Marc in Elk: "I just need a third reply here to say how much..."

A reminder that "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" isn't the shortest horror story ever written, it's actually "Specifies a tri-state Boolean value" written by the esteemed author Microsoft .NET Documentation.

Context: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.office.core.msotristate

Note that there are actually 5 values, not three. Also True is -1, and the value that equals 1 isn't supported.

learn.microsoft.com

MsoTriState Enum (Microsoft.Office.Core)

Specifies a tri-state Boolean value.

I just need a third reply here to say how much I appreciate the sheer simplicity and insanity of this documentation page - almost every single word provided ask more questions than it answers

March 13, 2026 at 11:18:13 AM

Whenever I seem MS's docs I'm happy I'm not programming for Windows (at least not with MS's tech). They should really get a clue from e.g. Qt how to make decent docs (although there are some rough parts even there...)