It already is dying. Word on the street is that a lot of the upcoming young'uns have never even heard of it. One quote I saw: "Microsoft Word? Is that like Google Docs?" Not sure the alternative...
It already is dying. Word on the street is that a lot of the upcoming young'uns have never even heard of it. One quote I saw: "Microsoft Word? Is that like Google Docs?"
Not sure the alternative is better, per se, but...
Sadly Google Docs is hardly a better variant. It still appears to be built on similar logic and remains largely compatible with MS Word. Also as far as I can see on Universities here people to...
Sadly Google Docs is hardly a better variant. It still appears to be built on similar logic and remains largely compatible with MS Word. Also as far as I can see on Universities here people to still use MS Word since it's now often part of a free package given to students, the biggest contender I see in that area is actually good ol' LaTeX. Google Docs is more often used as a shared drafting system in that regard.
Almost all the defects the author cites about Word apply to Google Docs. And if you're a "power user" of word processing software Docs is, in many ways, even worse and more clunky. The author's...
Almost all the defects the author cites about Word apply to Google Docs. And if you're a "power user" of word processing software Docs is, in many ways, even worse and more clunky.
The author's hearkening back to dedicated individual tools for outlining, formatting, spell-checking, etc. is a bit rose tinted but I can understand their point.
My company writes a fair number of proposals and White Papers. We briefly flirted with designing a software stack around it that centered around a Markdown based text editor, a GitHub-ish version control system, and some sort of parser/formatting tool that would let us translate to-and-from our clients'/partners' preferred formats.
It didn't work. Our senior management was just too resistent to change. Weirdly, I thought getting them on-board with Markdown was going to be the major struggle, but that was less hard than trying to explain the concept of version control. They preferred saving numerous drafts of documents identified by byzantine filenaming conventions to indicate who last edited it and when instead. It was probably for the best though, because I suspect if we actually went through with trying to write that parser/formatting tool it would have led to an endless stream of headaches down the line.
Sadly true - some years I moved from local documents to Google Docs and Sheets, and it was very convenient at first, but large docs really struggle - not just on mobile, but on a fast desktop. I...
Sadly true - some years I moved from local documents to Google Docs and Sheets, and it was very convenient at first, but large docs really struggle - not just on mobile, but on a fast desktop.
Oh don't get me started on Google Sheets. Having to use a slower, weaker version of Excel is bad enough. But then you take away most of the esoteric keyboard shortcuts and it just kills productivity.
Oh don't get me started on Google Sheets. Having to use a slower, weaker version of Excel is bad enough. But then you take away most of the esoteric keyboard shortcuts and it just kills productivity.
Even if the industry standard does not change to LibreOffice for these software, I feel like it's better that it at least becomes Google Docs rather than Microsoft Office b/c it removes a big...
Even if the industry standard does not change to LibreOffice for these software, I feel like it's better that it at least becomes Google Docs rather than Microsoft Office b/c it removes a big financial hurdle for beginners who don't want to use pirated software (it's been over a decade that I don't have MS Office on my computer, so IDK if that's even possible w/ the new subscription model). Knowledge of Office tools is a standard barrier to entry to almost any job that can help you earn more than minimum wage, widespead availability is important.
I wish there was something like LibreOffice that wasn't written in Java (& thus slooooow and ugly and incompatible with anything other than the JVM [e.g. the platform's UI, mouse movements etc]). I wonder how well Calligra Suite is doing, their website is really stringy in informing the user about the details of the software.
I experienced mild performance issues, but also consistent issues with scrolling being extremely fast or extremely slow. I used whatever version Debian Stable repos have. Now I'm on Testing, w/...
As far as your complaints about speed and the UI, have you tried the latest version? In 2018 there was a large UI upgrade to LibreOffice, and I honestly don't notice any performance issues when I use it, at least not compared to Microsoft Office.
I experienced mild performance issues, but also consistent issues with scrolling being extremely fast or extremely slow. I used whatever version Debian Stable repos have. Now I'm on Testing, w/ libreoffice 1:6.1.4-3+b1 and it indeed is better. Thanks for the heads up!
I found the sensationalist title a little off-putting at first, as well as the fact that it seemed aimed mostly at a creative writing audience, but this is actually a well-structured and...
I found the sensationalist title a little off-putting at first, as well as the fact that it seemed aimed mostly at a creative writing audience, but this is actually a well-structured and underpinned argument.
I remember back in the day my parents worked exclusively on Macintosh computers with Clarisworks as their office suite, and it created never-ending back-and-forths with clients and companies who seemed completely unable to use anything but Word and/or Excel, eventually this brow-beat my parents into switching to MS Office.
And the main argument that MS Office is now too big and visible kind of holds if you consider that even the most referred to alternatives like LibreOffice or OpenOffice very clearly try to imitate and remain compatible with MS Office, rather than proposing a radically different, improved package.
Well, compatibility (with Word et al., but also, with the rest of the world) is the biggest issue, so it's understandable that they want to remain compatible. Frankly, as an Emacs user, I can say...
Well, compatibility (with Word et al., but also, with the rest of the world) is the biggest issue, so it's understandable that they want to remain compatible. Frankly, as an Emacs user, I can say that, apart from a few problems caused by a bad parser (regexps...), Org mode is way better than MS Word or LibreOffice Writer in many respects. I can type in whatever I need, and through the highly customisable export process I can use the same document to produce almost anything I want. Throughout my undergrad, I used Org mode + XeLaTeX for all my assignments (except a couple I made with heirloom-doctools), and gave people PDFs. On one occasion where I had to deliver a .docx, I just used the ODT exporter and saved as .docx in LibreOffice.
