Freudian typo: Enchanced metafiles

Freudian typo: Enchanced metafiles

Date:	August 6, 2007 / year-entry #286
Tags:	other
Orig Link:	https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070806-00/?p=25703
Comments:	10
Summary:	Back in 1993, there was an internal presentation discussing the various new features that were being added to that fancy new version of Windows that ultimately came to be known as Windows 95. In the GDI section, one of the new features was listed as "Enchanced metafiles". When the slide went up, you could hear the...

Back in 1993, there was an internal presentation discussing the various new features that were being added to that fancy new version of Windows that ultimately came to be known as Windows 95. In the GDI section, one of the new features was listed as "Enchanced metafiles".

When the slide went up, you could hear the scattered titters of laughter as each person read and discovered the typographical error. For a few days thereafter, the GDI folks had to endure people stopping by and asking them, "Hey, so how are those enchanced metafiles coming?"

Comments (10)

AC says:

August 6, 2007 at 10:27 am

Could have been worse – if such a feature had existed at the time it might have been auto-corrected to "enchanted metafiles" :)
Paul M. Parks says:

August 6, 2007 at 10:40 am

I had to read it three times before I saw the typo.

PMP
Jonathan says:

August 6, 2007 at 11:31 am

I don’t get it. What is Freudian about "enchanced?"

/probably just taking the title too seriously
Sunil says:

August 6, 2007 at 11:49 am

Pretty lame typo to get excited about…
Henry says:

August 6, 2007 at 12:06 pm

Jonathan, Freudian slip is just something that is caused by the subconscious.

In this example it could be that enchanced was misstyped because the typer thought that these new metafiles would only work under chance, or some such thing.
Mack says:

August 6, 2007 at 1:16 pm

Yes, a Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean a mother.
Baron Harkonnen says:

August 6, 2007 at 4:24 pm

When my family got its first 386, I remember asking my Dad about its strange "enchanted keyboard".
DriverDude says:

August 6, 2007 at 10:39 pm

Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks "enchanted metafiles" are more fun…
steveg says:

August 7, 2007 at 1:05 am

Maybe Enchanced Metafiles use some sort of randomness to recreate the original image. Hence, enchanced.

typedef struct tagENCHMETARECORD

{

DWORD iType; // Record type EMR_XXX

DWORD nSize; // Record size in bytes

DWORD dParm[1]; // DWORD Array of parameters

DWORD dwChance; // Chance record is correct

} ENCHMETARECORD;
mccoyn says:

August 10, 2007 at 12:47 pm

I never liked the name metafiles in the first place. They are actual fully self contained real files, nothing meta about them. I would have rather they be called metaimages. Anyways, it can’t be changed now and few people use this clever file format anyways.

I also think bitmaps should have been called pixelmaps. Every file is a collection of bits.

Comments are closed.

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