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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?'"
"The problem with Word and notably Microsoft, is that they have attempted to make both Windows and their apps, notably Office, all things to all people with an interface that has not really changed at all over the course of its lifetime."
Office 2007 is leaps and bounds over anything Microsoft put out before. The interface is also heavily improved, so I don't know where you're getting this (unless this is pre-2005 when Office 2007 wasn't public knowledge)
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from the looks of the front page you would think math geeks would only use it but it also functions as an excellent word processor...
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That is very much a matter of taste. I found the Office 2007 user interface an unusable, intrusive abomination, that was constantly in my way when I was trying to work [1], so after a few months I went back to 2003. I agree that it was "leaps and bounds over anything Microsoft put out before", but in the bad direction. Your mileage may vary, of course.
[1] It did look good, though, I'll give it that. Perfect for the exec who chooses his PA on bust size rather than on organisational skills.
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A guy with a brand new Fender Strat doesn't sound like Jimi Hendrix. Nor can you drive better in a Lotus than an xB.
What's more likely is that if you think you're doing better and that helps you, so much the better.
Document composers for mass mailings, labels, newsletters, all need different features that aren't part of the word processing function of creativity, rather its creative exposition. I'll write (a dozen books, thousands of articles so far) on whatever, and won't go to Jerry Pournelle's years of bitching about the nuances. It's the content, Jerry. It's the content. Word, Word Perfect, WordStar, Zedit, Joe, Vi, textedit, don't much matter. Grammar checkers, spell checkers, syntactical analyzers, pretty printers, code-indenting hoohaa, I don't care. Let me write. Grace and elegance are for those that need glitter and swan-like moves. They look pretty, but it's only style, and style will always be subjective. Content rules; fancy-assed WYSIWYG twelve-key-combo-crap drools.
Just my 2c worth.
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I agree, the Office 2007 suite is for me the most improved version MS has put out of Office in ages.
It's a bit mind boggling how when you've been used to apps like OpenOffice and Office 2003, you find (after an adjustment period, of course) what you want and that without opening a menu! Exception being when opening files... If there's one UI idea as neat as a tabbed browser, it has to be a tabbed toolbar where one tab is context sensitive.
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I dont know what it is about OO either. I find it just easier to work with. Not in the finding buttons to do things I want, but just to sit and type on, particularly the linux version.
Aside from that, I switched to OO when I was grant writing, it managed a project better then MS Office and the integration with the Spreadsheet was better then Excel and Word. Go figure.
Use LaTeX instead of plain TeX, it allows you to concentrate on content without the distraction of presentation.
The time needed to to be spend on presentation of a 250 page LaTeX document (and yes, I have written a handful such documents) is around 10 seconds, if you are willing to live with the (somewhat boring) default layout, plus some sloppy spacing.
[ It is actually one of great advantages of markup based typesetting systems, over wysiwyg based systems. AT&T did measurements when trying to switch from troff to PageMaker. Internal regulation demanded a pilot project to show benefit. Management wanted to switch, but the troff based beat out the PageMaker based team each time, despite both teams having no prior knowledge of the tools. The PageMaker based team spend too much time too early on layout. ]
No software since WP5.1 has done as good and obvious a job of indexing, hierarchical sections, cross referencing, and tables of contents. I could do all those things so painlessly in WP and never managed to achieve them proficiently in Word. Throw in simple keystroke access for almost everything you did and it becomes a writer's dream. I have often thought of setting up a DOS PC simply to run WP but now finding a supported printer is quite a feat.
WP was proof that you did not have to invent an abstract and incomprehensible model of a document simply to make a tool to author one.
LaTeX tries to do a different thing than "desktop publishing," and for what it does, it does it extremely well, and is far better than any alternatives.
Back in the day, we had "word processors," and we had "desktop publishing software," the difference being that the desktop publishing software let you precisely control page layout and were WYSIWYG. Word processors were things you typed documents into and they broke that document into pages to send to a printer. Word processors had extensive features to help you enter your document correctly, like spell and grammar checkers, ways to emphasize text by making it bold or underlined, and not much else. They processed words, not pages.
Then someone had the not-so-bright idea to bring WYSIWYG into word processing, combining Desktop Publishing Software and Word Processing Software into shitty abominations called WordPerfect > 5.1 and Microsoft Word. Putting a small subset of desktop publishing power into cheap, buggy software ensured that secretaries everywhere would abuse Comic Sans and clip art until the end of time, and attach their creations to what should have been plain text email.
My first "office suite" let you type your document into the word processor, then you could set up the page layout in the desktop publishing program and link the text in, where it would flow into the predetermined layout and fill it. Two discrete steps, which couldn't have been easier. Trying to do this all at once is a pain in the ass, especially if you're changing the document around (editing). The problems worsen when multiple people work on the same document.
Initially, it was obvious that word processing and desktop publishing were two very different things, and never the twain shall meet. We'd all be a lot better off if this distinction had stayed, because the problem with word processors today is not that they're trying to be all things to all people, but that they're trying to do two different things at the same time.
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I remember hearing about this issue with the trial version of Word 97 converting all files it was allowed to touch to Word 97 format. Some things never change....
This is an area where I think Sun is far more on the ball than Microsoft - for one, SO/OOo defaults to saving in the same format as the original document. More importantly, the file formats are better documented than the ones for Word, so you should be able to read them for the forseeable future. The downside of SO/OOo is that it is too much of a clone of MS-Office and dealing with all the formatting issues does get in the way of writing.
I've been thinking of getting a Mac specifically to be able to use Pages.
I would say the earlier Windows versions up to about 6 were the zenith of Word Processing. Novell was one thing but when Corel got it, ugh. Became buggy in their quest to dumb it down to "Wordishness".
I've never quite understood the bloatware bitching. If there are a lot of features you don't like, then shut up, sit down and don't use them for Chrissake. You can write your novel very happily in AbiWord I'm sure but don't complain because I want something that can do more. I used WP to do double-sided tri-folds. I don't know what I would have done without reveal codes for micromanaging stuff that as often as not was in text and graphics boxes rotated this way or that. Get a publishing package you say. Why? WordPerfect produced the B&W laserprinted trifolds we needed. Used macros to take a delimited server db addresses dump, convert it to a WP data file and do the merge and print. Routinely ran a whole bunch of lists that way for years with WP as the core program.
When Microsoft used their OS monopoly money to dump Office 97 on the market it was one of the most shameful examples of a monopoly murdering quality with artificial underpricing.
Any slashdot article that's bitching about microsoft word needs at least one person sadly referring to the wordperfect reveal codes option they so miss. I didn't see it being referred to yet so here I am, karma in hand. (Knowing it's off topic and all) I guess I'll finally bow down to the masses, this will be my last cry for the good old days of the reveal codes screen. The alt-F3, the underwaterscreen as we used to call it... whether due to mass ignorance, evil microsoft package deals, or maybe we reveal codes lovers were just the weird ones, and the word meta-information handling won due to it's actual superiority. I don't know, but it's absolutely too late now, and I need to let it go. But why why why does openoffice emulate that Word crap to the extent that when using that suite you run into the exact same horrible formatting issues! Press backspace, and suddenly the whole text document is bold. You can't get that picture to move down one line, unless you want the formatting of 2 paragraphs to turn into a complete mess, and blank pages added. Why why why? I want my underwaterscreen! Please god give me the strength to let this go and not long for something archaic and so much better than everything the rest of the world uses for some weird reason. I mean, there even was a time when word perfect 8 was available on linux! where did that time go?! Ok that was it, I promise I'll never rant about that again. I hope I can do this.
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