[Cube] Needed: OS X Digital "Graph Paper" Program

George Pepper pep27 at mac.com
Fri Jun 17 12:57:09 PDT 2005


Wow.  My previous response got bounced by the moderator. ;^) 

(I think it was just too long)
  
 I'm sorry, but Excel does not behave in the way you describe.  If I click on a pencil icon, I expect that it is going to draw a line; it does not do that.  Instead, it just highlights a group of cells.  I simply have zero-tolerance for programs which do not respond as I expect given the conventions I have grown accustomed to through my experiences with previous software that I've been exposed to.  What I want Excel to do is to behave EXACTLY like the old Mac Paint program but with a graph paper template, which is how any blank sheet of graph paper should be set up to respond.  It will not comply to my demands, and I cannot figure out it's requirements for input, so it is therefore useless to me. 
  
 If I can figure out the Encore and Sibelus music notation programs in five minutes each, without cracking open a manual for either one of them, then is is possible for every single piece of software on the planet ever written by anybody to be just as simple and intuitive to use as those two programs are, despite the fact that they are quite powerful and allow for an infinate number of musical compositions to be written with them.  Excel (And ALL other MS software) is the exact analog of the Finale music printing program: Unforgivably obtuse and nothing but a hindrance to the creative individual due to it's inherant and unaviodably anti-intuitive user interface.  That's why, after spending circa $500.00 on Finale, I dragged it to the trash within ten minutes of opening it for the first time: It refused to behave in a predictably intuitive manner and it hindered my creative flow.  As I say, I have zero-tolerance for that sort of behavior from any program no matter how much or little it costs and no matter whether it is the "industry standard" or not. 
  
 I don't even use Word anymore: As soon as I figured out that I could just add ".doc" to the end of filenames of outgoing letters I created with TextEdit and change ".doc" to ".rtf" on incoming Word documents, I stopped using it for good.  Why anybody would use Word when TextEdit is a zillion times easier to use, I simply don't understand.  But that's just me: I'm sure there are things you can do with Word you can't with TextEdit, but I have NO IDEA what those things would be, so they must be arcane enough that someone like me who just wants a word processor to - you know - process words doesn't need to even be aware of them. 
  
 The only reason I even HAVE the MS Office suite is because I was told I'd "need it".  Well, I don't so I guess I should just drag it to the trash like I did with Finale. That's certainly where it belongs considering all the "good" it's done for me.
  
 Pep 
  
 On Friday, June 17, 2005, at 10:04AM, atoa <atoa at krak.net> wrote: 
  
 >Not a joke at all. Set the columns and rows to the size you want, and draw  
 >whatever you want as objects. Then print, with the option to print  
 >gridlines. I've been doing it for years.


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