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Why Microsoft Word must die

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Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#241

Post by ShirtlessRod »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #175
Ralith wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I use LaTeX and it gives me the results I want and I don't find myself spending inordinate amounts of time tweaking things, does that make me an intermediate user? I guess I had better stop learning.

This just goes to show you the shabby general state of word processing software. I've been looking for something better than OO/Libre/MSWord/etc for years and avoided using LaTeX because the workflow is _so_ 80's. However, having recently decided to give up, and switched to using LaTeX, my worksheets, course notes, exams, and presentations have never looked better, and take about the same time, or less to create. I'l…

> avoided using LaTeX because the workflow is _so_ 80's.

I've never understood this way of thinking. Either it works or it doesn't work -- the age should have nothing to do with it.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#242

Post by ZeroGravitas »

triton wrote: post #99
cstross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's actually a load or horse shit (excuse my French). I've worked with both ODF and OOXML extensively as we write document templating software and I'll pick OOXML over ODF any say. It's less quirky, there are decent COTS tools to handle it and the output rendering is consistent regardless of which tool you pick to do the rendering. It's also better documented and way more intuitive. I really don't know where you a…

Last time I checked not even Microsoft Office implemented the version of OOXML they forced through ISO which somewhat undermines your point.

http://adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx

Note that post isn't written by some random GNU fanatic, but one of the key figures involved in the standardization.

"The simple validators developed by me (Office-o-tron) and by Jesper Lund Stocholm (ISO/IEC 29500 Validator) reveal, to Microsoft's dismay, that the output documents of the Office 2010 Beta are non-conformant, and that this is in large part due to glaring uncorrected problems in the text (e.g. contradictory provisions). It is also a worrying commentary on the standards-savvyness of the Office developers that the first amateur attempts of part-time outsiders find problems with documents which Redmond’s internal QA processes have missed. I confidently predict that fuller validation of Office document is likely to reveal many problems both with those documents, and with the Standard itself, over the coming years."

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#243

Post by School-Cotton »

tomrod wrote: post #221
School-Cotton wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very disingenuous. The libreoffice code base is big and complex and hard enough to ramp up on that fixing your personal problems with it would quickly become a full time job, even if you already know all there is to know about programming enterprise software in c++

That depends on what you're trying to fix. Add a nonlinear solver to calc? Sure. Add a fill function into draw? _Maybe_ a two-month after-hours project.

Draw internals are an absolute mess. I've tried to fix bugs in Draw multiple times and just ended up discouraged.

It took me around 3 months, full-time, to write an import filter for LibreOffice that still only kinda-sorta works. And it depended very little on the rest of the codebase.

I think you underestimate how complicated a modern office suite is, and how much years-old technical debt there is floating around in LibreOffice.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#245

Post by ShirtlessRod »

sounds wrote: post #15
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…

Arguing this is the exceptional case misses his point, I think. He is intelligent, eloquent, and absolutely correct. In _any_ field except "business letters and reports" there are numerous talented, creative people who use other software and understand his lament: "the major publishers have been browbeaten into believing that Word is the sine qua non of document production systems." Some examples: ∙ Hard science rese…

Maybe I had a unique experience, but when I was in grad school (chemical engineering) we exclusively used LaTeX for thesis work. The journals we worked with also required it, if I recall correctly.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#246

Post by MAGZine »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #82
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

> The truly irreplaceable product is Excel. I’m by no means an Excel power user, but Apple Numbers provides everything I need in a spreadsheet app. I have native Numbers apps on my laptop, desktop, tablet, and phone (but there’s also a web app). Whenever I save a file on one device, it’s automatically added to all the others. A file created on my laptop can be edited on my phone and vice versa. Also, Apple Numbers im…

So Numbers is a good, platform-locked spreadsheet editor for simple uses?

Dropbox+Excel seems like it would do the same thing, but even with more flexibility (including version control, document sharing) and supporting even more platforms.

I don't think you can ever consider spreadsheet software to be 'user friendly'. They're spreadsheets.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#247

Post by pseut »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #158
GuiA wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your average college professor isn't going to learn how to use a version control system to suggest changes to his student's thesis-in-progress. Word has version control though, and it's appreciated by many in academia. Version control for humans is a Big Startup Idea, I wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox and Github were trying to tackle it (from 2 different angles: Dropbox from the "how do we get average the user to…

Yes, but it only works when you use word. Yours sincerely, a graduate student whose thesis is written in LaTeX and then converted to RTF and then hand edited so his supervisor(s) can give him comments. I sent them a link to my github repository, but they never took me up on my offer :(

If you don't already do it, set up separate branches for each advisor/supervisor so you can add their comments there, then merge it back with your own work. i.e., just pretend that they're using git too, but do it for them.

And I second the pandoc recommendation if you can get it to work

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#248

Post by rbanffy »

triton wrote: post #99
cstross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's actually a load or horse shit (excuse my French). I've worked with both ODF and OOXML extensively as we write document templating software and I'll pick OOXML over ODF any say. It's less quirky, there are decent COTS tools to handle it and the output rendering is consistent regardless of which tool you pick to do the rendering. It's also better documented and way more intuitive. I really don't know where you a…

> there are decent COTS tools to handle it

Of course there are - Microsoft's ecosystem is huge. And tools can use Office as a library

> output rendering is consistent

That's not a format problem

> It's also better documented

Now that's just wrong. It's more extensively documented (the spec is an impressive stack when printed) but there cannot possibly be a better specification than freely available source code. If you really want to know how to read an ODF document, you can always read LibreOffice's source code. And use it too.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#249

Post by rbanffy »

serge2k wrote: post #68
cstross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Parts of it say "do as Word 6 does".

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#250

Post by pseut »

joosters wrote: post #227
thuuuomas wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world won't just use the pieces of software that you want, you are going to have to live with other people's choices. Choice- singular. The real problem with Word, as highlighted in OP's post, is its longstanding market dominance & attitude of outright hostility towards interoperability.

Just read the rest of the comments, there are plenty of alternatives. The author isn't complaining about a lack of choices, either. Instead, he is moaning that other people have made a different choice from him.

No. Look, I'll read the last paragraph for you:

"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, from Scrivener (a program designed for managing the structure and editing of large compound documents, which works in a manner analogous to a programmer's integrated development environment if Word were a basic text editor) to classic text editors such as Vim. 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."

--TFA

So, you can disagree, but the "why" of your first comment is pretty directly addressed by the author.

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