Existing users, 
User Name Xiaopangzi
Member Since 2001-03-25
Total number of Feedback Posts: 96
Total number of comments: 12
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Xiaopangzi [ Search for All ]
Microsoft Office 2008 12.1.5 (Mac OS X)
Stability still not improved after a year 
I’ve been using Office ever since Word 4 at the beginning of the ’90s, but Microsoft has not made an intuitive, stable, Mac-like application since the wonderful Word 5.1a. The Mac Business Unit keeps churning out updates to Office 2008 but still hasn’t made Word 12 stable, yet. It either hangs (with reports automatically sent to Apple) or crashes (with reports sometimes sent to Microsoft) at least once a day with the most basic usage. I don’t do anything out of the ordinary, so I can’t imagine the same thing not happening to everyone else who uses Word for editing at least eight hours a day. Here is a simple test to show the lack of basic functionality. Place your cursor in the middle of a document, and then try to find a word appearing anywhere above the document with the default Current Document All selected in the Find and Replace dialog box. Word will find anything below the cursor and will pretend to loop from the top of the document back down to the cursor but will not actually find or especially replace any words appearing above the cursor. That is something that should have been worked out in the beta releases before the commercial launch but still has not been addressed even after multiple updates now reaching version 12.1.5, and I remember another user pointing it out a year ago with the 12.0 release. As for stability, try the following test. Use the Replace All button in the Find and Replace dialog box to replace any word or phrase, no matter how long or short, regardless of whether there are no incidences of that word in the document or there are thousands of incidences, and regardless of whether the document is only 6 pages or 600 pages, and in doc, rtf, or docx format, with or without images and/or text boxes. The search and replace should have worked correctly (except of course for any instances above the cursor and any instances in text boxes). Then, perform another Replace All with a different word or phrase, without saving the document after the first Find and Replace operation. I guarantee any Word 2008 user that the application will crash, or sometimes just hang, as I’ve verified a consistent occurrence on multiple machines. As for the stability of every version of Word from 6 to 12, if you save the document between each thought while writing or between each editing change while reading someone else’s document, as I do automatically for safety reasons, Word creates dozens or even hundreds of tmp files per session and then eventually crashes as a result (probably memory related). Similarly, if you have Save AutoRecover enabled in the Preferences and happen to do a manual save at the same time that Word is attempting its automatic backup save (or vice versa), Word will hang indefinitely or will simply crash. My only workaround is to ensure that Save AutoRecover is not enabled and to make sure I save the document after every Replace All operation. Of course, I also have to move the cursor to the top of the document before every Replace All operation so that every instance is changed, after first highlighting the last edited spot in order to easily find it again after the Replace All has completed. I then have to quit and restart Word every hour for safety reasons to cause the tmp files to be cleared out and prevent unexpected crashes. What’s even more frustrating with regard to the Save AutoRecover feature is that, if Word hangs (requiring a force quit) or crashes, it will only find the AutoRecover backup version of the document instead of the more recent one or several versions that you manually saved after an AutoRecover backup. That often means that you lose as much as 10 minutes of editing, which involves a lot of changes when you are in the translation industry, struggling to meet deadlines every half hour to an hour throughout the day. I have a lot more to write but will only mention this most basic lack of functionality and stability regarding the Replace All feature. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, January 21 2009 @ 02:02 PM PST
Apple iWork 09 (Mac OS X)
Find & Replace Functionality Still Too Limited for Full-time Use
The following applies specifically to Pages ’09 rather than being attributable also to Numbers and Keynote. Observations: • Although still not as crisp and clear as text on a Word page, antialiased text in Pages ’09 is much less blurry than in previous versions of Pages, so Pages ’09 is now viable as a replacement of Microsoft Word, as long as Find & Replace functionality is significantly expanded in the near future. • Unable to search for bold, italic, underlined, subscript, superscript, or highlighted text, or text with specific fonts, colors, etc., within documents in which the original writer did not define styles (did not use a style sheet). • Unable to use clipboard content for Replace All, such as when replacing all instances of “CO2” with the equivalent that contains the proper subscript number. • Unable to specifically search for only one-byte or two-byte characters within a document, unlike the Japanese version of Word (or with Japanese enabled via Microsoft Language Register). • Unable to automatically convert double-byte characters to their single-byte equivalents or vice versa. • Unable to search upward. • Unable to search for combinations of unspecified numbers and letters or use any other