May 1, 2012

  • Ok, Come On

    New MSPaint annoys me to pieces! I want to draw clear, sharp pictures of graphs. Just graphs. Collections of points that are sometimes connected by lines. I want this picture to be clear and legible. So how come I can't make solid points anymore? Every single one of the "paintbrushes" involves some kind of weird smearing at the edges, and it takes more memory to record it all, and the resulting point is not as clear. When I want to zoom in to look at it, I have to go to a separate tab to zoom in at all, and everything isn't just buttons anymore, it's classifications of buttons into a hierarchy! Maybe I liked to click on one button and have everything I wanted right there. Maybe I liked solid dots.

    Yes, I can have solid dots with the pencil button instead, but the biggest pencil dot is way too small. Yes, I can draw a circle and then fill it in with the bucket, but that takes more time.

    I've heard it said that someone who has milk, water, juice, and wine has more freedom than someone who has 50 types of soda. Well maybe I agree. I want to draw a solid dot, or a solid line of a certain thickness, and instead I have 9 brushes that smear in slightly different ways.

    I'm not happy about it. All this complaining about technology makes me feel like a great big reactionary, complaining about every change that happens, and it's true that every improvement is a change. But not every change is an improvement! Getting rid of the functionality of drawing thick solid lines is NOT an improvement. I don't care if the new interface has gently-rounded corners and pretty, soft colors. I want the one-click drawing tools, and I want big solid dots back.

    P.S. I stopped using TeXnicCenter on my computer. Images don't work right. Too incompatible. PDFs don't build at all half the time. I'll be looking for a way to have LaTeX again, either by getting OldAdobe back or by trying a new LaTeX thing. This is stupid.