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Using Microsoft Word with Git

blog.martinfenner.org

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Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#121

Post by beagle3 »

WoodenChair wrote: post #74
MarcScott wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my argument is that WYSIWYG needs to die. For the vast majority of people they want nothing more than: > text > image > more text > table > more text There are any number of applications that allow you to write markdown and view the generated HTML in whatever formatting you want. Your recipient then gets to choose their own fonts, colours etc, which from an accessibility point of view, is much better. Unless…

> I think my argument is that WYSIWYG needs to die. WYSIWYG is a big part of what made the GUI revolution so successful. The computer for the rest of us, wouldn't be for the rest of us, if we had to worry about Git and how to render our file format. I've had the same frustrations dealing with publishers and Word templates as you had. Your mistake is that you are conflating our experience writing a technical book with…

WYSIWYG for professional word processing is like training wheels - it lets you start being productive on day one, but if you don't spend the effort to learn how to work without them, they get in the way and make you slower -- although you wouldn't know that unless you've seen someone who can do the job without them.

I have not used Word for ~10 years, but not in the last ~20 or so years, after I realized how much time and effort it cost me -- nearly missed an important deadline because of a Word 2 vs Word 6 incompatibility that manifested in a very inopportune moment.

It's been around for almost 30 years. I'm constantly receiving documents from people who've used it for >25years. And there is never use of styles, often spaces instead of tabs, many "new lines" instead of a page break, and a host of other things like that. References are not dynamic (just typed out) meaning that an item inserted in the middle of a list makes many of them wrong.

The vast majority of people who have used it for decades use it mostly as a smart typewriter, because the "pro" features like styles require a lot of discipline and the "let's just press the bold button" is too easy and enticing.

WYSIWYG needs to die whenever anything professional is needed.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#122

Post by rleigh »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #81
andi999 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats wrong with the tex typesetting?

The worst part is the default font, Computer Modern, which is absolutely deplorable. I'm not a big fan of the general style of "modern" fonts (a name coined at the end of the 19th centry when they still were actually modern). But, worse than that, Computer Modern is horrifically slim and spindly. I've read repeated rumours over the years that it was deliberately this way because the printers of the time used ink that…

Have you tried XeTeX with the TeX Gyre fonts? It made a big difference for me. (I previously used pslatex and then pdflatex with Palatino/mathpazo as well.)

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#123

Post by bovermyer »

BeetleB wrote: post #109
bovermyer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's really cool. It sounds like your commitment to learning Emacs mirrored my commitment to LaTeX - didn't know it, but was highly motivated to learn. I love that.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#124

Post by johnwalkr »

crazygringo wrote: post #56
lewisjoe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2013, we were hacking away a document tracking system to solve exactly this. We thought we were disrupting the legal market while in reality the lawyers were way too comfortable with Word and emailing docx files. Exactly like you've hinted, the right way to crack this is to bring a full-fledged word processor like Google Docs, but instead of ad-hoc realtime collaborations the software has to enable customizable un…

Yup. Even Google Docs supports this types of approvals workflow (in beta): https://support.google.com/a/answer/9381067?hl=en Unlike its normal collaboration mode, the file gets locked down.

This looks great!

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#125

Post by andi999 »

kevincox wrote: post #102
andi999 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ac…

To argue for this workflow: the mutex is soft (social) which is a good thing, sometimes ppl do not reply on time and you need to move forward. For having new ideas/paragraphs after sending out, you either inform the colleague to hold it until your done, or you send a paragraph and ask him to merge it.

The mail allows you to see all patches, sometimes 'clean slate' is done by accepting all changes. While this sounds like a problem in theory, in practise its not.

I agree that things can be better somehow, but it is really difficult to see any solution which is at least 10% better. The current workflow also has the advantages: - data is as safe as your filesystem and email system together - Word file is generally not considered a vendor lock-in - everybody understands the workflow - nobody can block the workflow (like not checking in again with sharepoint)

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#126

Post by andi999 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #75
andi999 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats wrong with the tex typesetting?

I can't stand the fonts, don't like how it applies space, etc. TeX is like a programmable pocket calculator from the 1970s, way ahead of it's time but today it's something that conspires with Word, Google Docs, and other dull tools to suck out the oxygen for sharp tools.

