On 8/10/00 3:44 AM, Bradley Smith [mailto:BradleyS@artisansw.com] wrote:
>I have updated Notes2Notes. I now have specific versions for Outlook 98 and
>Outlook 2000.
Welcome back to the Newton fold, Bradley! (Last I had heard, you sold
your Newton? What happened? Miss us? ;-) Glad to have you back,
whatever reason.
>Shoddy programming by Microsoft (IMHO) means that I have been unable to
>produce a version that works on all versions of Outlook.
I believe you, after having spent the last two days trying to get
MS-Access 97 to reliably be able to send email using Outlook in an
unattended fashion so we can deliver data files produced on our
minicomputer to our customers in Excel format (Access talks to Excel just
fine). Stumbling blocks galore. Searched their Knowldegebase and MSDN
stuff and found lots of documentation and samples and different methods
of sending mail, (built in rather crappy and inconsistent mail support in
VBA, MAPI calls, OLE Automation calls, etc.) all of it with hidden
gotchas and outright bugs. I've managed to cobble something together
finally that seems to work, using SEVERAL of the above methods! Sigh.
I hate hacking around a major vendor's, because it just means I'll have
to deal with them again when the software (Microsoft's, not mine) is
updated. MS also seem to rename and replace their major API's every
time you turn around. One sample bit of mail code I looked at had
comments on how a section of code had changed through about FIVE
different iterations of MS mail programming API's. It was frankly
horrifying. In Access we had DAO and now ADO and I'm not sure what came
before them, or even if those two acronyms are the current ones (ODA?
AOD? How about DOA....yeah, that's it) Using MS products to program is
good job security, that's for sure. Makes me feel dirty getting job
security that way, though. Oh well....they didn't ask me what we were
going to use at work. If they had, we've be using 4th Dimension, not
Access (and Macs, if I could swing it). They could be good, if they'd
just spend the time to stamp the bugs rather than change everything every
5 minutes because the last "standard" API they released didn't work and
was full of bugs. It's days like these that sour me on MS products.
(Also, can anyone point me to VBA code on Windows that will center the
dang open/save dialog box? I can open it just fine....but I want to
center the blasted thing, or have control over the window positioning
other than "relative to the parent window" (form,actually)....which I CAN
tell Access to center.)
"Shoddy programming by Microsoft". An oxymoron if I ever heard one. I
like Visual BASIC, a lot, but if you try to use more than the (ahem)
basic features or go outside of one apps Visual BASIC for Applications to
talk to another, be prepared for headaches, sometimes.
I'm tempted to investigate RealBASIC for MacOS and the latest NS/BASIC
development system for Palm machines (on Windows), both are Visual BASIC
work-alikes. They probably work better!
Sorry, I digress. But (with all due apologies to Jim Anderson for
ranting against his employer) this sort of thing from Microsoft is why I
won't touch a WinCE PDA. Newtons or Palms yes, maybe even Psions (they
seem pretty nice), but no Wincing for me! Even the folks in Pen
Computing's latest embarassingly gushy issue comment on it's
unreliability. Repeatedly. I'm sorry, but unreliability in a PDA is
unacceptable. You can tell that the nice little MS ad booklet insert in
the issue bought Pen Computing's coverage pretty good. I also notice
their reader-mail section, quite extensive (and full of Newton mentions)
in the past, has vanished. Bad signs for what has been my favorite
computer mag. I hope they come to their senses. I might be tempted to
give a WinCE unit a try if they had a $150 unit like the Palms and
Visors, something to try out a bit so I can form a more informed opinion
(as I have done with Palm units). Or even in the $200-$250 range. But
most are in the $400-$500 range. And they don't talk to Macs (Some of
Microsoft's Mac software actually interfaces with Palm's but not PDA's
using their own PDA OS, for heaven's sake! How weird!) Sorry,
Microsoft. You still don't get it. Three strikes and you're OUT! Some
of their Mac stuff (especially Internet Explorer) is great, at least.
Better than the Windows counterpart, in fact! Keep up the good work
Microsoft Mac Team!
- Bill
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