Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat

Charlie Dickinson writes "Writers get attached to the implement that puts words from head and heart on paper. Hemingway favored carpenter pencils for his drafts. Possibly only a blunt pencil lead would bear the vitality of words flowing from his fingertips. More recently, amid PCs on Everyperson's desktop, Northwest novelist David James Duncan noted his lengthy The Brother's K was lovingly crafted on a typewriter. Often individualistic, writers must feel free to accept or refuse new writing technology and answer only to their muse." Dickinson walks through some of the choices writers face (or have faced) in their choice of tools, and champions his own favorite -- which isn't a fancy "word processor" at all. Read on below.

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.

Comments

Slashdot County Fair!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

This Sunday at Slashdot Arena:

VI VS. EMACS

Right after the tractor pull and the monster truck races!!

vi is good but...

[grub]

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! :)

Re:vi is good but...

[kaan]

Of course a good working knowledge of vi is useful as it's pretty much the lowest common denominator on any Unix-like system.

Very well put.

I first learned vi in 1991, and while it was a steep uphill battle, I crested the hump pretty quickly and have been totally pleased since then. I have always enjoyed having a familiar editor available on just about any system I've touched (Solaris, Ultrix, Unicos, Linux, OSX, Windows).

Sure it's nice to have Emacs configured to do a gazillion things for you, but I liken that to owning a radio, tv, telephone, answering machine, dishwasher, dog walker, maid, bicycle, grocery cart, and dry cleaner all built into one gigantic thing.

No thanks, I just want to edit files...

Re:vi is good but...

[BigBir3d]

Sure it's nice to have Emacs configured to do a gazillion things for you, but I liken that to owning a radio, tv, telephone, answering machine, dishwasher, dog walker, maid, bicycle, grocery cart, and dry cleaner all built into one gigantic thing.

That reminds me of the wife joke....

Re:vi is good but...

[phrogeeb]

I do my first draft in charcoal on slabs of shale-rock.

I then edit the draft by using a chisel to carve the words into the rock permanently.

It gives me time to think about each individual phrase, word, and letter.

Actually, I am part of the growing generation of high school students that do all of their work (beginning to finish) in Word or StarOffice or something of the equivalent.

Somehow, our adolescent minds have been able to wrap themselves around the concept that, if you just spend a few minutes formatting at the beginning or end of a writing session, and then leave it the hell alone, you can be just as productive and creative etc. as you might on pen and paper.

Not to mention the fact that italics have removed the need to remember whether the name of a play should be underlined or put in quotation marks.

In 1996,

[tarquin_fim_bim]

in a presentation in Australia to the Press Club, Scott McNeally stated: "When the anthropologists look back on the 1980s and 1990s and do the archaeological digs, and get their callipers and brooms and microscopes out, they will blame the massive reduction in productivity during the 1980s and 1990s entirely on Microsoft Office."
While this view maybe considered extreme, the author of the article certainly casts some doubt on the usefulness of complex word processing software. But then, I would not call vi particularly intuitive, but it does cut down on pointless formatting decisions that seem to endlessly arise.

Re:In 1996,

[ePhil_One]

it does cut down on pointless formatting decisions that seem to endlessly arise.

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.

Re:In 1996,

[julesh]

I would not call vi particularly intuitive, but it does cut down on pointless formatting decisions that seem to endlessly arise.

OK, I'm going to jump in here. I thought the point was particularly daft when the original author wrote it, and I think its daft now.

There are no formatting choices when you write a novel. Well, pretty close to zero, anyway.

Lets see:

Typeface: Courier (or nearest equivalent).
Market research shows that manuscripts that are made to look as close to traditional typed text as possible are more likely to be picked up by a publisher. That's the end of that one. Easy.

Font size: 11 or 12 pt double spaced
Doesn't really matter a huge amount which one, some think 12pt is easier to read, some prefer the slimmer feel of a manuscript with slightly fewer pages. You'll choose it when you sit down first time and won't change it. Ever.

Page layout: A4 or Letter, whichever you normally use, 1" margins
The only size of paper you'd ever consider

Special effects in the text
Underline for emphasis. Anything else is generally accepted to be offputting to editors.

Chapter headers, etc
Start a new page. Underline them if you feel like it. It doesn't really matter anyway, they'll be reformatted when the book gets published.

Headers and footers
Your name, book title, page number.

And that's pretty much everything you need to know. It'll take, what, about 2 minutes to set up if you know the application, about 10 minutes if you don't.

Oh, and how do I print my vi output in the right format (paginated with the right margins, headers and footers, any necessary sections underlined, double spaced)? I'm sure there's a nice little Unix utility to do it, but it'd probably take me about 10 minutes with man to find it and work out how to use it.

I'll stick with OpenOffice for my novel writing requirements, thanks.

Re:In 1996,

[orac2]

Dear God, no! I'm an editor in the U.S. and you just sent a shiver down my spine at the thought that I should try to read the next manuscript to cross my desk in courier, or any non-proportional sans serif font.

Serif proportional fonts are much more readable for bulk text, as found in the body of a manuscript (this applies to paper printouts, not neccesarily on-screen where the crappy resolution of most monitors compared to paper gives proportional, sans-serif fonts the edge). As for things like word counts, etc, manuscripts invariably appear with an accompanying electronic copy (and often only the electronic copy, e.g. when something is filed by email).

