Software-y-Ddraig Shareware Registration Services provides an off-the-shelf utility that enables .Net software developers to quickly and easily add shareware registration to their software. It is extremely simple to use (2 lines of code at its simplest) but very flexible and has anti-tamper technology and integrates with ShareIt's e-commerce system, providing a complete end to end solution for shareware distribution.
The 2006 release was falling foul of Windows Vista's new least-privilege security features. Today I have released a new version that works with Windows Vista even in a standard user account (the old version relied on the user having administrator rights, the new version does not).
Our registration system is used by CCDWare, who produce a range of CCD imaging software for amateur astronomers. The key generator component integrates with the ShareIt e-commerce system, which handles the store front, credit card processing and emailing of the license key direct to the purchaser.
Software-y-Ddraig (Dragon Software) is the name under which we (TiGra Networks) produce custom developed software for astronomers.
Over the 25 years or so that I’ve been using computers, I have worked with various word processing packages such as WordStar, WordPerfect, MacAuthor, nroff, Aldus (Adobe) PageMaker, Quark Xpress, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Word. Again and again, I see people misusing their word processing software and making life difficult for themselves. Over the years I’ve developed a set of principles through trial and error that guide me in the use of a word processing program. I call these principles “The Three Golden Rules of Effective Word Processing”. Using my three golden rules will help you avoid most of the common pitfalls. Let’s first look at the three rules then I’ll discuss the reasoning behind them:
- Never more than one white-space character.
- No spot formatting – make liberal use of styles
- Start in Outline View.
Those are my three rules. If you apply them religiously, you will actually find it quite difficult to stick to these rules, but the long term benefits make it worth the effort and your word processing will become more accomplished and more efficient as a result. Perhaps more importantly, you will produce high-quality documents that can be used and re-purposed by your co-workers.
I use Microsoft Word 2007 for my day-to-day document production and the remainder of this paper uses terminology that is directly relevant to Word. However, other word processing packages have equivalent features and the ideas presented here should apply equally well to them.
Now, let’s look at those rules and their implications in detail.
Rule 1 – Never more than one white space character
Let’s first define what a white space character is. A white space character is any character that takes up space in storage but does not display (or leave a mark on paper). The two most important characters in this class are the space itself and the paragraph mark but also included are tabs, em and en spaces and line breaks.
This rule aims to combat the tendency to align text by typing multiple new lines, spaces or tabs. On a conventional typewriter, that used to be the only way to do things, but in a modern word processor is it a big faux pas to align things visually. The reason? All spaces are not created equal. The width of individual characters and spaces may be different when the document is moved to a different device – a printer or even another computer with slightly different fonts installed. If different stationery is applied to your document, your formatting will be trashed. You can’t rely on characters straying the same size or in the same position as when you typed them. Furthermore, if text is edited elsewhere in the document, text may re-flow causing unexpected changes in formatting. You can quickly get into a situation where you're chasing your tail trying to fix-up all the formatting that breaks each time you tweak the document.
With a typewriter, everything was done by hand, including layout. With a word processor, try to work with the computer, not against it. You need to tell the computer what you want it to do and let the computer work out how to do it. If you try to micro-manage your layout, you'll be working against the software.
So this begs the question: If I can’t use white space, then how do I space my text as I want it to appear? The answer lies in the use of styles (see Rule 2 – No Spot Formatting, Always Use a Style).
One common mistake I see is the use of tables to position text, so it is worth examining when it is appropriate to use a table and when to use other techniques. Tables are a great tool for arranging (obviously) tabular data, when items are arranged in a grid of row and columns. It should be obvious that tables are not a good tool for creating paragraph indents and formatting. What might be less clear is where items are arranged in a list. After all, isn’t that just a table with only one column? Well, that is one way to look at it but the use of a table unnecessarily complicates the paragraph formatting and can make things harder to understand.
Word has built-in styles for formatting lists, either with or without bullets or numbering and can even cope with multiple levels of numbering. Those styles should be used in preference to a table. The list styles can be applied with a single button click on the toolbar.
