need them.

[Silver Slimer]

I believe that is their objective to be honest. Companies shouldn't be
so easily handing the monopoly to Microsoft.

[ray carter]

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 09:22:13 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
> tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
> all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
> hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
> word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
> be portable too. ;-)

It's not really portable in the sense of OS portability.

I generally use LibreOffice for heavy duty work and Abiword when I just
need to dash off a quick note - works a treat!

[Juan Wei]

Ken Springer has written on 2/4/2014 9:41 PM:

Define "in depth". I've been using open source programs for 30-odd years
and while some do not have all of the features of the proprietary
programs they are trying to replace, I have seen no more than the usual
number of bugs. (As you well know, no program is completely free of
bugs. See MS Windows, for example.)

[Ken Springer]

I guess the best definition is using features available in a program
that most people either don't use, have no need for, and/or don't even
realize exist.

[BillW50]

"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message

news:lcshgf$mbr$1...@dont-email.me...

> BillW50 wrote:
>
>> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
>> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which
>> I
>> tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me
>> at
>> all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
>> hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
>> word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it
>> can
>> be portable too. ;-)
>

[...]

> Then I found "This "Giveaway-of-the-day" offer has
> expired." inside the setup.exe file so, yep, this is the GOTD wrapper
> but is it a web-only wrapper or does it contain the full Atlantis
> product?

I downloaded it a few minutes after it was up on the website. Mine had
no GAOTD wrapper, just a setup.exe and a readme.txt. Although it doesn't
make a lot of difference, since once installed you can create a copy on
a flash drive. And running it on the flash, has the ability to install
on the computer you are running it on.

[...]

> No table or frames support. Really, no table support?

Why are people creating tables on a word processor? Why not use a
spreadsheet?

> I guess if you like this word processor (and only want a word
> processor)
> but miss out on the GOTD offer, you could buy it for only $10 with a
> 70%
> discount offer at softpedia.com.
>
> http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Text-editors/Atlantis-Word-Processor.shtml
>
> As of version 1.6.5.8, this product dropped support for Windows 9x and
> Windows NT4. It's been awhile since I've seen anyone using NT4 but I
> still see plenty of users of Windows 9x.

Hmm... I wonder if it gets you future updates for free?

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows Live Mail 2009 v14
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 7 Home SP1

[Ken Springer]

On 2/5/14 2:47 PM, BillW50 wrote:
> "VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
> news:lcshgf$mbr$1...@dont-email.me...
>> BillW50 wrote:

<snip>

> Why are people creating tables on a word processor? Why not use a
> spreadsheet?

It depends on what your goal is with the table.

I think people tend to lose sight of the purpose of a spreadsheet. It's
for the purpose manipulating numbers, doing math operations of some
type. It's not for manipulating text.

In your preferred spreadsheet, can you insert a graphic/image into a
cell? In a Libre Office spreadsheet, you can insert a graphic/image,
but it's free floating, it's not inserted into the cell itself. Which
you might want if you were using LO Writer to create a table for a
basic HTML page.

In Writer and Word, the image is inserted into the table cell. Change
the size, shape, location of the table and/or cell, and the image moves
with it. Doing the same in an LO spreadsheet, the image stays put. You
have to manually reposition that image.

I'm sure there are other differences, but this one comes to mind. And
doing something like this that doesn't require a math component is
simply extra steps you have to do to get that table into the text
document, plus the extra time to edit that table info.

[VanguardLH]

BillW50 wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote ...

>
>> Then I found "This "Giveaway-of-the-day" offer has
>> expired." inside the setup.exe file so, yep, this is the GOTD wrapper
>> but is it a web-only wrapper or does it contain the full Atlantis
>> product?
>
> I downloaded it a few minutes after it was up on the website. Mine had
> no GAOTD wrapper, just a setup.exe and a readme.txt.

Perhaps we got different downloads from the GOTD site. I severely doubt
the true installer for JUST the word processor product distributed by
the author would contain a string saying "Giveaway-of-the-day".

The GOTD download that I got also had only the setup.exe and .txt files.
It was what was INSIDE the .exe file that identified it from GOTD.

Did you try running the setup.exe with NO network access so the wrapper
couldn't phone home? If not, did you install significantly outside the
window of the giveaway day, like 4 hours after you could no longer
download it from the GOTD site (to accomodate any timezone difference
between your locale and for their validation server)?

>> No table or frames support. Really, no table support?
>
> Why are people creating tables on a word processor? Why not use a
> spreadsheet?

So you're going to make someone bounce between a word processor and
spreadsheet program just to, for example, see a list of ingredients in a
recipe? Ever read a newspaper or even a small one-page flyer? Really,
that's your argument for not supporting tables in a word processor, that
you don't need columnar formatting ever? Uh huh, and I suppose you
never used the tab key to align text either in a single or multiple
columns.

Tables in documents aren't necessarily and most times are not a
spreadsheet with cells containing formulae. They are just a means of
providing easy columnar *formatting*. So why bother with bolding,
italics, spacing between paragraphs, justification, bullet lists, or any
of that other unnecessary formatting fluff? Just with a plain text
editor, like Notepad, if you think formatting is unimportant.

That you don't need to use tables for columnar formatting is hardly an
excuse for a word *processor* to omit the feature. I didn't even
mention embedding a spreadsheet or range of cells from one into a
document. I only mentioned tables which is a formatting feature.

>> if you like this word processor (and only want a word processor) but
>> miss out on the GOTD offer, you could buy it for only $10 with a 70%
>> discount offer at softpedia.com.
>

> Hmm... I wonder if it gets you future updates for free?

Well, with the purchase of any software, some updates might be available
but not usually after the next major update (which many companies now
disconnect after the next minor update so you only get the sub-minor
versions for free). For example, 1.6.5 would be major version 1, minor
version 6, and sub-minor version 5. In the long past, you got the
updates until version 2.x.x came out. Now they've pushed it so you
typically only get updates until 1.7.x comes out. Some software has
lifetime free updates.

I lost interest in the product soon after investigating it. It'll be up
to you to find out from the author how they handle updates, or ask the
folks here that mentioned using it for years. The 70% offer is you
buying a license from the author for the software. You would have to
find out from author how they handle licensing regarding later releases.

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/register.htm
http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/upgrading.htm

Those don't describe the longevity of their update process; i.e., to
what point in the versioning chain you cease to get further updates.
There is no mention of lifetime updates. You could ask in their forums
(http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/forum.htm) or other respondents
here that mentioned they've used this product for years and on how often
there have been major version releases remembering that this product is
still at version 1 since first released in 2003. It was at 1.6.6.1 back
in Dec 2009. 4 years later and it's STILL at 1.6.6.1. Not much
movement there and from what I've read they don't focus on RFEs
(requests for enhancement) from their customers.

I have to wonder over such a long time with no changes, especially to
accomodate customer requests, if the product is dead. It is not
uncommon for a company to cease development but continue milking a
revenue stream from it. Look how many years Delrina Fax (aka WinFax)
was dead before and after Symantec acquired the product all the time
still being sold.

[Shadow]

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 09:22:13 -0600, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:

>I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
>Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
>tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
>all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
>hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
>word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
>be portable too. ;-)

I downloaded it, and since I'd missed the GAOTD offer, I had
to make my own serial. They owe me five minutes.

Nice = The clickerty sound. It does not phone home. It saves
in RTF. Most companies use ODT and RTF as the others are not
universal. Bad for business to lose a customer because some clueless
salesman sent the letter in a proprietary format.

Bad = It does not use open source dictionaries, and the author
is not willing to add any new ones. See discussions in Forum. For me ,
not having a Brazilian-Portuguese dictionary is a no-no.

Last thoughts = is there a clickerty-click extension for
LibreOffice ?
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

[BillW50]

"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message

news:lcuulr$4gi$1...@dont-email.me...

> BillW50 wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH wrote ...
>>
>>> Then I found "This "Giveaway-of-the-day" offer has
>>> expired." inside the setup.exe file so, yep, this is the GOTD
>>> wrapper but is it a web-only wrapper or does it contain the full
>>> Atlantis product?
>>
>> I downloaded it a few minutes after it was up on the website. Mine
>> had no GAOTD wrapper, just a setup.exe and a readme.txt.
>
> Perhaps we got different downloads from the GOTD site. I severely
> doubt the true installer for JUST the word processor product
> distributed by the author would contain a string saying
> "Giveaway-of-the-day".
>
> The GOTD download that I got also had only the setup.exe and .txt
> files. It was what was INSIDE the .exe file that identified it from
> GOTD.
>
> Did you try running the setup.exe with NO network access so the
> wrapper couldn't phone home? If not, did you install significantly
> outside the window of the giveaway day, like 4 hours after you could
> no longer download it from the GOTD site (to accomodate any timezone
> difference between your locale and for their validation server)?

Absolutely! For example, I haven't fired up Windows 7 on this machine
for like 6 months. I just fired it up yesterday (a day after that
GAOTD), and ran setup.exe and it installed Atlantis just fine. Others
commented in the comment section that theirs didn't have the wrapper
either.

>>> No table or frames support. Really, no table support?
>>
>> Why are people creating tables on a word processor? Why not use a
>> spreadsheet?
>
> So you're going to make someone bounce between a word processor and
> spreadsheet program just to, for example, see a list of ingredients in
> a recipe?

Naw, MS Word can read Excel tables right inside of a Word document. This
is called integration.

> Ever read a newspaper or even a small one-page flyer?
> Really, that's your argument for not supporting tables in a word
> processor, that you don't need columnar formatting ever?

I don't think of columns as tables per se. By the way, Atlantis does
support columns.

> Uh huh, and I suppose you never used the tab key to align text either
> in a single or multiple columns.

I've been using word processors and text editors since the early 80's.
And back in the CP/M-DOS days I have created a few tables by using tab
characters. But since then, I can't think of a single time I wanted to
create a table (outside of a spreadsheet). And since I save lots of
computer articles (I use plain text if I can get away with it). And
tables just makes the task of converting to plain text a bit harder. Too
many people are creating tables and using them for things that are
totally unnecessary.

> Tables in documents aren't necessarily and most times are not a
> spreadsheet with cells containing formulae. They are just a means of
> providing easy columnar *formatting*. So why bother with bolding,
> italics, spacing between paragraphs, justification, bullet lists, or
> any of that other unnecessary formatting fluff? Just with a plain
> text editor, like Notepad, if you think formatting is unimportant.

I don't know, we do pretty well in plain text newsgroups without all of
that stuff. Some experts claim that plain text doesn't contain
formatting. But I disagree. Plain text can be formatted to contain many
of the features you listed above.

Heck, this WLM has a formatting error and creates quoted lines with a
mix of long and short line lengths. Thank goodness for formatting
controls in word processors. As I can fix it in a few seconds.

> That you don't need to use tables for columnar formatting is hardly an
> excuse for a word *processor* to omit the feature. I didn't even
> mention embedding a spreadsheet or range of cells from one into a
> document. I only mentioned tables which is a formatting feature.

I dunno, I don't miss it a bit. And Atlantis is only 3MB in size. And
for all it does, it is truly amazing! And it has features I like which
is rare among other word processors. Like it tells me how long I have
been composing this reply and how many characters per minute I am typing
them out. ;-)

Everything I have read so far, registrating gets you all future 1.xx
versions.

> I have to wonder over such a long time with no changes, especially to
> accomodate customer requests, if the product is dead. It is not
> uncommon for a company to cease development but continue milking a
> revenue stream from it. Look how many years Delrina Fax (aka WinFax)
> was dead before and after Symantec acquired the product all the time
> still being sold.

I have a ton of such software. Although I have a different take about
viewing such software. Most of these products virtually had been all
ironed out. And they are far from the early buggy versions. And I think
most software should be like this.

Take a look at Mozilla for example. I view their products as always
under construction and will never be completed. You can't develop good
software using this model. What you always end up with is bloated
spaghetti code.

[dora.s...@gmail.com]

I sometimes watch Giveaway of the Day, and once in a great while it's something I want. Usually they have the same things over and over again.

I haven't followed this thread. I did check out this Atlantis Word Pocessor, days ago, and it is a cheap version of Word that costs $30 or so and does a quarter of what Word does.

If you can't afford Word, download OpenOffice. It's basically a free version of Microsoft Office; it's produced by some group as open source software.

Dora

[BillW50]

<dora.s...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9215a1aa-b011-4682...@googlegroups.com...