I don't know anyone who demands Courier 12/24. Actually, once upon a time, I was drinking with a bunch of publishing nerds, and we tried to work out what booze would go with what fonts, i.e. if Ariel was a drink, what drink would it be? (I did mention we were nerds right?). Anyhoo, Whiskey was the best match for Courier, and Guinness the best match for Times New Roman. The point is, disregarding price, which would most people rather drink a pint of? The longer the text, the more likely I am to want to see it in anything other than Courier.

Re:In 1996,

[TomV]

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.

A habit, aye, there's the rub.

I've heard and read the same story from so many writers, from Douglas Adams' famous 'whooshing deadlines' comment on. Authors, perhaps, fall into two broad categories - the possessed, compelled to write all the time without rest, and far more commonly, the procrastinator.

There seem to be a great number of writers, including some staggeringly good ones, who tell the same story of procrastination, displacement activity, long baths, walking the dog, repainting the kitchen, becoming a world authority on Bolivian lepidoptera, scaling mountains, booking an extensive program of root canal surgery, anything, anything at all to just delay having to actually try to condense their inner vision into squiggles on a plain background.

Perhaps that's the first editor, the reluctance to commit anything until forced to. Perhaps there are millions of people out there who could create fabulous works, but don't force themselves to actually write it. A few of the authors I've conversed with will readily state that the reason they're authors is that they're 'no good at anything else' - for me, there are easier ways to feed myself than writing, but there are those who believe there aren't, and eventually, desperately, reluctantly, they are finally forced to make some marks on that plain background.

I find for the first draft at least, it has to be ink or a typewriter. Anything with a backspace key just dumps me into a morass of microediting, with ink I have to choose more carefully and accept more willingly. Savage editing can come later when I know how the thing actually *goes*.

tomV

Re:In 1996,

[orac2]

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.

Re:In 1996,

[Smedrick]

It really depends on the editor. Older guys that worked with the old type-setters claim that Courier is easier on the eyes simply because they're so used to it.

It's all a matter of preference. In general, young editors and publishers prefer TNR while the older crowd likes Courier. Personally, I prefer the Sans-seriff family (Verdana in particular), but I'm just an engineer, so what do I know?

Re:In 1996,

[swillden]

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.

I create a lot of technical documents, and I specifically do *not* use Word because of it's poor support for change tracking. Software developers have created fantastic tools for change management, and I find that these are as good for documents as they are for code.

Word probably does the job you need, but for requirements specifications where you have to not only know what changed between the version you're looking at and two or three revisions back, but also keep track for all time of who changed what, when and why, CVS is a much better solution.

Re:In 1996,

[kalidasa]

When I did editing (at a lit/academic journal), the main reason we wanted Courier was because that was all our scanner could handle. In other words, if we didn't get a disk, and we were pretty sure we were going to use it, we explicitly asked for courier.

Re:In 1996,

[melinda99]

As a designer working primarily with a writing team, it makes my skin crawl to hear writers even speak of formatting, or layout, or what the rules are for same.

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.

Re:In 1996,

[Sablepegasus]

Believe it or not, this is something I was wondering about.

I'm a writer myself and have always been advised to submit MS in typewriter (Courier) font.

HOWEVER, I have begun write in Times myself. Or in the font closest to it that is A: Clear to read without tiring the eyes and B: Closest to that which is printed in magazines and books.

In the past, the Courier printer font was advised over "prettier" fonts because it looked closest to that copy that was produced on a typewriter. However, since this advice was given back in the late 80s, when the personal computer was still pretty much a luxury and 'new', as well as the fact that the printers of the time were dot matrix, it is logical to assume that the advice is outmoded. However, I have still seen this exact same advice printed in writing books published as recently as last year (I do not own any writing books published in 2003, since I have been working the majority of this year and haven't had time to read much).

On the flip side, there have been more books printed advising Times in addition to Courier, but personally, I haven't read anything advising Times and Serif fonts over Courier and the Sans-serif Typewriter fonts. I certainly hope this is a trend in publishing that will become better known soon.

I am quite in agreement that reading a 300+ MS typed in Courier is a headache. (I have several reams of MS printed in Courier. They're in a box in my garage.) Times and the similar fonts just look better printed out and they are easier to read. (Not to mention they appear slightly smalller and better formed and it seems that you can get more words on one page than you can with the same point size in Courier.)

Anyway, thanks for a valuable piece of information! Next MS I submit, I'll use Times or a similar Serif font.

Sable

XyWrite

[mr.henry]

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.

vi for writers?

[jbellis]

Sure that plays well on slashdot, but most writers looking for a typewriter-with-memory would be better served by Notepad or the Mac equivalent. (Does OSX still have TextEdit?)

How many writers know what a regular expression IS, let alone how to search with one? :)

Re:vi for writers?

[PopCulture]

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"

Re:vi for writers?

[fenix down]

Does it still render html files? That was the stupidest damn feature ever.

Re:vi for writers?

