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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.
I used to think that the reality of the situation was that you really could not have a professional class word processing application that does all things that professional writers need used by the same audience that merely wants to write school reports or letters to friends. However, it is all in the interface and Pages from Apple has shown that many of the "professional" features in word processing have to do with page layout or formatting issues as well as integrating not just text and fonts, but also images. Fundamentally the issue with interfaces is not providing features piled on features, but figuring out how to craft a tool that people can use to get work done rather than having to learn how to use the tool. I want my word processing environment to simply let me craft written word and images into a form that allows me to communicate my intent to the audience without getting in the way or making me learn arcane and occult methods for getting my page numbers to appear just right or getting the text to wrap around an embedded image without constantly having to reformat an entire 80 (or more) page document. Writing my doctoral dissertation in Word back in 2003 was a repeated lesson in pain as every time I changed a single image, the formatting of the entire document would be altered with entire paragraphs seeming to disappear or get hidden outside of margins and I never want to return to that world.
Granted, I still have to return to Word from time to time as Pages is not yet perfect, still needing better integration with Endnote, but it is getting pretty close. The perfect environment would be Pages that can read and edit Adobe Acrobat files along with markup, comments and notes along with full Endnote functionality that would also run on a tablet that takes advantage of gestures...
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I am just wondering if the author has a problem with MS, MS Word, or how the package works and "feels".
OpenOffice is presented similarly, but "feels" different. Like Office 2007 does, only better.
I enjoy writing in OpenOffice more than with MS Word, but that just may be because that which you use often gets familiar, like a favourite pair of shoes...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
It's the "killer ap" that got me to convert to linux full time.
http://www.lyx.org/
The best green-screen creative writing environment is Vim. Which comes free with every Mac, already, if you've the wit to open a terminal window. (Although I'll give you a free pass if you prefer Emacs.) WriteRoom stinks to me of an attempt to sell a reinvented wheel to folks who don't know any better.
http://texmacs.org/ FREE!
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...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I can't watch "Juno" and read that article in the same day. My brain is really tired of text and dialogue as dense as a ten-year-old Christmas fruitcake.
Can anyone here translate into "concise" for me?
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
... who misread the title as "Goodbye Cruel World". Thought it was going to be a /. suicidal note... God I NEED COFFEE!
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
> What is it with this "it's been done before, thus it can't be improved"-philosophy?
Writeroom is not actually trying to sell itself on being an improvement on anything, it sells itslef on notalgia to a time where there were zillions of text editors. Problem is, these text editors are still around. If vim is too strange, try Emacs as the poster suggested. Both have all the features listed, and are rather easy to learn if you only do simple stuff. And if you want it even simpler, pico, or nano, or jed, or joe are also available.
I've used various versions of Word (and before that, the original AppleWorks on an Apple ][e) to write books and book-length dissertations. Just so you know where I'm coming from, I still think the best version of Word for the Mac is 5.1a.
For the last decade or so my strategy was to use Word's outliner then fill in the text. Pretty straightforward when you know exactly how things are supposed to go, like for a paper or a report. Unfortunately, I found them wanting for my creative writing, where I tend to write from the inside out, starting with a scene or a character or a funny sentence but not knowing where that bit would fit in a story. Sure, I could just dump everything in the ol' slop file, or link a bunch of individual files using Word's master document, but it was always forced and clunky.
Last October I was looking for a new tool for Nanowrimo and I experimented with WriteRoom, Jer's Novel Write, Lyx, CopyWrite, Storyist, and Scriviner. In the end it came down to Storyist and Scriviner. I liked how Storyist had novel templates, but they seemed overly restrictive--and the software cost twice as much. I ended up buying Scriviner.
What I like about Scriviner is that it gracefully handles working with both long chapters and little scraps, easily allowing you to change the views to an outline or index cards on a cork board with synopses, or as individual documents, or all run in together in a single window.
...dude, where's my car?
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
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. ]
Mod parent up, it really sums up everything worthwhile about the subject.
"Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do anything I must use three or even four editing programs. This is truly intolerable!"
The master programmer stared at the novice. "And what would you do to remedy this state of affairs?" he asked.
The novice thought for a moment. "I will design a new editing program," he said, "a program that will replace all these others."