Avoid list styles if you want to do heading numbering. Heading numbering is best achieved using Outline view and by modifying the heading styles in the document.
Most people use spot formatting all the time, indiscriminately, throughout their document. What do I mean by spot formatting? It’s when you select a piece of text and change the formatting attributes directly from the toolbar or the mini bar.
So what’s up with spot formatting, anyway? Well, these are the main things:
- Once you start using spot formatting, it will be difficult or impossible to maintain consistency throughout your document it can be difficult to keep track of what you’ve done. When you use a style, you can be sure that your formatting is consistent throughout your document. Furthermore, you can redesign the look of your document by editing the styles.
- If you allow yourself to use spot formatting, then it is less likely that you will have the discipline to use styles to full advantage.
- Spot formatting and styles can work against each other, leading to documents that are confusing and hard to work with.
- Your documents will be harder for others to use and re-purpose.
So those are the reasons not to spot-format, but there are some big benefits that come from using styles, too. For example:
- Your company may have a standard set of templates containing styles that you should use to be consistent with your corporate image. Using those styles ensures your formatting meets company policy. If your company changes its templates later on, you can easily update your documents to match (and it might even happen automatically).
- Styles help you to identify the meaning (rather than the actual content) of different parts of your document. This can make your document easier to understand and the word processor might be able to start automating some tasks based on the document structure. Probably the most obvious example of this is building a table of contents, or TOC. Word can infer the table of contents based on the headings in your document – but only if you used the heading styles! If you spot-formatted your headings, then you will have to type the TOC manually, and keep updating it any time the document changes. More on this in Rule 3 – Start in Outline View
So what if there aren’t enough styles to do what you need? First, try to start your document from a template that closely matches what you want to produce. If your company has created its own templates, try to use those. Otherwise use one of the templates built in to Word. Then, create new styles to specify the formatting you need. When creating new styles, try to follow these guidelines:
- Name your style based on what it will be used for, not how it will look. For example, “Telephone number” is good; “Bold Green Times Roman” is bad. “Document Title” good; “Red 24pt Underlined” bad.
- Try to base your style on an existing style. For example, if you wanted to create emphasis in your text, you might create a new style named “Emphasis”, base it on Body Text and add Italics to the formatting.
Outline view lets you ignore the details and focus on the big picture. By hiding the paragraphs and just viewing the headings in your document, you can easily comprehend the structure of the document. Outline view also allows you to move large chunks of your document around using simple drag-and-drop operations. When starting a new document, try to write down all the headings, at least the major headings first in outline view. Then you can switch to Print layout and begin fleshing out the details.
Using outline view to design a document in this way helps you achieve two important tasks:
- You’ll be more productive and your document will have a more coherent structure.
- You’ll automatically be using some of the built-in styles for your headings and body text, enabling Word to build and maintain your table of contents and giving you a head start on the way to producing more effective word processed documents.
Tips for Keeping to the Rules
If you decide to try sticking to these Golden Rules, you will undoubtedly find it hard at first. Bad habits are hard to kick! At first, you’ll get frustrated and you’ll find yourself creating and modifying a lot of new styles. Slowly, as time goes on, you’ll lose the urge to spot format everything, you’ll start to build up a library of re-usable templates and you’ll find that you usually have a perfect style for nearly every situation.
Probably the first thing that you’ll have problems with is creating space between your paragraphs, as the default paragraph style doesn’t leave any space. You can either edit your default style, called Normal, or create a series of new styles to meet your requirements. Double-spacing after a full stop is out. If you need a wide space, use an en space (Shift-Space) or an em space (Ctrl-Shift-Space). If you find yourself using tabs to line up columns, consider using a table instead.
Next, create a series of character styles to replace what you would have previously done with spot formatting. Give them names that reflect how they will be used, not how they look. Some useful styles you could create are Emphasis, Quote, Block Quote, Caption, Cross Reference, Banner and so on. Get the heading styles Heading 1 to Heading 6 looking exactly how you want them. I usually start with Heading 1 then base each subsequent heading style on it’s predecessor, so that any changes in Heading 1 will cascade down through all the heading styles.