> I sometimes watch Giveaway of the Day, and once in a great while it's
> something I want. Usually they have the same things over and over
> again.

Yes so true! Although they do have some really great winners there from
time to time.

> I haven't followed this thread. I did check out this Atlantis Word
> Pocessor, days ago, and it is a cheap version of Word that costs $30
> or so and does a quarter of what Word does.

Oh, maybe somewhat limited as far as Word goes, but it also does things
that Word can't. And I am totally amazed how tiny this program is! The
dang thing is only 3MB in size and has dozens and dozens of features. I
have no idea what language this program was written in, but I only know
of machine and assembly languages that could pull off something this
small in size.

> If you can't afford Word, download OpenOffice. It's basically a
> free version of Microsoft Office; it's produced by some group as open
> source software.

I have used OpenOffice and I found it awful! Things like changing the
case of text is all over the place (sentence case isn't by the
upper/lower case toggles). They all should be in the same place. There
is no organization in the thought of the software. It is like features
were added later as an afterthought. And they would stick things in the
strangest places. I couldn't even be productive with it for even plain
text formatting. Some might be fine with OpenOffice, but not me. I would
gladly pay $500 so I wouldn't be stuck working with OpenOffice.

[BillW50]

"Ken Springer" <word...@greeleynet.com> wrote in message
news:lcujvm$vh5$1...@speranza.aioe.org...

> On 2/5/14 2:47 PM, BillW50 wrote:
>> "VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
>> news:lcshgf$mbr$1...@dont-email.me...
>>> BillW50 wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Why are people creating tables on a word processor? Why not use a
>> spreadsheet?
>
> It depends on what your goal is with the table.
>
> I think people tend to lose sight of the purpose of a spreadsheet.
> It's for the purpose manipulating numbers, doing math operations of
> some type. It's not for manipulating text.

You're right, but on the other hand, I think some lost sight what tables
are for. And while spreadsheets are manipulating numbers, databases are
for manipulating text and/or numbers. If say you are running a computer
review for example, why are they using tables to just control the left
and right margins of the paragraphs?

> In your preferred spreadsheet, can you insert a graphic/image into a
> cell? In a Libre Office spreadsheet, you can insert a graphic/image,
> but it's free floating, it's not inserted into the cell itself. Which
> you might want if you were using LO Writer to create a table for a
> basic HTML page.
>
> In Writer and Word, the image is inserted into the table cell. Change
> the size, shape, location of the table and/or cell, and the image
> moves with it. Doing the same in an LO spreadsheet, the image stays
> put. You have to manually reposition that image.
>
> I'm sure there are other differences, but this one comes to mind. And
> doing something like this that doesn't require a math component is
> simply extra steps you have to do to get that table into the text
> document, plus the extra time to edit that table info.

You know, some word processors has features of basic spreadsheet and
database use. Even though these features might be there, I wouldn't call
them very useful except for the lightest of uses.

You know I save lots of computers articles over the years. My most used
format is in plain text. As it is the most transportable format of all.
But when it just isn't practical, I'll use RTF, DOC, HTML, or even
MHTML. And most of the time I see tables used in docs, it was totally
unnecessary.

[Silver Slimer]

On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 06:01:47 -0500, Shadow <S...@dow.br> wrote:

> Nice = The clickerty sound. It does not phone home. It saves
> in RTF. Most companies use ODT and RTF as the others are not
> universal. Bad for business to lose a customer because some clueless
> salesman sent the letter in a proprietary format.

I used to use .RTF as a standard in the late 90's and early 2000's BECAUSE
all programs recognized it and it was the closest thing to an open format.
Since the creation of .ODT, .RTF essentially lost its worth as the .ODT
format is more capable and is guaranteed to be supported forever as well.
I don't mind that .DOC or .DOCX have become standards in the industry, but
I think it's a bad idea for all of the world's enterprises to give
Microsoft a monopoly on document standards. The use of .ODT does not hand
power to one specific entity whereas the use of .DOC or .DOCX does.

> Bad = It does not use open source dictionaries, and the author
> is not willing to add any new ones. See discussions in Forum. For me ,
> not having a Brazilian-Portuguese dictionary is a no-no.

I'll bet that LibreOffice offers it though.

--
Silver Slimer
GNU/Linux is a duct-taped form of Communism

[Silver Slimer]

On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 06:31:08 -0500, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:

> Take a look at Mozilla for example. I view their products as always
> under construction and will never be completed. You can't develop good
> software using this model. What you always end up with is bloated
> spaghetti code.

Mozilla continues to use the outdated and insecure Netscape API for Flash
and is the slowest of all browsers for a cold start. It provides the best
features but at the cost of more memory use and the potential of freezing
the whole computer (my wife and I both experienced a frozen computer from
Mozilla's garbage code on two entirely different laptops).

[VanguardLH]

BillW50 wrote:

> BillW50 wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH wrote ...
>>

>> Did you try running the setup.exe with NO network access so the
>> wrapper couldn't phone home?
>

> Absolutely!

Then it wasn't the typical GOTD install that limits you to the giveaway
day. Too bad GOTD doesn't identity their limited installs versus the
author-original installs. The latter type is so rare that the
expectation is a GOTD download will have their phone-home wrapper.

>> So you're going to make someone bounce between a word processor and
>> spreadsheet program just to, for example, see a list of ingredients in
>> a recipe?
>
> Naw, MS Word can read Excel tables right inside of a Word document. This
> is called integration.

First you argue that table support isn't needed. I wasn't talking about
spreadsheet integration but using tables they way they are prevalently
used: for formatting. Now you're trying to recover by arguing about
embedded spreadsheets for tables despite that Altantis is NOT an office
suite, is only a word processor, and there would be no spreadsheet
program to integrate with their word processor. You're wandering.

I was mentioning what Atlantis' word processor does NOT have.

>> Really, that's your argument for not supporting tables in a word
>> processor, that you don't need columnar formatting ever?
>
> I don't think of columns as tables per se. By the way, Atlantis does
> support columns.

Might be doable to make up for the lack of table support for formatting.

>> Uh huh, and I suppose you never used the tab key to align text either
>> in a single or multiple columns.
>
> I've been using word processors and text editors since the early 80's.

And I'm even older than you and using computers even longer. Irrelevant
to the discussion of why tables are missing from Atlantis. The point is
that having to use tab keys is a clumsy method to make up for the lack
of support tables (regardless of what software would support 30 years
ago).

> I can't think of a single time I wanted to
> create a table (outside of a spreadsheet).

So you are again using your limited experience to dictate that a product
doesn't need a feature in a product that is used by lots of other users.
Did you contract with Sun Rising to produce this product just for you?

> I don't know, we do pretty well in plain text newsgroups without all of
> that stuff.

Wow, the limit for use of a word processor by you is that it only need
to create documents for publishing in text-only newsgroups? Frankly I
didn't think anyone would be using a *word processor* to post in Usenet.
I didn't realize the discussion was about the LCD (lowest common
denominator) feature set of a word processor to do plain text editing.
Seems you should be happy with Notepad in Windows and vim in Linux.

>> I have to wonder over such a long time with no changes, especially to
>> accomodate customer requests, if the product is dead.
>

> I have a ton of such software. Although I have a different take about
> viewing such software. Most of these products virtually had been all
> ironed out. And they are far from the early buggy versions. And I think
> most software should be like this.

Despite the argument, stagnant software is still stagnant software.
That it got "ironed out" to no longer have any updates for a long time
means it met the criteria of functionality designed by the author. Yet
word processors shouldn't be stagnant software. We're not talking about
edline or sed here.

To me, this looks like Chinesware were further development wasn't
warranted because the revenue stream didn't support it. Using GOTD is
just another means for authors to get free advertising both at the GOTD
site and through word of mouth from users. They pump up the advertising
for a staid product.

> Take a look at Mozilla for example. I view their products as always
> under construction and will never be completed. You can't develop good
> software using this model. What you always end up with is bloated
> spaghetti code.

And most users here aren't still using a staid OS, like CP/M, either.
The very term "software" mean flexibility and change, not cast in stone.
If you don't like change, computers are definitely nothing you should
get involved with.

[Paul]

I can't say I've seen the same thing here.

Firefox on this machine (WinXP), starts in one second. While viewing
no web page content, memory consumption in Task Manager is listed
as 35MB. And, I've never had a freeze due to Firefox or Thunderbird.

To really have a freeze, you need to do some testing to classify it:

1) Press the shift lock key on the keyboard, and see if
the keyboard LED flashes. If the desktop manager fails,
sometimes that takes keyboard input with it. If the keyboard
LED responds to the shift lock, then you're not really frozen.

2) The real test, is to attempt to ping the computer from
another computer. If you get a response, then the computer
really isn't frozen, and it's a GUI problem. Locking up
the GUI, is not the same kind of failure as completely
freezing it. If it happens regularly, consider looking into
Windbg over a serial port. On Unix boxes we'd just Telnet in
and do stuff. But I don't think that's an option on WinXP.
Maybe the equivalent on Windows, would be a remote desktop
session as a means to debug.

Another reason why your machine freezes and mine doesn't,
is the kind of AV you run. That can make a big difference
to apparent stability.

Firefox has a program in place to address memory usage.
They actually have a surveillance system, so that on a
per-release basis, they can detect whether any of their
old memory usage problems have come back. So they have
invested some effort in providing debugging tools for
the developers, and surveillance when an update is pushed
out. It's not like they're completely oblivious to your pain.

Is Firefox bloated - agreed, if you download the tarball
and look at the 60,000 files in the source. It's hell on
Earth in there. I tried single stepping with a debugger,
working on a problem, and it was virtually hopeless to make
any headway. Several of the files, had routines that looked
similar to one another, and yet were using different
sets of preferences. Really... goofy.

As far as I know, *all* the suppliers of browsers, rewrite
stuff. The main problem with Firefox, is for at least
some subsystems, they never ever seem to do a good
job of it (e.g. printing in Firefox - boo hiss).

Paul

[Silver Slimer]

On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 11:52:29 -0500, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:

> I can't say I've seen the same thing here.
>
> Firefox on this machine (WinXP), starts in one second. While viewing
> no web page content, memory consumption in Task Manager is listed
> as 35MB. And, I've never had a freeze due to Firefox or Thunderbird.

Meanwhile, browser reviewers have all pointed out that Firefox is the
slowest to start. Not one has recorded a one-second start for Firefox on a
cold start and they used i7 processors.

> To really have a freeze, you need to do some testing to classify it:
>
> 1) Press the shift lock key on the keyboard, and see if
> the keyboard LED flashes. If the desktop manager fails,
> sometimes that takes keyboard input with it. If the keyboard
> LED responds to the shift lock, then you're not really frozen.

No response from the system at all constitutes a freeze, does it not?

> 2) The real test, is to attempt to ping the computer from
> another computer. If you get a response, then the computer
> really isn't frozen, and it's a GUI problem. Locking up
> the GUI, is not the same kind of failure as completely
> freezing it. If it happens regularly, consider looking into
> Windbg over a serial port. On Unix boxes we'd just Telnet in
> and do stuff. But I don't think that's an option on WinXP.
> Maybe the equivalent on Windows, would be a remote desktop
> session as a means to debug.

> Another reason why your machine freezes and mine doesn't,
> is the kind of AV you run. That can make a big difference
> to apparent stability.

The anti-virus is McAfee and it's admittedly pretty shitty. I blame it for
the fact that my computer doesn't wake from sleep sometimes (whereas it
works correctly without it installed). There IS a possibility that McAfee
is affecting both Thunderbird and Firefox's proper operation but it's sad
how neither IE nor Opera are problematic with it installed.

> As far as I know, *all* the suppliers of browsers, rewrite
> stuff. The main problem with Firefox, is for at least
> some subsystems, they never ever seem to do a good

> job of it (e.g. printing in Firefox - boo hiss).a

Firefox, for me, is not worth using without at least HTTPS Everywhere and
AdBlock Plus installed. If I were to discover that either of the two
extensions were the cause of Firefox's crashes and freezes, I would remove
them but Firefox would become useless to me. Malware generally comes from
ads and stolen credit card details and the like come from visiting sites
without proper encryption so I'm unwilling to use the browser without
those tools being installed. Opera has the same plug-ins and like I
mentioned before, is not affected by McAfee's potential problem-causing.
In addition to that, it loads immediately unlike Firefox.

