Slashdot Mirror
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.
Slashdot welcomes readers' original features.
Having started with Wordstar under CP/M on an Apple ][+ in ~1981 or 82, I found Joe to be just what I was looking for. If I want a graphical editor on a Unix-like system, NEdit is the only thing I use (I have it configured to highlight/italicize/colourize keywords and other goo in Cisco PIX config files).
It's graphical, yes, but otherwise quite lightweight and responsive. Of course a good working knowledge of vi is useful as it's pretty much the lowest common denominator on any Unix-like system.
Pico? Begone, infidel!
Trolling is a art,
Salon has a pretty good story on XyWrite, the old DOS word processor which is apparently a favorite among a lot of writers. If you want to play around with it, you can build a "XyLite" system with a little work. Also check out the XyWWWeb, an excellent resource for XyWrite related stuff.
Personally, I've been a fan of Textpad for years, and it's one of the few pieces of shareware that I actually bought. Light, fast, with incredicle search and replace (even regular expressions). I use it for the few documents I write, and any coding that I might do.
It works great on an 8086 class PC. There's even a Palm version.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Metapad is an excellent, free, plain text editor for Windows that can seamlessly replace Notepad. Handy for editing html source code ...
This is utter nonsense. A writer KNOWS what font he writes in makes know difference, the magazine/publisher will likely decide this. This is akin to blaming the existance of pencils and electric sharpeners for his incessant pencil sharpening. Its just a habit he has to avoid working, get rid of it and he'll find another.
Which isn't to say MS Word isn't a bloated nightmare.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
I work for a small newspaper and we have related issues. Writers use Word and do all sorts of inconsistent formating (inconsistent from other writers and other paragraphs they wrote). Everything gets placed in Quark XPress and most of the formatting dissappears. Most of the rest of it has to be undone.
.doc just fine, though. It's rather absurd if you ask me. I've been told that Quark 6 opens RTF files, finally, maybe that will put an end to it.
It's absurd to use a word processor that costs hundreds of dollars rather than TextEdit or Notepad just to mark a few words bold or italic (that's all the formatting we keep). It's also too tempting for writers to try to insert tables or images or other nonsense that really needs to be submitted as a seperate file. To make it more difficult, Quark 4.x on the Mac won't open an RTF or SimpleText file and retain the little formatting we need. It'll open a proprietary
The only reason Pournelle requested white text instead of yellow is because white-on-blue was the default colour scheme for many DOS-based word processors and text editors. He wasn't a programmer, so he probably didn't spend much time using the Borland IDE on DOS. WordPerfect, DOS Edit, and IBM's E and TEDIT come to mind.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
As a professional writer, I use a lot of different tools. Several of my books I've used MS Word, because the publishers had special templates and macros they used in production that weren't easily ported or usable in other software. (I know, I tried it.) On other stuff (aka 'submitted but not published' works) I've used TextPad, OpenOffice, and Power Writer . TextPad lets me write without getting any programming or interface nonsense in the way; OpenOffice lets me compose more complex documents with footnotes; and Power Writer contains plot, character, and idea databases that help keep all my reference details in one place. All good, all for different reasons. Except Word. I'm not very fond of Word.
My main two reasons to avoid it are:
1. Search / Search Replace are terrible. To search you are required to bring up a new window and is not very featureful (regex, incremental search, etc). Replace is equally or more lacking.
2. Undo is only one step.
Both of these things are in emacs and vim. Emacs and vim are ported to nearly every platform in existence, and both emacs and vi, can also serve many other purposes besides writing text like programming, publishing (w/ latex, nroff, etc.), letters, mail, and news.
Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!
Even for us computer experts...with all the different versions of Office, it's still difficult to know exactly where you have to go to disable a particular feature (Outlook is especially bad at hiding things under multiple usless menus)
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Nice article
I find that the tool that I'm using affects output even more so with music. My music sounds markedly different when I use a tracker rather than a sequencer, and also when I use one certain type of tracker or sequencer over another. The interface has a great deal to do with it, as does the ease of generating certain tonal effects in different programs. My personal sequencer of choice is Bars & Pipes on the Amiga. It's interface and features are like no other, and being pretty old it has no recording facilities so the emphasis is on pure music data. Consequently my best and most creative work has come from using that program.
At the end of the day, the end result is what is most important, but the method you choose can greatly affect that result. Computers are just tools and the "latest and greatest" tool just might not bring out the best in the individual user.
I've tried dozens of different kinds of pens over my lifetime, and the one that I've settled on and now insist on is the inexpensive Pilot EasyTouch Medium Point ball-point (the Fine Point is good too, but not quite as smooth). It is the smoothest writing instrument I've found, whether ball-point, roller-ball, gel, fountain pen, or whatever. And it always just seems to work; it doesn't dry on me and require those scribbles to get the ink flowing after several days of non-use, like other ball-points. Strangely it doesn't seem to be a standard stock item and I have to special order it from Staples. The blue color seems slightly smoother than red or black, but that may be subjective.
As for pencils, for years I used to use a Pentel P205 .5mm, but recently
I've come to prefer the Staedtler 9505 .5mm. An advantage is that it
doesn't have that frustrating slippage in the last 1/4" of lead that you
end up throwing away. I also like a very soft lead (2B) because it
writes dark with little effort. But that's just me - it takes getting
used to because the lead is so fragile, and other people sometimes get
frustrated when I lend it to them, breaking the lead over and over
because they're used to pressing hard.
It might be different in my universe (print journalism) -- book publishing is its own universe (a la how legal offices still use Word Perfect). The discrepancy may be because where it's still common to submit actual reams of paper rather than, say, a CD-ROM, I could see how a fixed width font would be useful to determine word counts and double spacing for comments. But I pity the readers...
I'm willing to bet though, that as manuscripts in the form of raw bundles of paper becomes increasingly anachronistic, you'll see the font reqirement fade away -- after all, there's a reason they don't publish the books in Courier.
BTW, where I work we generally use MS Word, because it turns out that some of those pain-in-the-ass advanced features do have utility, specifically the ability to track changes. This is critical for us because the article wends its way back and forth several times in quick succession between authors and editors and most communication is electronic even within the office walls.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
Even for print, the publishing business has changed and fonts are chosen first by their ability to be ripped by software that feeds the presses. That means Type 1 fonts work best. Secondly, usability studies assert that any serif is best for print (the standard being Times Roman) and sansserif (the standard being Arial since all OS will recognize Arial) works best for online.
No writer should write with a concern for what the words look like on paper. Text editors are the correct tool for the writer. The standard for formatting is FrameMaker, QuarkExpress, or PageMaker. Those are not toy apps and best used by pros.
And for the record, Arial is tap water. Times Roman is Diet Coke.