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Why Microsoft Word must die

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Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#61

Post by cstross »

redthrowaway wrote: post #52
zerovox wrote: post #4

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of writers were less technically savvy, happiest writing in Word, or simply wouldn't know how to write in any other format. It makes sense from the publishers point of view to pick one format and stick with it, so they have a consistent editing style and ability, and only have to deal with converting one format into a final publication. I do feel that this is one of those cases where…

Hell, George R.R. Martin uses WordStar 4.0 in DOS. You don't need anything fancy to put chars in a text file.

That may be part of why he writes relatively slowly. (WordStar doesn't exactly provide support for refactoring huge, complex structured documents ...)

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#63

Post by aaronbrethorst »

primelens wrote: post #60
wfunction wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool! What do you like more about it than MS Office?

I tried it because I wanted to try free (as in freedom) software and never felt the need to switch back as it did everything I required of a WYSIWYG word processor. I guess I have just gotten so used to it now that when I use Word/Excel etc (mostly briefly on someone else's computer) I get all confused about their new panel based menu system. The point is not that they are better but that they are a suitable replacem…

The Ribbon is almost seven years old now.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#64

Post by fauigerzigerk »

zerovox wrote: post #54
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes sense from the publishers point of view to pick one format and stick with it, so they have a consistent editing style [...] One problem with Word is exactly that it is very difficult to get anything remotely consistent out of it. Even people who are very knowledgeable and smart are unable to use that hodgepodge of completely intransparent styling features correctly. Anything involving numbering and bullets…

Ah, this is me being misleading, I didn't mean the styling of the document was important(well, until it gets sent to publication, where I am sure you're right about the interns), I really meant the ability and tools to edit/review/track changes and highlight/annotate sections they want changed.

I see what you mean, and you're right, the workflows would be near impossible to manage without standardizing on one format.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#65

Post by serge2k »

sliverstorm wrote: post #34
mtraven wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many other software products have entire groups and conferences dedicated to tracking and mitigating the problems they cause? http://www.eusprig.org/

Linux? ( http://events.linuxfoundation.org/ ) EDA tools? ( http://www.dac.com/ ) Having problems is not the operative issue. It's userbase. All software has problems; Excel is one of the projects that has a large enough userbase that you can schedule conferences about its problems. P.S. "EDA" is of course more than one tool, but it's close to the right scope and what jumps to mind right now.

Every open source project large enough to have a community that cares?

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#66

Post by serge2k »

brymaster wrote: post #17
wfunction wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are solid alternatives to the other products in the office suite Are you sure? Does it not strike you as odd that OpenOffice/LibreOffice still haven't managed to replace Word?

I really think that has to do with Microsoft's lock-in strategy and the fact that people only "know" Office in the corporate space.

Or maybe, just maybe, it could be that word is actually a market leader in terms of features and interface.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#67

Post by clarry »

vzhang wrote: post #55

“The reason I want Word to die is that until it does, it is unavoidable.” I don't know what he would think about air with this hipster mentality.

If air was a big, expensive, complex, hard-to-use, proprietary product that we could perfectly well kill off and do without, I'd loathe it.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#68

Post by serge2k »

cstross wrote: post #30
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.docx is an open format, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

It's a published format. Open, not so much: to parse .docx properly you've basically got to re-implement Word -- they carefully drafted the standard to make it hard for rival XML processors to work on their files.

Can you implement it freely?

Will microsoft sue you into oblivion if you attempt to use it?

"It's hard" doesn't mean it isn't open. It may well mean that it is a crappy format.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#69

Post by e12e »

pasbesoin wrote: post #19
nonchalance wrote: post #3

The truly irreplaceable product is Excel. It is fraught with quirky bugs and limitations and odd conventions (how many people actually end up storing dates before the magic February 29 1900?), yet no alternative can hold a candle to Excel. On the other hand, there are solid alternatives to the other products in the office suite

It's been over a decade since I was a regular, daily Excel user ("power user", frankly). I still, today, haven't seen anything that matches what Excel was already back then. It has its quirks. It's also damned powerful and optimized. (I guess that's including its program-ability and the ability to interface it with external functionality via Win32 et al. I remember, for example, referencing IE 4, then 5, in order to…

It's a shame the "scheme in a grid"-project apparently is dead:

http://siag.nu/

(At least it's not trivial to get it to compile on a modern Linux distro as far as I can tell...).

Not that it's really a replacement for excel for all users, but it was an interesting package.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#70

Post by clarry »

primelens wrote: post #47

LibreOffice is fighting the good fight and for most things it's a great substitute for word. But I've always wondered what would happen if something like Latex were to become truly user friendly - I mean pre-compiled distributions that are easy to download and work without tweaking, relatively good wysiwyg viewers and a less obtuse maze of packages.

I don't think the fight here is Word vs LibreOffice vs Latex vs whatever, it's that it sucks when a very specific format (and workflow or tools, when the format is too complex to be universal like plaintext) is imposed on you even though the task at hand could be easily completed with dozens of different tools. I hate when msword .docs are imposed on me, and I'd hate it just as much if latex or libreoffice was imposed on me the same way.
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