Sunday, May 29, 2005

I just came across Stochastic Hit Parade with Bethany Ryker at WFMU, streaming at 128Kb via iTunes. A tasty mix of "serious" contemporary music, electronica, jazz, world so far, while waiting for a segment about Mauricio Kagel's music and films. For me, Kagel is the most delightful, funny, imaginative, provocative of the Darmstadt post-tonal composers. 10:20:42 PM

My daughter uses Office on the Mac for classwork so that she can carry work between home and the school Wintel boxes. Today, she was trying to draw a complicated decision tree for a chemistry report. I thought I could help her by showing her how to use the drawing tools in Word. However, nothing in Microsoft world is ever simple. We wanted to draw boxes with connectors between them. I was sure that there was a way to create connectors that between boxes that stretch as the boxes are moved. We wasted a long time looking for how to create connectors, which are mentioned in the documentation. I was sure that there was a way. But we couldn't find it. After she gave up and went back to her original, laborious way of drawing the decision tree, I realized finally what the problem was. Powerpoint provides connectors, but Office does not. Yet, the two drawing interfaces are otherwise very similar. so, I kept (mis)remembering connectors from Powerpoint while looking at the Word drawing interface. It's hard to understand how such a glaring inconsistency escaped interface design and user testing. But I shouldn't be surprised. How likely is it that the armies of Word and Powerpoint developers ever have time or organizational space to talk to each other, let alone define overall consistency goals for the whole Office product? Integrated office suites were one of the most poisoned gifts of the office software wars of the 90s, killing in the name of spurious purchasing convenience a multitude of excellent but specialized programs from drawing to outlining. For drawings in my own writing and presentations, I mostly use OmniGraffle, a wonderful product that keeps getting better without bloat. What my daughter needs would have been trivial in OmniGraffle, except that it would prevent her from editing the result in her Wintel-monopolized school. I use Office only when working with others who are for one reason or another tied to it. 1:00:41 PM