A fix to the application dictionary problem and a word annoyance

I know Word 2003 as only a charter member of the death-to-Word club can. Even so, I was reminded to change two things when reading O'Reilly Media's Word Annoyances (ends at Word 2003).

First I removed the default Word custom.dic file and created my own (jfaughnan.dic) file in a folder I backup and control. So no more lost dictionary when I change machines. I then created a Google Apps document [1][2] to hold a copy of the dictionary. I will periodically merge [4] that with my other application specific dictionaries -- which are particularly important on handheld devices [3]. Imperfect, but good enough.

Then I finally paid attention to the Word settings for "smart" [5] Edit and cut/paste, turning off most of the default behaviors.

So I recommend the book (though it doesn't include Word 2007), but I don't agree with their recommendation to use Styles for everything. That's what every book on Word says, and they're all wrong. Styles are too broken to seriously contemplate unless you're a technical writer [6] [7].

--

[1] Incredibly annoying pink color scheme today. I wish Google spent less time being cute and more time fixing their #@$!$ buggy products (such as their custom search widget, which is broken as of this morning).

[2] Ironically Google Docs has its OWN dictionary, so the text file shows a spelling error indicator for every entry! There's no way to edit that dictionary. One day perhaps.

[3] In the long forgotten glory days Palm had a great auto-complete tool with a custom dictionary. Emily's BlackBerry has one too - very important for word completion.

[4] Copy/paste to TextPad, sort and delete dupes, copy/paste back.

[5] aka "Stupid"

[6] Most of them hate Word even more than I do.

[7] Word 2007 includes a complete do-over of Styles but it requires a (funny that) new file format that's incompatible with everything in the megaverse.

Aperture 2: the missing Help items and Apple's manual site

One of the oddities of the demo version of Aperture 2 is the Help menu is empty. I assume this will be fixed soon and that the shipping version will have the same PDF set Aperture 1 had. (It's another question why Aperture doesn't use Apple's Help system. Sometimes I think it's not really an Apple product at all.)

In the meantime an Apple Discussion Group post pointed me to a site I didn't know about: the Apple Manual page. Every Apple product manual shows up there, sorted by publication date. It's a great resource and I'm going to add it to my custom OS X Search widget.

There's also a "page" (query) for Aperture manuals only, but as of today it only has Aperture 1.x manuals. I assume that's a metadata error and we'll soon see the manuals there.

Aperture 2: Yes, it's much faster.

Now that I've found a workaround for the Aperture 2 .Mac bug, and found Aperture can, at long last, edit dates it was time to test performance on my old, decaying, G5 iMac (2 GHz PPC, 1.5 GB RAM).

I imported by reference a 2300 image iPhoto Library -- all JPEG. After importing I practiced browsing it, and I tested the filmstrip "Preview" browser (tap P to toggle). Preview browsing is extremely fast, at least with JPEG originals. Scrolling the entire set of 2300 images was not as fast is iPhoto but was very acceptable for my purposes. In practice I almost never view that many items at once.

The import worked well, as before slideshows, photo books, calendars, etc are not imported. If you want to switch your iPhoto images to Aperture you need to save these as PDFs. Since iPhoto and Aperture count images differently it's tough to know if all images were truly imported. Movies will NOT be imported from iPhoto, in the past Aperture didn't warn they'd been left behind.

As with earlier versions Aperture imports Smart Albums as "dumb" albums. Aperture's "smart albums" are as dim as iPhoto's: you can't use a Smart Album as an input to a filter (no nested queries in other words). iTunes is more powerful.

I expect I'll buy the product in a week or two.

Aperture 2: you can edit the dates now

In December I wrote:

Gordon's Tech: Will Apple abandon Aperture?

... You can't edit date metadata, you've never been able to edit dates, this hasn't been fixed despite several major updates...

So version 2.0 is out and, yes, you can edit the dates. I don't see any batch editing but I'm not an Aperture expert. At least there's something. The product is not dead yet.

Still no Apple Help file. They must have a pretty limited development budget.

Once I figure out a solution to the .Mac bug I'll start using it over the next two weeks. The date issue was my primary objection to moving to Aperture -- it gave me a worrisome impression of the product manager.

PS. Surprise! Academic licenses cannot upgrade. Going forward the academic discount isn't worth it with the new pricing.)

Update: You can AppleScript date modifications, so there's no problem with batch updating!

Adjust date and time of version/master

The “adjust date” verb has been added to the AppleScript Dictionary, allowing you to modify the EXIF date of images through a scripted workflow.

Update 2/13/08: The tutorial page video shows how to edit dates for multiple selected images.

Aperture 2: There was a problem connecting to .Mac

I took me less than 10 seconds to find a major bug Apple - Aperture 2.

That's a new record!

If you have a .Mac record in your keychain Aperture tries to connect to it -- even if the account is long defunct.

When that happens it displays an alert "There was a problem connecting to .Mac". You can't get the alert to go away, in fact I now have multiple floating dialogs telling me of this problem.

I'm going to try pulling my network cable next time I restart.

They ought to be ashamed, but as far as I can tell Apple is shameless.

Update: I quit, pulled the network cable, and restarted. It hung on start but after a minute or so something timed out and it did run correctly. I then restarted with the network cable and got the looping error message. I'll probably have to locate the .mac entry in my keychain and remove it.

Update 2/13/08: The fix for now is to open the .Mac preferences in your System Preferences. Remove your old username and password for the inactive account. The bug goes away.

Google now supporting Safari?

I've been pretty fed up with Firefox flakiness lately, so I took Safari 3 for a visit to Google's properties.

Gmail RTF was supported. Google Docs no longer warns of an unsupported browser.

Blogger doesn't seem as messed up when using Safari (though it uses div tags instead of the familial p tags).

The only app that warns of an unsupported browser is Google Page Creator -- which is due to be dumped "any time now".

Google is very close to full Safari support, I'm going to try switching for a while. 

I'll be happy to leave Firefox 2/Mac behind. It ain't so great on XP either these days! We need Firefox 3 ASAP.

The worst commercial web site on the net?

The Lowe Alpine web page won't render correctly in either Safari 3 or Firefox 2.

I've never seen that before.

There's a contact link, but it's broken.

I think we've got a winner.