But, and a big "but" (pun not intended), except a few beautiful jobs where you can code away in your text editor or you will never need to touch any office productivity apps, you'll need to use MS Office stuff, and you'll need to exchange documents with the rest of the world quite often. There, you just cannot afford incompatibility, or jumping the hoops daily, which I did jump once in 4 years because it was easier than to learn Writer and a new way of text editing just to type up a document. But IRL, compatibility is required, and MS is seemingly keen to consistently keep a gap with other software in that regard, probably to milk such advantage.
Pandoc does docx? Colour me surprised! That's great, though, pandoc is truly one of the best software out there. I use it infrequently, but when needed, there simply isn't something equivalent,...
Pandoc does docx? Colour me surprised! That's great, though, pandoc is truly one of the best software out there. I use it infrequently, but when needed, there simply isn't something equivalent, let aside better.
I didn't read the article past the first two paragraphs. To be fair I'm in an angry mood and I don't see what's wrong with Word at all. Also a creative writer who has chucked out a draft of a book...
I didn't read the article past the first two paragraphs.
To be fair I'm in an angry mood and I don't see what's wrong with Word at all.
Also a creative writer who has chucked out a draft of a book and a few short stories.
Seems like this guy needs to pick up a pencil and some paper. That's the best way to do your creative writing IMO next to a typewriter. Screens and word processors IN GENERAL are a knife in the chest of creativity.
Word is helpful in transcribing my drafts to processor, and I use it for all my academic papers, etc.
A great alternative to word if you prefer writing down your story on the computer first is WriteMonkey.
For reference, I was born in the late nineties. Most of my peers in college and in high school used google docs, but I find it inferior in every way. It's really only useful if you're using multiple computers to edit a document. But on a campus, most computers have Word installed AND OneDrive is integrated into Word, allowing you to access your Word documents anywhere.
So my opinion is: Word is fine, Word is not dying. Yes, it has a "monopoly" on Word processors but you can go anywhere on the internet to find free, useful word processors to meet your needs.
FWIW, Charles Stross is a very well-known science-fiction writer, who's published dozens of books and short-stories. The whole point of this article is addressing this monopoly, from the last...
To be fair I'm in an angry mood and I don't see what's wrong with Word at all.
Also a creative writer who has chucked out a draft of a book and a few short stories.
FWIW, Charles Stross is a very well-known science-fiction writer, who's published dozens of books and short-stories.
Yes, it has a "monopoly" on Word processors but you can go anywhere on the internet to find free, useful word processors to meet your needs.
The whole point of this article is addressing this monopoly, from the last paragraph:
The reason I want Word to die is that until it does, it is unavoidable. I do not write novels using Microsoft Word. I use a variety of other tools, [...] But somehow, the major publishers have been browbeaten into believing that Word is the sine qua non of document production systems. They have warped and corrupted their production workflow into using Microsoft Word .doc files as their raw substrate, even though this is a file format ill-suited for editorial or typesetting chores. And they expect me to integrate myself into a Word-centric workflow, even though it's an inappropriate, damaging, and laborious tool for the job. It is, quite simply, unavoidable. And worse, by its very prominence, we become blind to the possibility that our tools for document creation could be improved. It has held us back for nearly 25 years already; I hope we will find something better to take its place soon.
Considering there are scientific journals that I have considered publishing to that only support Word, I don't know that this criticism is misplaced.
Okay, I can see his point now. Why put your point at the bottom of the post, though? That kinda seems to me more like a rant that's designed to create discussion (which it has succeeded on) more...
Okay, I can see his point now. Why put your point at the bottom of the post, though? That kinda seems to me more like a rant that's designed to create discussion (which it has succeeded on) more than a point.
If you want people to get your point, don't start off with "I hate Microsoft Word, I want it to die"
Say "The Publishing Industry is overly reliant on using Microsoft Word, and it's detrimental to creative writers like myself"
No matter what your credentials are, if you can't do this, I don't want to read what you've written.... especially if your title is designed to make me angry or comes across as a rant.
Yeah, I really have no idea why the article is structured as 5-6 paragraphs reciting all the terrible things Microsoft has done and how the product itself isn't good for certain use-cases...
Yeah, I really have no idea why the article is structured as 5-6 paragraphs reciting all the terrible things Microsoft has done and how the product itself isn't good for certain use-cases (spoiler: if you're not doing anything too complex, I usually think it's just fine)---most of which had to be already known to his audience---only to get to the point all the way at the end. My guess is that he was asked to submit his latest novel as a *.doc and erm... wasn't too thrilled about it.
I wouldn't write off his body of work though, if you're at all interested in SF. He's won and been nominated for a number of awards over the years and has a few that are rightly considered genre-defining classics (e.g., you could make the case that Accelerando is to the technological singularity as Neuromancer or Snow Crash is to cyber-punk).
Lots of articles are like that these days. Like a few days ago there was this topic here about an article where a woman was mad at men riding bikes because they were faster than her or something....
Lots of articles are like that these days. Like a few days ago there was this topic here about an article where a woman was mad at men riding bikes because they were faster than her or something. Legitimacy or not of her anger aside, the article started off by her morning routine, then her clothes, the bike itself, why she likes riding, etc, and only a few paragraphs in did she get to the point, for the lack of a better suiting term, which took a couple paragraphs, and then kthxbye. Maybe they are teaching these absurdities in creative writing lessons or something?
HAHAHA! You're totally right. I would totally rage too in a similar situation. Good points. I'll check out some of his work. Thank you for recommending me some of his works, I was honestly about...
HAHAHA! You're totally right. I would totally rage too in a similar situation.
Good points. I'll check out some of his work. Thank you for recommending me some of his works, I was honestly about to write him off haha. You saved me!
