Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using Microsoft Word with Git

blog.martinfenner.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 136 posts

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#81

Post by quietbritishjim »

andi999 wrote: post #71
PaulHoule wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TeX is a 1970s system. I thought it was cool in the 1990s, but in 2020 it makes the typesetter in me want to hurl.

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 would run a bit so the font was like that to compensate, but I don't know if it's true.

That's not such a big deal since you can obviously change the font. For a long time there were lots of text fonts but very few math fonts, and those math fonts that did exist would either have some symbols from Computer Modern or wouldn't have a suitably similar text font. But now there are a fair number of choices. Personally I like mathpazo (with Palatino for text) but I've found people used to Computer Modern can find this a bit much of a radical departure. (Edit: I've found a more conservative choice is Times for text and Utopia (MathDesign) for math.)

TeX does have a few small typesetting niggles. For example, if you set f(x)g(y) with normal small brackets around the x but large brackets around the y (because it's really a displayed fraction) then you'll find g is miles away from its argument but right next to f's argument. (I'll avoid opening the can of worms about what the root cause is here, but it's very clearly wrong in this case.) This is actually not that big a deal either - there are lots of problems like this but they're all fairly minor and small in number compared to the huge number of things typeset correctly. The only problem comes when people refuse to correct things because they assume that if TeX typesets it that way then that must be correct by definition.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#82

Post by toyg »

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.

My experience of those features a few months ago has been poor, particularly for Powerpoint, so I turned to HN for advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23245552

Some of the proposed solutions were very nice, particularly Draftable - but it's expensive and my bosses didn't feel it was worth it. To this day they still work on huge slide decks that are partially shared, but I'm just not involved anymore with that side of things so I stopped pushing. I still think a way of tracking Powerpoint decks on a slide-by-slide basis, with partial merging and synching, would be really good to have (existing features for embedding are '90s-era).

For Word there are quite a few solutions nowadays, most are clearly superior to the stuff Office ships with. So the problem is still there, just not as bad as 15 years ago.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#83

Post by greenie_beans »

yes! i have a collection of tweets where fiction/non-fiction writers joke about naming their versions different things. i'm like, use git?

i wrote a novella using a folder system + text editor + git. i'm trying to put that into a web app. don't know how useful it would be for other people though. and don't know if it will ever be finished because i need to write.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#84

Post by drieddust »

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…

Typical workflow with word documents required mutiple people reviewing, commenting,and merging or rejecting the comments. Microsoft Word's change tracking,comment, and review features are adequate for most people.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#85

Post by ghego1 »

michihuber wrote: post #24
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…

ghego, could I ask you a few questions via email? m@replace-with-my-username.com

Sure, I've sent you an email :-)

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#86

Post by wenc »

toyg wrote: post #82
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.

My experience of those features a few months ago has been poor, particularly for Powerpoint, so I turned to HN for advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23245552 Some of the proposed solutions were very nice, particularly Draftable - but it's expensive and my bosses didn't feel it was worth it. To this day they still work on huge slide decks that are partially shared, but I'm just not involved anymore with tha…

I remember that discussion. If I recall, your experience was poor because you didn't have Sharepoint storage, yes? (merge conflicts?)

I use O365 collab features daily (with SharePoint/OneDrive) storage and the experience has been similar to that of GSuite. I regularly work on PowerPoints with multiple people simultaneously editing the slides.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#87

Post by rat_1234 »

greenie_beans wrote: post #83

yes! i have a collection of tweets where fiction/non-fiction writers joke about naming their versions different things. i'm like, use git? i wrote a novella using a folder system + text editor + git. i'm trying to put that into a web app. don't know how useful it would be for other people though. and don't know if it will ever be finished because i need to write.

I wrote a CLI tool in Python for this exact use case and am currently using it to write a novel. Basically the CLI tool solves a lot of the tedious issues that come up (e.g., combining all of the text files, reordering them, etc.)

If you like writing out of a text editor (I use Atom) it's super useful.

https://github.com/edelgm6/draft

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#88

Post by ghego1 »

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 deeply and honestly would love to agree with you but unfortunately I can't based on my experience.

I write a lot of stuff in the legal area (articles, books, contracts, court documents, etc) and there's nothing that comes close to Word.

For some time I had tried to switch to LibreOffice. My goal was to quit Word, which is the only software that still binds me to Windows/Mac (not interested in Wine). I hoped to finally be able to switch to Linux without any hiccups.

Unfortunately LibreOffice is not quite as good as Word. I use many of the advanced features of Word, and the more you use these in LibreOffice, the more you encounter bugs. At one point I had a .odt file with tons of cross-references in footnotes pointing to other footnotes. When I was ready to ship the document I found out that all cross-references were messed up and I had to redo them all.

Now it's true that LibreOffice has a huge and active community that works hard to improve the product, but as word processors are my main and most important tool for work, I need the most reliable software I can get. Unfortunately that is still Word...

On top of that I must add that I do need to properly format documents 99% of the times, and also on this I find Word slightly superior, even if admittedly on this is quite comparable to FOSS solutions. The only quite big problem at this regard is interoperability. Since I know that most, if not all, my colleagues/counterparts use Word, whenever I send a document I need to send something that "will just work" for them, which is a docx. This means that using anything other than Word might give some problems in relation to formatting, which in same cases is pretty important.

Re: Using Microsoft Word with Git

#90

Post by Apofis »

At first, I'm like... but it's just a zipped archive of XML and other content files which can be used with git successfully, but yeah there's a mess in there. It's not really meant to be human readable.
Post reply on HN