>>16
Converting the .doc to an image (though you'd want something lossless like PNG in this case) then circling stuff in an image editor is the most obvious way to do it.
Well, sorry to disappoint you, but things don't work like that. First off going to a different program for that would be silly as you have drawing tools in Word. You're wasting time and money (assuming you're paying for your software, huh). Second, you can't easily recover text back into Word, and don't even dream of recovering whatever you drew. An image is a bitmap. It's itrinsically different from vector drawing, always was, always will, there's no fix for it because it doesn't need to be fixed. If you can't understand why these are different and why is this such a bad idea, I'm sorry, but it's your problem, not mine. I'll do my best to explain it if you create a new thread for it.
Converting the .doc to an image (though you'd want something lossless like PNG in this case) then circling stuff in an image editor is the most obvious way to do it.
No, it's not. You're converting your rich text into a bitmap. That's not obvious, logical, or desirable.
You'll say "I can do that on paper, with my hand". Yes, you can, but can you edit whatever you've written, change fonts, align, and search?
Do you really think that computers should make it hard to do stuff that doesn't make immediate sense to do?
No. Computers don't make anything, they're just a Von Neumann machine running instructions. Software developers, who wrote those instructions, do whatever they like, are paid for, and/or feel like the proper thing to do. In this case, what makes sense is to add vectors to your Word document, not to convert it to a bitmap and edit with an image editor just because you like the pencil icon better there. Like I said, I'll post a detailed explanation on vector graphics, rich text, and bitmap graphics on demand if you need it.
If "lusers" can't figure stuff out, why can't you re-engineer your systems so that they make fucking sense?
Because modifying them so that a random luser without a fucking idea of what he/she's doing would be difficult, and the result would suck and be utterly slow, or stupidly automagical to the point it's unusable for anybody, luser or not. Why do you insist on applying whatever concepts you're used to in a computer which is absolutely different? Let me reask this: handwriting is so easy and straightforward, I take a pencil and write, lol. After I'm done writing my 100 page masterpiece, I want to change the font. Can I? What the fuck, don't tell me I can't!? In a computer, it's something as easy as Ctrl+E, Ctrl+Shift+F, type the font I want, Enter. Why can't that be done on paper? That's so counter-intuitive and "illogical" :-( . See what I mean?
what people want is to have as little stuff as possible to understand before they can do things relevant to their lives with their computers.
Like I said, go buy a TV. You can't make Spanish easier, can you? But I want to write in Spanish! I really do! And I don't understand it! Why does it have to be so complex? [whine whine]
It's not a matter of what you want to do. It's a matter of what you know to do. You can't make a plane easier so kids will fly it, because it'll suck, or fail at something kids don't understand. You can't expect to do something with a computer you don't have a frigging clue about. Current automagical drag and drop stuff has already gone too far and sometimes unexpected problems arise and assfuck both lusers and users equally because the computer was instructed to do a lot of things automagically you might not want to do, or you might not assume it'll be doing.