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Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat
Personally, when the PC revolution got underway, I bought an Apple IIe soon after its introduction. VisiCalc caught my eye. As did Flight Simulator, and going online with a 300-baud modem to local computer bulletin boards. But when it came to writing -- in those days, three drafts of a first novel -- I would not abandon my trusty Hermes portable typewriter. The Apple would not tempt me to some writing Eden. The complexity of computers, I sensed, could only sap the creative process.
This reluctance to mix computers with writing ended abruptly in 1988: I began writing professionally. At different writing jobs, I made use of whatever hardware/software combo the employer had. I fashioned text with PCs, Macs, Sun workstations, and still deemed any personal writing project at night better suited to the beloved Hermes.
I soon realized storing words on electronic media meant the professional wordsmith also did "desktop publishing." I had to worry about font selection, repagination, stylesheets. I wondered when I'd have time to find the right word, the original phrase. Once, while "writing" a software manual, I commented that I'd spent far more time formatting than actually writing. That comment went unanswered. I had a sure sense I needed to make an adjustment to new priorities.
Still, I couldn't shake the idea something was being lost when writers got embroiled in desktop publishing. After five years, I gave up the software manuals, the marketing newsletters, to refocus on personal writing. And for the first time, I thought about moving my writing to that Apple IIe. I hesitated. The monitor was filled with text glowing green on a black background. Would those green emissions overwhelm my inner eye of imagination, unlike a piece of paper sitting in a typewriter? I decided to take the plunge and see.
Maybe I looked sideways when I visualized a story scene. I soon found the Apple IIe gave efficiency analogous to replacing handwriting with typewriting. I only retyped what I needed in successive drafts. Counting words was a snap. And, thankfully, Apple IIe word processing was primitive: more a typewriter with memory, not a desktop publishing system. On balance, a good tool. Before long, I was publishing short stories to the World Wide Web.
But by 1999, living with an Apple IIe was Neanderthal. So despite 15+ years of service, I upgraded to an IBM ThinkPad laptop. I was attracted by portability, the renowned IBM keyboard touch, and a promised multimedia experience of the World Wide Web. As for writing, I would use the full-bodied word processor that came with the ThinkPad. This I accepted as a tradeoff for new PC technology. I gave it a go and lived with a plethora of pull-down menus within pull-down menus. I endured help balloons that appeared without bidding. To keep writing, I resisted becoming expert with all my word processor could do.
This strategy of limits on learning worked but briefly. In months, I was driven to maddening distraction with features I thought I'd accidentally turned on and wouldn't, in a blue moon, set right. Gems like capitalization on autopilot. But what really called for a decision was discovery of quotation marks in the wrong font spread randomly throughout a book-length file (and a pair of left quotation marks at that!).
Moreover, the ThinkPad's operating system, Windows 98, caused me to yearn for the stability of an Apple IIe (if not a Sun workstation). I thought about Linux--the alternative to Windows (unless one buys a new computer and goes Macintosh). But in a serendipitous experiment, I installed the very alternative BeOS on the ThinkPad. As operating systems go, it was a vision of loveliness. Scot Hacker, author of THE BEOS BIBLE, aptly described BeOS as combining "the grace of a Mac and the power of Unix."
The productivity suite I bought for BeOS had a "less is more" flavor and the word processor, in particular, worked well. I wrote a novel without struggle. But too often I tackled the day's writing deciding such issues as a font for the day's draft. The point being, I still had too many choices, compared to my beloved Apple IIe. When I finished the 76,000-word manuscript, I found a disconcerting bug in my otherwise dependable word processor. It repeated words, on occasion, in the text. Admittedly, a dozen "doubles" among tens of thousands of words isn't a big deal, but I wondered if my writing might benefit from even less computer functionality. Did those font choices have a price?
With a new novel to write, the time seemed ripe to switch software. I'd like to say I scoured about for word processors, but I didn't. In my novel, one character would write computer programs. The story question was, What software would he use? It had to be vi. Vi, a Unix editor for plain text files created in 1976 by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. I'd remembered working with a software engineer, who saw no advantage to word processors and dismissed the "prettiness" of desktop publishing. He did everything in vi. Could I write a novel in vi? I decided, Why not?
Vi fast became -- and remains, 100,000 words later -- my writing implement of choice. Most of all, what I like about vi is something that is, well, aesthetic. I like vi's keyboard-only operation. Vi doesn't assault with helpful balloons or racks of toolbar icons. No, vi has a 70s ambience (no mouse, no GUI) that's refreshingly clean. In that sense, vi is a treasured software servant. It works well without showy presence and respectfully stays out of the way.
Sure, vi is only a digitized window on the ThinkPad screen. But, at times, I can almost imagine another sheet of paper filling up with words, not unlike one I rolled into my Hermes typewriter. That's when vi, the minimalist's text editor, lets the words roll freely, as with Hemingway's carpenter pencil, from my fingertips.
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Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
This Sunday at Slashdot Arena:
VI VS. EMACS
Right after the tractor pull and the monster truck races!!
for all my novels. Sometimes I even write in rot13 code just for fun.
All is Number -Pythagoras.
would advise against notepad.
ctrl-z only works for your last mistake - then it just redoes your mistake over
that would totally suck it big time to lose like 250 pages of work becase your pet walked across your keyboard, startin at the lower left corner... "ctrl-a"
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
Does it still render html files? That was the stupidest damn feature ever.
If I may quote Spider Robinson a moment:
"Goc damn it, you didn't write it on a "word processor"! Or even on a "computer." What it is, is a goddamn typewrite--a machine for turning fingerstrokes on a keyboard into ink symbols on a piece of paper. (Okay, yours can also be used as a computer when you're not writing--my old Ryal manual can be used as a nutcracker, or a paperweight, or a murder weapon.) The silicon revolution did not change that process--from the user's point of view--much more than did the electric typewriter, it merely streamlined the error-correction process. When it's being used to make words appear on a page, it's a typewriter.
To speak of your "word processor" is like refering to your car as an "exothermically powered, myocontrolled matter transporter." [ed. or refering to a flashlight as a "low voltage high density photon projector"] The only purpose of the term is to cue your listeners that you can afford to use a computer as a typewriter, and all it really tells them is that you're insecure enough to worry that people might think you still used one of those old-fashioned things to type on.
--Mike"
Take it for what it is worth...
Time to get back to the basics folks.
Good writing should really be done on the primary writing environment - that is cuneform and clay.
You should really forego the modern inventions of typewriters, ink and paper and such as they will contaminate the muse and offend the gods. Nothing like the smell and feel of freshly pressed clay tablets.
because everybody knows that Power = VI
even freshman Physics students could tell you that...
That was only so that MS engineers could mock-up BSODs so they could get the text alignment and wording right ;-)
AT&ROFLMAO
I use it for the few documents I write, and any coding that I might do.
What about ASCII "art" for your website?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I was drinking with a bunch of publishing nerds, and we tried to work out what booze would go with what fonts
So Tequila and Wingdings, right?
This guy doesn't even give credit to vi's predecessors.
You know, i, ii, iii, iv, and v.
Yes, of course Mr. Spoilsport that's
Of course the two-way sneeze through windvents would be great for my geeky brother, and the climate control that emulates Ancient Egypt or Tropical Paradise would delight a world traveller, but I'm just a guy who writes.
Look Mr.
...omphaloskepsis often...