Weird thing is I was just checking out Neuromancer on amazon a few minutes ago... I'll have to check out Accelerando now too...
edit: reading some of his blog posts really trigger me... mainly because of his political views... but then again as a fellow writer I have some crazy/wonky/absurd views... thank gosh I'm not famous... but what I've learned from this is that I shouldn't have a blog on the internet at all... I might turn people away with my crazy views... i just shall ramble on tildes instead... or in my journal... :P
I generally prefer typing once I know what I'm working with but you're totally right on the creative barrier. There is something different about having a blank page in front of you with complete...
I generally prefer typing once I know what I'm working with but you're totally right on the creative barrier.
There is something different about having a blank page in front of you with complete control over what appears. Fonts, colors, formatting are all things that don't need to be considered when an idea is being developed in the early stages.
I like to start all my projects with a blank printer page and a pencil.
Right? It's the best idea incubator. Write something down, go do something else, have it bounce around in your head, rinse and repeat. Before you know it you have a good idea for a new project. It...
Right? It's the best idea incubator.
Write something down, go do something else, have it bounce around in your head, rinse and repeat.
Before you know it you have a good idea for a new project.
It might be a hunch, but this method is probably hardwired into our brains. Humans have been writing stuff down on paper for literally thousands of years. If I could time travel, I'd really want to meet the guy/girl who realized he could write stuff down on papyrus and give him a pat on the back.
Well Saramago disagrees (search: Do you compose directly on a computer?). Buggy, slow, and partially compatible word processors (and other office programs), admittedly chasing the carrot in that...
Seems like this guy needs to pick up a pencil and some paper. That's the best way to do your creative writing IMO next to a typewriter. Screens and word processors IN GENERAL are a knife in the chest of creativity.
Well Saramago disagrees (search: Do you compose directly on a computer?).
So my opinion is: Word is fine, Word is not dying. Yes, it has a "monopoly" on Word processors but you can go anywhere on the internet to find free, useful word processors to meet your needs.
Buggy, slow, and partially compatible word processors (and other office programs), admittedly chasing the carrot in that regards anyways. If you want to send a file to a publisher, they most often only admit Word documents. When you send people documents to correct, they send you back the text copy-pasted into Word, annotated, and, if they're heartless enough, version controlled in Word. That might be an acceptable trade-off for someone who dislikes using Word directly, but might also not be.
Interesting. I agree with the PRINCIPLE behind his methods. However, Saramago did not grow up like me. I was a year old when Saramago was interviewed for this piece. In 1998 there were much less...
Interesting. I agree with the PRINCIPLE behind his methods.
However, Saramago did not grow up like me. I was a year old when Saramago was interviewed for this piece. In 1998 there were much less distractions and the computer was not a daily part societal existence. Many Americans (I am American, so I will use Americans for reference) now use the computer daily for multiple facets of life.
When I was growing up even, the family had one computer and we all shared it. Now you can get a computer for around 100 dollars or less and they have become even more personalized and tailored to helping us in every day life.
Computers have become more intrusive too. Constant notifications, dopamine targeting buttons, programs, games, social media all come to mind when you open a computer, even if you are writing.
Simply put, there are too many distractions, and even if you don't use them, they're still on your brain when you're writing and with high speed internet access being common in today's world, it's easier to get distracted.
It's also easier to do research too. That's why I like using the computer.
As a kid who grow up in the 2000s, computers became hardwired into my brain. Someone who grew up in the 1920s probably doesn't have a huge amount of their brain wired to all things technology/computers.
This is why I prefer to use paper. I should have clarified that personally, I prefer to use paper because when I open the computer my brain tends to drift towards other, less productive things...
To each their own, I guess.
You're right about the industry using Word. I don't have much experience sending and receiving files via email. But I understand the nightmare this could cause. In college our professors usually send us version controlled documents which is a hassle because it has to be converted and sometimes it screws up the formatting.
I'm seeing more of your point now. I've always accepted Word as the default processor because it's what I've grown up using and it's been on every single computer I've owned. I've found it easy to use and the layout, while convoluted, is superior to most other layouts I've used. I've never really considered the price of Word nor the hassle it might be to actual professionals. I am simply a hobbyist writer at the moment.
My idea then to be would to write your stuff on something free, then copy paste it into word and do some formatting. It's not fun but it's what we have to do, I guess.
We're totally on the same page. TBH I shared this article to see what people think, I don't give much thought to Word etc because I don't really need to use them. But I do write a lot of text on...
We're totally on the same page. TBH I shared this article to see what people think, I don't give much thought to Word etc because I don't really need to use them. But I do write a lot of text on computers, and I want that text to survive (i.e. 30 yrs from now, I want to still have it). Nothing comes close to plain text in that regard. And thus I use Org mode for writing on a computer: it is a nice format to use, Emacs allows me to customise it to do whatever I want, and I can export to any format I want (see my other comments in the thread).
I'm born in the first half of 90s, so we're only a few years apart. Distractions & procrastination are something I'm having to fight. That's why I'm always going back and forth in my mind between using a computer for productivity & paper, when writing prose and studying humanities. These days, I've reverted back to a paper&pen agenda since 6 months. Also, I find that I write way better initial drafts of everything on paper. Then I transcribe to Org mode and edit. I use RCS for version control (it's old, but I like it better with documents b/c it does locking and can insert the changelog into the document). But starting out on paper is better, I feel "freer" there. Editing text is a double edged sword. The freedom of grabbing my red pen and making notes for modification is unmatched. But it's easier to apply those edits to the original document to get proper prose, and follow the history of those edits, it's easier on the computer. I haven't found my home yet, in that regard.
Everyone will have their ways of dealing with text. I'm aware that I've chosen a method that puts me into a tiny minority. My personal wish is that compatibility of different tools was taken seriously, and that people acknowledged that there are different needs and different methods. A way of operation similar to HTML&CSS would be great, where big name productivity tools collaborated to make and use a common file format so that users won't have to worry getting bitten by incompatibilites. But sadly it's not in the business interest of Microsoft, the bully leader that gets to decide.