What’s the Point? It’s quicker if I break the rules!
At first it will seem like a lot of work sticking to these rules, but in the long run you’ll produce better documents that look good; are easier to work with and are easier to re-use. After a bit of practice it will become second nature and you’ll start to use a lot more of the power of your word processing software. It may occasionally seem quicker just to do a “quick fix” and indeed there are some situations where this is perfectly justified, but it is a slippery slope, so be careful not to slide back into those old habits. Persevere with the Golden Rules – the more you use them the easier it will become.
Summary
When I produced this document, I “ate my own dog food”. That is, I stuck to my own rules religiously. I began by using a template that I created for my company that defines the standard look-and-feel of my company documents. The headers, footers and watermarks all come from that template, along with the page layout and a bunch of pre-defined styles.
Next, I laid down my headings in Outline view. The finished document has changed a bit since the initial draft but Outline view made it easy to rearrange things.
Finally I filled in the content, scrupulously using my predefined styles and defining a few new ones along the way. I have avoiding spot formatting and multiple white space characters religiously. I hope the finished result is a clear, consistent document that conforms to my company’s policy.
Try applying some alternative themes from Word 2007’s Page Layout tab. Notice how the whole document responds to those changes? That works because I used styles based on the theme-aware items.
Postscript: The original content for this blog post is contained in the attached Word 2007 document.
Cross-posted from http://community.tigranetworks.co.uk/blogs/TiGraNetworks
I have been a huge fan of the Action Pack that is available to Microsoft partners. It provides enough software to run a 10 PC business complete with server software, Windows, Office and other stuff.
I've just renewed my subscription and received my January shipment and I have a bad taste in my mouth. Recently, Microsoft has stopped providing "full install" media for Windows (XP and now Vista) and only provides upgrade media. The license has always been an upgrade license. Now that we've received Windows Vista, we can no longer perform clean installs because Windows Vista disallows that from an upgrade license key. So as an IT professional, I can no longer do "nuke and pave" installs from my Action Pack media. Whereas the definition of an upgrade used to be only in the licensing details, it has now been extended to the actual installed bits and their method of installation. I don't think I can live with that. I'm not sure that I can continue to abide by the Action Pack license agreement. Microsoft is making it too difficult and I'm seriously considering asking for a refund. Other parnters are also saying they can't live with the new Action Pack but for a slightly different reason. It seems that Microsoft's interpretation of the licensing rules is that Action Pack subscribers must immediately switch over to the new versions of Vista and Office upon renewing their subscription. Many businesses are not yet ready to upgrade and are unwilling to uninstall the old versions of the software, but by strict interpretation of the licensing rules, they would be forced to do so.
Microsoft, what are you thinking? We are your partners. Why are you so intent on pissing off your own partners? We are finding it harder every day to justify Microsoft's decisions to our customers. Maybe soon we will stop trying! For the Action Pack to remain useful, we need the ability to do "nuke and pave" installs, so we can use our licenses in Virtual PCs and to clean up our own systems. We need to do nuke-and-pave installs for our customers to get rid of all the crap that OEMs load up. If there is any justice, Microsoft will suffer a bad PR blizzard for this move. I for one am extremely disappointed.
[Update (see comments): David Overton has pointed out that in fact it is possible to do a clean install from a Vista upgrade media/license, so my assertion above that it was not possible may be misleading. The install must, however, be launched from the previous OS and cannot be performed on a blank hard drive. You can no longer perform a clean install by booting from the Vista media as was possible in XP. So, in the situation where the hard drive has been trashed and it is necessary to do a 'bare metal' install, it is necessary to first install the previous OS (or recover it using the OEM recovery media, if that has been provided) and then perform a Vista install and select the Advanced options - the Vista setup then moves the XP installation out of the way and performs a fresh install. Possible - but still very inconvenient, and it still leaves a lot of the OEM detritus in Program Files and other locations. My definition of a "clean install" is to install on a blank hard drive by booting from the media. This was possible with XP but is no longer possible with Vista upgrade licenses. Dave's mitigation of installing XP first is certainly a way around this, but that is no longer a clean install by my definition.]
