ALL AUTO-CORRECTION SHOULD BE OFF BY DEFAULT!!!!
This is a rant. If I’m going to be responsible, I guess the rant should eventually get turned into a bug report. But I’ll start with the rant.
I hate autocorrection. Automatic hyphenation, automated spellchecking, automated URL completion, automated correction of capitalization…. I’m not saying that I don’t make mistakes that need correcting: what I find is that autocorrection gets in my way, interrupts my thinking, and – overall – makes me less productive.
Now I’m sure that some people, somewhere, must like it (although I hear more complaints than compliments for it), and I’m not opposed to making these features available. What makes me furious is that they are turned on by default. Every time I encounter a new spreadsheet or word processor, I get bitten by the “feature” and have to take the time to turn it off. And how should I turn it off? That’s another source of frustration. In OpenOffice, things like automated capitalization and hyphenation are specified in Options->Language Settings->Writing Aids, while things like word completion are in Tools->Autocorrect, and configuring spellchecking requires you to start a spellcheck via Tools->Spellcheck->Check and then use Options to change its behavior. (Then remember to cancel the spellcheck!) (OpenOffice is not unique in this: it follows Microsoft’s lead slavishly in this respect.)
OK, you’re saying, but it’s just a one-time frustration. It’s not a big deal. Wrong. Consider the situation that the Register reported a couple of days ago in a piece entitled Excel ate my DNA. Scientists imported genetic data into Excel, Excel “autocorrected” it, and the result was unrecoverable data corruption:
The errors are introduced because some genetic identifiers look very like dates to Excel. If the spreadsheet is not properly set up, it will convert an identifier, such as SEPT2 to a date: 2-Sep. The conversion, the researchers say, is irreversible: once the error has been introduced, the original data is gone.
I’m sure that these researchers installed MS Office in good faith. I’m sure that the installation program never asked them, “Shall I enable a bunch of options that may lead to silent data corruption?” And now they’re screwed.
Software designers need the equivalent of a Hippocratic Oath, combined with Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. I do not expect my word processor or spreadsheet to change my data in any way without first asking me if I want it to do so. Out of the box, all automated corrections should be turned off. No exceptions. First, do no harm. (And one day someone will test the legal disclaimers in the software licenses, and the whole “repudiation of liability” nonsense will be exposed. But that’s another discussion.)
So which Bugtraq category do I file this under?