[BillW50]

"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message

news:ld0b7e$1rf$1...@dont-email.me...

[BillW50]

"BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:ld0hpd$bpe$1...@dont-email.me...

>
> "VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
> news:ld0b7e$1rf$1...@dont-email.me...

Sorry about the last post, fingers slipped.

[Ken Springer]

On 2/6/14 7:06 AM, BillW50 wrote:
> "Ken Springer" <word...@greeleynet.com> wrote in message
> news:lcujvm$vh5$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
>> On 2/5/14 2:47 PM, BillW50 wrote:
>>> "VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
>>> news:lcshgf$mbr$1...@dont-email.me...
>>>> BillW50 wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> Why are people creating tables on a word processor? Why not use a
>>> spreadsheet?
>>
>> It depends on what your goal is with the table.
>>
>> I think people tend to lose sight of the purpose of a spreadsheet.
>> It's for the purpose manipulating numbers, doing math operations of
>> some type. It's not for manipulating text.
>
> You're right, but on the other hand, I think some lost sight what tables
> are for. And while spreadsheets are manipulating numbers, databases are
> for manipulating text and/or numbers.

"manipulating text and/or numbers"... You've lost me there with that
phrase. How do you "manipulate" text? I can sort of see it with numbers.

> If say you are running a computer
> review for example, why are they using tables to just control the left
> and right margins of the paragraphs?

Assuming your review is simply a text article, I wouldn't use a table at
all. Possibly for a pull quote, but I'd more than likely use a text box
there.

My uses of tables would be more for presenting information in a... At a
loss for a descriptor here. LOL

For instance, I have document listing different types of scholarships
(music, engineering, scientific) in one column of the table, where to
apply for it in the second column, and the web page hyperlink in the
third column. But the formatting does look like a spreadsheet layout.
It's constantly changing, or was as the project is in languish mode, and
is small enough that using spreadsheet to do the ever changing updates
would take more time than just doing it in Word/Libre Office/????????
tables. And, I can sort the data as I wish.

There is one case where I would use a spreadsheet, although I've never
had the reason to do so. I have to prepare a report to somebody about
the financial portion of some project. But, as I do the report, all the
numbers needed for the report are not available. In the spreadsheet,
I'd put the relevant data where calculations can be done as the data
comes in, with the results being dynamic in this case. The "bottom
line" of all these calculation goes into the report. I'd create the
"bottom line" part of the spreadsheet as a linked object into the text
document so that as new information comes in and is entered into the
spreadsheet, the changes to the "bottom line" are automatically updated
in the text document.

>> In your preferred spreadsheet, can you insert a graphic/image into a
>> cell? In a Libre Office spreadsheet, you can insert a graphic/image,
>> but it's free floating, it's not inserted into the cell itself. Which
>> you might want if you were using LO Writer to create a table for a
>> basic HTML page.
>>
>> In Writer and Word, the image is inserted into the table cell. Change
>> the size, shape, location of the table and/or cell, and the image
>> moves with it. Doing the same in an LO spreadsheet, the image stays
>> put. You have to manually reposition that image.
>>
>> I'm sure there are other differences, but this one comes to mind. And
>> doing something like this that doesn't require a math component is
>> simply extra steps you have to do to get that table into the text
>> document, plus the extra time to edit that table info.
>
> You know, some word processors has features of basic spreadsheet and
> database use. Even though these features might be there, I wouldn't call
> them very useful except for the lightest of uses.

Years ago, I experimented with the spreadsheet function of a table in
Word. Can't remember which version, but 2003 or previous. The cell
names were the antiquated R1C1 for the upper left cell, not A1 as we are
used to these days.

Never played with a database feature of a word processor. Or, at least,
not knowingly! LOL

> You know I save lots of computers articles over the years. My most used
> format is in plain text. As it is the most transportable format of all.
> But when it just isn't practical, I'll use RTF, DOC, HTML, or even
> MHTML. And most of the time I see tables used in docs, it was totally
> unnecessary.

For the copies I'm going to share, I use PDF. And save the original in
native format for the program.

[Shadow]

On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 10:40:29 -0500, "Silver Slimer" <slvrslmr@lv.c>
wrote:

>> Bad = It does not use open source dictionaries, and the author
>> is not willing to add any new ones. See discussions in Forum. For me ,
>> not having a Brazilian-Portuguese dictionary is a no-no.
>
>I'll bet that LibreOffice offers it though.

Of course it does. But no clickerty-click.

[Shadow]

On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 12:28:23 -0500, "Silver Slimer" <slvrslmr@lv.c>

wrote:

>> I can't say I've seen the same thing here.
>>
>> Firefox on this machine (WinXP), starts in one second. While viewing
>> no web page content, memory consumption in Task Manager is listed
>> as 35MB. And, I've never had a freeze due to Firefox or Thunderbird.
>
>Meanwhile, browser reviewers have all pointed out that Firefox is the
>slowest to start. Not one has recorded a one-second start for Firefox on a
>cold start and they used i7 processors.

Reviewers are expensive. Only Micro$oft and Google can afford
the best.

[Silver Slimer]

That is more paranoia from what I will have to assume it's a GNU/Linux
advocate. There are multiple videos on Youtube where the browsers are put
side-by-side on the same computer and launched at exactly the same time
under identical scenarios which clearly demonstrated that Firefox was the
slowest. If that's not sufficient evidence for you, I don't think there
ever will be.

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 2/06/2014, Shadow posted:

To be consistent, you should spell the later company name as Goog£e.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

[BillW50]

"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message

news:ld0b7e$1rf$1...@dont-email.me...

> BillW50 wrote:
>
>> BillW50 wrote:
>>
>>> VanguardLH wrote ...
>>>
>>> Did you try running the setup.exe with NO network access so the
>>> wrapper couldn't phone home?
>>
>> Absolutely!
>
> Then it wasn't the typical GOTD install that limits you to the
> giveaway day. Too bad GOTD doesn't identity their limited installs
> versus the author-original installs. The latter type is so rare that
> the expectation is a GOTD download will have their phone-home wrapper.

Yeah was an error on GOTD part? Was it the wrapper caused the install to
fail? Did the developer say don't bother with the wrapper as the program
can clone itself anyway? Who knows?

Remember GOTD had taken a lot of heat for about 6 years with a wrapper
that was easy to crack. Some developers had taken extra steps to protect
their software by using an activation key. Which their servers would
only accept during the give away. Nowadays GOTD uses a much different

wrapper.

>>> So you're going to make someone bounce between a word processor and
>>> spreadsheet program just to, for example, see a list of ingredients
>>> in a recipe?
>>
>> Naw, MS Word can read Excel tables right inside of a Word document.
>> This is called integration.
>
> First you argue that table support isn't needed. I wasn't talking
> about spreadsheet integration but using tables they way they are
> prevalently used: for formatting. Now you're trying to recover by
> arguing about embedded spreadsheets for tables despite that Altantis
> is NOT an office suite, is only a word processor, and there would be
> no spreadsheet program to integrate with their word processor. You're
> wandering.

Ok. I save articles from webpages all of the time. I mostly save them as
plain text which doesn't have table support in the format. And even
though some of them use tables, the information didn't generally had to
be used in a table anyway. I find most people who use tables are over
using them. Rarely do I find the need for a table necessary. And when I
come across that really needs it, then I can't save it as plain text and
most use another format. Same is true if there are graphic images that
must be included if they pertain to the article.

> I was mentioning what Atlantis' word processor does NOT have.

Yes we know, it doesn't do tables and it is only 3MB in size. Yet it
still can do things that Word can't. That is one heck of an achievement,
if you ask me.

>>> Really, that's your argument for not supporting tables in a word
>>> processor, that you don't need columnar formatting ever?
>>
>> I don't think of columns as tables per se. By the way, Atlantis does
>> support columns.
>
> Might be doable to make up for the lack of table support for
> formatting.

You know, back in the 80's you didn't use GUI word processors for
tables. You used a GUI publisher instead. Whatever happened to those?

>>> Uh huh, and I suppose you never used the tab key to align text
>>> either in a single or multiple columns.
>>
>> I've been using word processors and text editors since the early
>> 80's.
>
> And I'm even older than you and using computers even longer.
> Irrelevant to the discussion of why tables are missing from Atlantis.
> The point is that having to use tab keys is a clumsy method to make up
> for the lack of support tables (regardless of what software would
> support 30 years ago).

Well I see it as no big deal. Maybe the developer also sees it the same
way. And if it is one of those must have features for you, then Atlantis
isn't for you. No big deal, there are lots of other word processors out
there that should make you happy.

>> I can't think of a single time I wanted to
>> create a table (outside of a spreadsheet).
>
> So you are again using your limited experience to dictate that a
> product doesn't need a feature in a product that is used by lots of
> other users. Did you contract with Sun Rising to produce this product
> just for you?

No, I am saying use the right tool for the job. The install is only 3MB
in size and look at all it can do. Adding tables would likely bloat it
another 40MB or so. Then there would be nothing special about Atlantis,
now would there?

>> I don't know, we do pretty well in plain text newsgroups without all
>> of that stuff.
>
> Wow, the limit for use of a word processor by you is that it only need
> to create documents for publishing in text-only newsgroups? Frankly I
> didn't think anyone would be using a *word processor* to post in
> Usenet. I didn't realize the discussion was about the LCD (lowest
> common denominator) feature set of a word processor to do plain text
> editing. Seems you should be happy with Notepad in Windows and vim in
> Linux.

Actually it is very tricky and one requires powerful word processors to
pull it off with any productivity. No notepad is a very lousy tool for
the job. As notepad has no line length rulers, no reformatting macros,
no margins, etc.

>>> I have to wonder over such a long time with no changes, especially
>>> to accomodate customer requests, if the product is dead.
>>
>> I have a ton of such software. Although I have a different take about
>> viewing such software. Most of these products virtually had been all
>> ironed out. And they are far from the early buggy versions. And I
>> think most software should be like this.
>
> Despite the argument, stagnant software is still stagnant software.
> That it got "ironed out" to no longer have any updates for a long time
> means it met the criteria of functionality designed by the author. Yet
> word processors shouldn't be stagnant software. We're not talking
> about edline or sed here.

I don't know about that? As I see lots of products that peeked and
before the downslope. And that is the best way to end it and that is the
way it should be done IMHO. Pushing something passed its prime is self
defeating. And I can think of zillions of examples if you need some.

> To me, this looks like Chinesware were further development wasn't
> warranted because the revenue stream didn't support it. Using GOTD is
> just another means for authors to get free advertising both at the
> GOTD site and through word of mouth from users. They pump up the
> advertising for a staid product.

Well you are probably right. But I also recall when GOTD was first set
up and it is probably still true today is the developers got paid per
download from GOTD. Sure it was a few bucks per download or something,
not a lot or anything, but better than giving it away for free. And GOTD
got their money from running ads on the site. Kind of a win for
everybody, don't you think?

>> Take a look at Mozilla for example. I view their products as always
>> under construction and will never be completed. You can't develop
>> good software using this model. What you always end up with is
>> bloated spaghetti code.
>
> And most users here aren't still using a staid OS, like CP/M, either.
> The very term "software" mean flexibility and change, not cast in
> stone. If you don't like change, computers are definitely nothing you
> should get involved with.

Whoa! That is a very odd statement for me to hear. If it wasn't for
change, only computer nerds would be using computers today. As I recall
trying to get friends and family interested in computers in the early
days and told them about the wonderful things like email.

And it was really odd back then. Some people got a computer and they
couldn't do a dang thing with it and passed it on to somebody else. And
often the same thing would happen. If you tried to teach them a few
things, many of them got frustrated right away.

Like if they put in a floppy to save something and it pops up with an
error, they were lost. You go there and say, no you have to format a
floppy first. They ask how do you do that? And then you say by typing
"Format a:". Then they say what? How am I going to remember that?

No, rather it is only change that is keeping everything going. If it
didn't change, computers would have been history a long time ago. Change
is the only thing that is keeping the momentum going. ;-)

[Bill in Co]

How would you compare Atlantis Word Processor to Kingsoft Writer? Since the
latter is free (in the regular version), I expect Atlantis might be better
in some regard?

[BillW50]

"Bill in Co" <surly_cu...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:MPGdnVvGB9Jpe27P...@earthlink.com...

