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Goodbye Cruel Word
theodp writes "The problem with Microsoft Word, writes the NYT's Virginia Heffernan, is that 'I always feel as if I'm taking an essay test.' Seeking to break free of the tyranny of Microsoft Word, Heffernan takes a look at Scrivener and the oh-so-retro WriteRoom, which she and others feel jibe better with the way writers think. 'The new writing programs encourage a writerly restart. You may even relearn the green-lighted alphabet, adjust your preference for long or short sentences, opt afresh for action over description. Renewal becomes heady: in WriteRoom's gloom is man's power to create something from nothing, to wrest form from formlessness. Let's just say it: It's biblical. And come on, ye writers, do you want to be a little Word drip writing 603 words in Palatino with regulation margins? Or do you want to be a Creator?'"
Microsoft Word. Light of my mind, fire of my frustration. My sin, my soul. Mi-cro-soft-word. The mouth contorts with anti-poetry. My. Crow. Soft. Word.
This was a coffee-out-the-nose moment for me - it's a parody of the very first paragraph of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
"Here's the basic problem: you're writing a text editor. Stop doing that. It's 2007."
Read my blog.
I've used Word since version 1.0 when it came on two 5-1/4" floppies and included a mouse in the box and ran on the original IBM 8088. Before that I used Word Factory, Wordstar and Zardax. I've used every version of Word since 1.0. It is now certainly bloated and busy. It's advanced features such as multiple indexing can drive you crazy with their ineptness, but at heart it is simply a blank screen for you to fill in. Turn off the Nazi grammar feature and it pretty well leaves you alone to do what you want. If you aren't creative, Word won't make you so. If you are creative, Word isn't going to regiment you into not being so. To claim otherwise is an excuse. Maybe you just aren't, like, creative at all. Blaming the software won't turn it around any more than the paper you use. If 8-1/2 x 11" paper is too authoritarian for you, try Charmin to better express your creativity. By all means use another word processor if it makes you feel better, but I don't think a few people looking for another cause are going to lead an exodus away from Word any time soon.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
There's something to be said for a writing tool for writers.
First, professional writers need only minimal formatting capability. Formatting is someone else's job. Any formatting done by the author will just interfere with page makeup later. Writers need to be able to insert chapter breaks, and that's about it.
Second, the word processor should not interrupt the flow of writing. Auto-completion is usually not wanted. Spell checking is probably better done after the fact, not during writing.
Third, not losing the text is important. The writer should not have to "save". A word processor which guaranteed it would never lose the text, backed up by continuous remote backup to multiple sites and an insurance policy, would probably have a following among pros.
There are newsroom systems like this, on which reporters compose stories.
I read TFA, and these guys seem to be worried about the wrong thing. Word menus, etc, are easy enough to deal with. What makes it a god-forsaken piece of shit are all the bugs. Documents are always getting corrupted, figures don't do where you want and stay there, can't save sometimes for no apparent reason, the entire thing just bombs out, etc. We had a "Platinum Support Ticket" or some similar nonsense open on Word for a few years. The upshot, direct from a Microsoft senior support line, was that if we wanted documents to not get corrupted, was to print it out on paper, make sure it was right, then use a scanner and save it as a TIFF. Thanks, that's good advice.
What is so pathetic is that I have ordinary technical documents from the late 50's and 60's that are laid out better, have better graphics, and are still perfectly readable today. While at the same time, a Word document I saved last week either can't be opened, or has all the symbols corrupted.
Brett
I have to agree that, for me, the best writing environment is a terminal with vim (often using Compiz' ADD Helper to dim the desktop and all other windows)
... both an upside (freedom) and a downside (something you have to figure out and that might distract you).
... who knows?
...
... don't we use vim because it's what we use all day, anyway? As sysadmins / programmers / etc, it makes sense for us to use the editor that we always use (which is available on all OSes, as well).
Also, a lightweight markup language, like Markdown, lets you write normally - but be able to convert your document to XHTML, LaTeX, PDF, etc etc.
The biggest downside to using vim is that, unlike Scrivener, it doesn't give you explicit places to put your notes / outline / etc. So, using vim, you're free to put your notes / etc wherever you want
For drafting, I often using an SCM like git or subversion, but for little snippets and free-writes, etc? They might be written down on paper, they might be in a random note file
It might be worth it to use screen or vim split screens to reproduce something like Scrivener provides, with designated places on the sides to have notes, etc etc. I think I might try that out
But, come-on, really
I use vim for my writing, because it's what I use all day anyway.
I use git for keeping track of my files / drafts / revisions, because it's what I use all day anyway.
I use markdown for my markup, because it's what I use all day anyway.
Thanks, but since when is something usable because MS says so? When I work in an application, I can tell whether or not its UI is discoverable, and whatever MS says does not change my live experience one way or another.
The Ribbon is awful for discoverability, because (a) the tooltips are tiny and hard to read (for some people, like myself), (b) sometimes the tooltips are posisioned over the button labels, so you see the key but no longer recognize the command it performs, and (c) because you have to press the darn Alt key! A menu is something you can open and while it stays open, you can navigate the menu and read the keyboard shortcuts at your own pace. As a readout, it is much clearer and more convenient.
Then there's the fact that you cannot customize the ribbon at all. The measly, tiny toolbar MS so graciously allows you to add buttons to is a sorry excuse.
Then the contextual shifting of the ribbon means I can no longer just click a button that I know is always there, almost without looking, since the mouse hand has its relative position memorized. Now I must check the current page first and switch to the one I need - a displacement of sorts. The shifting is visually distracting, too.
MS has repeatedly lied about how the Ribbon supposedly takes less vertical space than the menu and toolbars (not true), and likewise their usability claims are - at the very least - highly subjective.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Thanks for the credit -- I don't think any OS or toolset gets it right all of the time, and I try to call it on individual cases. There is MS stuff that I like (Visual Studio, for example) and MS stuff that I don't like (Office 2007, obviously).
The specific things I don't like about the Office 2007 UI are:
But they are all largely a matter of personal style. A heavy mouser won't mind the longer key sequences. Somebody desk based with a huge hi-res screen won't miss the real-estate. A right-brain dominant person will be glad to see the back of the menus. There are plenty of people for whom the interface will work just fine. What got me is that 2007 took away my choice. I had to work the way MS chose for me to work -- no, worse, I had to work in the way that a graphic designer in Redmond chose for me to work, and of course they have a visual rather than a verbal mind because that's what makes a good graphic designer. And I bet they have a huge screen. And I bet they prefer the mouse to the keyboard, because the mouse is better at graphics and layouts than the keyboard is. But I am not a graphic designer.
I've been told that there are third-party tools that can fix a lot of the problems I had. But the fact that it needs third-party tools to make the interface acceptable suggests to me that MS got it wrong in the first place. Not wrong in the sense that the interface is wrong for everybody, but wrong in that it assumes everybody works and thinks the same. One size does not fit all.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Hint: if you have to tell people how discoverable it is, it isn't.