Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Microsoft Word must die

antipope.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 387 posts

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#231

Post by rbanffy »

YeahKIA wrote: post #222
asdasf wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing, programming, or any such thing. He pointed that out. And he pointed out that the industry was still foisting it on him. That is why he wants it to die. This was the summary at the end of the article in fact.

Curious what kind of foisting. I'm sure people might have preferred things in word format. Its just a matter of convenience. But I doubt its foisted. I've seen PDF files to be as annoyingly common particularly in academia. I hate it but I get around by just saving my document as PDF and move on. He's just being overly dramatic.

Most likely when he sends a plain text file to his editor, he gets back a .doc file with the revisions and annotations.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#232

Post by rbanffy »

Ygg2 wrote: post #135
kijin wrote: post #77

> Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination, a petty, unimaginative, inconsistent dictator that is ill-suited to any creative writer's use. Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing, programming, or any such thing. It was designed to help office workers produce business documents (a) quickly, (b) in a format that integrates with all the other programs in the Office suite, and (b)…

>At the end of that novel, Winston loved Big Brother. Because he probably realized that no other program Mostly because he was drugged, physically and psychologically tortured and reduced to his basic instinct and given option to experience its greatest fear or 'love' Big Brother. That's closer to real world than it being the only good option. LibreOffice needs a good compare function, not the whole review shtick.

> Mostly because he was drugged, physically and psychologically tortured and reduced to his basic instinct and given option to experience its greatest fear or 'love' Big Brother.

Sounds remarkably like using Microsoft Office.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#233

Post by filestar »

primelens wrote: post #229
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ribbon is almost seven years old now.

And that's how long I've been MS-free :-).

>And that's how long I've been MS-free :-).

Not if you use StackOverflow or any other site that uses IIS as the webserver, in which case you're using Windows :)

From

http://www.zdnet.com/intel-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop-is-...

>When you go to any large Web site--Google, Facebook, Twitter--you're using Linux."

/joke

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#234

Post by lostlogin »

Steuard wrote: post #154
iSnow wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but using git for collaborative writing? That's like using nukes to get rid of mosquitoes. SVN would be a poor but better choice, but you'd rather use stypi, google docs or something like that.

Wow, do I disagree. I use version control (hg) for solo writing, and I'd love to use it for collaboration if I didn't think it would be an uphill slog to convince my coauthors to learn it too.

I'm guessing that you too have opened a recent-but-not-current doc, made changes, added polish etc, only to realise a few hours down the track that you opened a legacy version. Having multiple backups with numbered version names etc is all very well, but when you do it manually and you are working late at night, tired, it's way too easy to screw up up. Better document version control sounds excellent.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#235

Post by ShirtlessRod »

asdasf wrote: post #204
kijin wrote: post #77

> Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination, a petty, unimaginative, inconsistent dictator that is ill-suited to any creative writer's use. Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing, programming, or any such thing. It was designed to help office workers produce business documents (a) quickly, (b) in a format that integrates with all the other programs in the Office suite, and (b)…

>Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing, programming, or any such thing. He pointed that out. And he pointed out that the industry was still foisting it on him. That is why he wants it to die. This was the summary at the end of the article in fact.

Then shouldn't he be far more mad at his industry, not the tool?

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#236

Post by iSnow »

Too wrote: post #217
iSnow wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but using git for collaborative writing? That's like using nukes to get rid of mosquitoes. SVN would be a poor but better choice, but you'd rather use stypi, google docs or something like that.

I can not think of any scenario where svn would be preferable over a distributed vcs such as git or mercurial. They can both be used exactly the same way as svn if you feel for it but come with tons of other benefits. I even think there's less friction to start with for non techincal people because you are always working in "everything always checked out"-mode and there is no need for a common server. Just let them e…

>I can not think of any scenario where svn would be preferable over a distributed vcs such as git or mercurial.

After forgetting to push after commit and then dropping your laptop, you'll know.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#237

Post by lostlogin »

slacka wrote: post #220
thaumasiotes wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what is the etiquette for filing bug reports? I think of bugs as something not working as intended. Pressing left from a selection taking the cursor one space to the left of its rightmost extent, instead of to the leftmost extent, is stupid, but presumably working as intended. Should I file a bug saying OOo doesn't do HTML syntax highlighting? A bug complaining that in all the years I've had it installed (pre…

It's called a feature request. If you think bitcoin mining falls under the scope an office suite, please do us all a favor and stay away from their bug tracker.

I'm missing something very funny I suspect. Please elaborate.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#238

Post by brymaster »

serge2k wrote: post #66
brymaster wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nonsense, we're talking about a word processor here and Office/Word has been heavily criticized for it's interface and incremental features (or lack of reasons to upgrade) in each release. Features? 99% of the time you're either writing a letter/resume, reading some lengthy terms and conditions doc or reading someone else's resume.

Office/Word is what they learn in school (lock-in strategy) and Office/Word is what corporate apathy and only "knowing" MS software leads to in the workplace. You work somewhere, you use Office. Period.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#239

Post by MarcScott »

In my school I'm trying my best to push students away from using Word. If they're making quick notes, I ask them to do it in a text editor. If they're presenting work for review I ask them to write it in markdown. This is only for my CompSci classes, but it's a start. My next mission is to break the stranglehold that PowerPoint has on my students.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#240

Post by MarcScott »

hydralist wrote: post #91
InclinedPlane wrote: post #81

It should. Word's roots reach back to an era when the primary way to share documents was by printing them out. And that heritage is deeply ingrained in so much of it. But that's not the way documents are shared today. I'd be surprised if even 1% of all documents created in Word in 2013 are printed out, yet all of those optimizations and compromises are still there. Unfortunately, not many people have come up with una…

kids printing school papers has to make that number > 1

My students _never_ print school papers. Submissions are all by email or the learning platform.
Post reply on HN