The problem, I think, is that the alternatives to MS Word are either equally bad for the same or similar reasons, or are too difficult to use. I’ve used LaTeX. You can learn enough LaTeX in a few...
The problem, I think, is that the alternatives to MS Word are either equally bad for the same or similar reasons, or are too difficult to use. I’ve used LaTeX. You can learn enough LaTeX in a few months to make simple documents with it. But, doing anything moderately complex in LaTeX requires learning a specific package and reading its documentation. And, if you have to deal with non-Latin text, you may struggle a lot going down the rabbit hole of exploring different descendants of the TeX engine and learning about their capabilities. Basically, at this point, we have to admit that most of the world is not going to learn LaTeX or XeTeX etc.
There are other document formatting systems like DocBook. I’m not sure if that’s the way to go either. XML is nice for machines to read. And some simple XML can be OK for humans to read. But, verbose markup languages get exceedingly difficult for humans to read and modify even with very little document complexity. Also, XML is generally over-engineered.
I think it’s interesting that a lot of programmers and tools have gravitated toward Markdown as a sort of anti-XML/HTML/SGML (even the name itself throws some shade in this regard). I think Markdown’s philosophy is a great start, but I think the actual language leaves some things to be desired, and the fact that there are umpteen different flavors of the language that nobody can agree on makes for subtle and surprising issues. The fact that GitHub has a specific flavor that they threw their weight behind for rendering READMEs has helped in this regard, to become a de facto standard. If you don’t like the decisions made by GitHub flavored Markdown you may have issues, though.
Recently I was turned on to Markdeep. This, like the original Markdown, is a neat document content/formatting language written by one opinionated person. I’ve used it for a couple documents so far, and I like the combination of Markdown-spirited syntax, but with some deviations that make for more consistency and nice flourishes, such as allowing inline LaTeX math via MathJax. I think something like this is the way forward, though it would probably require more robust support than "this is some guy's personal project, feel free to use it if it suits you".
A nice compromise between horrible stuff like TeX and XML, and Markdown is Textile. It is very expressive with minimal and (unlike reStructuredText or AsciiDoc) elegant syntax, and great...
A nice compromise between horrible stuff like TeX and XML, and Markdown is Textile. It is very expressive with minimal and (unlike reStructuredText or AsciiDoc) elegant syntax, and great compatibility among implementations (AFAIK). It is also easier to type on mobile b/c you don't need to type brackets for links or backticks for code. Instead you write links like
"Link text":http://example.com
and inline code like
@require "redcloth"@
w/o the need to switch levels. It is by far my favourite and I use it for my blog.
FYI, I don’t think TeX derivatives are horrible. I actually quite like them, and they produce beautiful looking documents (for Latin-script language content). I just realize that it is never going...
FYI, I don’t think TeX derivatives are horrible. I actually quite like them, and they produce beautiful looking documents (for Latin-script language content). I just realize that it is never going to be an MS Word-killer. I also like Overleaf for writing LaTeX online, collaboratively with others (this kind of thing was a life-saver in grad school for group projects).
I'm curious to see what an alternate suggestion would be that's anywhere close to as easy to use as Microsoft Word or Google Docs are for the average computer user. Keep in mind that with how...
I'm curious to see what an alternate suggestion would be that's anywhere close to as easy to use as Microsoft Word or Google Docs are for the average computer user. Keep in mind that with how prolific computers are in everyday life, the average computer user does not give a wit about their computers, software, coding, or learning about them at all. They just want the ability to put words on a page as quick a possible and for it to not look like it was written in Notepad with a console font.
This sort of word processing has the biggest market share for the exact same reason that Windows (and now OSX) have such a large market share of OS usage while Linux is far behind—ease of use for people that do not want to learn.
When I'm at work and have to churn out a business note quickly, Google Docs or Word (depending on sensitivity ratings) are the tools of choice. When I'm writing creatively, tools like Scrivener or Pages are preferable. But a friend of mine who does not give a single crap about technology wrote his latest book, he did it happily in Microsoft Word because he's more interested in getting his words written down than he is in formatting how his words are rendered.
I just think the author doesn't quite realize the extent of what he's asking for when he demands that MS Word, and the format its standardized that people expect out of a word processor, to die....
I just think the author doesn't quite realize the extent of what he's asking for when he demands that MS Word, and the format its standardized that people expect out of a word processor, to die. There's a big reason why they took over in the first place and he never gets anywhere close to addressing it: ease of use for people who won't learn.
I usually see this argument in Linux-promoting articles. I understand the position on smaller scales, and personal levels, but to suggest it as the new de facto standard without a comprehensive solution suggested is a huge gap in argumentation.
Word being easy to use is a myth. Most people know how to use word because they've received training in one form or another. It was part of the curriculum in middle and high school, and it was...
There's a big reason why they took over in the first place and he never gets anywhere close to addressing it: ease of use for people who won't learn.
Word being easy to use is a myth. Most people know how to use word because they've received training in one form or another. It was part of the curriculum in middle and high school, and it was even a general education requirement for my college degree. Word is the standard because the Office Suite was much better than the competition in the 90s and became a de-facto business standard.
Honestly, Word should be going away soon. Unless you are trying to draft a paper document primarily made of text, Word is not the tool you should be using. Forcing people to submit their work in Word format is wasteful, unnecessary, arguably exclusionary, and probably the only real reason why Word is 'the standard' still.
I believe that ease of use and ease of learning are two different things. There are many formats which I know are easy to use but when I see a layperson begin to use them, they have a lot of...
I believe that ease of use and ease of learning are two different things. There are many formats which I know are easy to use but when I see a layperson begin to use them, they have a lot of trouble trying to wrap their heads around the prerequisite concepts at all before they can begin understanding how to use it, such as HTML or Markdown.