I just tried to install my Windows Vista upgrade on my Acer tablet PC. Mission aborted. The installation ends in a blue screen, even though I complied with the instructions in the upgrade advisor. No problem I thought - I'll just do a "nuke and pave" clean install. Shock horror! Windows Vista will not permit a clean install using an upgrade license! What on earth is Microsoft thinking? The upgrade license should be just that - a license. In the past, provided you've been able to prove that you had a valid license for the prior version, it has always been possible to install a clean system from an upgrade media. Many IT professionals (myself included) prefer to "upgrade" our OEM images by formatting the hard drive and starting afresh, a process that we refer to as "nuke and pave". Now, we will be unable to do that. Which means, for old systems, we'll be forced to deal with all the baggage and problems that usually get carried over in an upgrade and for brand new systems, we have to swallow all the crap that OEMs cram into their images.
On one hand, it is understandable that Microsoft has done this. It is undestandable that they want to protect their revenues and prevent people from using upgrade media to do full installs. On the other hand, this measure negatively impacts legitimate users and when that happens, nobody wins in the long run.
However I think the real reason this has happened is because Microsoft is in bed with the OEMs. There is a new licensing model for Ofice 2007 which means that an OEM can get a slice of the profits for versions of Office purchased after the computer has been sold. It works like this. The OEM creates their master installation image to include full versions of Windows Vista and Office 2007. The image is branded with the OEM's unique ID. All of the different Windows Vista and Office are now actually identical and the different feature sets are unlocked depending on what license key you enter - so all new computers will have full versions of everything. So you buy your new computer with Windows Vista Home Basic and the OEM gives you a license key for Home Basic. When you get your computer, you can activate a free trial of the office software that is already installed. At the end of the trial, you can purchase a license key for whatever version of Office you'd like. Now here's the sneaky part. When you enter your key and activate Office, the activation software will tell Microsoft which OEM originally installed the image (remember the install image was branded by the OEM). So the OEM now gets a slice of the profit from the office license key you just purchased, bypassing your regular IT consultant or the reseller who sold you your license key. This is why Microsoft needs to prevent "nuke and pave" installs - because their friends the OEMs will lose out on their secondary revenue stream.
All in all, this move is good for Microsoft and OEMs, but bad for consumers and IT service providers. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.
Gordon Frazer, MD of MS UK is giving the keynote. Interesting how the MD turns out for developer events but not the “ordinary” partner events. Nice to put a face to the name and he’s just promised us all a freebie copy of Windows Vista Ultimate or Office 2007, so I’m liking the guy right now.
We’re in Chicago conference room and there are about 200 people in here. My badge number is 350 but there are only about 220 seats. I see only two women. Why is that? Women make great engineers, yet they are not encouraged to follow technical careers in this country. Working in California for 4 years really opened my eyes to that. There are many, many more women in engineering in America. Why is the UK so lame at encouraging women into IT? Come on girls, step up to the plate. People like my wife Grace and Susanne who started the Kent SBS user group are still rare gems and that just shouldn’t be so.
The gentleman now speaking (whose name I missed) has just defined a user interface as “the emotional connection to the software”. This is a great definition. Engineers in general are very poor at thinking emotionally and that was traditionally why Apple built up a cult following in the arts – because Apple understood that people are emotionally driven. If Steve Jobs hadn’t left Apple adrift for a decade, things might have worked out very differently in terms of market share. I am always drawn to software that has a nice, clean GUI. User interfaces have always been considered as a means to an end – the man-machine interface. However, I have always thought that great looking software that affords usability is an end in itself. Now with XAML, developers and designers can collaborate on the same codebase to produce great looking and functional applications. Now all we have to do is convince developers that they aren’t necessarily great designers ;-)
Apparently a lot of work has been put into Office 2007 as a developer platform. One example of this is how ASP.Net controls now work directly in SharePoint, so developers no longer have to learn a different set of skills to develop SharePoint controls. The whole area of SharePoint is going to be huge in 2007.