[Frymaster]

writers looking for a typewriter-with-memory would be better served by Notepad or the Mac equivalent.

if you think vim is a "typewriter-with-memory" you must have one hell of a typewriter! can notepad do:

• word completion from the buffer? vim can with ctrl-p or ctrl-n
• find next occurrence of word under cursor? vim can with *
• uppercase current line? vim can with gUU
• provide built-in encryption? vim can with :X
• regex find/replace? vim can with %s///g
• dump stdout from any command right into what you're working on? vim can with !! command

the list goes on and on. vim is a fully-featured, powerful, customizable, lightweight and ubiquitous editor that runs on just about any os available. notpad can't even do line numbers.

take that, notepad!

My observations...

[Lumpy]

I know 3 novel writers and many script writers...

and they all completely despise Microsoft Word and Open Office.

some of them even have nasty words to describe both of those products..

basically the jist of all their gripes is the damned "features" you cannot turn off or get in the way, both apps (word and Open Office) are written for childish minds as one of them put it... "any word processor that does anything you did not specifically ask for is a complete piece of crap" (referring to microsoft word.)

Re:My observations...

[grub]

Ummm...you can turn off all those "damned features," unless you're too stupid (script writers) to know how.

If you turn off all those features then you may as well use a simpler, tighter editor in the first place, yes?

Re:My observations...

[jawtheshark]

Dear AC,

These damned features are *hard* for normal people to turn off. You may think that it's easy as a seasoned computer user. Just yesterday a friend of mine called me on my cell, just to ask how she could turn off automatic spell checking in Word. She is not dumb at all, but for her this was a task that she could not do alone.

I had to support a bunch of secretaries when they started off with Word. They all had problems with the feature overload. These secretaries had to write pathological reports and their former system was text-only in a Novel network. Word for them was hell (and the support for me was hell too *grin*).

Never say that people are stupid because they don't know how to use computers. Otherwhise we are stupid for not being able to write reports at insane speeds.

Re:My observations...

[5KVGhost]

These damned features are *hard* for normal people to turn off. You may think that it's easy as a seasoned computer user. Just yesterday a friend of mine called me on my cell, just to ask how she could turn off automatic spell checking in Word. She is not dumb at all, but for her this was a task that she could not do alone.

Let's see...

1. Bring up Help.
2. Type "turn off automatic spell checking".
3. Read the first item, "Turn on or off automatic spelling and grammar checking"
4. Select the stated menu option and checkbox

Yes, clearly this is an insurmountable task not to be attempted without a trained professional. And you should also wear safety goggles.

Never say that people are stupid because they don't know how to use computers. Otherwhise we are stupid for not being able to write reports at insane speeds.

I never say that anyone is stupid because they don't understand an application. Disinterested or lazy, at worst, but never stupid.

It that particular case I can only assume that it was easier for your friend to call you up and gripe than to take three minutes and look up the answer themselves. But changing the program you give them won't help that problem, it'll just change the sorts of questions you're asked. ("How do I make this vi thing do automatic spell checking?")

Re:My observations...

[svallarian]

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.

Re:My observations...

[Shalda]

Well duh. Word and Open Office aren't designed for professional writers. They're intended for office workers. They server their intended purpose very well, but they can not be all things to all people. Likewise, Vi also has an intended purpose: quick textmode editing of text files. If you're a unix programmer or sys-admin, it's an invaluable tool. But I couldn't imagine trying to write anything extensive with it. There are programs designed to be word processors for serious writers. I don't know what they are or what the good ones are, just that they exist. I just shake my head when I see people using a screwdriver to pound a nail.

Re:My observations...

[jawtheshark]

And that's why I only help people when they're looking for the help function

Then you don't help a lot of people, do you? Most people don't use the "Help" function.

I support people because I like to help them, and I know that they don't have the time to actually learn all the finesses of a certain software package. Besides, how would I have sounded when I'd have told her to sod off and click on clippy? Like an asshole. That's the last thing I want from my real life friends. Also, if I do that, the next time she has a problem -a real one, like the computer being infected by a virus or something (shouldn't happen, I made her buy AV software)- then she won't call me. That is the real danger in not helping people.

Re:My observations...

[Alyeska]

Exactly: The Word Interface is clunky. Non-intuitive menus. I'm a very seasoned user, writer (I use FrameMaker, btw), and much of the automata of Word is hard to seek and destroy.

e.g., spell-check options and auto-correct spell-check options are in different menu trees. The former has a control that says, "Correct spelling as I type," but that *isn't* the auto-correct (but it seems like it might be...). One is in general preferences dialog, the other in "tools." Not, NOT intuitive.

Mr Duncan

[Anonymous Coward]

I met him at a writers conference in the outskirts of Detroit. He presented a small essay about the life of the borgeouis class in late 19th century Germany which many people found fascinating. But what astounded me, and I'm not usually that superficial, is how even though he had a pronounced lisp he was one of the most captivating speakers in the seminar.

I spoke to him the following and explained to him that he was one of my main writing influences. I think I mildly embarassed him since he seemed to lost for words.

Great chap and an excellent writer.

Which is nice.

WFB on WordStar

[RabidOverYou]

"I'm told there are better programs [than WordStar], but I'm also told there are better alphabets." --William F. Buckley Jr.

This is a darn old quote; I've no idea what he's running these days.

Amazing

[cubicledrone]

It is truly amazing how important the simple act of writing really is. Nearly every form of education, entertainment, business and reference is totally dependent on letters, words and sentences.

