[warning: grumpy guy ahead.] I'm sorry, but other than praising etherpad and pg, and sort of snidely lamenting the fact that nobody uses etherpad, was there a

[warning: grumpy guy ahead.] I'm sorry, but other than praising etherpad and pg, and sort of snidely lamenting the fact that nobody uses etherpad, was there a point to this article? "change the face of writing" is a pretty big commitment to make in a title. I just spent 5 minutes reading something that told me absolutely nothing new, which had no conclusions aside from something like "writing and publishing are two different things" -- a statement that is glaringly obvious yet the author never seems to get around to actually saying. I'm seeing a lot of Atlantic articles popping up on HN. Let's hope they stay of a high quality, and don't just rehash old ground and pander. I was a big fan of wave, but one of the many criticisms it had was that nobody really wants everything they type published. You want to finish something, then you publish. I mean really, think about this: watching the physical act of somebody editing themselves is going to make such a huge difference in writing? Oh really? We won't need editors, or conversations about strategies to use in our pieces, or the creative tension and problem-solving that goes on in a good publication? Just playing with a slider and watching characters appear and text be edited will change the face of publishing? I gave pg a free pass when he wrote the first article. After all, it was a YC company and it was a cool feature. He had a right to overstate things. But simply repeating a canard doesn't make the underlying structure of the universe change, no matter how cool the feature is.</rant>