Oh wow! I totally wasn't expecting that question. ;-) And frankly, I
barely know anything about Kingsoft free version, just the commercial
version. And Kingsoft Office vs. MS Office is really close. Although MS
Office has a bit of an edge above Kingsoft, but generally speaking, if
you know one or the other, the other one is almost the same thing.

Comparing Atlantis vs. Kingsoft Writer or even MS Word is almost the
same comparison. As Atlantis is pretty much a really light version of
both. Although what is exciting about Atlantis is that the features one
would use most is there. Plus it has little extras that neither one of
them have. Like when you open a file, you get a preview of it before you
even open it. You can set sounds for almost everything. Tells you how
long you have been working on a document and how many characters per
minute you are typing, etc.

Another neat thing about Atlantis is once you use the install, you can
lose it, delete it or whatever. As it doesn't matter. As any working
copy either installed on a computer or made as a portable version is
totally capable of acting as an installer once again.

Atlantis is classic style interface only. Kingsoft can toggle either and
MS Office depends on the version. I personally like the classic
interface and since Atlantis is a bit lighter on features than either
Kingsoft or MS, I could see myself actually using Atlantis more than
either of the other two. Mainly because it has the features that I use
most often. And the features it does have, they work really well. Dare I
say better than Kingsoft or MS? I dunno, maybe. ;-)

[Shadow]

>To be consistent, you should spell the later company name as GoogŁe.

It was not voluntary. I do not have the "s" letter on this
keyboard, it's one of those communist open-source ones, so I have to
use "$".......
I thought Thatcher sold England by the Pound, not GoogŁe. Ah,
maybe they bought it .... hum.
OK, I'll put an OT up there. I'm good at that.

[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004

We have a new policy - Google 2012

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 2/06/2014, Shadow posted:
> On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 11:28:29 -0800, Gene E. Bloch
> <bloc...@someplace.invalid> wrote:

>> On 2/06/2014, Shadow posted:
>>> On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 12:28:23 -0500, "Silver Slimer" <slvrslmr@lv.c>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>>> I can't say I've seen the same thing here.
>>>>>
>>>>> Firefox on this machine (WinXP), starts in one second. While
>>>>> viewing no web page content, memory consumption in Task Manager
>>>>> is listed as 35MB. And, I've never had a freeze due to Firefox
>>>>> or Thunderbird.
>>>>
>>>> Meanwhile, browser reviewers have all pointed out that Firefox is
>>>> the slowest to start. Not one has recorded a one-second start
>>>> for Firefox on a cold start and they used i7 processors.
>>> Reviewers are expensive. Only Micro$oft and Google can afford
>>> the best.
>>> []'s
>>

>> To be consistent, you should spell the later company name as Goog£e.

> It was not voluntary. I do not have the "s" letter on this
> keyboard, it's one of those communist open-source ones, so I have to
> use "$".......

> I thought Thatcher sold England by the Pound, not Goog£e. Ah,

> maybe they bought it .... hum.
> OK, I'll put an OT up there. I'm good at that.
> []'s

I'm sorry about your keyboard. Good luck in managing to get by with it.

You should have bought the model with walrus ivory keys. They all have
s's so they can say "walrus". They also all have l's too - same reason.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <lcvrpu$7pe$1...@dont-email.me>, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom>
writes:

>
>"VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
>news:lcuulr$4gi$1...@dont-email.me...

[]

>> So you're going to make someone bounce between a word processor and
>> spreadsheet program just to, for example, see a list of ingredients in
>> a recipe?
>
>Naw, MS Word can read Excel tables right inside of a Word document. This
>is called integration.

I guess we should avoid the word "table". If you mean a grid (with or
without visible lines), then a spreadsheet - Excel or other - is NOT the
way to make it. (Microsoft haven't helped by putting grid-helping
facilities in Excel; I suppose "the customer is always right" so they
had to, rather than telling the customer s/he was a twit for doing it
that way.)

A *spreadsheet* is for data on which calculations are anticipated.
Granted, not _all_ the columns/rows will have sums done on them - I've
nothing against column and row headings - but if _all_ you want is the
_layout_, don't use a spreadsheet. (VanguardLH [what's the origin of
that name by the way?] are for once in agreement on something!)

>
>> Ever read a newspaper or even a small one-page flyer?
>> Really, that's your argument for not supporting tables in a word
>> processor, that you don't need columnar formatting ever?
>
>I don't think of columns as tables per se. By the way, Atlantis does
>support columns.

I find true columns as Word implements them rather clunky, though I can
see that if I was doing things that use them a lot, I'd use them. If I
just want a short section to have columns, I'm likely to use a table.
That's a Word table, of course - not a spreadsheet.

>
>> Uh huh, and I suppose you never used the tab key to align text either
>> in a single or multiple columns.

Indeed, for a simple case. (At least it's better than using spaces,
which I've - in pain! - seen people do. Especially with non-monospaced
text!)

>
>I've been using word processors and text editors since the early 80's.
>And back in the CP/M-DOS days I have created a few tables by using tab
>characters. But since then, I can't think of a single time I wanted to
>create a table (outside of a spreadsheet). And since I save lots of
>computer articles (I use plain text if I can get away with it). And
>tables just makes the task of converting to plain text a bit harder. Too
>many people are creating tables and using them for things that are
>totally unnecessary.

I'm sure some are, but grid layout does make a lot of things easier to
see at a glance.

>
>> Tables in documents aren't necessarily and most times are not a
>> spreadsheet with cells containing formulae. They are just a means of

Hear hear!

>> providing easy columnar *formatting*. So why bother with bolding,
>> italics, spacing between paragraphs, justification, bullet lists, or
>> any of that other unnecessary formatting fluff? Just with a plain
>> text editor, like Notepad, if you think formatting is unimportant.
>
>I don't know, we do pretty well in plain text newsgroups without all of
>that stuff. Some experts claim that plain text doesn't contain
>formatting. But I disagree. Plain text can be formatted to contain many
>of the features you listed above.

If you use monospaced text, then it isn't hard to make a table - grid -
in plain text using tabs; most plain text handlers to actually handle
tabs.
[]

>> That you don't need to use tables for columnar formatting is hardly an
>> excuse for a word *processor* to omit the feature. I didn't even

Agreed - tables should be included as part of a word processor (meaning
grids, not a spreadsheet [though I think Word's tables can do very
limited sums too!]).

>> mention embedding a spreadsheet or range of cells from one into a
>> document. I only mentioned tables which is a formatting feature.

[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

no good deed goes unpunished. This is an iron-clad rule in Netiquette.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <op.xau9x...@slick.cssmi.qc.ca>, Silver Slimer

<slvrslmr@lv.c> writes:
>On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 06:31:08 -0500, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>> Take a look at Mozilla for example. I view their products as always
>> under construction and will never be completed. You can't develop good
>> software using this model. What you always end up with is bloated
>> spaghetti code.
>
>Mozilla continues to use the outdated and insecure Netscape API for
>Flash and is the slowest of all browsers for a cold start. It provides

I can't speak for other browsers - Firefox may well be slower than some;
however, any comparison with IE is skewed by the fact that IE shares so
much with the OS that comparison on a fair basis isn't possible. It was
back in the Windows 95/98 days when it was possible to completely remove
IE (google for IEradicator); then the startup times could be truly
compared. But no other browser's startup time can now be fairly compared
to IE. (Unless a proportion - and who is to say how much? - of the
computer's boot time is considered to be part of IE's start time.)

>the best features but at the cost of more memory use and the potential
>of freezing the whole computer (my wife and I both experienced a
>frozen computer from Mozilla's garbage code on two entirely different
>laptops).
>

Strange: MMVs. I frequently experience treacle-time at work which I
directly trace to IE, and this was the case both under XP and 7.
Granted, the main culprit is some grotty code my employer uses, which
only works via IE: but, when it's making IE crawl or freeze, the rest of
the computer is sluggish. And just this afternoon I experienced similar
sluggishness here when using IE (I had to because of some websites [such
as google images] which weren't/aren't displaying images in Firefox):
the user experience was very similar.

I do grant that, here, I'm less experienced with IE than F, and if I
were more so _might_ get round the treacle-effect; that doesn't apply at
work, though (where I have to use it anyway so am used to it).

[BillW50]

On 2/8/2014 8:35 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:> In message

<lcvrpu$7pe$1...@dont-email.me>, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> writes:
>>
>> "VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
>> news:lcuulr$4gi$1...@dont-email.me...
> []
>>> So you're going to make someone bounce between a word processor and
>>> spreadsheet program just to, for example, see a list of ingredients in
>>> a recipe?
>>
>> Naw, MS Word can read Excel tables right inside of a Word document. This
>> is called integration.
>
> I guess we should avoid the word "table". If you mean a grid (with or
> without visible lines), then a spreadsheet - Excel or other - is NOT the
> way to make it. (Microsoft haven't helped by putting grid-helping
> facilities in Excel; I suppose "the customer is always right" so they
> had to, rather than telling the customer s/he was a twit for doing it
> that way.)
>
> A *spreadsheet* is for data on which calculations are anticipated.
> Granted, not _all_ the columns/rows will have sums done on them - I've
> nothing against column and row headings - but if _all_ you want is the
> _layout_, don't use a spreadsheet. (VanguardLH [what's the origin of
> that name by the way?] are for once in agreement on something!)

Odd? If I need a blank form let's say for daily blood glucose readings,
a spreadsheet is the way to do it. Why what would you use to create such
a form? You would use a word processor?

>>> Ever read a newspaper or even a small one-page flyer?
>>> Really, that's your argument for not supporting tables in a word
>>> processor, that you don't need columnar formatting ever?
>>
>> I don't think of columns as tables per se. By the way, Atlantis does
>> support columns.
>
> I find true columns as Word implements them rather clunky, though I can
> see that if I was doing things that use them a lot, I'd use them. If I
> just want a short section to have columns, I'm likely to use a table.
> That's a Word table, of course - not a spreadsheet.

Sure if you were using Word, but the original topic was doing it under
Atlantis. And Atlantis doesn't do tables. It does columns though.

>>> Uh huh, and I suppose you never used the tab key to align text either
>>> in a single or multiple columns.
>
> Indeed, for a simple case. (At least it's better than using spaces,
> which I've - in pain! - seen people do. Especially with non-monospaced
> text!)

Actually some people strip tabs from documents and replace them with
spaces for devices that doesn't use tab characters. Worse some software
interprets tabs differently. I seem to recall most see a tab as eight
character spacing. But not all use the same.

Just look at a desktop with icons sometime. The labels are center
aligned and non-monospaced font is used. And that looks just fine.

>> I've been using word processors and text editors since the early 80's.
>> And back in the CP/M-DOS days I have created a few tables by using tab
>> characters. But since then, I can't think of a single time I wanted to
>> create a table (outside of a spreadsheet). And since I save lots of
>> computer articles (I use plain text if I can get away with it). And
>> tables just makes the task of converting to plain text a bit harder. Too
>> many people are creating tables and using them for things that are
>> totally unnecessary.
>
> I'm sure some are, but grid layout does make a lot of things easier to
> see at a glance.

Sure they can, like it makes a lot of sense in a spreadsheet. But not
for setting the left and right margins of an article. Why do they do
this? So it fits nicely on an iPhone or what?

>>> Tables in documents aren't necessarily and most times are not a
>>> spreadsheet with cells containing formulae. They are just a means of
>
> Hear hear!

Don't forget that databases can do tables and you can process both
letters and numerals.

>>> providing easy columnar *formatting*. So why bother with bolding,
>>> italics, spacing between paragraphs, justification, bullet lists, or
>>> any of that other unnecessary formatting fluff? Just with a plain
>>> text editor, like Notepad, if you think formatting is unimportant.
>>
>> I don't know, we do pretty well in plain text newsgroups without all of
>> that stuff. Some experts claim that plain text doesn't contain
>> formatting. But I disagree. Plain text can be formatted to contain many
>> of the features you listed above.
>
> If you use monospaced text, then it isn't hard to make a table - grid -
> in plain text using tabs; most plain text handlers to actually handle tabs.

True, and I use this all of the time. And it works in Atlantis as well.

>>> That you don't need to use tables for columnar formatting is hardly an
>>> excuse for a word *processor* to omit the feature. I didn't even
>
> Agreed - tables should be included as part of a word processor (meaning
> grids, not a spreadsheet [though I think Word's tables can do very
> limited sums too!]).