In the face of $100 million motion picture budgets and teams of hundreds building video games, the words of another author remain quite profound:

"With words alone, I have an unlimited special effects budget."

Textpad!!

[NineNine]

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.

Re:Textpad!!

[nv5]

yessss! on Windows, it is still my favorite text editor. It is extremely intuitive. When one of the Java developers of my last company made me aware of it, and I had the control over the development tools budget, we gladly paid for a copy for every developer. on Linux/KDE, I've been using Kate for HTML and PHP coding.

Re:Textpad!!

[pmz]

I use it for the few documents I write, and any coding that I might do.

What about ASCII "art" for your website?

Writing novels with real tools

[N7DR]

I don't suppose that anyone is really interested, but this does give me the opportunity to say that my novels have all been written using absolutely the best tools for the job: a real editor (in my case, mostly VEDIT Plus under Windows, although I also did one with emacs) and Plain Tex. Yes, that's Plain Tex, not LaTeX.

I remain firmly convinced that the combination of a powerful editor and Plain TeX cannot be beat.

The problem, though, is that nowadays publishers more and more demand manuscripts in the form of M$ Word files, which frankly sucks. I am measurably less productive under Word than I am with the combination of (editor + Plain TeX), and I suspect that the same would be true of most authors who are technically competent.

Re:Writing novels with real tools

[Ian Bicking]

From what I can tell, most publishers don't really trust their writers to do anything but the simplest formatting or typesetting (nor probably to most writers want to think about typesetting). The Word document they are looking for is as plain as can be -- maybe a few italics here and there at most. Probably of more interest to the publishers is the track changes mode in Word. They probably won't do any formatting until the book is very close to finished, but tracking changes is important. I don't know what tools support this in other formats, like RTF.

A slim subset of HTML seems best to me -- p, br, h1, i, b, maybe tt. Maybe some other details if depending on the domain. Amount and type of whitespace explicitly insignificant. Comparisons relatively easy due to the primitive structure. No attempt at semantics -- that's for indexers and people involved later on, if it happens at all. No one can agree on semantics anyway. The focus should be on content. But that still presupposes tools that I am not certain exist -- accessible editors with that can handle comparisons, accessible storage of revisions, safe transport of documents without loss of information, high enough availability that all the likely freelancers involved in the process (editor, copywriter, proofreader, researcher, indexer, etc) will have access and sufficient skill in the tools... well, that's why they choose Word. Ironically, the actual features publishers need aren't that extensive -- far less than what a secretary needs! -- but they're still stuck with Word.

Same here

[JanneM]

Not at all at the level of "real" wordsmithing, but I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in Vi (Vim, to be exact) using LaTeX. Same goes for all papers and other 'professional' text generation.

What a word processor does well, on the other hand, are short documents that are due to be printed and consumed immediately, such as letters, applications and so on. For such stuff, you can't really separate content creation and formatting anymore, and LaTeX becomes too heavyweight to deal with it. Of course, with that focus for wordprocessing, 95% of all features are absolutely worthless.

A Pentel 0.5mm Mechanical Pencil

[pleasetryanotherchoi]

with index finger clicker is my weapon of choice, although I use Kwrite (What? Not Emacs/VI? Let the flammage ensue but direct your shrapnel away from the top of my head.) for producing a final draft.

While words cannot express the beauty of discovering the frequency of Sol-type stars within 100 light-years of Earth, or Tibetan surnames and their construction without visiting a library, computers (and especially the internet) are a godawful distraction to creativity.

Like now.

Jerry Pournelle's requirement

[Spectre]

And Jerry Pournelle successfully campaigned to have Microsoft add an option to Word just for him. Which one?

[] Blue background, white text

That option is still there to this day.

Dang, it must be nice to be able to tell Bill Gates what to do once in a while!

Re:Jerry Pournelle's requirement

[red_dragon]

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.

Re:Jerry Pournelle's requirement

[Rude Turnip]

Well, two people in my office (me + a secretary) would like to thank Jerry Pournelle for that feature! White text on blue is so much easier on the eyes.

Re:Jerry Pournelle's requirement

[Linker3000]

That was only so that MS engineers could mock-up BSODs so they could get the text alignment and wording right ;-)

Re:Jerry Pournelle's requirement

[Hatta]

That's what's great about mozilla's userContent.css.

Minimalism

[dang-a-pin]

I write with Ultra Edit, & can vouch for the complete lack of distraction that the minimalist editor provides. Instead of emphasizing your prose with underlining, italics, boldface, etc., you throw your readers against the wall by better word choices, more dynamic phrasing, and edgier dialogue. It's also just plain easier to concentrate, when you're not thinking about how a program must be used. Anything else is for sissies.

You know...

[superdan2k]

I have a degree in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing. You know what I do? I write first, format later, and you know what? It works! It's called time management.

Furthermore, it's not tough to select Courier, 10pt., set the margin widths to 1.25" all the way around, and set the material to double-spacing. That's all that's really required.

Creative people

[j-turkey]

Creative people seem to be among the most resistant to new technologies and/or meduims brought about by technology. The word processor is just one example...but how long did it take photography to be accepted as a fine art? (I'm sure that there are photographers out there right now that will argue that it still hasn't).

