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

atoa atoa at krak.net
Fri Jun 17 18:20:41 PDT 2005


I'm sorry, but Excel does work exactly as I described. It does not, never 
did, and one hopes, never will, act like Mac Paint.

It is a spreadsheet program. It was not designed to print graph paper with 
marks on it, but it does do it pretty well if you take the time to figure 
out how to use it, rather than just rail about it.

Hate Microsoft all you want, but Excel is an excellent program, and has 
been since I started using it (in the form of Multiplan) on my 128k Mac.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005, George Pepper wrote:

>
> 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.
> _______________________________________________
> Cube mailing list
> Cube at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
> http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/cube
>
> Listmom is trying to clean out his closets! Vintage Mac and random stuff:
>         http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZmacguy1984
>


More information about the Cube mailing list