7 ms·

And what would be better?

ptaipale 10y ago
On one front, LaTeX. On another, e.g. Framemaker. But as an overall documentation tool MS Word is hard to beat because you can still do most things, and it is ubiquitous. In my experience, the worst problems with Word come out of company templates. Plain Word out of the box causes less surprises.
- cm2187 10y ago
  Most of my troubles with word have to do with most of the properties of the items on the document being invisible. You are dealing with invisible page breaks, invisible margins, invisible objects, etc. What would be really powerfull is a dual markup/WYSIWYG UI, like WPF in visual studio. Editing xml attributes on a markup is way more efficient than trying to guess on what you clicked and then going to menus and nested sub menus. But typing raw xml is not fun, you want to be able to type in the document directly. And you don't want to expose the markup to unsophisticated users. The markup should be way more defensive than a text editor. It should not allow you to place a node where that type of node is illegal. It should make autocomplete adds the mandatory features when typing a new node (like the closing tag, the mandatory attributes, etc). Otherwise we will spend our time dealing with corrupted documents. Same for powerpoint, which in my opinion has pretty much converged with word. Most decks created are not on screen presentation but rather rich visual text documents, just text document with a page orientation that fits modern screens.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    This is what commercial editors for Docbook and DITA allow for, yet you don't see many keen in embracing them.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    What would be really powerfull is a dual markup/WYSIWYG UI, like WPF in visual studio WordPerfect had this in the '80s. It's a conventional word processor, but you could press the "Reveal Codes" function key and get a split-screen. The lower half would show all the markup. You could see and delete a tag explictly, and its matching one would also go away. Though of course, the markup was not indented. My mother, -- a secretary -- used it all the time. But when she met other secretaries who came from an MS-Word backround, they hated the very existence of the feature. I think the last few editions of WP removed it (in order to cargo cult Word?). Then they went out of business.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      Word has had that for a long time. In modern ribbon-interface Word versions, it's in the Home-Paragraph section, top right icon ("paragraph mark"). Additionally you can/should toggle field code display with Alt-F9. This has been in Word since, I think, Word for Windows 2.0 (circa 1992, for Windows 2.11). It might have also been in the previous DOS-based Word versions that co-existed with DOS-based WP (but since I used both, I can't always tell which features were in which).
      - adrianratnapala 10y ago
        Do you mean those strange cryptic characters at the end of the paragraphs? That is not a lot like reveal codes, or like a markup language. Though I agree they are handy.
        ptaipale 10y ago
        Maybe not markup language, but the idea is to show the markup. To get a paragraph break, you still hit Return and don't try to type that end-of-paragraph marker. The field codes are more like an actual language; you can insert a field and then type the content in it.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > Most of my troubles with word have to do with most of the properties of the items on the document being invisible. You are dealing with invisible page breaks, invisible margins, invisible objects, etc. WordPerfect doesn't have this problem: > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WordPerfect&oldid=736681454#Reveal_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WordPerfect&oldid... "The Reveal Codes feature, imperfectly imitated much later in Microsoft Word, is a second editing screen that can be toggled open and closed at the bottom of the main editing screen. It was especially beloved of those who were faced with Microsoft Word, which had at the time no similar feature. The codes for formatting and locating text are displayed, interspersed with tags and the occasional objects, with the tags and objects represented by named tokens. The scheme makes it far easier to untangle problems than with styles-based word processors, and object tokens can be clicked with a pointing device to directly open the configuration editor for the particular object type, e.g. clicking on a style token brings up the style editor with the particular style type displayed."
- cnvogel 10y ago
  > In my experience, the worst problems with Word come out of company templates. Oh, yes, brother. Especially as they tend to be created by the people with the least experience in using (even modestly) advanced features.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    I work for a major international corporation which official powerpoint template has hardcoded numbers on each slide, no auto-page numbering...
- geezerjay 10y ago
  > because you can still do most things, and it is ubiquitous. That's also true for LibreOffice or other FLOSS office projects. In fact, a copy of LibreOffice doesn't cost anyone between 100€ and 300€, or requires any subscription.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Still, in the corporate world most people do not have LibreOffice, but they do have Microsoft Word. And in very many cases they can't even install software themselves, as the computer is managed by the IT/IM organisation. The cost of license is negligible in this context; the actual cost comes from managing something non-standard. Yes, you or me don't like it but it's the fact in many corporations, government organisations and even educational institutions.