Ease of use is an even easier myth to disprove. From the 90s until Microsoft introduced the Ribbon interface, almost every word processor had a nearly identical interface. Weather the ribbon...
Ease of use is an even easier myth to disprove. From the 90s until Microsoft introduced the Ribbon interface, almost every word processor had a nearly identical interface.
Weather the ribbon interface is better or worse than the old version seems to be a matter of oppinion, but for me I find that it takes me much longer to find the functionality that I need.
To be clear, I have been specifically talking about ease of learning this whole time. Everyone argues ease of use because it's easier to make arguments about, but I'm saying ease of learning is...
To be clear, I have been specifically talking about ease of learning this whole time. Everyone argues ease of use because it's easier to make arguments about, but I'm saying ease of learning is the real make or break, and pretty much every argument about "we should use this software paradigm instead of the super popular one!" is broken by it.
I'm having difficulty with this conversation because you seem to be arguing different things at different times. You just made an argument about formats as if I had suggested everyone should learn...
I'm having difficulty with this conversation because you seem to be arguing different things at different times. You just made an argument about formats as if I had suggested everyone should learn how to code. Now you are talking about software paradigms. You might be confusing me with other commenters, because I am just talking about applications.
My arguement was that Word is not any easier to use than other word processors. And for the same initial reasons I have given you, it is not any easier to learn either.
The paradigm is the format in this case. The paradigm of word processors following Word's format. This author thinks it should die. It has nothing to do with learning to code, but it is about...
The paradigm is the format in this case. The paradigm of word processors following Word's format. This author thinks it should die. It has nothing to do with learning to code, but it is about learning. Learning how to use the software. These are people who will never, ever know code.
What I am trying to suggest is that your argument is like the author's: it's only argues how easy an application to use. It doesn't consider how easy that application is to learn, and that is what I am saying is always the missing factor of these sorts of arguments.
It's not just Word the author is referring to, though. Google Docs and LibreOffice are also the kind of thing the author seems to want to do away with. He wants to kill the entire approach to word...
It's not just Word the author is referring to, though. Google Docs and LibreOffice are also the kind of thing the author seems to want to do away with. He wants to kill the entire approach to word processing that Word started and popularized.
Again, my question for him is what other paradigm he suggests to take over for the current word processing paradigm, because he doesn't actually suggest one for general use. He only gives a specific personal example.
Libre Office is more neat these days than Microsoft Office. It provides the similar classic offline document editing options and lacks the "cloud" bloat. Interface is customizable, ribbon can be...
Libre Office is more neat these days than Microsoft Office. It provides the similar classic offline document editing options and lacks the "cloud" bloat. Interface is customizable, ribbon can be enabled. I'm happy this open source project exists.
Your comment made me wonder if emacs already had a WYSIWYG mode, and to my surprise I found Richard Stallman really wants that to happen. In a way, it does already, with something called enriched...
Your comment made me wonder if emacs already had a WYSIWYG mode, and to my surprise I found Richard Stallman really wants that to happen.
In a way, it does already, with something called enriched text mode.
Finding this out may have pushed me to the vim side of the editor wars.
Org, Markdown and other modes can hide the markup and render it graphically. But Vim doesn't have rich text either (it does the same thing Emacs do), so I don't get how that made you choose it.
Org, Markdown and other modes can hide the markup and render it graphically. But Vim doesn't have rich text either (it does the same thing Emacs do), so I don't get how that made you choose it.
It already is dying. Word on the street is that a lot of the upcoming young'uns have never even heard of it. One quote I saw: "Microsoft Word? Is that like Google Docs?"
Not sure the alternative is better, per se, but...
Sadly Google Docs is hardly a better variant. It still appears to be built on similar logic and remains largely compatible with MS Word. Also as far as I can see on Universities here people to still use MS Word since it's now often part of a free package given to students, the biggest contender I see in that area is actually good ol' LaTeX. Google Docs is more often used as a shared drafting system in that regard.
Almost all the defects the author cites about Word apply to Google Docs. And if you're a "power user" of word processing software Docs is, in many ways, even worse and more clunky.
The author's hearkening back to dedicated individual tools for outlining, formatting, spell-checking, etc. is a bit rose tinted but I can understand their point.
My company writes a fair number of proposals and White Papers. We briefly flirted with designing a software stack around it that centered around a Markdown based text editor, a GitHub-ish version control system, and some sort of parser/formatting tool that would let us translate to-and-from our clients'/partners' preferred formats.
It didn't work. Our senior management was just too resistent to change. Weirdly, I thought getting them on-board with Markdown was going to be the major struggle, but that was less hard than trying to explain the concept of version control. They preferred saving numerous drafts of documents identified by byzantine filenaming conventions to indicate who last edited it and when instead. It was probably for the best though, because I suspect if we actually went through with trying to write that parser/formatting tool it would have led to an endless stream of headaches down the line.
Sadly true - some years I moved from local documents to Google Docs and Sheets, and it was very convenient at first, but large docs really struggle - not just on mobile, but on a fast desktop.
I prefer markdown format now
Oh don't get me started on Google Sheets. Having to use a slower, weaker version of Excel is bad enough. But then you take away most of the esoteric keyboard shortcuts and it just kills productivity.
Even if the industry standard does not change to LibreOffice for these software, I feel like it's better that it at least becomes Google Docs rather than Microsoft Office b/c it removes a big financial hurdle for beginners who don't want to use pirated software (it's been over a decade that I don't have MS Office on my computer, so IDK if that's even possible w/ the new subscription model). Knowledge of Office tools is a standard barrier to entry to almost any job that can help you earn more than minimum wage, widespead availability is important.
I wish there was something like LibreOffice that wasn't written in Java (& thus slooooow and ugly and incompatible with anything other than the JVM [e.g. the platform's UI, mouse movements etc]). I wonder how well Calligra Suite is doing, their website is really stringy in informing the user about the details of the software.
