In the end we had to ignore the numlock mask altogether and rely on virtual key codes to determine if the user is sending a numpad key to the input method component.

I’m glad to have found this article to support our findings. I’m attending this year’s WWDC (my first) and am hoping to present/reproduce this bug (along with a few more) directly to some Apple people…

You seem to miss the fact that a team of 50 odd engineers must work together across multiple campuses [with their supporting infrastructure as well], with a 20 year old, 20+ million lines of code [guess] project. Add in standard project scheduling, the humanity factor, actual knowledge of software development processes, some actual compassion and it’s all more understandable.

Perhaps you’ve forgetten you are but 1 in a sea of millions of users for Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe and that you’re individual issues and desires do not in any way shape or form map to the desires of the other millions other than simple statistical grouping?

I don’t work for the MacBU but I respect the fact that they maintain the largest Mac development team outside Apple and consistently deliver a product that addresses their customers needs.

“Mac users demand high quality” is a strawman. All consumers expect, nay, demand, high quality across any product. Flaggellating the MacBU to get your issues addressed using gross generalizations is sad.

Thanks–that’s good to know. Still, I agree with Pierre–some of these problems are pretty obvious, and yet they persist for almost two years after the release of Office 2004. From the end user’s perspective, it is hard to understand what is going on when there is no information about whether the problem has been acknowledged and when or if it will be ever be fixed. Further, the updaters are accompanied with very little information about what the end users can expect when the updated versions of the apps. For instance, the last updater for Office 2004 was described as affording “improved stability” for Word 2004–that’s not enough information. It would be better to have a full technical release note, such as the ones that Adobe provides for the CS and CS2 suite, which lists all of the problems that were fixed in a given release. This would make it possible for an end user to issue another bug or problem report to remind you guys about the issues that remain.

Here’s just one issue that is on my personal radar screen: the unexplained lagging in the updating of the screen windows that accompany cutting and pasting or deleting blocks of text. I’ve got a pretty fast system, and still sometimes I wonder if I really did press the keystroke that I thought I did, because nothing happened, and then…. it happens. This behavior occurs even with a light load on the system, and it is highly disconcerting when one is concentrating on writing.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for keeping up the good work on the Office apps. We, the end users, are depending on you to do the best you can, and some better transparency about the process will make us feel better, I think.

I mean, It suck to have bugs in a software app, or for that matter to have razor blades that gets oxidized because of the water (¿?), but c’mon, I don think a bloger should be accountable in his web page by any guy who has a keyboard, I think is it horrendous to go off to a guy just because he happens to blog about were he Works.

Every time I read this blog I think, that all (I mean ALL) the problems could be fixed with more people, because you are always taking a person away from something he is doing to finish some other stuff. A MacBU with a 100 persons or more, could EASILY, port Office to Cocoa, Get Messenger on par with Windows Messenger, revive explorer, fix all bugs you could ever imagine in all the previous apps, and do a WMP just for fun.

But he can’t, this guy must work with the card he has bean dealt and I don think he should be held accountable for that. (Maybe your employer, but that’s another topic)

I don’t really know anything about this bug so it would not be fair to comment, but I must thank you for being so honest in your blog. I wish more companies would encourage their employees to write blogs and this is something I must give Microsoft credit for.

Just a quick question - I was wondering if Microsoft had any plans to make a free Powerpoint viewer for Macs, as they do for Windows?

“Microsoft Word and non-breaking spaces: French Typography 101″

http://www.betalogue.com/2006/06/21/microsoft-word-and-non-breaking-spaces-french-typography-101/

Thanks for the post and for your efforts. I agree with Pierre; there are a number of small issues that seem to linger with the Mac Office apps, and for those of us who work professionally with these apps these small issues cause continuous distraction. I hope that you and your colleagues can work out a reliable way to let the professional users communicate problems to you. I’ll bet that feedback channels usually have a low signal to noise ratio, so they may not be really very useful to you. As one suggestion, why not identify a small set of professional users (like Pierre) who really give your apps a continuous workout, and set up private channels of communication with them. These people will provide reliable problem reports for you that will be worth the time to try to address.

And that, in my opinion, is not just accidental. It suggests that there are serious systemic issues with the development and testing processes that Microsoft uses. And that Microsoft doesn’t take the issues seriously enough to do something about them. (The “pseudo-localization” reference was indeed just a starting point. I didn’t mean to imply that pseudo-localization should have caught that bug.)

Mac users are a pretty demanding bunch. They want great performance, attention to detail, and responsiveness. Most major Mac developers, including Microsoft, Adobe, and indeed Apple itself, appear to have serious difficulties meeting such expectations. But I am afraid I have to say that, of the bunch, Microsoft is most definitely the worst.

This bug with Postscript fonts and the non-breaking space is not an isolated incident. I could give you a very long list of very irritating bugs that have been there for years and haven’t been fixed. (You could also explore the “Microsoft” category on my blog to get an idea.)

Just to illustrate the on-going nature of the problem: PowerPower Point v. X had this horrible bug where using a “dead key” such as the circumflex accent on the French or French Canadian keyboard would cause the cursor to jump all over the place and make it impossible to type. Even if your French is not very good, you must know that the circumflex accent is an integral part of French spelling and is used in all kinds of very common words, including être, âme, maître, etc.

The bug was eventually fixed in PowerPoint 2004, but for several YEARS I as a French typist had to live with it in PowerPoint v. X (the English version; again, I don’t know whether the bug was ever fixed in the French version of the product; I cannot afford to buy two separate copies of every Office release).

This was the exact same situation: a glaring bug that mostly affected non-U.S. users and remained unfixed for YEARS. Was there a tester who went to graduate school at the most inappropriate time for that one as well? A simple human mistake? I think not.

There might be an advantage to have multi-lingual bundled apps. This might be a way to have the Mac Community create additional languages, even not officially. The OOo community did it, and you know find OOo localization ressources in many many languages… Eventually this might increase the adoption of Office:Mac abroad.

Another thing. Pierre is very vocal for this bug. That’s OK… but. As you know there are crashing bugs related to localization issues. Many have been correcting in PPT:2004. Word grammar checker crashing bugs are here since… Office 2001 (I think)… I hope this one will be on the top list thing to fix for Office:Next

For what it’s worth, I think you can actually build a monolithic Cocoa app. It wouldn’t be fun and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do it, but I think it’s possible. If it was a weekend instead of Tuesday night, maybe I’d try it….