Referencing With Word 2007

Referencing with Word 2007 is one of those things I'll never quite understand. Word (and possibly just Office in general) 2007 is, by far, the best office software I've ever used and is, quite probably, the most pleasing Microsoft sotware ever. However, the whole referencing feels like something that they designed well and then just never bothered finishing. It goes so far... and then stops.

Why do they have a neat, extensible, configurable underlying system that can't be played with from the UI?

Sadly, none of the in built referencing styles suit the documents I want to write. Fortunately it's all done based on xsl files. Unfortunately, there's no interface to customise/create them.

Last time I had this problem it was early days and noone had done much to create other styles. More recently this is almost still the case except, it seems, for some (now much loved) bloke on Code Plex.

I've started out by downloading his IEEE style to have a play with which is good but isn't quite what I want. There seems to be quite a bit there for supporting DIY though which could be rather useful.

Back in the world

All my gallovanting is over so I am back, home, working hard (except possibly right now when I am in the library context switching between my 'working hard' and blogging). My dissertation deadline is Friday and I still only have three chapters actually finished (two of which aren't actually proofed yet). I also, worryingly, haven't even started one... but it is the conclusion so hopefully that's not too disasterous.

Shared Memory... explanation?

I'm trying to justify why I'd implement RPC over message-passing in a distributed architecture. To get round to this bit I need to suggest alternative methods... the main one being shared memory. Only problem is I then have to assemble some sensible words suggesting what shared memory actually is - something more informative than "it's memory, shared between multiple devices". Hmmm....

I've got a nice picture though, 1000 words and all that (I really don't need any more 1000s of words!).

C# Books

Stu's just asked me about C# programming books. When I last did any C# it was version 1.1, just, I started my project at version 1.0 and finished up using version 1.1. Still, the book I used was the first edition of what is now this book: The C# 3.0 Programming Language. I'm glad to see the book has continued because it was by far the best when I was looking for something to learn from/reference. Like the K&R C book, it provides the specification, it's nice and clear and it's not full of specific useless examples - hurrah.... maybe one day I'll find the need to come back to C# and have a look at the new edition... once it's available.

Mental_Floss Brain Game - "Questionswers? Answestions!"

Today's mental_floss brain game "has only four questions, and the questions are all about each other. Or the answers are all about each other. Or both. I’m not quite sure."

It's only a quick quiz but I enjoyed the thinking. Slightly less monotonous than writing words about things I did the thinking for ages ago.

Try the quiz here.

Pseudocode?

Is it pseudocode or pseudo code? Wiki seems to say it's one word but Microsoft Word is not convinced. Also, finding the Wiki article using EasySearch works for both "pseudo code wiki" and for "pseudocode wiki", but the second leads to a reccomendation that you try the first so maybe they need convincing at EasySearch's engines too. I think I prefer it as one word... either way I've been writing lots of it :)

I've been using this nice little style guide thing which seems to suit me quite well subject to a few alterations (though the style guide also seems to think it's two words).

I feel like I'm sort of making progress with this write-up stuff now but it does take such a long time. I think my structure's kinda there though.

Antonym of setup...?

Any suggestions?

I think I might give up and refer to the pair as being scaffolding :)