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Using Microsoft Word with Git

blog.martinfenner.org

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Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#101

Post by Atropos »

tom1239 wrote: post #50
ghego1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a lot of experience in both legal (academic and lawyer) and tech (developer and founder), I totally agree with you and think you framed very well the situation. As a lawyer I can full confirm that our industry works as you have described (as regards documents workflows), and with my tech background I can also confirm that most features of dev-oriented solutions like git are mostly uninteresting from a lawyer's…

Similarly, I am a qualified lawyer. I previously worked in a big law firm in London, which describes itself internally as both the “best” and “the most advanced” law firm in the world. I now work full-time as an engineer in software, and increasingly in hardware. I agree with both comments. To add, in large-scale corporate/commercial practice (which is the area which I practised), Git would be useful in replacing ema…

I am still working in big law and I disagree that the benefits of adopting more advanced version control would be small. However, I work in a field that is a mix of regulatory law and litigation, where almost no work is based on templates and most things are drafted from scratch.

One very large problem that typically comes up in large teams: Only 1 team member can edit the the "live version" of a document (it's locked for editing by the version control system), the other team members need to work "offline" and then reintegrate their changes/drafts into the main document. Everybody has lived through the horror story of a team member in the different time zone still having checked out the live version and going to sleep :)

Sometimes you have to circulate a draft document in parallel to multiple parties (e.g. colleagues with special subject expertise + client's inhouse lawyers + client's technical experts + other party's law firm + other party's inhouse lawyers + other party's technical experts). It can happen that you need to reintegrate comments from different parties to different versions of the drafts, e.g., if your client gives feedback quickly and you re-circulate updated version internally, then you receive other party's comments to the older draft version...

Besides the mechanical aspects of reintegrating comments, it is also difficult to track if everybody who needs to sign off has actually signed off on the parts of the documents they had to review. Often it gets lost who made which comment/change. It can be quite awkward if a regulator asks you "Isn't the technical statement on page 12 contradicted by fact XYZ" - please explain until tomorrow - and you have to quickly figure out who actually put that in...

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#102

Post by kevincox »

andi999 wrote: post #69
tom1239 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I am a qualified lawyer. I previously worked in a big law firm in London, which describes itself internally as both the “best” and “the most advanced” law firm in the world. I now work full-time as an engineer in software, and increasingly in hardware. I agree with both comments. To add, in large-scale corporate/commercial practice (which is the area which I practised), Git would be useful in replacing ema…

Actually what is so time inefficient about this workflow? Sending by email doesnt take a minute. Also it is a great way to transfer responsibility (in whose park is the ball).

There are many flows that don't work. You can only have a single person working at the file at a time. You need a mutex (which email is in this case). However imagine that you send back a file, then realize that you missed something. You can add more changes and send it again, but if the other party has started working already now they have no reasonable way to merge in the new changes.

Also is there anything that actually guarantees that the tracked changes were the only changes made? I haven't seen this but it seems like a serious flaw in the process.

Also what if you get an intern to do some of the work, then you want to review the changes between version:$lastyousaw and version:$current. IIUC the mail with tracked changes only allows you to view one "patch" at a time.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#103

Post by GordonS »

CJefferson wrote: post #61
MarcScott wrote: post #28

I really don't understand how Word remains so popular. It was created at a time when few people had internet access, and was designed to produce printed documents. It was the perfect tool to write newsletters, flyers, articles, academic papers and manuscripts. The world has moved on though, and I fail to see Word's relevance today, other than the sheer number of people that are familiar with it. Word is expensive, pr…

I agree that word is bad, but I don't think we have a great replacement yet. Markdown -- standard markdown isn't expressive enough (no tables for example), there are lots of extensions but none which are "standard". LaTeX -- doesn't produce accessible documents, so is a non-starter in lots of areas (seriously, the PDFs it generates are some of the worst around when it comes to accessibility. Word's are amazing).

> I agree that word is bad

If we put aside the Word file format, and maybe the ribbon, is Word bad though?

I've been using it for decades, and have tried OpenOffice and LibreOffice too over the years - nothing comes close to Word.

Markdown is not suitable for "normal" users, but as a developer, I've come to prefer markdown for technical documentation and such (especially where I want a history, diffs etc), but I still use Word for a lot of other things.

Word is incredibly fully-featured - I use a lot of functionality, but am likely still only using a fraction of what it has. It really does have all your document editing needs covered.

Aside from the file format, I think Word is a fantastic piece of software. I have a few annoyances with it now and then, but it's been very dependable and kept me in good stead over the years.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#104

Post by asciimov »

MarcScott wrote: post #28

I really don't understand how Word remains so popular. It was created at a time when few people had internet access, and was designed to produce printed documents. It was the perfect tool to write newsletters, flyers, articles, academic papers and manuscripts. The world has moved on though, and I fail to see Word's relevance today, other than the sheer number of people that are familiar with it. Word is expensive, pr…

> I really don't understand how Word remains so popular.

Because Office/Word has become the hammer of the document writing world.

It isn't an issue that it's a bad product and better products our out there (and there are).

It is that everyone is expected to know how to use word at a basic level. From Secretaries to VPs and CEOs, almost universally these people can open a word document, edit it, and save it.

