[jelockwood]

 thg1, on 28 September 2010 - 12:19 PM, said:

>From what I can see, and I've just finished playing with a document written in Arabic, it appears that left-to-right languages work fine.

Jeff -- Are you an Arabic reader? All advance info has indicated that Word for Mac 2011 would not still not be able to do Arabic, Hebrew, or any Indic language, leaving it 1 billion people short of what Word for Windows can handle, and thus making the "parity" assertion somewhat crazy. I am truly amazed if what you say is actually true.

http://m10lmac.blogs...th-complex.html

As a test you can copy/paste the text examples in 8 thru 14 from this page into Word and see if any of them still look like the graphic:

http://homepage.mac....ewecke/ltp.html

The fact Office 2011 is still not 100% Cocoa (i.e. it includes great chunks of ancient Carbon code) would make it more likely Office 2011 still cannot properly do none roman languages. Only the new bits of Office 2011 are Cocoa e.g. Outlook and the ribbon user interface code and presumably the new VBA code. As a result Office 2011 as a whole is limited to being a 32bit application, something that has upset some Excel power freaks.

The fact it still extensively uses Carbon is also likely to limit the performance improvements and knowing Microsoft is also likely to mean many ancient bugs (aka. features) may still be lurking in the depths. Apple have been encouraging developers to move to Cocoa ever since Mac OS X was launched, i.e. over a decade ago! The fallacious excuse Microsofties have used that rewriting it all as Cocoa would cost too much is unjustifiable since even Microsoft admit they make far more profit from Office for Mac than Office for Windows.

[Q. How many Microsofties does it take to fix a bug? A. None, you call it a feature and move on.]

Apple would probably have liked to kill off Carbon in Mac OS X 10.6 and if not that then 10.7, however due to lard arses like Microsoft, they have needed to keep it alive. With the infrequency of Office upgrades, this probably means Apple will need to keep Carbon around until at least Mac OS X 10.8.

Note: Microsoft are making small steps forward, they at least are switching to using Apple's installer unlike Adobe (shudder!).

[thg1]

 jelockwood, on 29 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

make it more likely Office 2011 still cannot properly do none roman languages.

I'm sure Office has no problem with non-roman scripts like Greek and Cyrillic.

As for Arabic, I've now seen a couple reports that Word can finally display this script with proper contextual shapes and in connected form, which is definitely something new. Whether there are direction, input, or editing issues needs further testing.

It seems likely that Indic scripts are still not supported, except perhaps in special cases ( http://m10lmac.blogs...8-language.html ). But this also needs further testing.

[nimbus2000]

 jelockwood, on 29 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

 thg1, on 28 September 2010 - 12:19 PM, said:

>From what I can see, and I've just finished playing with a document written in Arabic, it appears that left-to-right languages work fine.

Jeff -- Are you an Arabic reader? All advance info has indicated that Word for Mac 2011 would not still not be able to do Arabic, Hebrew, or any Indic language, leaving it 1 billion people short of what Word for Windows can handle, and thus making the "parity" assertion somewhat crazy. I am truly amazed if what you say is actually true.

http://m10lmac.blogs...th-complex.html

As a test you can copy/paste the text examples in 8 thru 14 from this page into Word and see if any of them still look like the graphic:

http://homepage.mac....ewecke/ltp.html

The fact Office 2011 is still not 100% Cocoa (i.e. it includes great chunks of ancient Carbon code) would make it more likely Office 2011 still cannot properly do none roman languages. Only the new bits of Office 2011 are Cocoa e.g. Outlook and the ribbon user interface code and presumably the new VBA code. As a result Office 2011 as a whole is limited to being a 32bit application, something that has upset some Excel power freaks.

The fact it still extensively uses Carbon is also likely to limit the performance improvements and knowing Microsoft is also likely to mean many ancient bugs (aka. features) may still be lurking in the depths. Apple have been encouraging developers to move to Cocoa ever since Mac OS X was launched, i.e. over a decade ago! The fallacious excuse Microsofties have used that rewriting it all as Cocoa would cost too much is unjustifiable since even Microsoft admit they make far more profit from Office for Mac than Office for Windows.

[Q. How many Microsofties does it take to fix a bug? A. None, you call it a feature and move on.]

Apple would probably have liked to kill off Carbon in Mac OS X 10.6 and if not that then 10.7, however due to lard arses like Microsoft, they have needed to keep it alive. With the infrequency of Office upgrades, this probably means Apple will need to keep Carbon around until at least Mac OS X 10.8.

Note: Microsoft are making small steps forward, they at least are switching to using Apple's installer unlike Adobe (shudder!).

Just a simple matter of the fact. Most Mac OS application still heavily depends on Carbon. iTune, for instance, is a pure Carbon application. Get rid of the Carbon? Sorry the MacOS Menu itself is Carbon. Don't hate the underlying computer language or framework, that's not what most consumers should be worried about.

[bcapehart]

So it is true then. Is our floating toolbox (the formatting palate) really gone? Say it isn't so.

I've been asking this repeatedly on other forums and haven't gotten a clear answer...

I agree with the comments on how the ribbon goes against sensible planning for a wide-screen layout. We have less and less vertical space to work with, so the formatting buttons "best" (maybe) go on the side. The toolbox did that for us. The ruler? Even if we can make it disappear, not so much.

[jcwelch]

 AaronShep, on 28 September 2010 - 10:59 AM, said:

For those who don't want either Word 2011's dumb interface or 2008's loss of features, there's an alternative: Word 2004 now works on Snow Leopard as well as ever, after Apple fixed some Rosetta bugs last spring. With Microsoft providing a file translator between new and old formats, there's no reason not to stick with the best Word version that Microsoft has yet produced.

as long as you don't mind twice the resource usage as needed for a native version.

