You are too old if you remember.......

[agentsteel53]

I use emacs.  I'll bet I use 1/1000th of the available features.  I just got used to it over vi, so that's my preference, even though vi loads 8 times as fast.

[agentsteel53]

Teco

because something has to make Perl look comprehensible.

[PHLBOS]

...Beta as in Betamax.

[Scott5114]

Does WordPerfect support ODF? If so, you could go ahead and use that format and everyone should be able to open it (Word will save to ODF but will bitch about it).

.docx/.xlsx should have never existed.

[Brandon]

Does WordPerfect support ODF? If so, you could go ahead and use that format and everyone should be able to open it (Word will save to ODF but will bitch about it).

.docx/.xlsx should have never existed.

Geeze, I hate that switch.  It made it a right royal bitch to deal with when they first came out.  Only a few people at work had Office 2007, and they had to make the conversions for the rest of us.

[agentsteel53]

I still barely know where anything is in Word and Excel post-07.  I find myself using the old keyboard shortcuts too often; the fact that those were preserved is the only way I get any work done in those two applications.

[formulanone]

.docx/.xlsx should have never existed.

Geeze, I hate that switch.  It made it a right royal bitch to deal with when they first came out.  Only a few people at work had Office 2007, and they had to make the conversions for the rest of us.

I still barely know where anything is in Word and Excel post-07.  I find myself using the old keyboard shortcuts too often; the fact that those were preserved is the only way I get any work done in those two applications.

Same here...In fact, I don't think I've ever used any of the "new" features in Office 2000-2003-2007-2010...I learned on Office 97, and everything since then just seems like bloat. Each one just takes longer to load...I still use my edition of Word/Excel 97 on my netbook because it loads up like lightning.

"The Ribbon" is shite, but then again, we're talking about a software bundle that has always had separate menus for "Options", "Preferences", and "Settings" which are essentially the same thing in any other piece of software, but not in Officeland.

[kkt]

Does WordPerfect support ODF? If so, you could go ahead and use that format and everyone should be able to open it (Word will save to ODF but will bitch about it).

.docx/.xlsx should have never existed.

Oh, but if MS used an open standard for documents, what would keep their customers from abandoning Office altogether? 

[WichitaRoads]

Whereas I can certainly get on board the word processing train, I'll refrain, and ask that we get back on topic... things road geeky, perhaps?

ICTRds

[J N Winkler]

I think it would be good to split the office/text-processing software to its own thread on the Off-Topic board.

That said, I echo the love for WordPerfect.  I especially liked the fact that it had explicit markup.  However, I stopped using it when I entered graduate school because Word was the clear market leader at that stage and I thought I would be able to exchange documents with my colleagues more easily if I switched over to it.  I used Word version 2000 (the very last that was even remotely user-friendly) for over ten years, but never came to like it.  The lack of explicit markup made formatting difficult and unstable, and I was forever having to dig up the unhelpful Help files whenever I attempted anything remotely complicated.

When I purchased a new computer (gaming laptop) in late 2011, I discovered my old copy of Office 2000 Professional just wouldn't install on it (I had originally bought it for a Windows 98 desktop, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit choked on it even with its built-in backward-compatibility features), so I experimented with LibreOffice instead.  For a while I thought it might be a viable substitute, but then I discovered it lacks some pretty basic features, such as the ability to center text vertically on a page without resorting to a single-cell table covering the entire page.

I had experimented briefly with TeX in the late nineties when I was analyzing quasar spectroscopy on Unix workstations.  I rather liked TeX, but I never figured out how to change the font from Computer Modern (which I never particularly cared for because it looks fussy), the three-stage (.tex --> .dvi --> .ps --> .pdf) distillation process that was available then was very cumbersome, Windows ports were at that time a microscopically small niche of the user base, and I was not prepared to commit to Unix or even Linux just to use TeX or LaTeX because the learning curve at the time was much, much steeper--driver support for commodity hardware was very spotty (you were expected to write your own, which is a hassle if you have no training in it and no easy way to get any), use of make was still considered routine, etc.

