Indented gonads.

[David]

On 26 May 2000 15:03:32 -0700, Harry George <hgg9140 at seanet.com> wrote:

>The key point is that the various "helpful" agents scattered through
>MS products default to on.  It is one thing to allow someone to turn
>them on -- they will thus also know how to turn them off.  It is quite
>another to turn them on by default. Frequently I've had to help
>casual MS users untangle the effects of those agents...

There are faults in Word, including some gullywhumpers that will hose your
entire document in a heartbeat (the Master Document scenario) and some that
are just endlessly annoying (some inconsistencies in the UI,
less-than-perfect handling of dash/en-dash/em-dash autoconversion).

But to whinge on about how Word automagically corrects 'accidental use of
cAPS LOCK KEY' by default -- and I hate to be this blunt in the Python
newsgroup, because it is a truly friendly community -- is plainly asinine.
By far the majority of word processor users are NOT writing program code,
or writing about program code: it makes far more sense for this behaviour
to default on than off.

And that you've had to help them turn this feature off is proof that they
wouldn't be able to turn it on by themselves, and probably would never have
realized that such a feature even existed -- and if you really have been
helping 'casual MS users,' then you know this already.

Let me be even more blunt: you shot your mouth off and got called on it.
Your cheap sniping at a perfectly valid MSWord default behaviour isn't
legitimate.  Your singularly uncommon and unlikely use of Word is not
adequate reason to inconvenience the greatest majority of users.  The only
flaming you're receiving regards 'accidental user of cAPS LOCK KEY' and
your assertion that it should be disabled by default, your attempt above to
muddy the waters by dragging in other 'helpful agents' notwithstanding.

Pick your sniping more carefully next time.  There are Word features that
you can legitimately criticize, should it ever be appropriate to do so --
highly unlikely in a Python forum.

Flame over and out.