I experienced mild performance issues, but also consistent issues with scrolling being extremely fast or extremely slow. I used whatever version Debian Stable repos have. Now I'm on Testing, w/
libreoffice 1:6.1.4-3+b1and it indeed is better. Thanks for the heads up!I found the sensationalist title a little off-putting at first, as well as the fact that it seemed aimed mostly at a creative writing audience, but this is actually a well-structured and underpinned argument.
I remember back in the day my parents worked exclusively on Macintosh computers with Clarisworks as their office suite, and it created never-ending back-and-forths with clients and companies who seemed completely unable to use anything but Word and/or Excel, eventually this brow-beat my parents into switching to MS Office.
And the main argument that MS Office is now too big and visible kind of holds if you consider that even the most referred to alternatives like LibreOffice or OpenOffice very clearly try to imitate and remain compatible with MS Office, rather than proposing a radically different, improved package.
Well, compatibility (with Word et al., but also, with the rest of the world) is the biggest issue, so it's understandable that they want to remain compatible. Frankly, as an Emacs user, I can say that, apart from a few problems caused by a bad parser (regexps...), Org mode is way better than MS Word or LibreOffice Writer in many respects. I can type in whatever I need, and through the highly customisable export process I can use the same document to produce almost anything I want. Throughout my undergrad, I used Org mode + XeLaTeX for all my assignments (except a couple I made with heirloom-doctools), and gave people PDFs. On one occasion where I had to deliver a .docx, I just used the ODT exporter and saved as .docx in LibreOffice.
But, and a big "but" (pun not intended), except a few beautiful jobs where you can code away in your text editor or you will never need to touch any office productivity apps, you'll need to use MS Office stuff, and you'll need to exchange documents with the rest of the world quite often. There, you just cannot afford incompatibility, or jumping the hoops daily, which I did jump once in 4 years because it was easier than to learn Writer and a new way of text editing just to type up a document. But IRL, compatibility is required, and MS is seemingly keen to consistently keep a gap with other software in that regard, probably to milk such advantage.
Pandoc does docx? Colour me surprised! That's great, though, pandoc is truly one of the best software out there. I use it infrequently, but when needed, there simply isn't something equivalent, let aside better.
Org Mode is awesome, but one area Emacs is way behind is grammar linting.
I didn't read the article past the first two paragraphs.
To be fair I'm in an angry mood and I don't see what's wrong with Word at all.
Also a creative writer who has chucked out a draft of a book and a few short stories.
Seems like this guy needs to pick up a pencil and some paper. That's the best way to do your creative writing IMO next to a typewriter. Screens and word processors IN GENERAL are a knife in the chest of creativity.
Word is helpful in transcribing my drafts to processor, and I use it for all my academic papers, etc.
A great alternative to word if you prefer writing down your story on the computer first is WriteMonkey.
For reference, I was born in the late nineties. Most of my peers in college and in high school used google docs, but I find it inferior in every way. It's really only useful if you're using multiple computers to edit a document. But on a campus, most computers have Word installed AND OneDrive is integrated into Word, allowing you to access your Word documents anywhere.
So my opinion is: Word is fine, Word is not dying. Yes, it has a "monopoly" on Word processors but you can go anywhere on the internet to find free, useful word processors to meet your needs.
FWIW, Charles Stross is a very well-known science-fiction writer, who's published dozens of books and short-stories.
The whole point of this article is addressing this monopoly, from the last paragraph:
Considering there are scientific journals that I have considered publishing to that only support Word, I don't know that this criticism is misplaced.
Okay, I can see his point now. Why put your point at the bottom of the post, though? That kinda seems to me more like a rant that's designed to create discussion (which it has succeeded on) more than a point.
If you want people to get your point, don't start off with "I hate Microsoft Word, I want it to die"
Say "The Publishing Industry is overly reliant on using Microsoft Word, and it's detrimental to creative writers like myself"
No matter what your credentials are, if you can't do this, I don't want to read what you've written.... especially if your title is designed to make me angry or comes across as a rant.
Yeah, I really have no idea why the article is structured as 5-6 paragraphs reciting all the terrible things Microsoft has done and how the product itself isn't good for certain use-cases (spoiler: if you're not doing anything too complex, I usually think it's just fine)---most of which had to be already known to his audience---only to get to the point all the way at the end. My guess is that he was asked to submit his latest novel as a *.doc and erm... wasn't too thrilled about it.
I wouldn't write off his body of work though, if you're at all interested in SF. He's won and been nominated for a number of awards over the years and has a few that are rightly considered genre-defining classics (e.g., you could make the case that Accelerando is to the technological singularity as Neuromancer or Snow Crash is to cyber-punk).
Lots of articles are like that these days. Like a few days ago there was this topic here about an article where a woman was mad at men riding bikes because they were faster than her or something. Legitimacy or not of her anger aside, the article started off by her morning routine, then her clothes, the bike itself, why she likes riding, etc, and only a few paragraphs in did she get to the point, for the lack of a better suiting term, which took a couple paragraphs, and then kthxbye. Maybe they are teaching these absurdities in creative writing lessons or something?
HAHAHA! You're totally right. I would totally rage too in a similar situation.
Good points. I'll check out some of his work. Thank you for recommending me some of his works, I was honestly about to write him off haha. You saved me!
Weird thing is I was just checking out Neuromancer on amazon a few minutes ago... I'll have to check out Accelerando now too...
edit: reading some of his blog posts really trigger me... mainly because of his political views... but then again as a fellow writer I have some crazy/wonky/absurd views... thank gosh I'm not famous... but what I've learned from this is that I shouldn't have a blog on the internet at all... I might turn people away with my crazy views... i just shall ramble on tildes instead... or in my journal... :P
I generally prefer typing once I know what I'm working with but you're totally right on the creative barrier.