A large fraction of those same photographers who are shaking their heads right now -- they refuse to accept digital photography as an artistic medium. Furthermore, much of the other digital "art" mediums have yet to be accepted...what about 3D rendering? This is surely an art form, but is not widely accepted. The demo scene is another that is not embraced by the artsy world.

The point is that the artistic types will tend to cling to their ways...who knows why. But it doesn't seem like, as a group, creative folks tend to enbrace new technology (or in this case a pretty damn old one, like a word processor) I wonder if it's alright to use an electric light Vs. a candle to write?

--Turkey

Bah, computers?

[JaredOfEuropa]

I can imagine people appreciate a tool like vi, or notepad for that matter, that has few features and is more or less keyboard-driven. Myself, I use editplus to bang out lots of text for reports, memos and the like... which means I do not have to worry about formatting and such. When I am reaonably happy with the text, I paste it into Word and apply a template and formatting.

But for the more creative writing I still prefer a notepad and pencil for the first draft. I can easily annotate, make drawings, cross out stuff and then decide I want to keep that text after all... and there's just no computer tool that is as easy to use. I find that both the features and the inherent limitations get in the way of creativity.
The drawback of course is that I have to type it ito the computer anyway, at some point.

Re:vi is but... another WordStar-like.

[netringer]

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.

You can still get VDE, which is a blazingly fast WordStar-like DOS editor written in assembler. AFAIK, because it loads the entire file into a page of memory it still has a 64K file size limitation, but it has a built-in ability to split and reassemble to and from larger files.

It works great on an 8086 class PC. There's even a Palm version.

Metapad

[nucal]

Metapad is an excellent, free, plain text editor for Windows that can seamlessly replace Notepad. Handy for editing html source code ...

Work Method

[SpaceRook]

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.

I'd recommend writing the raw text first and then formatting later. I've written several lengthy user manuals. The first thing I write is a table of contents. This can be done in a program as simple as NotePad (although I like EditPlus).

Then, fill out each section. Write the content. Trying to format on the fly with something like MSWord is a major pain in the ass (don't even get me STARTED on what a nightmare subdocuments can be). Plus, you end up wasting a lot of time.

I like technology

[mrandre]

I must confess to enjoying the feel of fresh pen on paper. And I have printed countless copies of nearly identical sections of writing, just so that my pen can run across the paper. Of course, when visceral pleasure runs out, practicality must take over, and it's easier to manage a large digital collection of scraps than a large pile of scrap paper. And so I have turned to DevonThink, a mac-only program that I am thrilled with. It makes it terrifically simple to edit many little scraps, and organize them into useful groupings. I will always relish the pen, but when work needs done, DevonThink does the trick.

vi is for wussies. I use ed

[coult]

for all my novels. Sometimes I even write in rot13 code just for fun.

Pen first, wp later

[thelexx]

A friend was once writing a fairly lengthy document with pen and paper while sitting on my couch during one of his stays in town. He had brought his laptop with him, so I asked why he wasn't using it. He explained that it was too easy to spend a lot of time editing and second-guessing instead of writing. So he did his initial drafts and main revisions on paper first, then put it into a wp for final tweaking and output.

I still remember...

[tekiegreg]

The last time I stepped into my mom's office (she's a lawyer btw) and still found people there using Wordperfect 5.1/DOS. Whatever works for your purpose, as my mom tells me "It does legal briefs better than anything else that I know how to use, so why change?" Why should authors use the latest version of MS Word or Vi, or Emacs or anything?

Once people have found a comfortable niche in technology, why change until you have better needs?

Vi, vim, editors for the 21st century?

[UninvitedCompany]

I learned vi back in the 1970s and have returned to it after some years of using other word processors. In the early days, we used troff(1) to format the output; vi and troff together had a feature set exceeding that of most word processors up until recently.

The article above surprises me, mainly because vi is so difficult to learn. Having once learned it, it's not a half bad editor, but there are better ones that are easier to learn. After all, vi was designed to take advantage of the (then) increasingly ubiquitous terminals with addressable cursors, connected at serial rates between 600 and 9600 bps. Most had only the keys found on a typewriter, with no function keys, arrow keys, or numeric keypad, and certainly no mouse. That made the keyboard-only, modal interface necessary.

With today's PCs, there are so many better choices out there, that it's surprising that vi retains any following at all. But what can I say, I still use it myself.

Improper use of "office productivity" tools

[CAIMLAS]

You weren't intended to "format" your writing at the same time as you wrote it, at least for a large part. Format things -after- you're done writing, if you find you tinker too much with formatting to get it "just right".

WordPerfect...5.1

[ZephyrQ]

I used to be rather prolific...enjoyed writing and all that. Even when I had to write grant requests and such...

Then WordPerfect went to 6.0. I configured it to look a *lot* like 5.1 -- still lotsa joy.

Then MSWord became the defacto format...which is when I started looking at other OSes because, well, I *hated* MSWord. But WP couldn't keep up. I eventually landed at Linux and had the corresponding version of WP. Then Corel bought it, then MS bought/ran/abused Corel.

I've been switching between gedit/abiword/OOOrg since and haven't been able to get the same...zen...as I used to with WordPerfect.

