Douglas Adams, the Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft Word
Oct 26, 2005
Imagine, three of your favorites coming together in one newsworthy item: Douglas Adams, his love for Macs, and Microsoft Word bashing. :)
On alt.fan.douglasadams, KÃ¥re today posted an article by Douglas (from MacUser) on his pet peeve about Microsoft Word (don't we all have one ... or perhaps, more?) The absence of smart quotes apparently annoyed DNA quite a bit, and it's a humorous piece (if that wasn't obvious from who the author was). Go read the full article.
Here's a choice passage: it's the bartender talking to Douglas.
"One of my regulars - chap called Fred, perhaps you know him, little wizened grey-haired fellow, about thirtyish - told me he'd been using Word 1.05 for two years before he discovered that you could search for carriage returns and tabs after all. He just thought they'd omitted it out of spite. But no, it was in there alright. It was even in the manual. Just not so as you could find it, that's all. It was his brother Jim as discovered it. He was doing three month solitary at the time. 'At least give me something to read,' he pleaded with the warders."
"Heartless brutes, they gave him a Microsoft Word manual. He was a broken man at the end of it, but he did know which page the Special Characters search routines were on, as there's not many as can say that. It's an ill wind."