Nowadays I just use LaTeX (via MikTeX for Windows), because the last decade has seen a sea change for TeX and its derivatives in terms of usability.  Guidance is very easy to retrieve over the Web, MikTeX is a major and well-supported Windows port, pdflatex offers single-stage, hassle-free PDF distillation (in fact much better than the combination of Word and Acrobat Distiller for the same input), and because the input files are plain text format, I can search and manipulate them quite easily using low-overhead tools like findstr and sed.  In general I am trying to move away from proprietary formats and from software packages which load with a splash screen and don't allow routine tasks to be scripted from the command line.  And, of course, markup is entirely explicit and you don't even need to be able to edit LaTeX class files to access formatting capabilities an order of magnitude better than Word's.

[formulanone]

Whereas I can certainly get on board the word processing train, I'll refrain, and ask that we get back on topic... things road geeky, perhaps?

15 pages of it is also about TV, radio, food, computers, games, sports, and other assorted bric-a-brac.

[1995hoo]

Whereas I can certainly get on board the word processing train, I'll refrain, and ask that we get back on topic... things road geeky, perhaps?

15 pages of it is also about TV, radio, food, computers, games, sports, and other assorted bric-a-brac.

Well, what the heck, let's go TOTALLY off-track! You're too old if you remember that "Take on Me" was originally released on a 45-rpm record in a totally different recording from the version that later became a hit single and if you remember that said original version also had a video that was utterly different from the famous rotoscoped video now being spoofed in a Volkswagen commercial.

There may be video floating about online of me trying (and failing) to hit the high notes in that song during a game at Nationals Park last year.....

[hubcity]

No need to hit the high notes - just squeal uncontrollably while trying. That's comedy gold.

[1995hoo]

No need to hit the high notes - just squeal uncontrollably while trying. That's comedy gold.

Yeah, but I know the words. I have no chance of hitting that note, though. (Click thumbnail at your own risk!)

[PHLBOS]

Seeing that baseball diamond pic. inspired me to post these two:

... when the St. Louis Cardinals was also a football team in addition to a baseball team.

... when Baltimore's football team was the Colts.

[agentsteel53]

you know you started following football at a very specific time when you still think of the team as the Phoenix Cardinals.

[ctsignguy]

Seeing that baseball diamond pic. inspired me to post these two:

... when the St. Louis Cardinals was also a football team in addition to a baseball team.

You are even WAYYYYYY older if you remember the Chicago Cardinals......the Brooklyn Dodgers.....the Boston Yanks.....the Dallas Texans....and the New York Bulldogs/Yanks of the NFL....

[1995hoo]

Seeing that baseball diamond pic. inspired me to post these two:

... when the St. Louis Cardinals was also a football team in addition to a baseball team.

... when Baltimore's football team was the Colts.

The picture is a link to a video. View it if you dare.

[msubulldog]

you know you started following football at a very specific time when you still think of the team as the Phoenix Cardinals.

Or the St Louis Cardinals. Speaking of which this brings back memories of the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Raiders, Baltimore Colts, Boston Patriots, Houston Oilers, Dallas Texans, New York Titans, and Los Angeles Chargers.

[1995hoo]

you know you started following football at a very specific time when you still think of the team as the Phoenix Cardinals.

Or the St Louis Cardinals. Speaking of which this brings back memories of the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Raiders, Baltimore Colts, Boston Patriots, Houston Oilers, Dallas Texans, New York Titans, and Los Angeles Chargers.

I think his point about the Phoenix Cardinals is that they only used that name for a very few years before changing it to Arizona Cardinals. In contrast, they were the St. Louis Cardinals for around 27 years.

[PHLBOS]

The picture is a link to a video. View it if you dare.

I'm well aware that it's a link to a video.  Due to your earlier (Click thumbnail at your own risk!) comment in your previous post and the above-post; I declined.

[1995hoo]

The picture is a link to a video. View it if you dare.

I'm well aware that it's a link to a video.  Due to your earlier (Click thumbnail at your own risk!) comment in your previous post and the above-post; I declined.

Sounds good. I just wasn't sure based on your prior post.

[kendancy66]

you know you started following football at a very specific time when you still think of the team as the Phoenix Cardinals.

.

You defintely fit the title of this thread, if you remember the Chicago Cardinals football team

[exit322]

you know you started following football at a very specific time when you still think of the team as the Phoenix Cardinals.

Or you still play Tecmo...

[agentsteel53]

I think there was one year of Tennessee Oilers.