On one front, LaTeX. On another, e.g. Framemaker. But as an overall documentation tool MS Word is hard to beat because you can still do most things, and it is ubiquitous. In my experience, the worst problems with Word come out of company templates. Plain Word out of the box causes less surprises.

cm2187 10y ago
Most of my troubles with word have to do with most of the properties of the items on the document being invisible. You are dealing with invisible page breaks, invisible margins, invisible objects, etc. What would be really powerfull is a dual markup/WYSIWYG UI, like WPF in visual studio. Editing xml attributes on a markup is way more efficient than trying to guess on what you clicked and then going to menus and nested sub menus. But typing raw xml is not fun, you want to be able to type in the document directly. And you don't want to expose the markup to unsophisticated users. The markup should be way more defensive than a text editor. It should not allow you to place a node where that type of node is illegal. It should make autocomplete adds the mandatory features when typing a new node (like the closing tag, the mandatory attributes, etc). Otherwise we will spend our time dealing with corrupted documents. Same for powerpoint, which in my opinion has pretty much converged with word. Most decks created are not on screen presentation but rather rich visual text documents, just text document with a page orientation that fits modern screens.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  This is what commercial editors for Docbook and DITA allow for, yet you don't see many keen in embracing them.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  What would be really powerfull is a dual markup/WYSIWYG UI, like WPF in visual studio WordPerfect had this in the '80s. It's a conventional word processor, but you could press the "Reveal Codes" function key and get a split-screen. The lower half would show all the markup. You could see and delete a tag explictly, and its matching one would also go away. Though of course, the markup was not indented. My mother, -- a secretary -- used it all the time. But when she met other secretaries who came from an MS-Word backround, they hated the very existence of the feature. I think the last few editions of WP removed it (in order to cargo cult Word?). Then they went out of business.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Word has had that for a long time. In modern ribbon-interface Word versions, it's in the Home-Paragraph section, top right icon ("paragraph mark"). Additionally you can/should toggle field code display with Alt-F9. This has been in Word since, I think, Word for Windows 2.0 (circa 1992, for Windows 2.11). It might have also been in the previous DOS-based Word versions that co-existed with DOS-based WP (but since I used both, I can't always tell which features were in which).
    - adrianratnapala 10y ago
      Do you mean those strange cryptic characters at the end of the paragraphs? That is not a lot like reveal codes, or like a markup language. Though I agree they are handy.
      - ptaipale 10y ago
        Maybe not markup language, but the idea is to show the markup. To get a paragraph break, you still hit Return and don't try to type that end-of-paragraph marker. The field codes are more like an actual language; you can insert a field and then type the content in it.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Most of my troubles with word have to do with most of the properties of the items on the document being invisible. You are dealing with invisible page breaks, invisible margins, invisible objects, etc. WordPerfect doesn't have this problem: > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WordPerfect&oldid=736681454#Reveal_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WordPerfect&oldid... "The Reveal Codes feature, imperfectly imitated much later in Microsoft Word, is a second editing screen that can be toggled open and closed at the bottom of the main editing screen. It was especially beloved of those who were faced with Microsoft Word, which had at the time no similar feature. The codes for formatting and locating text are displayed, interspersed with tags and the occasional objects, with the tags and objects represented by named tokens. The scheme makes it far easier to untangle problems than with styles-based word processors, and object tokens can be clicked with a pointing device to directly open the configuration editor for the particular object type, e.g. clicking on a style token brings up the style editor with the particular style type displayed."
cnvogel 10y ago
> In my experience, the worst problems with Word come out of company templates. Oh, yes, brother. Especially as they tend to be created by the people with the least experience in using (even modestly) advanced features.
- cm2187 10y ago
  I work for a major international corporation which official powerpoint template has hardcoded numbers on each slide, no auto-page numbering...
geezerjay 10y ago
> because you can still do most things, and it is ubiquitous. That's also true for LibreOffice or other FLOSS office projects. In fact, a copy of LibreOffice doesn't cost anyone between 100€ and 300€, or requires any subscription.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Still, in the corporate world most people do not have LibreOffice, but they do have Microsoft Word. And in very many cases they can't even install software themselves, as the computer is managed by the IT/IM organisation. The cost of license is negligible in this context; the actual cost comes from managing something non-standard. Yes, you or me don't like it but it's the fact in many corporations, government organisations and even educational institutions.