[jcwelch]

 jelockwood, on 29 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

The fact Office 2011 is still not 100% Cocoa (i.e. it includes great chunks of ancient Carbon code) would make it more likely Office 2011 still cannot properly do none roman languages. Only the new bits of Office 2011 are Cocoa e.g. Outlook and the ribbon user interface code and presumably the new VBA code. As a result Office 2011 as a whole is limited to being a 32bit application, something that has upset some Excel power freaks.

actually, not doing RTL languages correctly has nothing to do with Cocoa v. Carbon. you can make a Carbon application do pretty much anything you want, you just have to do all the work yourself, you get little for free. the 32-bit thing is...i guess if you need MASSIVe spreadsheets, sure, annoying. but that's about the only part of the suite that has an immediate benefit from 64-bit. the rest? it's just future-proofing.

 jelockwood, on 29 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

The fact it still extensively uses Carbon is also likely to limit the performance improvements and knowing Microsoft is also likely to mean many ancient bugs (aka. features) may still be lurking in the depths. Apple have been encouraging developers to move to Cocoa ever since Mac OS X was launched, i.e. over a decade ago! The fallacious excuse Microsofties have used that rewriting it all as Cocoa would cost too much is unjustifiable since even Microsoft admit they make far more profit from Office for Mac than Office for Windows.

You of course, have a verifiable source comparing Office profits by platform to back that statement up. As far as the rest, Apple can encourage all they want, but that doesn't mean it can happen. For example, until some months after the Intel announcement, the larger developers, (Adobe, Microsoft, etc.) couldn't debug their code on a 32-bit OS, because the debug symbology was too verbose. Apple finally fixed that, but that's just one example of why "oh, just do it in Cocoa" is not the trivial exercise you wish it was.

 jelockwood, on 29 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

[Q. How many Microsofties does it take to fix a bug? A. None, you call it a feature and move on.]

You mean like the open bugs I have in quite a few Apple products that go back to 2005? It's not just Microsoft, not by a long shot.

 jelockwood, on 29 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

Apple would probably have liked to kill off Carbon in Mac OS X 10.6 and if not that then 10.7, however due to lard arses like Microsoft, they have needed to keep it alive. With the infrequency of Office upgrades, this probably means Apple will need to keep Carbon around until at least Mac OS X 10.8.

well, had Apple killed Cocoa in 10.6, you'd have had a dickens of a time running Final Cut Studio.

 jelockwood, on 29 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

Note: Microsoft are making small steps forward, they at least are switching to using Apple's installer unlike Adobe (shudder!).

Microsoft's been using Apple's installer since Office 2008, and Adobe has even been making progress there. But, everything's simple when you're not doing the work.

[callmesevenwong]

While Word allows simultaneous document editing, but how easy is that? how well is the implementation? Can I get this function via sky drive, or I am forced to install and use share point?

As simultaneous editing is one of the main feature of Word 2010, I am surprise it is not covered in this review.

This post has been edited by callmesevenwong: 30 September 2010 - 06:36 PM

[spacest]

> Full parity with Word for Windows

No. It doesn't show Cyrillic text, while Pages has no problem. This is an unforgivable bug that happens even before you start working with the program, just opening a DOC file. I shudder to think what's ahead.

[Reg]

 mdawson, on 28 September 2010 - 07:48 AM, said:

• To delete files and folders in the Finder you move the file to the trash can then empty the trash can, but in Windows you have to move the file, confirm that you want to move the file, empty the recycle bin then confirm that you want to empty the recycle bin.

• To create a new folder in the Finder you invoke a context menu and select the first item "New Folder"; in Windows you invoke the context menu, then move the cursor to from the top of the menu most of the way down to "New" to invoke a submenu in which you have to scroll all the way to the top to select "Folder".

Those may seem like minor things, but those extra seconds add up over the course of a workday.

This is incorrect. To delete files in Finder, you drag the file to the trash can. Then you must click open the trash can again to empty it. But before you empty it, you must click on 'empty' (that's 3 clicks). If we are comparing across platforms the ability to completely delete a file, then the equivalent of emptying the recycle bin in Windows would be 'secure empty trash' in OS X. So instead of clicking 'empty' you click 'secure empty trash'. This brings up a dialogue box which asks you if you 'are sure you want to secure empty trash?' Then you must click that. (That's 4 clicks).

If you are creating a lot of folders during a session, there is a keyboard short cut in Windows Explorer: Press Ctrl + Shift + N. It instantly creates a new folder.

[JeffScholen]

One feature I like with Windows Word application is the ability to blog and update my post from within the Word application. Is this possible with the Mac version?

[JereJoiner]

What's the chance of buying Word 2011 without having to buy the office suite, which I don't need?

[Reg]

 JereJoiner, on 04 October 2010 - 05:16 AM, said:

What's the chance of buying Word 2011 without having to buy the office suite, which I don't need?

Zero.

Word 2011 isn't sold seperately. You'll have to buy the suite (or find a torrent). Office 2011 is available for trial as well.

[thg1]

Regarding Right to Left scripts, I got the following response at the Office for Mac Team blog on Oct. 15:

"Due to technology limitations on the text input tools, Office for Mac’s Unicode support won’t include right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic."

[yoelf]

MS dropped (again!!!!!) Bidi language support from the upcoming version of MS Office.
What can I say?

It is not that such support was ever optimal on the windows versions of the SW, but gaining decent compatibility was (and remains) a HUGE issue for Mac users interested in Office applications.

Sadly, what Open Office, Neo Office have to offer on this is just short of enough (they do support Bidi language, but compatibility with MS environment lacks)

A major hurdle for Apple in 1/6 of global population, if you ask me...