Yes lots of word processors can do this including good old WordStar.
Also most of them can sort a list in a column. This is much like a
database function.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8 Pro w/Media Center

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <m9q6f9108gshm56d7...@4ax.com>, Shadow
<S...@dow.br> writes:
[]

> Nice = The clickerty sound. It does not phone home. It saves

[]
Since you don't explain what you mean by "The clickerty sound", I can
only assume you mean keyclicks. If you want those,
http://www.leeos.com/noisy_keyboard.html (and the mouse one!) is (are!)
still there - get them while they are, as the site doesn't seem to have
been altered since 2003, so I imagine it may not be there much longer.
It (they) work fine under XP (and many previous); whether 7 or not I
don't know (I'd say there's a good chance as the integration seems to be
well written).

Don't use unless you live alone ... (-:

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I think I'm sexy in a nerdy way, and I'm perfectly happy with that. That's
quite a cool thing to be, all of a sudden. - Daniel Radcliffe, in Radio Times,
11-17 February 2012

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <ld0opq$p4k$1...@dont-email.me>, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom>
writes:
[]

>You know, back in the 80's you didn't use GUI word processors for
>tables. You used a GUI publisher instead. Whatever happened to those?

Interesting question! I guess GUI word processors got better (or at
least computing power rose enough to make them work well enough to do
what the publisher did) that they fell away.
[]

>>> I can't think of a single time I wanted to
>>> create a table (outside of a spreadsheet).

Oh, I do them all the time, and never use a spreadsheet to do them.
[]

>> editing. Seems you should be happy with Notepad in Windows and vim in
>> Linux.
>
>Actually it is very tricky and one requires powerful word processors to
>pull it off with any productivity. No notepad is a very lousy tool for
>the job. As notepad has no line length rulers, no reformatting macros,
>no margins, etc.

(There are Notepad alternatives that have various extras - I use
Notepad+, which I think has rulers, for example; there are plenty of
others.)
[]
Talking of small word processors, how big is WordPad? I was surprised to
find it is still there in 7. I remember in the early days of Windows,
finding that it did a lot of what I wanted from a WP. Then (though not
now), there is the WP that was part of the Works suite, before that got
nobbled (initially by replacing it with actual Word, and then removal of
the Works suite altogether - I still suspect because MS found it was
preventing sales of Office [and indirectly later Windows], as it was
very economical with its resource demands [so also stopped people having
to buy new computers]).

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <ld5ke8$p42$1...@dont-email.me>, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom>
writes:
[]

>Odd? If I need a blank form let's say for daily blood glucose readings,
>a spreadsheet is the way to do it. Why what would you use to create
>such a form? You would use a word processor?

Why not? I'd use a spreadsheet if I was going to do sums on the figures,
which for that example is quite possible (weekly totals and so on), so
it's not an example I'd choose: I'd pick something like, say, a daily
rota where you put names by days of the week (whose job it is to mop the
floor and similar). For _that_, I see a word processor as no more
onerous than a spreadsheet, and it would give me better text control.
[]

>> I find true columns as Word implements them rather clunky, though I can
>> see that if I was doing things that use them a lot, I'd use them. If I
>> just want a short section to have columns, I'm likely to use a table.
>> That's a Word table, of course - not a spreadsheet.
>
>Sure if you were using Word, but the original topic was doing it under
>Atlantis. And Atlantis doesn't do tables. It does columns though.

OK; if I was doing it in Word and hadn't familiarised myself with its
table functions as much as I have, I'd probably use its column function.
I certainly wouldn't use a spreadsheet.
[]

>Actually some people strip tabs from documents and replace them with
>spaces for devices that doesn't use tab characters. Worse some software
>interprets tabs differently. I seem to recall most see a tab as eight
>character spacing. But not all use the same.

Indeed. I remember _hardware_ (terminals - maybe VT100?) that took tabs
as (make-up-to-)eight characters, but I agree, I've certainly seen some
softwares that use other figures - some computer-language-oriented
editors use 4, for example, though that's mainly a default that is
alterable.

>
>Just look at a desktop with icons sometime. The labels are center
>aligned and non-monospaced font is used. And that looks just fine.

(The non-monospacing is a default only of course). I'm not sure of the
point you're making: desktops default to putting icons on a grid (with
slight variations in what's available and what's the default, between
different versions of Windows etc.). I'm not sure how that relates to
the question/opinion of whether word processors should do grids or not.
[]

>>> many people are creating tables and using them for things that are
>>> totally unnecessary.
>>
>> I'm sure some are, but grid layout does make a lot of things easier to
>> see at a glance.
>
>Sure they can, like it makes a lot of sense in a spreadsheet. But not

I'm still not sure if you're meaning "table" when you say "spreadsheet".
For (another) example of where I'd use a grid, but not have any
intention of doing sums on it, consider the comparison of features of
several competing candidates - be it software (such as word
processors!), models of car, whatever. I find _that_ sort of comparison
- which models do tables, have central locking, whatever - much easier
to follow in a _grid_ than if each just had its plus and minus points
listed in a paragraph. (Salesmen, of course, like the latter, as they
can list the good points without mentioning the omissions, and it's less
obvious.)

>for setting the left and right margins of an article. Why do they do

I think that's what they call a "straw man" - I'd never even think of
using a spreadsheet just to set margins. (In fact, thinking of Excel
which is the only spreadsheet I know well, margins are one of the bigger
pains in that, IMO. In fact Excel is the least WYSIWYG part of Office -
which is OK for its primary purpose, but doesn't make it good for
_grids_.)

>this? So it fits nicely on an iPhone or what?
>
>>>> Tables in documents aren't necessarily and most times are not a
>>>> spreadsheet with cells containing formulae. They are just a means of
>>
>> Hear hear!
>
>Don't forget that databases can do tables and you can process both
>letters and numerals.

Databases are a different matter again. (I did actually do a training
course on the Office one - Agent is it? - but enough years ago that I've
forgotten lots of it, including obviously the name!)
[]

>>>> That you don't need to use tables for columnar formatting is hardly an
>>>> excuse for a word *processor* to omit the feature. I didn't even
>>
>> Agreed - tables should be included as part of a word processor (meaning
>> grids, not a spreadsheet [though I think Word's tables can do very
>> limited sums too!]).
>
>Yes lots of word processors can do this including good old WordStar.
>Also most of them can sort a list in a column. This is much like a
>database function.
>
--

J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

[R. C. White]

Hi, John.

> Databases are a different matter again. (I did actually do a training
course on the Office one - Agent is it? - but enough years ago that I've
forgotten lots of it, including obviously the name!)

Microsoft Access

I used it quite a bit in my CPA practice - but that ended over 20 years ago.
I still have it installed (in Office 2010) in Win8.1 but almost never even
open it.

RC

--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
r...@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3508.0205) in Win8.1 Pro


"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
news:uPCr+zsC...@soft255.demon.co.uk...

<SNIP>

[BillW50]

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:PvVjGGsc...@soft255.demon.co.uk...

> In message <ld0opq$p4k$1...@dont-email.me>, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom>
> writes:
> []
>> You know, back in the 80's you didn't use GUI word processors for
>> tables. You used a GUI publisher instead. Whatever happened to those?
>
> Interesting question! I guess GUI word processors got better (or at
> least computing power rose enough to make them work well enough to do
> what the publisher did) that they fell away.

I just checked one of my MS Office 2000 Pro CDs and Microsoft Publisher
is on there. Anybody recall which was the last Office that had it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Publisher

Wow! It was never dropped. As it is still found in the more expensive
versions of Office.

> []
>>>> I can't think of a single time I wanted to
>>>> create a table (outside of a spreadsheet).
>
> Oh, I do them all the time, and never use a spreadsheet to do them.
> []
>>> editing. Seems you should be happy with Notepad in Windows and vim
>>> in Linux.
>>
>> Actually it is very tricky and one requires powerful word processors
>> to pull it off with any productivity. No notepad is a very lousy tool
>> for the job. As notepad has no line length rulers, no reformatting
>> macros, no margins, etc.
>
> (There are Notepad alternatives that have various extras - I use
> Notepad+, which I think has rulers, for example; there are plenty of
> others.)

While I used Notepad+, there was something I didn't like about it. I do
like NewtPad (newtpad.com) a lot ($20 to buy). While it works fine for
plain text files, its main purpose is for writing programming scripts,
etc.

> []
> Talking of small word processors, how big is WordPad? I was surprised
> to find it is still there in 7. I remember in the early days of
> Windows, finding that it did a lot of what I wanted from a WP. Then
> (though not now), there is the WP that was part of the Works suite,
> before that got nobbled (initially by replacing it with actual Word,
> and then removal of the Works suite altogether - I still suspect
> because MS found it was preventing sales of Office [and indirectly
> later Windows], as it was very economical with its resource demands
> [so also stopped people having to buy new computers]).

Last time I tried to figured out how to run WordPad as a stand alone
application, I found WordPad isn't just one exe, but a number of files
scattered all over the place. I think it might even need some dll files
in the Windows folder. And before WordPad came around, early versions of
Windows had Write instead. And even today if you type Write into a
command prompt, WordPad pops up.

Oh man, Works! Just about every Windows machine I ever purchased came
with Works. The OEM license was something like 15 bucks I was told. Even
this machine came with Works. I used just about every version from 2 to
9. And for me, it was almost good enough to use daily. The one feature
which would have helped me a lot was if it supported macros. I think
Microsoft left that one out as they knew they would lose a lot of Office
sales if they included it in Works. At least in my case, I did purchase
a lot of copies of Office because it had macro support.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows Live Mail 2009 v14

Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8 Pro w/Media Center

[Ken Blake]

On Sat, 8 Feb 2014 16:12:12 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Talking of small word processors, how big is WordPad?

In Windows 8, it's 4,455 KB.

But I wouldn't call it a word processor. To me it's nothing more than
a glorified text editor.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <m3rcf9l7vkfho86bl...@4ax.com>, Ken Blake

To me, a text editor uses a monospaced font, of a fixed size and
colo(u)r, and with no bold, underline, or italic; and doesn't usually do
word-wrapping. Or any justification other than the default left.
Basically, could be (and was!) used on a character-mode terminal. Edit,
in DOS (I've just tried typing it into a Run box - it's still there in
XP!) was a (not very good) example.

For a lot of light home users, I suspect WordPad would do all they want.
It's even got a print preview!

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

If your mind goes blank, remember to turn down the sound.

[Maurizio]

On 04/02/2014 17:22, BillW50 wrote:
> I often don't get very excited about the daily offering on
> Giveawayoftheday.com. And today was just another word processor which I
> tried dozens of them in the past and almost none of them impress me at
> all. But I must say just using this Atlantis Word Processor for a few
> hours has really impressed me. If you are frustrated over non MS Word
> word processors like me, this one is definitely worth a look. And it can
> be portable too. ;-)
>
Atlantis is good, but it doesn't support tables which is really
inconvenient.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <lctg4q$fpn$1...@dont-email.me>, dadiOH <dad...@invalid.com>
writes:
[]
>I can't comment on your other concerns as they aren't things I use, need or
>want. I am sure there are more full featured word processors but simplicity
>decreases with features.

"they aren't things I use, need, or want". This statement bears
examination. They aren't things you use, that's self-evident! They
aren't things you need - depends on your definition of need; you don't
_need_ a word processor, or even a computer. As to whether they're
things you _want_ - well, I suppose if you don't actually know about
them you can't want them; however, they might be things you'd want _if_
you actually saw them.
>
>One thing I do like about it is the ability to save in htm. I have and can
>use html editors but rarely use them as I don't have much need for them.
>The web pages in my sig were made with Atlantis and IrfanView.
>
Is the HTML code it produces (a) standards-compliant (b) compact? I only
ask because I'm most unimpressed with what Word produces. Try the
following (change the {} to <>):

{HTML}{HEAD}{/HEAD}
{BODY}
{FONT COLOR=RED}red}{/FONT}
{FONT COLOR=YELLOW}yellow{/FONT}
{/BODY}
{/HTML}

create that (e. g. in notepad), save it as colours.htm, load it into
Word, re-save it, look at the size, look at it in notepad ...

(I think Word's output might just be standards-compliant.)