Because of this expectation, it is easier to throw money at Microsoft and have the tool you can expect everyone to use.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#105

Post by agumonkey »

atoav wrote: post #35
codingdave wrote: post #14

My SaaS deals primarily with legal documents that for years had been maintained with Word. The pain of emailing documents is real, but the comfort level with how Word works is also real. Over the years, most organizations have developed internal workflows to share and send documents around that bypass the pains, and while they may not be perfect, they work. The funny thing is that the document authors like these ways…

As someone who is at the intersection of tech and arts one of the things I like about using git in projects is that it is very clear what is the latest official defintive final variant of a piece of data and you don't have to ask anybody to get it. When I worked as a VFX freelancer I was amazed at the number of hours (=money) burned by marketing agencies who didn't manage to give me the definitive variant for a simpl…

most offices are an immense source of waste regarding information exchange.

some would say whoever solves that problems is filthy rich

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#106

Post by michihuber »

Atropos wrote: post #101
tom1239 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I am a qualified lawyer. I previously worked in a big law firm in London, which describes itself internally as both the “best” and “the most advanced” law firm in the world. I now work full-time as an engineer in software, and increasingly in hardware. I agree with both comments. To add, in large-scale corporate/commercial practice (which is the area which I practised), Git would be useful in replacing ema…

I am still working in big law and I disagree that the benefits of adopting more advanced version control would be small. However, I work in a field that is a mix of regulatory law and litigation, where almost no work is based on templates and most things are drafted from scratch. One very large problem that typically comes up in large teams: Only 1 team member can edit the the "live version" of a document (it's locke…

Would you also email me so I can ask a few questions?

m@replace-with-my-username.com

Would be much appreciated!

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#107

Post by agumonkey »

codingdave wrote: post #14

My SaaS deals primarily with legal documents that for years had been maintained with Word. The pain of emailing documents is real, but the comfort level with how Word works is also real. Over the years, most organizations have developed internal workflows to share and send documents around that bypass the pains, and while they may not be perfect, they work. The funny thing is that the document authors like these ways…

nice story (really), makes me wonder if a special kind of group merge to give a better idea of who/why on the changes at a particular time would be interesting

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#108

Post by bovermyer »

BeetleB wrote: post #97
bovermyer wrote: post #11

I gave up using Word to write manuscripts when I switched to Markdown documents in git. In the last few months, though, I gave up on Markdown to switch to a more robust format - LaTeX. Before I switched, I didn't know LaTeX at all, but I knew from my reading that it had the features I needed.

I hope to see a post from you one day saying "I gave up on LaTeX and switched to org" :-) Seriously, org has served all my authoring needs for over a decade now. You can export to LaTeX and HTML easily, and now pandoc does a decent job of exporting to other formats. You can embed LaTeX lines in your org document, so you get the full power of LaTeX, without having to write LaTeX for everything. Tables are hellish in L…

I've tried to use Emacs a few times before. It just never clicked for me.

And honestly... I enjoy writing LaTeX. The structure just feels really comfortable to me.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#109

Post by BeetleB »

bovermyer wrote: post #108
BeetleB wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope to see a post from you one day saying "I gave up on LaTeX and switched to org" :-) Seriously, org has served all my authoring needs for over a decade now. You can export to LaTeX and HTML easily, and now pandoc does a decent job of exporting to other formats. You can embed LaTeX lines in your org document, so you get the full power of LaTeX, without having to write LaTeX for everything. Tables are hellish in L…

I've tried to use Emacs a few times before. It just never clicked for me. And honestly... I enjoy writing LaTeX. The structure just feels really comfortable to me.

Oh, I was all about LaTeX for a decade prior to switching to org, so I know the feeling. However, org is just so much more lightweight that I found myself writing/authoring a lot more once I switched. I now often author emails where I need rich text (embedded code with syntax highlighting, tables, etc) in org.

Oh, and I try to do all my presentations in it too - it can export to Beamer.

As for Emacs, I know what you mean. I tried it on and off for 10-11 years before I finally stuck to it. In my case, what helped was that vi/vim really was much worse, so it's not like I had a seriously good alternative. I tired of repeatedly switching editors per task (had one for Python, another for LaTeX, etc). I finally one day said "I need to learn a really good editor and stick to it." I bought the Emacs book, spent a whole week reading it, and forced myself to Google a solution whenever I couldn't remember how to do something. I was surprised how quickly I became proficient in it - within a month of use.

(All without learning elisp - I was a "power" Emacs user for 8-9 years before I learned elisp properly).

And then I discovered org mode. While I've encountered people who were proficient Emacs users but left for something else, I haven't found anyone who is an org mode user who switched to something else. I know people who use other editors in general, but still use Emacs just to use org mode.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#110

Post by juped »

binbag wrote: post #22

I don’t understand why this 6 year old article has been posted when current Microsoft 365 versions of Word et al have built in version control and real time collaboration.

It already existed at the time this article was written, as well, I think. There is probably a niche for purely ergonomic tooling that works with, not against, the built-in features, but a lot of this is a matter of positioning - I know some expensive and widely used legal document management systems that are strictly worse than the built-in features (regularly lose important data thanks to user error in ways that are impossible with the built in features). They still sell and get used.
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