And, y'know, I think my desire to write has decreased as a result...

Re:Tools of the trade.

[Theaetetus]

I like to write my first drafts in pencil and paper. I use a 0.5mm #2 Pentel pencil, a Magic Rub eraser, and college-ruled paper. Subsequent drafts are typically on PC, in whatever format--usually .DOC format, since I primarily use Windows at home. I spent a half hour configuring the normal.dot template the way I wanted it, and I was off and running.

Call it a result of my lousy public school upbringing, or a result of my 17 years of piano lessons, but I can type at 95 wpm and handwrite at only 15-20. Typing, I can almost keep up with my thoughts, and I find that papers, essays, and stories flow much easier from my mind to the page. Writing by hand, by the end of a long sentence, I've gotten so wrapped up in the mechanics of writing - loops, curves, dotting the T's and crossing the I's - that I've lost the flow, and have to frequently read back the same line over and over again to complete the thought.

I'm not saying it's for everyone, but when teachers stopped insisting on handwritten rough drafts, I was a happy man.

-T

newspaper

[scrotch]

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.

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 .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.

Words of Wisdom from Mike Callahan by S.R.

[Jedi Holocron]

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...

LaTex anyone?

[olorin42]

I personally use LaTeX for all of my writing beyond a simple memo (which is usually email at this point). Although I am no professional writer, I find myself writing and maintaining several large documents on a daily basis. Things like software architecture documentation, requirements documents, etc.

Tex's seperation of "content" from "formating" means that, as I am writing, I am not distracted by things like font and layout, I can decide on that stuff later. Then all I do is publish to Postscript,PDF or HTML and I am done.

I have written everything from my master's thesis, to magazine/journal articles, and large(50-200 page) documents for my business with it and have had no complaints. The documents can easily be maintained in a source controll system like cvs, because they are just text. I use the emacs tex-mode for editing the documents and I find it to be a very productive combination.

The other nice thing is that LaTeX is a full fledged typesetting system and does a very good job of laying things out in a consistent manner. IIRC, O'Reilly used to use TeX for typesetting all of there books, but I am not sure if that is still ture. But LaTeX does produce great looking documents, I have recieved numerous comments from my clients on how consistent and professional my documents look.

The only problem with it is when people want to get the document in "word format" so that it can be maintained by someone other than myself. Or when I am working on an article and the magazine requires it to be submitted in word format. I still haven't found a good solution to this, but thankfully it is not something that happens too often.

I have thought about moving to a more "modern" system like DocBook, but I haven't found any good tools for working with DocBook documents yet. Nor do I like the very verbose XML syntax which seems to me to clutter up the text much more than the simple LaTeX directives. So, I really haven't had sufficient motivation to change yet.

Cuneiform is essential

[Camel Pilot]

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.

Re:vi for writers? YES! - LaTeX

[AugustMoon]

I write everything in vi, including dissertations, theses, technical journal publications, reports, stage plays, screen plays, and short stories (no books yet).

The key (for me) is to use LaTeX as a markup language. It is available for windows, Mac, and Linux and for non-table non-equation oriented work is trivial to learn. Equations and tables aren't particularly hard either, quicker (assuming you type quickly) than MS Word equation mechanisms. Plus it handles all your typesetting for you. I actually use pdflatex which generates nice pdf files.

Ten years from now, all my work will be in ascii text still, and wether or not LaTeX exists at that time, all I need is a text editor to view my work!

Now, I'm partial to vi, but any sufficiently good text editor would be fine. Functionally rich enough and worth the learning curve.

My Dream Writing System

[Schlemphfer]

I've been working on a book for the past year, and I spent many hours thinking hard before settling on my writing tool of choice. It wasn't my G4 tower with flat panel, nor was it my 1.6 gigahertz Vaio with flat panel. I decided the optimal tool for writing my book was a 266 Mhz Thinkpad I scored last summer off eBay for about $250.

I prefered the Thinkpad for a couple of reasons. First, it had the best keyboard I've ever used. Second, I deliberately never installed games, nor hooked it up to the Internet. So I was never tempted to check email or surf the web when I should be writing.

As for my word processor, OpenOffice did not until recently have a decent "draft mode" type view until recently. ABIword was too unstable (I don't know about the new 2.0 release.) So I've been using WordPerfect 10.0, which has the speed and flexibility I could desire, great footnoting, plus the ability to view embedded codes on the off chance your document gets screwed up.

I'd say right now, my dream system for writing would be:

A mini-PC
Flat panel
Thinkpad 600 Keyboard (how I wish I could buy the keyboard alone, that's why this is a dream PC.)
WordPerfect

A little shopping around for a used 1.6 Mhz system, and the whole thing shouldn't cost more than $400-$500. I couldn't ask for anything better for writing.

of course Emacs will lose ...

[kaan]

because everybody knows that Power = VI

even freshman Physics students could tell you that...

Re:of course Emacs will lose ...

[kaan]

Not so, young grasshopper. Straight-up Electricity and Magnetism offers the following as a staple equation:

Power = potential difference * current
= V * I
= VI

I hereby invalidate your troll attempt!