wildcard searches. • Unable to search for unspecified uppercase letters or combinations of uppercase and lowercase letters. • Unable to highlight text if the desired color is already selected in the Apple, Developer, Crayons, and Web Safe Colors subpalettes in the Show Colors formatting palette, so a different neighboring color has to be temporarily selected before reselecting the desired color to be applied to the current text selection. • Difficult to identify the applied highlight color of selected text, as the System Preference’s default Highlight Color is still used even for highlighted text instead of Pages using a color that directly contrasts with the applied highlight color, as is standard in Word. • Word files with first line indentation lose most of their indentation when opened in Pages. Desires: • An option in Preferences that enables certain Views—especially Show Invisibles—by default for all documents, whether newly created or imported from Word format • Access to the Inspector via the pointer while inputting search (and replace) criteria in the fields of the Find & Replace dialog box, as most documents do not have styles defined by the original author • Ability to search across all open documents and search upward to find the previous instance of any criteria • Fullest possible regular expression search via the Find & Replace dialog box but preferably selectable from a pulldown menu with natural user-friendly language. • Ability to apply the currently selected color in the Show Colors palette as highlighting for any selected text via a single click (without having to deselect the desired color first) and then have immediate visual feedback that the highlighting has been successful by displaying the text selection highlight in a color that directly contrasts with the applied highlight color. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, January 14 2009 @ 01:02 PM PST
AudialHub 1.01 (Mac OS X)
All progress halts upon scrolling
Note to all users: Be careful not to scroll down when converting files—at least by clicking in the empty scrollbar space when converting WMA to AAC—as it will hang the application. I've tried it with various folders of files, and the moment when you try to scroll, that will halt all progress for as many hours as you wish to wait, regardless of which file is being converted in the list. It doesn't act like a normal hang in the sense of freezing things up, but all progress halts indefinitely as soon as you attempt to scroll, and then you have to start the process again beginning on the previous file. The reason why I say that it is not an actual hang is because the application doesn't need to be force-quit. You just need to Cancel and Clear All, and then add the files back again. It is definitely not a matter of a corrupted file, as one might expect. Anyway, I hope that the company fixes this soon, because it's hard to resist scrolling. Still AudialHub and VisualHub are definitely my choices for media conversion, after having tried all of the other available ones, but I wouldn't say that this is a solid piece of software as the previous user claims. [alert admin]
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Saturday, May 03 2008 @ 01:01 PM PDT
Genius 1.7 (Mac OS X)
Version 1.7 makes Genius perfect for my purposes, because I can now see the tiny dots that indicate the vowels for Hebrew without having to switch from 1440 x 900 to 640 x 480 pixels screen resolution when switching from list management to actual drills. Ignoring diacritical marks also makes it possible for me to more easily drill from English to Hebrew, as I haven't bothered to learn how to add the vowels when typing, so just typing the consonants should produce a correct answer as far as Genius is concerned. I've never bothered to try Genius with Chinese characters (including Japanese words), but I'm sure that the font size options help distinguish between some very similar characters. I'm used to reading copies of copies of faxes from Japan that turn characters into blobs, and I can tell what characters were intended just from the general outline when seeing the words in context, but I'm sure that people who are less familiar with Chinese characters and are using Genius to learn Japanese or Chinese will definitely appreciate the optional larger sized fonts. [alert admin]
Monday, December 25 2006 @ 12:03 PM PST
Ebbinghaus 1.5 (Mac OS X)
Import options are too limited
This looks like a very promising complement to Genius 1.6 for using images as the questions or answers, or using sentences that are too long to write as answers, in cases when recognition is more important than word-for-word or letter-for-letter reproduction. The interface is very similar to Genius 1.6, so it will be familiar to those users. Unfortunately, though, I can't seem to convert my tab-delimited Hebrew–English dictionary into an XML file or a “;” CVS. A tab is the one thing that I can’t seem to enter in the separator dialogue box in Preferences. By the way, “separator” was misspelled as “seperator” in that box. I did manage to import a very sporadic list due to the existence of semicolons in my definitions, and although it was unusable, I was really impressed that the Hebrew was displayed in the right direction with the vowels positioned properly, indicating that this is a fully Unicode-compatible application, unlike many wordprocessors for which such a function should be mandatory. I guess I need to find a way to create an XML file, and then I can upload tons of Hebrew, Japanese, and Chinese vocabulary lists that I've compiled over the years. Until then, I'll just continue using Genius, as forcing a person to type the answer really distinguishes true learning from recognition or vague recollection of memorized text. I still need Ebbinghaus for drilling myself on long detailed definitions. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, December 13 2006 @ 04:52 PM PST