[Ken Blake]

On Sat, 8 Feb 2014 18:19:52 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"

<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> In message <m3rcf9l7vkfho86bl...@4ax.com>, Ken Blake
> <kbl...@kb.invalid> writes:
> >On Sat, 8 Feb 2014 16:12:12 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
> ><G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> Talking of small word processors, how big is WordPad?
> >
> >
> >In Windows 8, it's 4,455 KB.
> >
> >But I wouldn't call it a word processor. To me it's nothing more than
> >a glorified text editor.
>
> To me, a text editor uses a monospaced font, of a fixed size and
> colo(u)r, and with no bold, underline, or italic; and doesn't usually do
> word-wrapping. Or any justification other than the default left.
> Basically, could be (and was!) used on a character-mode terminal. Edit,
> in DOS (I've just tried typing it into a Run box - it's still there in
> XP!) was a (not very good) example.

Note that I said "glorified." Yes, it's more than a plain text editor,
but it's also less than a real word processor.

> For a lot of light home users, I suspect WordPad would do all they want.

I'm sure you're right! But note that if you go back 30 years or so,
typewriters would also do all they wanted. And a typewriter is even
farther from a word processor than WordPad.

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

> Ken Blake writes:
>> [ WordPad ]

>>
>>But I wouldn't call it a word processor. To me it's nothing more than a
>>glorified text editor.
>
> To me, a text editor uses a monospaced font, of a fixed size and
> colo(u)r, and with no bold, underline, or italic;

..describes most common plain text editors. But not *glorified* ones!
Maybe only glorified editors do those things. :-)

> and doesn't usually do word-wrapping.

My standard Ubuntu text editor, gedit, does word-wrapping. In the
Preferences, there is a choice: [√] Enable text wrapping
and also a choice for: [√] Enable automatic indentation (which is a sort
of justification). There are a few basic choices for Fonts & Colors as
well where I can choose any font installed (proportional, if I wish) and
color schemes, too.

With all the thousands of editors available, we could waste the entire day
looking for user choices, eh? Nah, back to sports... <g>

--
-bts

[Ken Springer]

On 2/8/14 11:41 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Feb 2014 18:19:52 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
> <G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> In message <m3rcf9l7vkfho86bl...@4ax.com>, Ken Blake
>> <kbl...@kb.invalid> writes:
>>> On Sat, 8 Feb 2014 16:12:12 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
>>> <G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Talking of small word processors, how big is WordPad?
>>>
>>>
>>> In Windows 8, it's 4,455 KB.
>>>
>>> But I wouldn't call it a word processor. To me it's nothing more than
>>> a glorified text editor.
>>
>> To me, a text editor uses a monospaced font, of a fixed size and
>> colo(u)r, and with no bold, underline, or italic; and doesn't usually do
>> word-wrapping. Or any justification other than the default left.
>> Basically, could be (and was!) used on a character-mode terminal. Edit,
>> in DOS (I've just tried typing it into a Run box - it's still there in
>> XP!) was a (not very good) example.
>
>
> Note that I said "glorified." Yes, it's more than a plain text editor,
> but it's also less than a real word processor.

So... What is a fake/faux/phony/false word processor??????? LOL!

I'm sorry, Ken, I just couldn't resist that!

On the serious side of this discussion, what make a word processor a
word processor and not a "glorified text editor"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editor

>
>
>> For a lot of light home users, I suspect WordPad would do all they want.
>
>
> I'm sure you're right! But note that if you go back 30 years or so,
> typewriters would also do all they wanted. And a typewriter is even
> farther from a word processor than WordPad.
>

[Shadow]

On Sat, 8 Feb 2014 16:00:40 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <m9q6f9108gshm56d7...@4ax.com>, Shadow
><S...@dow.br> writes:
>[]
>> Nice = The clickerty sound. It does not phone home. It saves
>[]
>Since you don't explain what you mean by "The clickerty sound", I can
>only assume you mean keyclicks. If you want those,
>http://www.leeos.com/noisy_keyboard.html (and the mouse one!) is (are!)
>still there - get them while they are, as the site doesn't seem to have
>been altered since 2003, so I imagine it may not be there much longer.
>It (they) work fine under XP (and many previous); whether 7 or not I
>don't know (I'd say there's a good chance as the integration seems to be
>well written).
>
>Don't use unless you live alone ... (-:

That worked. Though I wish it could be limited to just my word
processor.
TY

[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004

We have a new policy - Google 2012

[Ken Blake]

On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 12:09:30 -0700, Ken Springer
<word...@greeleynet.com> wrote:


> On the serious side of this discussion, what make a word processor a
> word processor and not a "glorified text editor"?

In my view? Whether it's closer in features to a word processor like
WordPerfect or Word or to a text editor like Notepad.

[Ken Springer]

Ah, but what features? Where is the line crossed from text editor to
word processor? This definition and description is at least one of two
things missing from this discussion. (I'll put the 2nd item in a reply
to news://nntp.aioe.org:119/ld5ke8$p42$1...@dont-email.me).

For sake of discussion, I'm going to limit use to 2 categories of
typing/text programs. Text editors and word processors.

To me, a text editor mimics what can be done with the last of the
mechanical typewriters and a few electric typewriters, like the IBM
Selectric and daisy wheel typewriters, where you can insert a different
ball or wheel and change font size and typeface. Spellchecking? No.
You've just crossed over into having created a very simple computer.

Something like word wrap is OK, you're mimicking the carriage return lever.

Basic margins/formatting is OK, since you can manually adjust this on
the carriage. Same for line spacing.

And whatever else you can do with a mechanical typewriter.

But, this is the computer age, so I would also accept some built in
features, like zoom for the visually impaired. And with a typewriter,
the user could have a magnifying glass.

Anything else intended to produce printed text are in the category of
word processors. From simple programs like WordPad and Abiword, to
document processors like LyX/LaTeX, to page layout software like Adobe
Pagemaker, Quark Express, Calamus SL.

And no, programs like CAD software, GPS software, databases, and
spreadsheets are not word processors. LOL

[Ken Springer]

On 2/8/14 3:57 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
> On 2/8/14 2:29 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
>> On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 12:09:30 -0700, Ken Springer
>> <word...@greeleynet.com> wrote:

<snip>

A quick followup, Pages from Apple contain elements of both word
processors like Word, WordPerfect, and page layout functions like
Pagemaker and Quark Express.

An interesting combo, which I think is a great idea for someone that
needs to do tasks that are suited for the different types of software.
If you're writing your dissertation, IMO a word processor is needed. If
you're doing a small flyer or multipage newsletter, page layout is the
better way to go.

[Ken Blake]

On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:57:13 -0700, Ken Springer

<word...@greeleynet.com> wrote:

> On 2/8/14 2:29 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
> > On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 12:09:30 -0700, Ken Springer
> > <word...@greeleynet.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On the serious side of this discussion, what make a word processor a
> >> word processor and not a "glorified text editor"?
> >
> >
> >
> > In my view? Whether it's closer in features to a word processor like
> > WordPerfect or Word or to a text editor like Notepad.
>
> Ah, but what features? Where is the line crossed from text editor to
> word processor?

The line is in my head. If you can't see it, or don't have the same
view I do, that's fine. We are all different.

There's really nothing to discuss here. From my perspective, WordPad
is closer to a text editor than to a word processor. Your perspective
is apparently different, and that's fine with me. It's not a matter of
right or wrong; it's a matter of different views.

[Ken Springer]

On 2/8/14 9:02 AM, BillW50 wrote:
> On 2/8/2014 8:35 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:> In message
> <lcvrpu$7pe$1...@dont-email.me>, BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> writes:
>>>
>>> "VanguardLH" <V...@nguard.LH> wrote in message
>>> news:lcuulr$4gi$1...@dont-email.me...

<snip>

>> A *spreadsheet* is for data on which calculations are anticipated.
>> Granted, not _all_ the columns/rows will have sums done on them - I've
>> nothing against column and row headings - but if _all_ you want is the
>> _layout_, don't use a spreadsheet. (VanguardLH [what's the origin of
>> that name by the way?] are for once in agreement on something!)
>
> Odd? If I need a blank form let's say for daily blood glucose readings,
> a spreadsheet is the way to do it. Why what would you use to create such
> a form? You would use a word processor?

I think, in this discussion, we've omitted two pieces of information...
The definition of a "form", and the purpose for which the table/form
is being created.

I'm assuming "form" means something printed on a single piece of paper,
paper size being irrelevant. Not the "form" you would create in a
program like MS Access for data entry.

As for the purpose, using the blood glucose readings example...

If I simply wanted something printed to hand write the sugar level
readings, and nothing else, I'd use a word processor in a heartbeat.
You get immediate visual feedback of what it will look like when
printed, and fitting it to the page size is easy. Simply tell the
program how many rows you want, and how many columns you want. If your
mental calculations are close, you're basically done. Then you can fine
tune the result to fill the printable area of the paper if you wish.
But with a spreadsheet, you have to define a "printable area", I.E.
which columns and rows will print on a page, and then use Print Preview
to see what is may look like. Change the number of columns and/or rows
you want to include, and you have to reset the printable area. No
immediate feedback.

But, if I were going to do some type of calculations on the individual
readings, creating graphs of averages, total, whatever I wanted to know,
I'd use the spreadsheet to create the table/form. Although, I'd
probably take that initial setup and import it into something like
Access and create a custom form on the monitor for the data input.
Depending on the data you are including for your glucose readings, the
Access way is possibly better, if you're also keeping track of what and
when you're eating, the times the readings were taken, what you ate, etc.

Truthfully, if I wanted something that sophisticated, I'd just use the
software that comes with my meter! LOL

Basically, you have to determine how that table/form is going to be used
if you wish to use the software that will give you the best end result.

<snip>

[Ken Springer]

Knew you would say that. <G>

Between two individuals, you are correct. But, with a group discussion,
everyone has to work with the same definition(s), whether you personally
agree with the definition or not.

[Ken Blake]

On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 16:32:14 -0700, Ken Springer

<word...@greeleynet.com> wrote:

> On 2/8/14 4:20 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
> > On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:57:13 -0700, Ken Springer
> > <word...@greeleynet.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 2/8/14 2:29 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
> >>> On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 12:09:30 -0700, Ken Springer
> >>> <word...@greeleynet.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> On the serious side of this discussion, what make a word processor a
> >>>> word processor and not a "glorified text editor"?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> In my view? Whether it's closer in features to a word processor like
> >>> WordPerfect or Word or to a text editor like Notepad.
> >>
> >> Ah, but what features? Where is the line crossed from text editor to
> >> word processor?
> >
> >
> >
> > The line is in my head. If you can't see it, or don't have the same
> > view I do, that's fine. We are all different.
> >
> > There's really nothing to discuss here. From my perspective, WordPad
> > is closer to a text editor than to a word processor. Your perspective
> > is apparently different, and that's fine with me. It's not a matter of
> > right or wrong; it's a matter of different views.
>
> Knew you would say that. <G>

LOL!

> Between two individuals, you are correct. But, with a group discussion,
> everyone has to work with the same definition(s), whether you personally
> agree with the definition or not.

I don't agree, but your view is fine with me. Wait for someone else to
answer your question. I've already expressed my view, so I'm done with
this thread.

[Mayayana]

| Apart from Mozilla FF or TB, I don't use any other open source products
| and I have no plans to change my habits.
|
| My website runs on Linux but it is maintained by my host and I have
| involvement with it.
|

My website also runs on Linux. I use Filezilla for
FTP. Do you use commercial software?

While I agree that a lot of OSS programs are projects
that are never finished (Linux, GIMP) or solid projects
that will always lack adequate GUI polish (7-Zip), I've
only bought two commercial products in the past
10 years or so: 1) BootIt for disk management and
disk imaging. 2) Corel Paint Shop Pro. Everything
else I use is either OSS or free. And all are the best
products I know of for the purpose. I'm willing to pay
for something that's worth it to me. I just don't see
such products. (I wouldn't touch anything from Adobe
or Symantec. And I don't like to use software that's
designed to call home without asking.)
The free products I use are *at least* adequate:

OSS:

Acrylic DNS
7-Zip
Filezilla (FTP)
Libre Office
SumatraPDF (which I was able to recompile, fairly easily,
to ignore PDF file restrictions)
VLC Media Player
Audacity (audio editor)

Free but not OSS:

IrfanView
HxD hex editor
CPUID
DVDFlick
Imgburn (CD/DVD writer)
Agent Ransack (Windows Find replacement)
Sysinternals utilities
Online Armor 4.0.0.15 for XP (last version before it was sold)
Private Firewall for Win7
(I don't use AV, but install Avast for people who's
PCs I manage.)