LyX

[frohike]

Really, I figured someone would have said this by now (maybe they have and I need to refresh again :) but what this guy really needs is LyX. It's basically a pretty word-processor-style front end for LaTeX. The help files and tutorial explicitly tell you that LyX follows a "WYSIWYM" principle -- What You See Is What You Mean. It tries to avoid pushing details like formatting into the writer's head, and instead focuses on getting the words organized into a meaningful structure. The program takes care of formatting everything based on the style you choose (you can choose any style at any time and the whole doc reflects it on the next preview). It's more or less the whole MVC paradigm that the XML/XSL folks push, but it's actually practical.

After discovering it I became a lot more productive with my writing. Admittedly that was limited mostly to writing college papers, but I spent a lot less time fighting with the word processor over formatting, focused on the writing, and the output was usually awesome looking.

YMMV I guess, if you're a formatting control freak then LyX won't work so well for you. Sometimes it's tough to make it do exactly what you want in the formatting phase too, so I eventually switched to using raw LaTeX or TeX for my docs, but LyX is a good middle of the road solution.

Writing tools

[miketo]

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.

Modern-day typewriters

[CAIMLAS]

If you're big on 'minimalist' stuff for writing, I'd strongly recommend one of the following (depending on how 'minimalist' you want to get):

AlphaSmart 3000

AlphaSmart Dana

They're (basically) Palm Pilots with full-sized keyboard functionality, w/o any irritating clip-on devices, etc. Their "word processor" is quite minimalistic with basic features such as spellcheck. Definately a nice tool for the mobile geek writer.

Fiddling vs. "Good Enough"

[Fencepost]

The problem with any WYSIWYG editor is that they promote fiddling with appearance when really the appearance is minor and the content is what matters. For a lot of things I'd actually rather have WordPerfect 5.1 than anything WYSIWYG, because it really doesn't matter whether the text ends halfway down the last page or has an extra 1 pt of spacing between each line to take it to the bottom of the page.

Put differently, it all goes back to the aphorism "Perfection is the enemy of (good/progress/etc.)" which is true not just because in trying to make things perfect you often either ruin them or never finish them - it's true because everyone's idea of perfection is different, but most of us can agree on "pretty good".

Re:Jerry Pournelle's requirement: Help me do this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Any idea on how to get OpenOffice.org Writer to do this? If I change the page background, that's how it prints. I only want to change the view.

I'm using Windows XP so I know I could alter the theme in Control Panel, but I don't want to do a system-wide change because it screws up lots of other things (like web browsing).

Help!!

Additional Simplicity

[Keighvin]

I'm of the same school of thought, keep the writing process as simple as possible so as not to occlude the creativity.

To that end, I have an AlphaSmart(.com) - a small portable keyboard, 4 lines of text, capable of storing about 100 pages (12pt. single spaced courier) of information. It runs on 3 AA (LR6) batteries and gets between 500-700 hours (no, no missing decimal points) of active use per set. I honestly haven't changed them in over a year. All active memory too, never worry about saving - it's always there no matter when it's turned off.

It emulates a keyboard when hooked up to a host machine, so open your favorite app and hit "Send" and the text is put in wherever you want it; connects via ADB, PS2, and USB. The only additional feature I've ever wished for was a VI interface on it to speed up some editing proceedures.

I highly recommend any freelance writer, journalist, novelist, student, etc. take a look at the device. They have a newer model running PalmOS for those who might be interested as well (no Linux, yet).

For All those saying "Use Notepad!"

[wray]

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.

Re:Tools of the trade.

[cei]

In a previous /. discussion on the death of cursive writing, one of the arguments FOR writing longhand was that it made you think harder about what you were committing to paper. A million monkeys with computers can generate a nive USENET feed, but if they had to write in script, there might be better stuff to read. *shrug*

In defense of Microsoft Word (on Mac)

[benwaggoner]

Okay, I'm at least a semi-pro writer (one published book, contributing editor for DV Magazine). And I think folks are completely missing how to use Word correctly, and its strengths. I'll be talking about Word for Mac v.X here. Even though Office XP is quite capable, I can't stand the way that they put icons in the left of the menus. Plus there's no better to write than with a laptop in the lap, leaning back in the Aeron, feet on the desk keeping the beat with NoFx.

Back around '89 when I first got Word 4.0 on my Mac SE, I did procrastinate by too much formatting. But I got over it! The key is just to define your standard template. Get that template down, and you're writing object-oriented with styles. Understanding how to use styles and tabs is critical to efficient Word use. Instead of doing it spaghetti-code style with formatting applied directly to units of text, build the right design for each style, and religiously only use styles. If you need to change the style later, it's changed in all instances. Much, much easier.

I NEVER mess with formatting when writing articles anymore, since my standard template has my styles all set up the way I want them.

The real strength of Word is that it lets you deal with your content in a variety of modes. I actually write all my first drafts in Outline mode now, so I can see and tweak the overall structure. This means I don't need to write linearly, like a typewriter is required. I can write what I'm inspired to write that moment, skip back to get terms used later defined in the appropriate place, and that kind of thing. And since the outline headings are styles, formatting concerns just disappear into the background. And because, the structure is always visible, it's much easier to remember what you intended to do, and to pick up on structural errors in my original plan for the piece.

When I'm editing, especially someone else's work, I use Normal mode. Thus I'm not distracted by where page breaks are and that kind of thing. Just the text.

