The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps • Hacker News Board

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#101

Post by O1111OOO » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

c-smile wrote: post #85

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #7

One advantage of Microsoft Office is that I can reasonably expect that in 20 years Word will still be around and will be able to read the files I write today. With these apps, I would be surprised if in 5 years I could read the files created with these apps.

Try my HTML-NOTEPAD then ( https://html-notepad.com ). Documents there are just HTML files that will be readable for centuries to come.

What a great solution! I've been on the lookout for a basic (non-bloated) local, html-based word-processor to replace RTF (for myself and as a recommendation for others). HTML-notepad is loading very quickly on an older dual-core 1.2ghz laptop I'm using right now (xfce, debian 64bit). The resulting html is remarkably tidy.

Love the fact that it's portable! Plus... no data-mining:)

I have a large set of local html pages that I use for bookmarks, PIM stuff, etc. It's my goto personal organizer. Mostly html 3.x, lots of tables. HTML-notepad has handled these pages without issues. To my surprise, it even displayed a search form embedded on one of these pages elegantly. Really like the way you implemented the editing of links to minimize the steps: click on link, pop-up to edit.

Also integrates into Firefox as a "view source" editor - nice (since it handles my local html pages so well)!

The only basic tag that's missing is the HR tag (horizontal rule). It displays fine but doesn't appear on any of the menus. Tables are very well behaved but... minor point: I expected that pressing TAB within a TD would jump me to the next TD.

It doesn't seem to care about html tags it doesn't understand - basically leaving them alone. This is pretty awesome, since I use the following a lot:

     
      
      Title (data)
      
      Expanded, multi-line (data)

I've been "playing" around with html-notepad for about an hour and so far, no issues whatsoever. It's not often that a new program appears that could potentially become an integral part of my daily workflow. Thank you for sharing this!

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#102

Post by int_19h » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 10:19 PM UTC

jdblair wrote: post #89

int_19h wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The binary formats that immediately preceded the current OOXML were OLE compound files (aka "structured storage), which is basically a filesystem-in-a-file that's intended to be used for serialization purposes - to allow files to have arbitrary nesting of COM components. Individual data structures are then binary-serialized into that compound file, but I don't think it's accurate to call it a "memory dump". People of…

That's how the DOC format in the 90s and early 00s worked. I was under the impression that the early formats for Word on DOS, Windows and Macintosh were all different and represented in-memory structures written directly to disk. Unfortunately, I can't find a citation, so I may be mistaken.

There was certainly some format that Word and Excel used before compound files, since COM Structured Storage only appeared in 90s, and the first version of Office to use it was (IIRC) Office 97. That older format may well be some kind of a memory dump. But I don't think there are many Office files still floating around these days, and most third party software that works with them seems to assume that it's 97 or later.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#103

Post by mickael-kerjean » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 11:11 PM UTC

Djvacto wrote: post #74

I'd love to have one notebook-type app that works between all my devices, or some combination that lets me have the same or similar content. I loved OneNote back in Uni, though I reached a point where I stopped taking notes (through the fault of the powerpoint teaching method, and my own laziness), and OneNote does seem to be a bit bloat-y when it comes to sync. Stuff like EMACS org-mode (or, preferrably, some kind o…

Yes, there's a bunch of org mode client that works everywhere, I built this one: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash/wiki/Release-0....

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#104

Post by ghostly_s » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 1:59 AM UTC

jacobkg wrote: post #16

Not mentioned in the article but WorkFlowy (YC ‘10) is still going strong. Minimalist web-based word processor with a flexible outline format. Can hold hundreds of thousands of items, without you getting overwhelmed.

I'm a Workflowy user but would never describe it as a general-purpose word processor, even with the "minimal" modifier. There are no formatting tools whatsoever. It's more of a minimalist mind-mapping tool.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#105

Post by ghostly_s » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

bkanber wrote: post #20

shanghaiaway wrote: post #2

Notion and Coda are attractive, but I'm wondering if the learning curve is too steep. Not sure if my team would use them without me setting everything up.

I use Notion for personal projects and love it. Very easy to learn. I used it to plan and execute my NaNoWriMo challenge last month and really have nothing bad to say about it. Works well on all my devices. But it's unstructured. I think in a work environment it's most useful as a wiki/project planner/lightweight tracker, but still can't replace the MS/Google office suite, and can't replace Jira/Asana for in depth ti…

Interesting, haven't heard of this one. From a quick perusal of the site it looks kind of like a more feature-ful Workflowy, is that a fair impression?

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#106

Post by honkycat » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

My problem with these sorts of tools is always the same: I have been spoiled by my emacs keybindings ( evil mode ), the ability to parse structured text, org-mode, and command line tooling.

I do not have to open a web browser and navigate, I just launch my helm-project-search buffer and type `org/work`. I then have a fuzzy search that matches on file name. Toss these files into a dropbox folder, and you are good to go.

None of these applications I have seen support structured text such that I can export / import through Emacs. They cling to your data as tightly as possible and do NOT want to let it go.

I was working as a hobby on an RPG supplement for a popular anime series. I was attracted to notion and coda, but was dismayed to find I did not have a way to turn the data I entered into structured data which I can query to generate an attractive webpage for the game.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#107

Post by bkanber » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 12:38 AM UTC

ghostly_s wrote: post #105

bkanber wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Notion for personal projects and love it. Very easy to learn. I used it to plan and execute my NaNoWriMo challenge last month and really have nothing bad to say about it. Works well on all my devices. But it's unstructured. I think in a work environment it's most useful as a wiki/project planner/lightweight tracker, but still can't replace the MS/Google office suite, and can't replace Jira/Asana for in depth ti…

Interesting, haven't heard of this one. From a quick perusal of the site it looks kind of like a more feature-ful Workflowy, is that a fair impression?

I'm not very familiar with Workflowy. They are similar though. I would say that Workflowy is what you'd get if you restricted Notion to only allow list items at the top level.

In Notion every paragraph is a "node", and a node can be text, media, list item, database (excellent feature, though, really more of a table where each item is a page), reference to other object, etc. Anything can have a parent of anything else, and the UI/UX is smooth.

For my NaNoWriMo project I've got databases of characters, places, maps, etc, and then pages for chapters with all the text, comments, to do lists, etc.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#108

Post by ghostly_s » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

bkanber wrote: post #107

ghostly_s wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, haven't heard of this one. From a quick perusal of the site it looks kind of like a more feature-ful Workflowy, is that a fair impression?

I'm not very familiar with Workflowy. They are similar though. I would say that Workflowy is what you'd get if you restricted Notion to only allow list items at the top level. In Notion every paragraph is a "node", and a node can be text, media, list item, database (excellent feature, though, really more of a table where each item is a page), reference to other object, etc. Anything can have a parent of anything else…

For the benefit of anyone else wondering the same: I checked it out and no, it's really nothing like Workflowy. The key feature of Workflowy is that you can 'zoom in' to any list item, essentially meaning any data item can also be a document which makes it actually viable to do everything at the top level. It doesn't seem Notion supports this workflow. Definitely jealous of some of the advanced data-type features in Notion but it feels much too fiddly for my mental model. Thanks for the explanation, though.