iDefrag 1.5.8 (Mac OS X)
Comparison to Disk Warrior functionality
I've loved iDefrag ever since I purchased it, as described in my previous commentary. Now that an upgraded version of Disk Warrior has finally been released, I'm wondering whether it can repair anything that iDefrag cannot, when the latter will replace your directory with a newly created compact directory after defragmentation just as Disk Warrior does without any file allocation optimization. If so, I'll consider upgrading my copy of Disk Warrior but will stick with iDefrag for the disk optimization that I value. The directory is not the only thing that needs to be optimized, no matter what Apple claims. [alert admin]
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Thursday, December 07 2006 @ 04:30 PM PST
DiskWarrior 4.0 (Mac OS X)
DiskWarrior helped me in the past and was one of my most valuable utilities, but having somehow been unaware until now of the ability to use an updater to burn a new CD-ROM compatible with newer hardware or versions of the OS as described by the company spokesman below, I recently bought iDefrag, because it definitely does have a utility for creating new CD-ROM discs for new hardware and OS releases. It's tempting to purchase an upgrade of DiskWarrior this time, as I never feel as though you can have too many utilities, but it appears as though this application is still mainly for repairing and optimizing (replacing) the directory, whereas iDefrag will optimize all of your hard disk data (like the extremely dangerous Norton Speed Disk) and replace the directory as DiskWarrior does. Is there anything functionality in DiskWarrior that is not available in iDefrag (i.e., any problems that it can repair that iDefrag cannot)? If so, I'll consider buying an upgrade. [alert admin]
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Thursday, December 07 2006 @ 04:25 PM PST
iStudy Flashcards 2.2.1 (Mac OS X)
This application isn't fully Unicode-compatible, as it displays Hebrew backwards, and is thus useless for my purposes. After a search of the Web site and features of the application itself, I could not find a way to have it import tab-delimited lists, which is quite a shock for a flashcard application. The closest alternative is using xml, which is not something most users would attempt to do. [alert admin]
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Monday, December 04 2006 @ 12:53 AM PST
Splitter 1.0 (Mac OS X)
Despite what someone mentioned below about incompatibility with OS X 10.3, this utility worked well with OS X 10.4. I was able to split a 386.4-MB text file into ten segments that were then separately openable by a wordprocessor, which I used to save them each in RTF. MS Word couldn't save a file a third of that size, even without any changes having been made to the plain text. Thanks to this utility, I now have access to all the data on my "Infobases Collectors Library ’97 for Macintosh" CD-ROM on my MacBook Pro, which obviously cannot use Classic (Mac OS 9) to open the massive text library with the original pre-OS X application. [alert admin]
Saturday, December 02 2006 @ 12:05 PM PST
iDefrag 1.5.7 (Mac OS X)
This is one of my most valuable software items on my hard disk. In answer to the various comments about speed, I must say that iDefrag is perfectly comparable to Norton Speed Disk, which I've used on every system since System 6.0.7.1 on my PowerBook 170. I don't think it's either faster or slower, as long as you have a recent model computer with a reasonable clock speed and hard disk. I really feel that this is safer and more stable than Norton Speed Disk. I lost the entire contents of my hard disk repeatedly through the years due to the various faulty Norton Utilities that always lacked minimal safety mechanisms built-in. In all, it definitely did far more harm than good, but I'm addicted to utility software, so it's hard for me to not run whatever I have and to own all that is available. I must be obsessive-compulsive, or something. I was frustrated that DiskWarrior was not updated after somewhere around OS 10.2, and it only rebuilt the directory and not the actual files on the hard disk. iDefrag does both with the same level of safety as Disk Warrior did. Any optimization software will take a couple of days to complete during the first run, depending on the amount of data that you have, but this software is configurable to make it shorter if time is a greater priority than perfectly compact and ordered data content. [alert admin]
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Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 04:28 PM PST
Last 10 Comments by Xiaopangzi [ Search for All ]
Text Highlighting Incompatible with Word
The highlighting (i.e., character background fills) of text in Pages cannot be removed or changed to a different color in either the Macintosh or Windows versions of Microsoft Word after a copy of a Pages file has been saved as a Word document. This applies also to files that have had text originally highlighted in Word and then opened in Pages without the editor altering any of the original Word highlighting. This is a serious problem…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Tuesday, February 10 2009 @ 11:02 AM PST
iWeb - NO SUPPORT FOR RIGHT TO LEFT TEXT DIRECTION!
