Office 2008 GUI refresh problems

Yeah. I suspect that you will find that they are Apple algorithms that are
used system-wide

But either OS X is supposed to tell us which parts of the screen have
changed, or we're supposed to tell it which part to redraw.

Someone is not making a phone call somewhere in the software.

All modern software is designed with "minimal redraw" algorithms. Without
them, the MacBook's five hour battery life would drop to about 60 minutes.
And if the processor was spending all its time redrawing the screen, it
wouldn't have much energy left for doing useful work. So the benefit is
substantial. But they are snaky little beasties to get right.

We have sent the Testers so many queries we have them totally swamped right
now... And the patch they're working on may be the one that fixes your
issue.

So I suggest that we wait patiently until they resurface...

Cheers


On 14/02/08 5:57 PM, in article 47b3e645$0$6140$f69f905@mamut2.aster.pl,
"Krzysztof M." wrote:

> Hm, partial redraw you are saying - nice. But it seems that these algos
> were used also in Excel and PowerPoint, because I have abserved the
> same behavior. I didn't have such problems in Office 2004. To top the
> things off, this piece of software is commercial, so I don't understand
> why they decided to use some part of code which could potentialy make
> problems in the future? You go to the shop, buying something for 150USD
> and you have problems, bad idea! It like treating customers as a early
> beta testers, right?
> But anyway, I can help to find what is causing the glitch, but I need
> some directions from one of the dev guy and we can try to reproduce
> everything.
>
> Thank you very much John for your information.
>
> On 2008-02-14 04:28:38 +0100, John McGhie said:
>
>> Yeah. Word has had "partial redraw" problems for about 15 years. You
>> didn't want to hear that...
>>
>> The reason they are so persistent and difficult to find is that Word does it
>> "intentionally". To save power, improve battery life, and speed response
>> times, Word is designed to re-draw only the parts of the screen that have
>> changed.
>>
>> The issue is for Word to learn when the part of the screen in question has
>> updated.
>>
>> Spaces just added another 'n' layers of difficulty to that question.
>>
>> I don't think they have a "Reproducible Test Case" yet. They need to be
>> able to construct a machine exactly like yours, then load exactly the same
>> software as you are running, and then get the issue to happen 100 per cent
>> of the time, so that they can look at the code and see what is causing the
>> issue.
>>
>> Just to make it exciting, the problem often goes away when you add the test
>> instrumentation into the code so that they can watch it working...
>>
>> Sorry: this can be very frustrating.
>>
>> On 14/02/08 3:54 AM, in article 47b320bd$0$6112$f69f905@mamut2.aster.pl,
>> "Krzysztof M." wrote:
>>
>>> On 2008-02-12 04:53:02 +0100, John McGhie said:
>>>
>>>> Ummm... Just to set some expectations
>>>>
>>>> Typical turn-around from MS Development would be about three weeks. About
>>>> three months between report and fix.
>>>>
>>>> If there's a work-around, Curt will get back to us, usually the next day.
>>>> However, Curt is in "Test", not "Development". Test is at the END of the
>>>> software development cycle, so they are much closer to the customers (us!)
>>>> and can respond immediately, without having to refer things up the chain of
>>>> command.
>>>>
>>>> There's a LOT of paperwork to be completed to get an issue referred from
>>>> us,
>>>> through Support, Test, Marketing, Project Management to Product Management
>>>> to the Developers, then back again.
>>>>
>>>> And yes, in today's computer software development companies, everyone is
>>>> fully committed 100 per cent of the time. The only thing that varies is
>>>> the
>>>> depth...
>>>>
>>>> Sorry about the wait, but I know no more than you do.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> After I installed Leopard 10.5.2 update I tried to remove my Office
>>> 2008 installation and install it once again - no luck, the same
>>> behavior. I tried also remove all preference files and directories with
>>> Microsoft from my HDD - no luck. Would be great to have almost some
>>> confirmation that's a bug or not? I don't know what I could potentially
>>> do more.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 12/02/08 8:21 AM, in article ee8c6b0.10.TakeThisOut@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
>>>> "mkrzych@officeformac.com" wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi everybody,
>>>>> looks like dev people have lots of things to fix, because no response for
>>>>> almost 3 days. Hm, I don't know that I should to remove this office suit
>>>>> from
>>>>> my HD or wait for answer from Curt? At least I can try to remove it and
>>>>> install it once again, but I'm not sure that it will change anything...
>

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John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
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McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
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