There is something different about having a blank page in front of you with complete control over what appears. Fonts, colors, formatting are all things that don't need to be considered when an idea is being developed in the early stages.
I like to start all my projects with a blank printer page and a pencil.
Right? It's the best idea incubator.
Write something down, go do something else, have it bounce around in your head, rinse and repeat.
Before you know it you have a good idea for a new project.
It might be a hunch, but this method is probably hardwired into our brains. Humans have been writing stuff down on paper for literally thousands of years. If I could time travel, I'd really want to meet the guy/girl who realized he could write stuff down on papyrus and give him a pat on the back.
Well Saramago disagrees (search: Do you compose directly on a computer?).
Buggy, slow, and partially compatible word processors (and other office programs), admittedly chasing the carrot in that regards anyways. If you want to send a file to a publisher, they most often only admit Word documents. When you send people documents to correct, they send you back the text copy-pasted into Word, annotated, and, if they're heartless enough, version controlled in Word. That might be an acceptable trade-off for someone who dislikes using Word directly, but might also not be.
Interesting. I agree with the PRINCIPLE behind his methods.
However, Saramago did not grow up like me. I was a year old when Saramago was interviewed for this piece. In 1998 there were much less distractions and the computer was not a daily part societal existence. Many Americans (I am American, so I will use Americans for reference) now use the computer daily for multiple facets of life.
When I was growing up even, the family had one computer and we all shared it. Now you can get a computer for around 100 dollars or less and they have become even more personalized and tailored to helping us in every day life.
Computers have become more intrusive too. Constant notifications, dopamine targeting buttons, programs, games, social media all come to mind when you open a computer, even if you are writing.
Simply put, there are too many distractions, and even if you don't use them, they're still on your brain when you're writing and with high speed internet access being common in today's world, it's easier to get distracted.
It's also easier to do research too. That's why I like using the computer.
As a kid who grow up in the 2000s, computers became hardwired into my brain. Someone who grew up in the 1920s probably doesn't have a huge amount of their brain wired to all things technology/computers.
This is why I prefer to use paper. I should have clarified that personally, I prefer to use paper because when I open the computer my brain tends to drift towards other, less productive things...
To each their own, I guess.
You're right about the industry using Word. I don't have much experience sending and receiving files via email. But I understand the nightmare this could cause. In college our professors usually send us version controlled documents which is a hassle because it has to be converted and sometimes it screws up the formatting.
I'm seeing more of your point now. I've always accepted Word as the default processor because it's what I've grown up using and it's been on every single computer I've owned. I've found it easy to use and the layout, while convoluted, is superior to most other layouts I've used. I've never really considered the price of Word nor the hassle it might be to actual professionals. I am simply a hobbyist writer at the moment.
My idea then to be would to write your stuff on something free, then copy paste it into word and do some formatting. It's not fun but it's what we have to do, I guess.
What do you suggest as a solution?
We're totally on the same page. TBH I shared this article to see what people think, I don't give much thought to Word etc because I don't really need to use them. But I do write a lot of text on computers, and I want that text to survive (i.e. 30 yrs from now, I want to still have it). Nothing comes close to plain text in that regard. And thus I use Org mode for writing on a computer: it is a nice format to use, Emacs allows me to customise it to do whatever I want, and I can export to any format I want (see my other comments in the thread).
I'm born in the first half of 90s, so we're only a few years apart. Distractions & procrastination are something I'm having to fight. That's why I'm always going back and forth in my mind between using a computer for productivity & paper, when writing prose and studying humanities. These days, I've reverted back to a paper&pen agenda since 6 months. Also, I find that I write way better initial drafts of everything on paper. Then I transcribe to Org mode and edit. I use RCS for version control (it's old, but I like it better with documents b/c it does locking and can insert the changelog into the document). But starting out on paper is better, I feel "freer" there. Editing text is a double edged sword. The freedom of grabbing my red pen and making notes for modification is unmatched. But it's easier to apply those edits to the original document to get proper prose, and follow the history of those edits, it's easier on the computer. I haven't found my home yet, in that regard.
Everyone will have their ways of dealing with text. I'm aware that I've chosen a method that puts me into a tiny minority. My personal wish is that compatibility of different tools was taken seriously, and that people acknowledged that there are different needs and different methods. A way of operation similar to HTML&CSS would be great, where big name productivity tools collaborated to make and use a common file format so that users won't have to worry getting bitten by incompatibilites. But sadly it's not in the business interest of Microsoft, the bully leader that gets to decide.
The problem, I think, is that the alternatives to MS Word are either equally bad for the same or similar reasons, or are too difficult to use. I’ve used LaTeX. You can learn enough LaTeX in a few months to make simple documents with it. But, doing anything moderately complex in LaTeX requires learning a specific package and reading its documentation. And, if you have to deal with non-Latin text, you may struggle a lot going down the rabbit hole of exploring different descendants of the TeX engine and learning about their capabilities. Basically, at this point, we have to admit that most of the world is not going to learn LaTeX or XeTeX etc.
There are other document formatting systems like DocBook. I’m not sure if that’s the way to go either. XML is nice for machines to read. And some simple XML can be OK for humans to read. But, verbose markup languages get exceedingly difficult for humans to read and modify even with very little document complexity. Also, XML is generally over-engineered.
I think it’s interesting that a lot of programmers and tools have gravitated toward Markdown as a sort of anti-XML/HTML/SGML (even the name itself throws some shade in this regard). I think Markdown’s philosophy is a great start, but I think the actual language leaves some things to be desired, and the fact that there are umpteen different flavors of the language that nobody can agree on makes for subtle and surprising issues. The fact that GitHub has a specific flavor that they threw their weight behind for rendering READMEs has helped in this regard, to become a de facto standard. If you don’t like the decisions made by GitHub flavored Markdown you may have issues, though.
