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Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

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Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#71

Post by polote »

k__ wrote: post #49
lewisjoe wrote: post #4

I'm in the business of building an online word processor - https://www.zoho.com/writer It's interesting how the documents industry is moving from print oriented legacy softwares (Google Docs, Word) to block based, app-ish, smart canvases (Notion, Coda, etc). Also both Microsoft & Google have adopted completely different strategies to compete in this market. Microsoft launched Loop as an entirely new app while Google…

What's the benefit here? Seems like it's touted as an innovation, but the only thing I see is that page breaks are gone. Which isn't bad, I mostly use Google docs for online articles and to maintain a todo list, so things are now a bit cleaner. But it doesn't seem like a big change...

It looks prettier, it allows you to put blocks bigger than the content. For example you can have the content to be fixed sized 800px and then inside the content put a large table or an image that is full width, and it can also feel like a static website. That what Notion does, you can "publish your page to the web" that gives a public URL that anyone can visit, without feeling like they are inside Notion

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#72

Post by ithkuil »

hnra wrote: post #60
ithkuil wrote: post #39

I like to be able to ditch the page splits. But I'd love to have an option to keep the "paper" shape, albeit an infinite strip (toilet paper style). All this white horizontal space distracts me

Is "View > Print layout" what you're looking for? It replaces page splits (header/footer whitspace and page margins) with a dashed line.

yeah I use it and it works quite well but then people use footnotes and they look weird there; disallow footnotes and make that dotted grey line go away and I'm sold

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#73

Post by polote »

theptip wrote: post #36
chippiewill wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's utterly bizarre just how much Google docs seems to have dropped the ball. It really feels like they haven't developed the product in the past 10 years. This is the first significant feature change that I can recall in a very long time other than minor UI tweaks.

Agreed. It’s really weird; because of the bundling advantage, they don’t have to be better than Notion, they just need to be good enough that the convenience factor wins out. It’s also frustrating because if Google played to their strengths, Docs could be best-in-class; the real problem that everybody is struggling with is internal knowledge management. Why can’t Google build me a privately indexed knowledge graph of…

> Why can’t Google build me a privately indexed knowledge graph of my internal docs

Not easy to do [1]. But that's what we try to to at Dokkument [2]

And also knowledge is spread around different tools, Github, monday, JIRA, Confluence, Slack. It is not all on Google Docs. And is Google is not the most integrated product

> People like notion because it is easier to structure nested Wiki docs quickly

I don't feel like it is the case. You can't retrieve anything unless you know the title of the document or you have saves the URL. Most people don't prefer Notion and some do, because they are list-addicted people, and it is easier to list documents in Notions than in Google Sheet. Notion doesn't fix any knowledge management problems compared to using Google Drive. And Confluence still makes circles around Notion in that area

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28597895

[2] https://dokkument.com

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#74

Post by xiaq »

asddubs wrote: post #70
polote wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My bet is on Google Docs style, Also in the industry. My bet is on all of them. Some people prefer block based, some prefer text, some prefer Markdown, some don't care. Writing a book on Notion is impossible for now, but building beautiful pages is much easier in Notion. Microsoft and Google (And Atlassian) have all adopted the same strategy which is "Look more like Notion". I don't think that Microsoft should be w…

porn list?

I think GP's "porn list people" means "people who really like lists (as if lists are pornography to them)"; see meaning 3 and 4 in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/porn#English.

I would say the other way around though, i.e. "list porn people".

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#75

Post by vlovich123 »

asddubs wrote: post #70
polote wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My bet is on Google Docs style, Also in the industry. My bet is on all of them. Some people prefer block based, some prefer text, some prefer Markdown, some don't care. Writing a book on Notion is impossible for now, but building beautiful pages is much easier in Notion. Microsoft and Google (And Atlassian) have all adopted the same strategy which is "Look more like Notion". I don't think that Microsoft should be w…

porn list?

I hope they meant list porn and English isn’t their native tongue. In the sense of people who get pleasure from making lists. Porn list people would imply people who make lists of porn which doesn’t fit the context.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#76

Post by tejohnso »

hnra wrote: post #60
ithkuil wrote: post #39

I like to be able to ditch the page splits. But I'd love to have an option to keep the "paper" shape, albeit an infinite strip (toilet paper style). All this white horizontal space distracts me

Is "View > Print layout" what you're looking for? It replaces page splits (header/footer whitspace and page margins) with a dashed line.

The dashed line is distracting and confuses when you are using dashed lines deliberately elsewhere. Why can't we just have an infinitely long canvas of a specific width? That's what I was expecting when I heard of pageless. Was disappointed. I'm not sure why I'd want to be able to set a minimal text width and then be left with infinite margin.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#77

Post by vlovich123 »

wiredfool wrote: post #37
lf-non wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a big fan of notion, but printing a document (even as a pdf) is an increasingly niche usecase in an increasingly digital-only world and I can totally understand if they don't put in much effort into it.

I wish. One of my clients wants it for everything (typically text, stats, and graphs), and typically views it as just an "add a button" sort of feature, when it winds up being a "reimplement the layout in a different language" sort of thing. (leaving apart the thing where basically they want a gigantic lovecrafian horror of an excel file translated to the web) PDFs have the ability to be a fixed, baked reference of a…

Could also just be a temporary thing for now. Wasn’t long ago when signing things over the internet wasn’t a thing. People adapt slowly to changing technological advancement. Businesses can take even longer to adapt (requires then to fail + a new generation to bring along new ways with them and supplant the old way).

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#78

Post by asciii »

xiaq wrote: post #74
asddubs wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

porn list?

I think GP's "porn list people" means "people who really like lists (as if lists are pornography to them)"; see meaning 3 and 4 in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/porn#English . I would say the other way around though, i.e. "list porn people".

Not OP, but thanks for clarifying. It's early this Friday morning and I was wondering why Notion worked well for "porn" lists.

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#79

Post by matwood »

lewisjoe wrote: post #4

I'm in the business of building an online word processor - https://www.zoho.com/writer It's interesting how the documents industry is moving from print oriented legacy softwares (Google Docs, Word) to block based, app-ish, smart canvases (Notion, Coda, etc). Also both Microsoft & Google have adopted completely different strategies to compete in this market. Microsoft launched Loop as an entirely new app while Google…

> legal professionals

I would love to meet these mythical legal professionals that use anything other than track changes in docx. :D

Re: Google Docs New Feature: Pageless

#80

Post by aikinai »

I excitedly enabled this right away on one of my docs only to see that it breaks columns. They’re stacked vertically with a line saying this should be a new column. Can’t believe it was launched in this state.
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