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Why Microsoft Word must die

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Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#341

Post by regularfry »

phaer wrote: post #333
iSnow wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

What? The result would be exactly the same, right? You don't have your unpushed commit if your laptop is broken, neither with svn nor with git. The only difference is that you still can use your local git repository if your server burns down, but you can't do that with svn.

With SVN a commit is a push. You can't forget to push after you've committed.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#342

Post by DennisP »

raverbashing wrote: post #148
r0muald wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Version control in Word (and pretty much any WYSIWYG editor) is fundamentally broken. I can't recall how many days of work I lost just because 1 out of 15 co-authors was not able to use it and fucked up everyone's text. And normally there's just 1 out of 15 that IS able to use it. If you're authoring papers on your own, heh, you could just be using pen and paper.

The problem there is having 15 co-authors. Really And if some of them can't use it, teach them. And revert to the previously non-fucked up version (it's on someone's email by the name of Article_1_fixed_2_corrections_10_10.docx)

If our collaboration tools can't handle a mere 15 collaborators, we need better tools.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#343

Post by jfb »

PeterisP wrote: post #339
lallysingh wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're absurdly underestimating people. A diff is a bunch of lines removed, and lines added. That's a pretty damn natural representation. As for git's complexity, it's all in its completely opaque display of its internal state. A chain of deltas - diffs - isn't complicated. It's all git's (perverse) desire to follow the exact-same command-line interface as cat and awk, when neither contain persistent state.

'a bunch of lines removed/added' is a great representation for stuff that consist of semi-atomic lines, like code. It is a horrible representation for stuff where edits may consist of both typo fixes, and separate wording changes in a single sentence - where you might want to accept change to one word and reject change to another word, despite that they came from a single "commit" to a single line. For collaborative…

I'd argue that it's not that great a representation for code, which should be diff'd syntactically.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#344

Post by welterde »

jwr wrote: post #143
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.

I think you hit a local extremum, so yes, I'd advise you to stay there :-) The day will come when you will need those two figures side-by-side, together with a caption positioned just right. Or a table that spans multiple pages and has multi-column cells. Or, heaven forbid, you will need to submit your bibliography in a byzantine format invented by someone with nothing better to do ("we take pride in the fact that we…

> The day will come when you will need those two figures side-by-side, together with a caption positioned just right. Or a table that spans multiple pages and has multi-column cells.

Not sure if you mean to say it is difficult to do or not in LaTeX.. but I had to do just that last week (10+ pages long tables, side by side figures with fancy captions, etc.).. and it was just a matter of searching for "LaTeX $problem" and I was in business..

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#346

Post by pge »

tripzilch wrote: post #337
tanzam75 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised nobody mentioned Pages on a Mac. It's a style sheet-based tool, where the styles are quite easy to work with. ... Pages works just fine, and produces nicely-formatted documents. Microsoft Word is also a styles-based tool, and produces nicely-formatted documents that are consistent with a stylesheet. The problem is that people don't use the styles.

I tried doing that in Word once, it's nowhere near the solid foundation that actual style sheets provide (thinking of CSS/HTML here). I only needed to style H1, H2, P, EM and possibly A (they don't have those names in Word, but you get the point). That's probably the simplest document structures you can have for a task that reasonably makes use of styles. The biggest problem was, those styles are like liquid, slippin…

This post begs the question - can Word be replaced with HTML/CSS? What if there were a WYSIWYG HTML/CSS editor? HTML would provide the intechangable document format; the ubiquity of browsers means everyone already has a document viewer; it would allow those with a desire for greater control to edit text directly in a text editor, separate from the presentation layer; and documents could be formatted for different presentation on screen and when printed; and while we're at it, we could replace powerpoint too.

I'm a LaTeX addict and not an HTML guru, so I'm sure there's a reason this solution doesnt work, but it seems intriguing.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#347

Post by creatio »

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #331
wfunction wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of being cynical, maybe consider the fact that students find it easier to type essays with Word than with other products, so Microsoft gave them a discount so they could afford it? Win-win. Just a thought.

what other products?

latex?

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#348

Post by triplesec »

There is until now no mention whatsoever in this thread of Openoffice, and I'm baffled as to why not. Sadly, they use the MX paradigm rather than improve the UXperience greatly, but, well, it's a start.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#349

Post by CJefferson »

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…

The biggest advantage of svn over git for non-technical users is that you can never end up with commit that then conflicts with another submit (as submits all happen on the server).

I have had various beginner git users get very confused when dealing with conflicts -- I have got myself quite confused on occasion too.

Re: Why Microsoft Word must die

#350

Post by monksy »

bentoner wrote: post #324
sammyo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks quite interesting and quite topical to a discussion I had just yesterday during an interview. I almost clicked the installer but hesitated. A link that discusses the impact and especially any issues if/when your product was uninstalled would be reassuring.

Sorry for the delay: busy weekend. I added a FAQ https://draftable.com/gmail/faq with the answer to your question (and more), but I'll answer here too: We don't modify the data in your Gmail account, so if you try Draftable, then uninstall it, your Gmail account won't be altered. Furthermore, if you disable Draftable before uninstalling it, we'll delete our index and revoke our access to your account.

Why use Draftable when you can use google docs? That keeps version history automatically.
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