Page Layout mode I use rarely. Word isn't designed for any kind of detailed layout. Still, it's nice to see where the page breaks fall before going out to PDF or anything. But I'll just import into InDesign if I need fine control.

So, big picture:

Use Styles to make structure, not formatting, central.

Use the right viewing mode for the stage of your project.

Relating this to music...

[FromWithin]

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.

Nonsense. Mark Twain started using a typewriter...

[dpbsmith]

...practically the day it was invented. Indeed, it can be argued that he started using one before it had been invented, or at least perfected.

Jack London began using a typewriter the very instant he could afford one. The one he could afford wasn't very good--a balky Blickensderfer that required great effort to operate, was badly aligned, and only typed in uppercase--and he switched to a better one as soon as he could afford that.

Here's a picture of the typewriter he used from 1904 on.

"Creative people" latched onto the Macintosh within months of its introduction.

Low tech writing implements

[ortholattice]

I use pens and pencils a lot for marking things up, making notes, and even scribbling rought drafts when I'm inspired away from a computer. No one seems to discuss this much, but anyway here are my personal preferences.

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.

More technical pushes for simplicity

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

When I wrote my Ph.D., I used the still quite excellent WordPerfect 5.1, for the most part. However, for better or worse (mostly for worse), I did wind up finishing it in WordPerfect for Windows (I think 6.1). At least the file formats were compatible, but in retrospect I should have stuck with the text screen (unfortunately, I recall that OS/2 actually ran the Windows version a bit better than the DOS one at the time though). FWIW, you can read that at: David Mertz Disseration, WordPerfect version; or since WP compatibility isn't so widespread nowadays: PDF page style and PDF book style. Back in those days, I wrote about PoMo philosophy and the like.

Flash forward a few years. Now I am a writer about computer programming. And mostly because of that transition, I absolutely cannot stand to write anything other than plain text. Well, almost plain text, I have my own little variant called "smart ASCII", which uses just a few of the conventions that email and Usenet often use: *bold*, -itals-, and so on.

In fact, I have written hundreds of articles, tutorials, and the like about programming (for well-known publishers like IBM, Intel, O'Reilly, etc.), all in plain text. My book Text Processing in Python is written the same way.

Well... once in a while I am compelled to use something awful like MS-Word--or something that exports to it, like AppleWorks or OpenOffice--but I hate doing that. It is tools that convert my smart ASCII into formats like HTML, XML, LaTeX, PDF, and so on. But those tools come at the end of the process. After I put the words down, then is the time to worry about niggly details like fonts, layouts, and so on... all in a way that is far more consistent than a wordprocessor is likely to produce. My book, for example, has been praised as particularly attractive typographically... I did all the preparation myself, by eschewing all the GUI nonsense that gets in the way during writing. David Mertz

Confidence... and a program layout idea

[Angram]

I regularly have to "fix" all sorts of "problems" for friends and family, whether over the phone or with them looking over my shoulder - they aren't "stupid" or "lazy", they just lack confidence. All of them have experience hitting some key or other and having the computer crash (Windows ME was a huge confidence-crusher all-around). They've learned that doing the "wrong" thing, which is usually just hitting the wrong key or the wrong menu item, destroys what they've done or activates something they don't want and don't know how to get rid of (typically don't know what it is or how it got there). My advice has always been "if you don't know, ask me instead of poking around" - while it may disparage learning and waste my time, it's better than the alternative (from over-the-phone rants about technology to completely reformatting hard drives).

They aren't stupid or lazy - they lack confidence. "Help" menus may have gotten considerably better over the years (so I now tell people to try them first), but they gave up on them years ago, when they lacked useful (step-by-step) information and were difficult to navigate.

What's needed is a set of evolving program layouts - from "Minimal" to "Full" (essentially Novice to Expert), with a simple search tool to allow users to find features when they are first needed and then allow users add them to the toolbars and menus (perhaps leaving them in some sort of "highlighted" mode for the first week or so).

a technophobe tale

[swell]

Yes, of course Mr. Spoilsport that's ... OK, Ralph. That's probably a very nice feature but you see, I'm a writer. All I need is a car to get me to church on Sunday and back to my studio. I'm afraid I'm not very good at handling 'features'.

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. ... Ralph, I just want to go to church. It's 16 blocks. If I were to find myself on the Antelope Valley Freeway and that fancy climate control turned on, I would be totally befuddled. Can't you find a simpler car for me to buy? Fewer buttons, switches, levers and knobs? Just a car with a button that says "go to church" and one that says "return home" would be fine.

What Knuth does

[Phronesis]

Here is a description of Donald Knuth's writing process, as related by one of his students in Mathematical Writing (p. 14):

His first copy is written in pencil. Some people compose at a terminal, but Don says, "The speed at which I write by hand is almost perfectly synchronized with the speed at which I think. I type faster than I think so I have to stop, and that interrupts the flow."

In the process of typing his handwritten copy into the computer he edits his composition for flow, so that it will read well at normal reading speed. Somewhere around here the text gets TeXed, but the description of this stage was tangled up with the description of the process of rewriting the composition. Of course, rewriting does not all occur at any one stage. As Don said, "You see things in different ways on the different passes. Some things look good in longhand but not in type."