Someone who uses MS Office for work is likely to
say that Libre Office doesn't compare. I don't doubt
that's true. But Libre Office is free and opens all
versions of MS Office files. As a casual user who
only needs to occasionally print business cards,
receipts, contracts, etc. it's more than adequate.
And it allows me to open anything from any MS Office
user. If I wanted to do that with MS Office I'd have
to keep buying each [wildly overpriced] version. (It's
amazing how many MS Office users don't know how
to write even a simple note without firing up MS
Word, and then assume that everyone else can
easily open their docx file.)

The only thing I find I'm unable to really be satisfied
with is browsers. IE is not even worth critiquing. Chrome
is spyware from the biggest spyware company going.
Opera is out of the running. I've never tried Safari, but
I wouldn't have high hopes for anything from Apple.
They're not known for catering to end-user choice.

Firefox keeps changing. They get most of their money
from Google, and it shows. Gradually the flexibility and
privacy options have been disappearing. Every time I
update it takes more work to get the functionality back.
I'm finding that I'm ending up with "extension creep":
adding more and more extensions to get the functions
that used to be built in. A browser that requires numerous,
arcane prefs edits and a handful of add-ons in order to
work properly is a bad piece of software.

I've been using Pale Moon in general, but that's really just
a leaner version of Firefox, not a better one.

I keep thinking it's time for a new, honest browser to
appear, but nothing does. I suppose all the idealistic,
young, genius programmers are too busy diddling their
Facebook on their cellphones to think about Internet
browsing.

[Yvonne York]

On 05/02/14 18:35, Ken Springer wrote:

[snip]

> I still want to give Linux a try, I even created a partition on my boot
> drive for that. Haven't had time and energy to do it. I've read some
> nice things about Netrunner (I think) and it's attempt to make switching
> from Windows less painful. It's supposed to include Flash, Java, and
> who knows what else.

Try
http://solydxk.com/
and be pleasantly surprised

[Yvonne York]

On 07/02/14 04:32, BillW50 wrote:

[snip]

> Dare I say better than Kingsoft or MS? I dunno, maybe. ;-)


http://www.freeoffice.com/
is worth a try

[VanguardLH]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

> Is the HTML code it produces (a) standards-compliant (b) compact? I only
> ask because I'm most unimpressed with what Word produces. Try the
> following (change the {} to <>):
>
> {HTML}{HEAD}{/HEAD}
> {BODY}
> {FONT COLOR=RED}red}{/FONT}
> {FONT COLOR=YELLOW}yellow{/FONT}
> {/BODY}
> {/HTML}
>
> create that (e. g. in notepad), save it as colours.htm, load it into
> Word, re-save it, look at the size, look at it in notepad ...
>
> (I think Word's output might just be standards-compliant.)

Alas, while the FONT tag is easy to understand, W3 decided to deprecate
it in favor of the more complicated CSS method. The FONT tag isn't
supported in HTML5. You're supposed to now use CSS (well, whenever they
actually get around to ratifying HTML5 which looks to be around 2021).
Apparently they think HTML shouldn't be easy to decode.

With MS Word, configure it (if possible) so NOT add all the Word-only
specific tags. HTML generated by Word will, by default, include a bunch
of tags that are non-standard (not true HTML tags) and only understood
by MS Word. All of it is fluff if your intention is to publish the
document outside of Word, like on a web server or to recipients who you
don't have a clue as to what client they use to view your document.

Alas, in the Word 2010 that I now have (had Word 2003 before), I cannot
find the option to omit Word-specific tags in HTML output files. There
was such an option back in Word 2003. In Word 2010, under Options ->
Advanced -> General -> Web Option, I don't see this option. There is,
however, a "Rely on CSS for font formatting" option that is enabled by
default.

The 125 byte file from the above simple HTML code (I removed the ">"
after the "red" text) will explode to 20,365 bytes when you make a
change (and then remove the change just so Word sees the document change
flag got set) and save using Word. Yeah, like that's efficient.

By the way, unless you change the file, Word doesn't save anything. So,
for example, after opening in MS Word, change "red" (shown in red color)
to "red text" and then save. Now Word will have something different to
save back in the same file. The result is you get a huge amount of meta
data added to the file (all of which is superfluous as all it does is
identify Word was the document editor) and a bunch of <o> and <w> tags
which is the non-standard tag having meaning ONLY to MS Word. It is all
these Word-specific non-standard tags for which there used to be an
option to omit in a changed document saved by MS Word.

Although Word used to have an option to omit its Word-specific tags from
a changed HTML document, I cannot find it in Word 2010 (which I haven't
used much since changing from Word 2003); however, any time you use Word
to edit an HTML document will result in a significant increase in size
and not just due to converting deprecated tags, like <FONT> to an over-
bloated CSS equivalent. It's just Microsoft's view that they own and
can control a technology in which they choose to participate late.

After some hunting around, and after still not finding the old option to
omit all the extraneous Word-specific tags from the .htm[l] file, I
noticed in the Save As dialog that you can select "Web Page Filtered".
That gets rid of all the Word-specific tags and meta-data. Word still
converts the deprecated tags (<FONT>) to CSS to define a class that gets
used as an attribute in the <p> paragraph tag so the file will still get
larger but this time the 125-byte simple code file will only mushroom to
703 bytes after converting the deprecated <FONT> tags to CSS classes.

So when HTML5 gets ratified and after an adoption period (which could be
around 6 years) then HTML won't be so simple anymore. I have to wonder
by 2027 if something won't have replaced HTML by then rather than
attempt to keep rewriting an old document formatting standard.

[VanguardLH]

Maurizio wrote:

> BillW50 wrote:
>
>> ... Atlantis Word Processor ...

>
> Atlantis is good, but it doesn't support tables which is really
> inconvenient.

Trying to start a duplicate subthread on an argument already in process?

[Shadow]

Very good post. Maybe you should crosspost to
alt.comp.freeware.

Wondering what you compiled SumatraPDF with. Site says "You'll
need Visual Studio 2012". I did not realize that DRM could be
switched off, I thought it was in some micro$oft library the program
used, and one of the reasons I was using other PDF-readers. Maybe I'll
just Ollydbg Sumatra. Write a binary patch if the code is +-
consistent through versions.

I also do not trust AVs anymore, specially the cloud-enabled
types, but I do recommend them for the clueless.

You forgot Nirsoft, and a text-editor (Notepad++), both
essential, IMHO.
And CPU_id (CPU-Z) and Imgburn both phone home (check your
logs)

Maybe we could start an about:config thread back in
alt.comp.freeware. To make Firefox freeware again. IE and Chrome are
built as malware, there is nothing that can be done to avoid the
spyware.

[Shadow]

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 11:51:34 +0700, Yvonne York <Yvo...@home.com>
wrote:

I run LXDE on Wheezy (Debian 7.3). My old hardware runs it as
fast as XP(which I still use). Whatever floats your boat, I suppose.
Advice - NEVER use Ubuntu. You will be unlearning Linux. Best
to start with one of the classics.

[dadiOH]

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote

in message news:CPNgOMp+...@soft255.demon.co.uk

> A *spreadsheet* is for data on which calculations are
> anticipated. Granted, not _all_ the columns/rows will
> have sums done on them - I've nothing against column and
> row headings - but if _all_ you want is the _layout_,
> don't use a spreadsheet. (VanguardLH [what's the origin
> of that name by the way?] are for once in agreement on
> something!)

Are you asking the origin of the word "spreadsheet"? If so, it pre-dates
computers. The first microcomputer spreadsheet was Visicalc,circa 1979. It
is still available, BTW.

--

dadiOH
____________________________

Winters getting colder? Tired of the rat race?
Taxes out of hand? Maybe just ready for a change?
Check it out... http://www.floridaloghouse.net

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <ld73ql$q0e$1...@dont-email.me>, VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH>
writes:

>J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
>
>> Is the HTML code it produces (a) standards-compliant (b) compact? I only
>> ask because I'm most unimpressed with what Word produces. Try the
>> following (change the {} to <>):
>>
>> {HTML}{HEAD}{/HEAD}
>> {BODY}
>> {FONT COLOR=RED}red}{/FONT}
>> {FONT COLOR=YELLOW}yellow{/FONT}
>> {/BODY}
>> {/HTML}
>>
>> create that (e. g. in notepad), save it as colours.htm, load it into
>> Word, re-save it, look at the size, look at it in notepad ...
>>
>> (I think Word's output might just be standards-compliant.)
>
>Alas, while the FONT tag is easy to understand, W3 decided to deprecate
>it in favor of the more complicated CSS method. The FONT tag isn't
>supported in HTML5. You're supposed to now use CSS (well, whenever they
>actually get around to ratifying HTML5 which looks to be around 2021).
>Apparently they think HTML shouldn't be easy to decode.

Yes. I don't agree with the W3 - and am surprised that Sir T B-L has
anything to do with them on that matter. (Another one they "deprecate" -
I _hate_ that word, it smacks of smug superiority - is CENTER. Easy to
understand, you see.)

I _can_ see the point of CSSs - but _not_ that _all_ pages should use
them.

>
>With MS Word, configure it (if possible) so NOT add all the Word-only
>specific tags. HTML generated by Word will, by default, include a bunch
>of tags that are non-standard (not true HTML tags) and only understood
>by MS Word. All of it is fluff if your intention is to publish the
>document outside of Word, like on a web server or to recipients who you
>don't have a clue as to what client they use to view your document.

Not only Word-specific, but (and this applies to all machine-generated
HTML I've seen - Word isn't actually the worst) lots of _spurious_ code.
Some emails I've received, when I've saved them, have had ten or twenty
{DIV}{/DIV} tags, usually with virtually - or, in fact actually! -
nothing separating them; and, at least three sets of nested tables. Oh,
and they might have a single & n b s p ; inside lots of {DIV} and
{FONT} tags. (Come to think of it, they tend to include both {DIV} _and_
{FONT} tags, so they _aren't_ even doing away with FONT, just adding DIV
_as well_.

(And they rarely give more than a cursory nod to code indenting,
either.)

>
>Alas, in the Word 2010 that I now have (had Word 2003 before), I cannot
>find the option to omit Word-specific tags in HTML output files. There
>was such an option back in Word 2003. In Word 2010, under Options ->
>Advanced -> General -> Web Option, I don't see this option. There is,
>however, a "Rely on CSS for font formatting" option that is enabled by
>default.

[]

>Although Word used to have an option to omit its Word-specific tags from
>a changed HTML document, I cannot find it in Word 2010 (which I haven't
>used much since changing from Word 2003); however, any time you use Word
>to edit an HTML document will result in a significant increase in size
>and not just due to converting deprecated tags, like <FONT> to an over-
>bloated CSS equivalent. It's just Microsoft's view that they own and
>can control a technology in which they choose to participate late.

(-:

>
>After some hunting around, and after still not finding the old option to
>omit all the extraneous Word-specific tags from the .htm[l] file, I
>noticed in the Save As dialog that you can select "Web Page Filtered".
>That gets rid of all the Word-specific tags and meta-data. Word still

Useful - I'll try to remember it. Though I only have (imposed, of
course) Word 2010 at work, where I don't generate any HTML (any I
generate for unofficial purposes I do with Notepad or 1-word; I think
for corporate webpage generation, some bloated style-thing is imposed on
us, that is even worse).

>converts the deprecated tags (<FONT>) to CSS to define a class that gets
>used as an attribute in the <p> paragraph tag so the file will still get
>larger but this time the 125-byte simple code file will only mushroom to
>703 bytes after converting the deprecated <FONT> tags to CSS classes.

Gee, only 703 instead of 125!

>
>So when HTML5 gets ratified and after an adoption period (which could be
>around 6 years) then HTML won't be so simple anymore. I have to wonder
>by 2027 if something won't have replaced HTML by then rather than
>attempt to keep rewriting an old document formatting standard.

Will browsers _actually_ stop parsing the old tags anyway, whatever W3
and HTML5 say? I rather doubt it.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Does Barbie come with Ken?"
"Barbie comes with G.I. Joe. She fakes it with Ken." - anonymous

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <ld6cm5$eq1$1...@speranza.aioe.org>, Ken Springer
<word...@greeleynet.com> writes:
[]

>To me, a text editor mimics what can be done with the last of the
>mechanical typewriters and a few electric typewriters, like the IBM
>Selectric and daisy wheel typewriters, where you can insert a different
>ball or wheel and change font size and typeface. Spellchecking? No.
>You've just crossed over into having created a very simple computer.