Two gentlemen from London Underground are demonstrating a proof-of-concept developed with Microsoft that nicely showcases WPF. The application can show a map of the underground system with various layers of historical and real-time data, including where all the trains are. There is also a part of the system based on Excel complete with its own Ribbon tab that queries against web services. A very slick looking system. They also have a complete geographical map in full 3D which was constructed in just one day! The whole suite was done in just 14 days by 4 people. Amazing.
This session chaired by Mark Johnston covers advances in .net framework 3.0. Case study on Cowes week, largest yachting event in the world. They’ve used XAML to develop an application that helps to plan the race course in the Solent and manage the start of the races, which start about every 5 minutes.
The new .net 3.0 framework is included in Windows Vista and can be downloaded and installed on XP.
One of the major components of .net 3.0 is WPF – Windows Presentation Foundation, which includes XAML, which provides the all-important separation between logic and presentation, allowing developers and designers to collaborate more easily on application design. There is also a new tool, Expression Blend, for working on GUI design. Blend produces XAML which can then be used directly in Visual Studio, so the developers and designers actually work on the same code, but through very different tools. XAML provides the interesting possibility that the same interface can be rendered in a browser or stand-alone as a rich client. WPF supports things like animation and composition, creating XPS documents and has strong data binding capabilities.
Mark proceeded to create a little application, rendered in a web browser, to browse his holiday snaps and videos using a combination of hand-edited XAML, Expression Blend and Visual Studio. The end result was a sort of scrapbook with images and descriptions with the whole thing fully resizable and zoomable. A nice demo of how easy it is to create almost throw-away applications in just a few minutes with a really rich user interface.
More this afternoon.
I’ve been looking forward to this session as I hope to be doing some work with Office and XML. Mark Johnston again, from the Developer and Platform Technology group. Start off with that corny “breakfast cereal” mock commercial.
Mark showed how documents are just collections of descreet objects by creating a word document from some text and image files and some hand-edited xml. Again – we created a word document without using word or any code – just notepad to edit xml and Windows Explorer to copy some files around. A .docx file is really just a zip file with a different extension. The .net framework provides an API for manipulating zip files in System.IO.Packaging, or a third party API can be used (eg. Compressed Folders in the shell). The packaging API can be used to walk the hierarchical structure and pull out the xml part that you wish to interact with, then System.XML can be used directly on the part. Once done, the part is simply written pack into the package. This would make it quite easy to assemble documents based on a data source by combining a template and some data and manipulating the XML.
The new content controls are an evolution of documents with user-defined xml and don’t require an XML schema to use. Content controls can easily be bound to document properties, which synchronise with SharePoint list columns. The controls can be locked down so that they can’t be deleted or edited. The Developer tab (not displayed by default) provides design-time access to these controls.
To create a dynamic document from XML data, the xml can be sucked in and added to the word document package as a document part. Content controls can then be mapped onto this xml using XPath queries. This would form the basis for a way to create word documents from (say) a CRM database.
Document Information Panels are based on InfoPath technology and can be used to push document properties in front of the user nwhere they are more likely to enter some data. So these are no longer buried (out of sight out of mind).
Each time I attend a LiveMeeting, I find myself frustrated that no-one bothers to fill-in their contact details. I have never, ever seen another person in a LiveMeeting with anything in their profile, not even the presenters from Microsoft have bothered to fill in this information. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to know who's in the meeting, especially if I am contributing to the discussion. I have a very visual mind and I like to know what people look like. I've realised that it's not immediately obvious that you even have a profile in LiveMeeting, so here's the lowdown...
Look in the list of attendees. Notice the little black 'fly-out' arrow next to each name? Try clicking on it - try mine if you're in a LiveMeeting with me. My profile is fully completed with name, company affiliation, phone numbers and even a photo.
Now find yourself in that list and pop open your fly-out - your details are probably blank. I'll bet you never clicked there before!
Now fill in your profile. Go to Tools | Options and complete that profile information and please, if possible, upload a photo of yourself or at least your company logo.
You only need to do this once and the information will be there for any LiveMeeting you attend.