So which programm does it better?

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#127

Post by rperez333 »

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #96
rperez333 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks very interesting. Do you think it can be applied to other kinds of XML files? I'm interested in using git with a vfx software (The Foundry Nuke) that writes XML projects, and it would be great to have some versioning system for it. I've tried using the git diff patience algorithm, but didn't work well - frequently, the diff was about to remove every single line and add all them back to the XML file.

In your situation, I'd just whip together a quick PowerShell script like I have here, but tailor it to the structure of your file format: traverse the XML tree and have a few if-else statements which filter out noisy metadata you don't need to see in the diff, if any, and save the resulting collected text node contents as a text file alongside the XML files. Each commit with changes to the XML will thanks to the Git…

thank you guys for these ideas, both sound great (powershell script and linter) and I'm confident I will get something working now!

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#128

Post by ghego1 »

beagle3 wrote: post #120
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…

I am not a lawyer, but as an entrepreneur I've had to send-and-receive a lot of legal documents with investor's lawyers, almost exclusively in .docx. I never trust the received file's "track changes", always compare to the latest version I've sent -- and it is extremely common to find a change that wasn't mentioned/discussed, and somehow magically "accepted" or otherwise not tracked in the other side's "track changes…

You are right, this happens a lot when drafting documents out-of-court documents.

IMHO this is a useful "feature" for lawyers. Don't forget that usually lawyers of two parties are working"together" only apparently, when in fact they are always litigating for their client's best interest.

The goal is not to reach a common agreement, but to reach the agreement that best serves the interest of one's client, most of the times at the expenses of the other party.

This is achieved in many ways, one being having text in a contract that the other party is not fully aware of, either because it's not properly understood or noticed.

This means that including in a document text without the other party noticing is a good old trick that quite valuable to any lawyer.

As a lawyer my position on this is that it's the other party to blame if it did not check the document properly (I always compare the documents for differences even when sent with revisions).

> (c) usually charge by the hour, so some efficiencies are actually going to cost them money if they implement them

I tend to disagree with this line of thought. Lawyers have a thousand ways to inflate their timesheets. Using a tool that makes their life more miserable by forcing them to do manual work that could be automated is certainly not one of them.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#129

Post by beagle3 »

ghego1 wrote: post #128
beagle3 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer, but as an entrepreneur I've had to send-and-receive a lot of legal documents with investor's lawyers, almost exclusively in .docx. I never trust the received file's "track changes", always compare to the latest version I've sent -- and it is extremely common to find a change that wasn't mentioned/discussed, and somehow magically "accepted" or otherwise not tracked in the other side's "track changes…

You are right, this happens a lot when drafting documents out-of-court documents. IMHO this is a useful "feature" for lawyers. Don't forget that usually lawyers of two parties are working"together" only apparently, when in fact they are always litigating for their client's best interest. The goal is not to reach a common agreement, but to reach the agreement that best serves the interest of one's client, most of the…

> As a lawyer my position on this is that it's the other party to blame if it did not check the document properly (I always compare the documents for differences even when sent with revisions).

As a non-lawyer, this is why they say "the problem with lawyers is that 95% of them give the rest of them a bad name". And as I mentioned, I also always compare.

> Lawyers have a thousand ways to inflate their timesheets. Using a tool that makes their life more miserable by forcing them to do manual work that could be automated is certainly not one of them.

I agree, and they do inflate them regularly -- all lawyers I asked to draft NDAs and employment agreements for me charged a few hours worth for the first one "because they had to write it" even though it was unchanged from another client (for sure; I've seen that exact one before).

Still, they need to keep an air of "being busy" and "working hard", and the best way to do that is to occasionally work hard.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#130

Post by fredguth »

lewisjoe wrote: post #52
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…

In 2013, we were hacking away a document tracking system to solve exactly this. We thought we were disrupting the legal market while in reality the lawyers were way too comfortable with Word and emailing docx files. Exactly like you've hinted, the right way to crack this is to bring a full-fledged word processor like Google Docs, but instead of ad-hoc realtime collaborations the software has to enable customizable un…

I didn't understand the "customizable unidirectional document workflow". What does it mean?
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