[]
As others have said, all our lines are in different places; for me, if I
have to put my finger on a specific line, it's that for me, a text
processor handles text, i. e. pure ASCII; that might _possibly_ be
extended to "extended ASCII" or one of the two-byte character sets, but
_doesn't_ even _know_ anything about fonts, colours, sizes, and so on.
In short, something whose output could be displayed on a "glass
teletype" (or real one) without losing anything. (I'd prefer it to be
one whose electronics know about 8-tabs, though.) Any _formatting_ - or
even non-monospaced spacing - makes it a word processor to me.

But it's academic; we all have our own line/definitions, and it doesn't
_usually_ matter if they don't coincide.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <ld81e9$vkd$1...@dont-email.me>, dadiOH <dad...@invalid.com>
writes:

>"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote
>in message news:CPNgOMp+...@soft255.demon.co.uk
>
>> A *spreadsheet* is for data on which calculations are
>> anticipated. Granted, not _all_ the columns/rows will
>> have sums done on them - I've nothing against column and
>> row headings - but if _all_ you want is the _layout_,
>> don't use a spreadsheet. (VanguardLH [what's the origin
>> of that name by the way?] are for once in agreement on
>> something!)
>
>Are you asking the origin of the word "spreadsheet"? If so, it pre-dates

No, I wasn't.

>computers. The first microcomputer spreadsheet was Visicalc,circa 1979. It
>is still available, BTW.
>

BBC Micro wasn't it?

But even that was a true spreadsheet, i. e. designed for doing sums. If
I just want a grid, I'll use the table features of a WP (I think the
temporal equivalent of Visicalc was View, though I can't remember if
that used tables, as I never used it much) - I won't use a spreadsheet
(as I understand the term).

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <b05df9hs1427rbl8q...@4ax.com>, Shadow

It (on this system, under XP, anyway) puts a click-to-toggle icon in the
tray area. (Just trying it to make sure, I found how much I've come to
rely on the clicks - silent typing was most unsettling!)

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder...

[Mayayana]

| Very good post. Maybe you should crosspost to
| alt.comp.freeware.
|

Thank you. I've never used that group. Maybe I'll
check into it. Though I'm ambivalent about supporting
people with a "free or bust" attitude. :)

| Wondering what you compiled SumatraPDF with. Site says "You'll
| need Visual Studio 2012". I did not realize that DRM could be
| switched off, I thought it was in some micro$oft library the program
| used, and one of the reasons I was using other PDF-readers. Maybe I'll
| just Ollydbg Sumatra. Write a binary patch if the code is +-
| consistent through versions.
|

I'm a bit behind with versions. My last version
was 2.1.1. The current version is 2.4. I think I
used VC 2008 Express. The new version may
require VC 2012. In the past the Express versions
have been free, though I can't say for sure that
VC 2012 is free.

The restrictions in PDFs are not DRM. They're
just flags, presumably stored in the header. It's
really just a clever scam instituted by Adobe to
make PDFs seem as "concrete" and immutable as
printed pages, which is something business people
very much want to think is feasible. Thus, a format
that's not good for much of anything other than
accurate printing has become the default for
anything official in business or gov't.

The only reason PDF locking works is because people
writing PDF readers respect the flags, and unlike, say,
HTML or DOC files, PDF is extremely complex. So if the
people writing the software respect the flags then
the format is lockable for all practical purposes. But one
need only ignore the flags, editing the source code to
bypass the flag checks. And in doing so one is not
bypassing any DRM or reverse engineering anything.
(Nevertheless, I don't distribute my Sumatra version.
I figure it's not for me to override the authors wishes.)

Unfortunately, in many cases the restriction flags
are set for no reason: Authors who don't know what
they're doing; gov't documents locked for no reason
other than frivolous, overzealous officiality; etc. Which
can be quite a pain. To copy text from a PDF like that
usually requires a screencapture sent to OCR software,
followed by some editing of the result.

| I also do not trust AVs anymore, specially the cloud-enabled
| types, but I do recommend them for the clueless.
|

Yes, it's hard to argue with having AV if people don't
want to keep track themselves. Anyone who wants
Facebook, webmail, or anything else that requires
allowing script and/or Flash indiscriminately, has no way
to be reasonably secure online.
But it's a shame. In my experience AV programs have become
extreme resource hogs, comparing byte streams to 10's of
thousands of "virus definitions"
every time a file is touched, and updating several times
daily. It's become an untenable approach. Many attacks
are using zero-day exploits, anyway. There have even been
articles about a market in zero-day exploits, with the NSA
apparently even more involved in criminal hacking than
Russian mobsters:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175803/

AV is mostly useless for that kind of thing.

| You forgot Nirsoft, and a text-editor (Notepad++), both
| essential, IMHO.
| And CPU_id (CPU-Z) and Imgburn both phone home (check your
| logs)

It is getting hard to find truly clean software. Some
of it's well intentioned. But even with those, I don't know
how the idea became popularly regarded as reasonable
that all software should be placed on an update drip-feed;
programs being changed willy nilly, without notice. It's
not a stable approach.
If I remember correctly, ImgBurn shows a message at
first start allowing updates to be disabled. I never had to
block it. But I do have cpuz.exe blocked. I'm using a
firewall that blocks unauthorized outgoing. I usually
also unplug the network cable when installing anything.
Some installers will hang if they detect a network connection
but are blocked from getting through.
Even the Mozilla products and extensions have an annoying
habit of trying to track installs by sending the browser to
their homepage on first run after an install or update.

| Maybe we could start an about:config thread back in
| alt.comp.freeware. To make Firefox freeware again. IE and Chrome are
| built as malware, there is nothing that can be done to avoid the
| spyware.

There is a lot that can be done. Last week I discovered that
I could replace the normal download window in FF 23. By
downloading the relevant .xpi and examining the code one can
make the pref changes and avoid installing more extensions.
And some extensions can replace the missing settings in the
Options window.
But it seems to be a losing battle. Those solutions are only
feasible for a very few people, and even then they're limited.
According to what I read, the download window is removed
altogether from FF 26! They break a function pointlessly one
month. The next month someone writes an XPI fix. A month
after that the Mozilla people break it permanently! The only
decent solution I have at this point is simply not to upgrade.

[Ken Springer]

Added to the list of distros to try. Thanks.

[Shadow]

On Sun, 9 Feb 2014 09:55:14 -0500, "Mayayana"
<maya...@invalid.nospam> wrote:

>| Very good post. Maybe you should crosspost to
>| alt.comp.freeware.
>|
>
> Thank you. I've never used that group. Maybe I'll
>check into it. Though I'm ambivalent about supporting
>people with a "free or bust" attitude. :)

Not like that, but since the NSA scandal people are so scared
of updating software or trying new stuff (I mean American or
European), that the group has been rather trollish. I myself am a
culprit.

>
>| Wondering what you compiled SumatraPDF with. Site says "You'll
>| need Visual Studio 2012". I did not realize that DRM could be
>| switched off, I thought it was in some micro$oft library the program
>| used, and one of the reasons I was using other PDF-readers. Maybe I'll
>| just Ollydbg Sumatra. Write a binary patch if the code is +-
>| consistent through versions.
>|
>
> I'm a bit behind with versions. My last version
>was 2.1.1. The current version is 2.4. I think I
>used VC 2008 Express. The new version may
>require VC 2012. In the past the Express versions
>have been free, though I can't say for sure that
>VC 2012 is free.

Sorry, I expressed myself badly. Visual Studio 2012 is the
only one available from MS ATM, but it probably compiles under the
previous versions.
Update: I found the 2008, 2010 and 2012 editions on MS
servers. All are 600-900 Mb isos. Wondering if they are worth my while
installing.

>
> The restrictions in PDFs are not DRM. They're
>just flags, presumably stored in the header. It's
>really just a clever scam instituted by Adobe to
>make PDFs seem as "concrete" and immutable as
>printed pages, which is something business people
>very much want to think is feasible. Thus, a format
>that's not good for much of anything other than
>accurate printing has become the default for
>anything official in business or gov't.

I fired up Ollydbg and removed the restriction on copying text
in about 3 minutes. It's a one-byte edit. Search for:
"Copying text was denied (copying as image only)"
the jump above that, make it unconditional.
I'm using v2.5.8*** portable.

I don't have any other PDF's to test for other restrictions.
:(

>
> The only reason PDF locking works is because people
>writing PDF readers respect the flags, and unlike, say,
>HTML or DOC files, PDF is extremely complex. So if the
>people writing the software respect the flags then
>the format is lockable for all practical purposes. But one
>need only ignore the flags, editing the source code to
>bypass the flag checks. And in doing so one is not
>bypassing any DRM or reverse engineering anything.
>(Nevertheless, I don't distribute my Sumatra version.
>I figure it's not for me to override the authors wishes.)

The good thing about open-source is that, being communist, you
can alter it to fit your needs ...
:)

Yep, and there are the ones that do not detect the NSA
backdoors by default. Google for Kaspersky's recent declarations on
NSA snooping. He thinks it's "great". McAfee and Norton never detected
the old FBI trojans. And Avira is going cloud for the free versions.

>
>
>| You forgot Nirsoft, and a text-editor (Notepad++), both
>| essential, IMHO.
>| And CPU_id (CPU-Z) and Imgburn both phone home (check your
>| logs)
>
> It is getting hard to find truly clean software. Some
>of it's well intentioned. But even with those, I don't know
>how the idea became popularly regarded as reasonable
>that all software should be placed on an update drip-feed;
>programs being changed willy nilly, without notice. It's
>not a stable approach.

+1
A wee DNS hack and you are updating to the latest Banking
Trojan[TM]

> If I remember correctly, ImgBurn shows a message at
>first start allowing updates to be disabled. I never had to
>block it.

It connects to 3 sites to "check if there is internet
connectivity" before going to the update site. Then it checks to see
if you have enabled updates. Well, it used to, so I block it just in
case. The author is a bright lad. Maybe he changed that.

>But I do have cpuz.exe blocked. I'm using a
>firewall that blocks unauthorized outgoing. I usually
>also unplug the network cable when installing anything.
>Some installers will hang if they detect a network connection
>but are blocked from getting through.
> Even the Mozilla products and extensions have an annoying
>habit of trying to track installs by sending the browser to
>their homepage on first run after an install or update.

Noscript comes to mind

>
>| Maybe we could start an about:config thread back in
>| alt.comp.freeware. To make Firefox freeware again. IE and Chrome are
>| built as malware, there is nothing that can be done to avoid the
>| spyware.
>

My
\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*******.default\prefs.js

is over 22Kb, but a lot of that was not manual editing.

> There is a lot that can be done. Last week I discovered that
>I could replace the normal download window in FF 23. By
>downloading the relevant .xpi and examining the code one can
>make the pref changes and avoid installing more extensions.
>And some extensions can replace the missing settings in the
>Options window.
> But it seems to be a losing battle. Those solutions are only
>feasible for a very few people, and even then they're limited.
>According to what I read, the download window is removed
>altogether from FF 26! They break a function pointlessly one
>month. The next month someone writes an XPI fix. A month
>after that the Mozilla people break it permanently! The only
>decent solution I have at this point is simply not to upgrade.

I use 17 ESR. Yep, I know it's backdoored, but so are the more
recent ones.

[Shadow]

On Sun, 9 Feb 2014 14:46:56 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>>>Since you don't explain what you mean by "The clickerty sound", I can
>>>only assume you mean keyclicks. If you want those,
>>>http://www.leeos.com/noisy_keyboard.html (and the mouse one!) is (are!)
>>>still there - get them while they are, as the site doesn't seem to have
>>>been altered since 2003, so I imagine it may not be there much longer.
>>>It (they) work fine under XP (and many previous); whether 7 or not I
>>>don't know (I'd say there's a good chance as the integration seems to be
>>>well written).
>>>
>>>Don't use unless you live alone ... (-:
>>
>> That worked. Though I wish it could be limited to just my word
>>processor.

>

>It (on this system, under XP, anyway) puts a click-to-toggle icon in the
>tray area. (Just trying it to make sure, I found how much I've come to
>rely on the clicks - silent typing was most unsettling!)

Yes. I just noticed it buried in the dozens of icons I have.
TY again.