Recently I was turned on to Markdeep. This, like the original Markdown, is a neat document content/formatting language written by one opinionated person. I’ve used it for a couple documents so far, and I like the combination of Markdown-spirited syntax, but with some deviations that make for more consistency and nice flourishes, such as allowing inline LaTeX math via MathJax. I think something like this is the way forward, though it would probably require more robust support than "this is some guy's personal project, feel free to use it if it suits you".
A nice compromise between horrible stuff like TeX and XML, and Markdown is Textile. It is very expressive with minimal and (unlike reStructuredText or AsciiDoc) elegant syntax, and great compatibility among implementations (AFAIK). It is also easier to type on mobile b/c you don't need to type brackets for links or backticks for code. Instead you write links like
and inline code like
w/o the need to switch levels. It is by far my favourite and I use it for my blog.
FYI, I don’t think TeX derivatives are horrible. I actually quite like them, and they produce beautiful looking documents (for Latin-script language content). I just realize that it is never going to be an MS Word-killer. I also like Overleaf for writing LaTeX online, collaboratively with others (this kind of thing was a life-saver in grad school for group projects).
I'm curious to see what an alternate suggestion would be that's anywhere close to as easy to use as Microsoft Word or Google Docs are for the average computer user. Keep in mind that with how prolific computers are in everyday life, the average computer user does not give a wit about their computers, software, coding, or learning about them at all. They just want the ability to put words on a page as quick a possible and for it to not look like it was written in Notepad with a console font.
This sort of word processing has the biggest market share for the exact same reason that Windows (and now OSX) have such a large market share of OS usage while Linux is far behind—ease of use for people that do not want to learn.
When I'm at work and have to churn out a business note quickly, Google Docs or Word (depending on sensitivity ratings) are the tools of choice. When I'm writing creatively, tools like Scrivener or Pages are preferable. But a friend of mine who does not give a single crap about technology wrote his latest book, he did it happily in Microsoft Word because he's more interested in getting his words written down than he is in formatting how his words are rendered.
Ah, but I assume this author would have the exact same issue with LibreOffice as he does with Word.
I just think the author doesn't quite realize the extent of what he's asking for when he demands that MS Word, and the format its standardized that people expect out of a word processor, to die. There's a big reason why they took over in the first place and he never gets anywhere close to addressing it: ease of use for people who won't learn.
I usually see this argument in Linux-promoting articles. I understand the position on smaller scales, and personal levels, but to suggest it as the new de facto standard without a comprehensive solution suggested is a huge gap in argumentation.
Word being easy to use is a myth. Most people know how to use word because they've received training in one form or another. It was part of the curriculum in middle and high school, and it was even a general education requirement for my college degree. Word is the standard because the Office Suite was much better than the competition in the 90s and became a de-facto business standard.
Honestly, Word should be going away soon. Unless you are trying to draft a paper document primarily made of text, Word is not the tool you should be using. Forcing people to submit their work in Word format is wasteful, unnecessary, arguably exclusionary, and probably the only real reason why Word is 'the standard' still.
I believe that ease of use and ease of learning are two different things. There are many formats which I know are easy to use but when I see a layperson begin to use them, they have a lot of trouble trying to wrap their heads around the prerequisite concepts at all before they can begin understanding how to use it, such as HTML or Markdown.
Ease of use is an even easier myth to disprove. From the 90s until Microsoft introduced the Ribbon interface, almost every word processor had a nearly identical interface.
Weather the ribbon interface is better or worse than the old version seems to be a matter of oppinion, but for me I find that it takes me much longer to find the functionality that I need.
To be clear, I have been specifically talking about ease of learning this whole time. Everyone argues ease of use because it's easier to make arguments about, but I'm saying ease of learning is the real make or break, and pretty much every argument about "we should use this software paradigm instead of the super popular one!" is broken by it.
I'm having difficulty with this conversation because you seem to be arguing different things at different times. You just made an argument about formats as if I had suggested everyone should learn how to code. Now you are talking about software paradigms. You might be confusing me with other commenters, because I am just talking about applications.
My arguement was that Word is not any easier to use than other word processors. And for the same initial reasons I have given you, it is not any easier to learn either.
The paradigm is the format in this case. The paradigm of word processors following Word's format. This author thinks it should die. It has nothing to do with learning to code, but it is about learning. Learning how to use the software. These are people who will never, ever know code.
What I am trying to suggest is that your argument is like the author's: it's only argues how easy an application to use. It doesn't consider how easy that application is to learn, and that is what I am saying is always the missing factor of these sorts of arguments.
It's not just Word the author is referring to, though. Google Docs and LibreOffice are also the kind of thing the author seems to want to do away with. He wants to kill the entire approach to word processing that Word started and popularized.
Again, my question for him is what other paradigm he suggests to take over for the current word processing paradigm, because he doesn't actually suggest one for general use. He only gives a specific personal example.
Libre Office is more neat these days than Microsoft Office. It provides the similar classic offline document editing options and lacks the "cloud" bloat. Interface is customizable, ribbon can be enabled. I'm happy this open source project exists.
The time for Emacs has come.
Your comment made me wonder if emacs already had a WYSIWYG mode, and to my surprise I found Richard Stallman really wants that to happen.
In a way, it does already, with something called enriched text mode.
Finding this out may have pushed me to the vim side of the editor wars.
Org, Markdown and other modes can hide the markup and render it graphically. But Vim doesn't have rich text either (it does the same thing Emacs do), so I don't get how that made you choose it.
That part was meant to be humorous.
Oops. Sorry. I admit to taking Emacs more seriously than I should. And I like Vim too.
Charles Stross wrote one of my favorite books, Accelerando . I don't care what software he used.