Suddenly the master struck the novice on the side of his head.
"What did you do that for?" exclaimed the surprised novice.
"I have no wish to learn another editing program," said the master.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- from "The Zen of Programming" by Geoffrey James, 1988.
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.
http://smultron.sourceforge.net/
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Wow, I feel your pain. After Word couldn't reliably handle a small 100-page thesis I wrote, I switched to Mellel for the rest of my time as a student. Highly recommended. Does everthing a dissertation needs, is easy to use, looks nice, and is fast.
XMLMind + DocBook might also be a good option.
But please, whatever you do, avoid Word at all cost. It's just not suitable for this kind of writing.
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 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.
I talked to Kayembi (the Scrivener guy) about a linux port using GNUStep. Currently, GNUStep doesn't have all the features Scrivener needs. He gave me a list (not complete, but it's a start) and I've been working on getting them added to GNUStep. So hopefully, we will have a linux version sometime :)
Ha ha. Sorry about that. Weird Yellow Stuff Is Warping Your Mind.
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.
One consistent criticism of most word processors is that they promote presentation over content - programs like WRITE, WriteRoom shift the focus back to content. The same could be said of most text editors, with the choice being a very personal matter.
If she can organize her large bust to keep it out of the way when she needs to get other things done, she might be great at other organizational skills as well.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Printers? For drivers for a range of printers.
Try here
http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/
Someone here linked to this which has so many good points I have no problem with reposting it.
But anyway: These people are being silly. The text editor problem has exaustivly been solved about 10 to 15 years ago. Since then we've gotten a few more, nearly all for free and one better than the next. And to all those who after 20 years of GUI computing still haven't gotten it:
YOU DON'T WRITE TEXT IN A WORD PROCESSOR!
If you're thinking "I know what I'm gonna do now - I'm gonna write a text." then DON'T use a word processor. Use an Editor of which there are countless around and available. Word processors are for formating and making documents print-ready. Repeat after me:" Word processors are *not* primary writing tools. " And don't even dare think of using a word processor for programming. There's a special place in hell for people who do that. Really.
I've been programming and writing for more than two decades now and the last time I abused a word processor as an editor for writing down my initial draft was with AmiPro on Windows for Workgroups 3.11 running on MS-DOS4. And only because I was a n00b at writing on computers, it was a print document from the get-go and AmiPro was good enough not to suck at writing and Win 3.11 lacked a good editor. I've been using jEdit for allmost a decade now and have recently picked up Emacs (not recommended for people who don't know what awaits them) because it runs on the CLI which I often have to use.
Bottom line: It's called Text Editor, or 'Editor' for short, folks. This type of programm has existed for over 30 years. Pick your favorite. And they've all got a fullscreen mode too.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
vi?
Sharper than the edge of Ockham's Razor.
Huh? I got the impression they were writers, wishing to maximize their work, like "The happy, broad-minded, process-friendly Scrivener software encourages note-taking and outlining and restructuring and promises all the exhilaration of a productive desk", or "you also get to drop the curtain on lifes prosaic demands with a feature that makes its users swoon: full screen", or " you must enter the WriteRoom, the ultimate spartan writing utopia", or "What I mean is this: Black screen. Green letters. Or another color combination of your discerning choice. But nothing else".
Now, tell me, where did running fucking micro$oft games enter into all that? Perhaps you didn't read the fucking article at all, did you? You just ran at the chance of becoming just another fucking, obnoxious, micro$oft shill, right?
Because when they added those features to Word, they set them to be active by default so that people would know Word had those features. If you don't want them, then just TURN THEM THE HELL OFF. It's in the Settings menu.
I'm so sick of people complaining about all these horrible things Word does to them when it takes about ten seconds to turn all of those features off and get them entirely out of your life. It used to be the stupid Office Assistant, people would bitch and moan for hours and hours and I'd just finally get sick of it, go to their computer, and spend the 10 seconds to turn it off.
If you don't like it: TURN IT OFF! That is all.
Comment of the year
For 30 years people have been trying to get at the perfect computer tools that fosters creativity. There is no such tool. Before the computer writers wrote with pencils, pens, quills, typewriters, chisels and animal fat paint on the cave wall.
