Re: Staying with XP after April 8 2014 (was Win 7 vs Win 8)

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

> I did find a slight need to
> learn new stuff when I went from XP to Win 7. It's a bigger transition
> than going from Xy 3+ to Xy IV but less than going from the old Word to
> Word with "the ribbon" (if you are familiar with that
> trauma).


Harry is not exaggerating when he reports on the 'trauma' of the new Word
ribbon interface. It is the worst interface in the last 20 years of
interface design. Let us hope it will soon be replaced. For many, it will
be OK to use Office 2007 or even earlier, which has the older
interface.


Office 2007 is available in a famous 'blue' edition which does not
require serial or activation:

http://mysticranger.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/microsoft-office-2007-blue-edition/; eudora="autourl">
http://mysticranger.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/microsoft-office-2007-blue-edition/


Blue versions of later Office suites are not available. I find that
because I need the latest OpenType typographical features (such as
automatic ligature support), I am compelled to use the most recent
versions of Office, and must deal with the trauma of the interface.


> Longer term, I'm hoping that
> Nota Bene will be our salvation.


Is there any evidence that Nota Bene will ever support OpenType fully or
even Unicode fully? Will NotaBene modernize sufficiently to support fine
typography at even the level of Word?


There was a time when XyWrite/Nota Bene led the field on book
production/typesetting features. I often think it's a pity that it hasn't
continued to evolve in those directions.


I am sure the company knows best what to do in order to survive, but it
doesn't seem to be going in a direction that would be helpful to my
particular workflows.


Regarding XP to Win 7, I would say that the transition takes about an
hour. 7 is much easier to use, and really is easier on the eye. One thing
to note, however: while it is easily possible in XP to search for files
that have no extension - - something which some XyWriters, including me,
alas, have got into the bad habit of doing - - MS search facilities after
XP (Vista and onwards) do not have a mechanism for search-indexing files
without extension names, so some other form of file-search becomes
obligatory. That said, I am finding that there Win 8.1 may have finally
brought back some limited ability to index and quicly search for files
without extensions.