That's a very valid comment. I've heard and joined in the protest about lack of proper support for Hebrew since the beginning of the 90s, with System 7, and Apple still obviously doesn't care. They were also extremely slow in their provision of Unicode compatibility for many years, making Asian and mixed language computing very frustrating. The Chinese input methods are still unsatisfactory compared to the Japanese FEP method. I wish that Apple would just…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, January 26 2009 @ 11:30 AM PST
Yes, you're absolutely right.
Original feedback item : Read More
Wednesday, December 13 2006 @ 04:33 PM PST
I forgot to mention that the ability to create your own up-to-date bootable disk makes this optimizer/defragmenter superior. It reminds me of some other defragmenter that I used to have with in the OS 8 days, which had a red flag as the icon. I can't remember what it was called, but it wasn't maintained for much longer than Disk Warrior was years later. I wish the developers mentioned what has been updated in this most…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Tuesday, November 14 2006 @ 04:31 PM PST
Thank you for taking the time to offer a suggestion. TextWrangler has advanced quite a bit since I last used it. Unfortunately, though, Hebrew is not listed in the available text encodings in Preferences, and the user manual states, "TextWrangler supports editing in all languages which use left-to-right text input methods," inferring that languages written right-to-left are not supported. There is no function for switching the direction of text in the menus. However, TextWrangler does have some…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, August 31 2006 @ 09:01 AM PDT
No support for AIFF, unfortunate
I can play AIFF by other means, but I can't figure out how to play a folder of files successively as this application is supposed to do for MP3.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, October 28 2005 @ 09:42 AM PDT
Binaural beats, or something different?
Okay, the download did finally complete, and I'm pretty sure that this does use binaural beats. I've never liked white or pink noise or even the sounds of nature mix with binaural beat frequencies, but this application really does have some good background sounds, and the speaker has an excellent, soothing voice. Still, I would not pay $40 for it when I already have the pure, undiluted binaural beat files that I generated for free by…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Saturday, July 30 2005 @ 11:59 PM PDT
It is also important to mention that this current version also interferes with the import of Panther mailboxes into Tiger Mail 2.0. Definitely remove MailPriority and all other plugins (Mail Scripts, httpmail plugin, etc.) before starting up Tiger Mail for the first time until they are each updated for Tiger. Neglecting to do so will cause you to take several days sorting out the mess of successfully importing the mailboxes and not having them disappear upon the…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, May 19 2005 @ 10:43 AM PDT
Gene, the value of Sp@mX is that it does in fact report to the sysadmins of the spoofed addresses so that they will know about the abuse of their reputation and can take action by also participating in tracing the true originating IP address wherever possible. Sp@mX does exactly what manual attempts do by going to the relevant NIC, tracing the address there and then reporting to the output abuse/postmaster address. If there are any errors…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, April 06 2005 @ 07:16 PM PDT
Okay, I'm obviously not doing a great proofreading job, even though editing is my actual profession. I meant to say "every day for the past few days" should read "every day for the past few years" in my previous review.
Original feedback item : Read More
Wednesday, December 29 2004 @ 03:52 AM PST