Did you know for instance that the sort-of-great Victorian English writer Anthony Trollope wrote on a clipboard using a stopwatch to time his writing down the minute? He did this because his day job was railway inspector and he was shackled by the station to station train times.
I wonder if dosbox supports (or could be modified to) emulate a dos compatible printer. There's probably quite a few other non-game pieces of software from those days that would be worth reviving.
> (And do NOT say "WINE" or I will laugh because that software is largely a bad joke.
You've got it backwards. MS Windows is the bad joke; Wine is more like nicorette, it wanes your addiction to said bad joke.
I have never been successful at entirely turning those "features" off. It always seemed to involve tracking down at least two obscure settings, and even then it seemed to reappear at random intervals. Admittedly I haven't yet tried to disable them in Office 2007.
Three Squirrels
They're masochists. It's hard to imagine a clunkier, fussier, more limiting and more annoying UI than a typical word processor (ms word or OOo, makes little difference). It's a torture. Now, the reviewed software appears to be better than nothing (I can't try it since both are mac-only). Perhaps they will fit the bill for those who prefer prepackaged solutions. For myself, however, I built a custom system based on XEmacs. It has all these conveniences - full screen, collapsible outlines, plus many more: one-key access to dict.org and to internet-wide concordance (actually just phrase search on google with results in a new buffer, very convenient to see how often and in what contexts a word or phrase are typically used). My analog of Scrivener's "snapshots" is much more powerful - it just commits the document to its svn repository on each save. And since my local svn server is always on, I can work on the same document from any desktop or laptop in my home easily. Plus, of course, one-key access to scripts for export to XML, PDF, HTML, etc. And many, many other small conveniences I have been adding for years. Perhaps the cruelest thing about Word is its search. I can't believe - even in office 2007 it's still a pop-up window that jumps on you, obscuring your text, and then jumps around like crazy when you try to search forward. It's absolutely insane. XEmacs's incremental search with highlighting matches, from statusbar at bottom, with autocomplete working, is a godsend by comparison, though in fact it's just the natural thing to do. And yes, you do need to search your text all the time when you are just writing prose, not only when coding programs. Here's a chance for OOo to differentiate itself on usability, if it cares about this kind of thing.
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.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Wouldn't work here. The missus knows that I prefer small.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
If the summary was written using the features of this software, I want nothing to do with it.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Except for several later versions of WordPerfect (I use WordPerfect 9, and it does everything WordPerfect 5.1 did, in many cases better, and several additional useful things I haven't seen on anything else; I helped publish a book written in WP (possibly 5.1, but I'm not sure) using WP9) I completely agree with you. WordPerfect 9, in my opinion, was the apex, and I still use it on Windows XP (which I run on a VM on my Ubuntu box).
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The problem is, there are writers, and there are people who write, and then there are people who look at a page of text and either drop it or say "ooh, pretty!!!" Word went downhill steadily from about Word for Windows 2.0 on. Word was in competition (well so were Wordperfect and a number of other extinct word processors so-called) with desktop publishing programs. Writers don't NEED the features that Word, or WordPerfect, or Open Office provide. They typically are constrained by very specific formatting rules - things like "type face - Courier," "two spaces after a period," "page numbers at upper right," "single tab at beginning of paragraph," etc. Effectively all they need IS a glorified typewriter (no more carbon paper, no more white-out, and cut and paste no longer demands scissors and paste). Publishers have very, very explicit requirements and all the menus, pop-ups, drop-downs, and general eye-candy just get in the way of a writer. So less is really better - honestly, WordStar was a great tool. Now, if your documents are the product of a one-man band, self-published (because no publisher will touch your manuscripts in fear that the crazed air you exude is contagious), then yeah, you need a word processor like Word - and a really big stapler. Or, indeed, if your employer never actually reads your reports or memos, and your income and raises depend on his appreciation of the "professional, polished appearance of your memo [about excess use of coffee by other staff]," then yeah, again you might be able to use Word effectively. But, for a writer, a scientist, or a real analyst, content is king and all that's really necessary is that lower case "L"s can't be confused with the numeral "1" by the reader, and the publisher will accept the manuscript without comments like, "type it over, correctly, and we'll see."
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.