Software

I typed "software" as "siftwire" just now. It's a rather nice looking word and could go several ways: "siftwar," which might be an SF war, or keep it as "siftwire," then figure out what a siftwire is.

Anyway, I posted the following on the Wyrdsmiths blog and got two responses. Readers are more likely to respond to software problems, I think.

I have two Apple computers at home, and a PC netbook which I take out. In addition, I post to a couple of blogs and am on facebook.

What this means is I do a lot of typing in different programs, often switching rapidly from one to another. Usually this is not a problem. But I keep looking for the like button when I read blogs, and sometimes strange things happen when I move among three different word processing programs. One of my stories has acquired an extra 2,000 words in the netbook version, which should be a copy of the Mac version. I made a brief attempt at finding the extra words, then decided to finish the story on a Mac.

Things that are simple and obvious to me in Word suddenly become a problem with the open source software on the netbook. I suppose I could decide to load Word onto all the computers, but that would mean spending money.

Anyway, not a big deal. But it surprises me how easily I can move among the programs and then how frustrating it is to suddenly not know how to do something very simple. Where is the line spacing in this program? How do I bold or center?