4 ms·

Ask HN: Why is desktop text editing software still so bad?

8 points by willthefirst 14y ago

For example: Why is Microsoft Word's autocorrect still not using the kind of text editing technology that already functions in all tablets and smart phones?

waivej 14y ago
After 2-3 years, I turned autocorrect off on my phone and wish I had done so sooner.
- willthefirst 14y ago
  Why? I would imagine that better and better autocorrect will make us want it more and more, not less and less. I'm just interested in why you would drop it.
  - waivej 14y ago
    I was stubborn and tried to like autocorrect for a long time. My partner laughed when I gave in because she turned it off within 20 minutes of getting her new phone. I found that autocorrect was intrusive and would interrupt my flow of words. The final straw was a few emails where I fought with it to get the word I wanted. I could have hit the X to cancel a change, but this required attention and it seemed hard to click in the right spot. It's easier to look for red underlines before I send an email.
  - saurik 14y ago
    It has not been my experience that autocorrect has become better: it has simply become more lax. As an example, I would actually find it really useful if the iPhone's autocorrect was smart enough to realize that my fingers were slightly off position as I typed (due to the lack of physical feedback) and could figure out what word I meant to type. However, it seems to just be running a spell check; it doesn't even realize that if I mash at the screen four times I intend to have four letters and it should not autocorrect what I typed to a word with five letters because it seems to be spelled similarly. The result is that a slight offset on the keyboard doesn't get corrected: it gets mutated into something hilariously unrelated to what you intended to type. Meanwhile, it also doesn't bother trying to come up with any kind of confidence rating for words I type that it doesn't understand. As an example: if I sit there and type a word with one finger, carefully moving my hand slowly to each key and carefully lining up each press, when I hit space bar the iPhone should realize "there is no way in hell I should be correcting this right now: this was a careful and deliberate action on behalf of this user", and yet even when you do that it will take a word and butcher it into one of the words in its dictionary; which, in the case of the iPhone, includes such words as "it's" and excludes such words as "its"... it doesn't even have the common decency to run a grammar check, something Word has had a reasonable-if-not-perfect implementation of for well over a decade now. Honestly: the iPhone has a /lot/ to learn from Word.
Derbasti 14y ago
Because in order to create a really good new generation of word processor, someone would have to start from scratch and reimagine the whole thing. Microsoft lives from taking users' documents hostage and making users pay for software upgrades, so they won't do it. OOo/Libre Office does not seem to have the man power to do it. Apple seems to be utterly unmotivated to anything more than absolutely necessery with its office suite. That said, there are interesting alternatives out there if you are willing to part with more than basic *.docx compatibility.
debacle 14y ago
Most typists have a disdain for autocorrect.
brudgers 14y ago
I own a Dell Venue Pro which has both keyboard and touchsreen text entry. Autocorrect is counterproductive when I use the keyboard. I wouldn't even begin to want that in a word processor...or FireFox like I'm using now.
khyryk 14y ago
I shudder at the mere thought. Word does some simple autocorrecting that has rarely ever been annoying; besides that, the most helpful thing it does is underline (potentially) misspelled words and offer suggestions. Given my experience with some smart phones, I'd rather not have what I type change mid-way. I even have autocorrect turned off on all of my phones.
pkamb 14y ago
> the kind of text editing technology that already functions in all tablets and smart phones? The reason that technology exists is because we're so bad at tapping small rectangles with our thumbs. If you interacted with your smartphone using a full size touch-typing keyboard, the phone wouldn't have advanced autocorrect.
greggman 14y ago
Why shoot for tablets and smartphones when there's better tech. http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/03/spell-checking-powered-by-web.html http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/03/spell-checking-powere...
lsiebert 14y ago
The autocorrect on my android is great... until I want to type something that is "incorrect" like type a linkedlist.c and get an autospace after the period. I think there can be improvement for keyboards inspired by touchscreen keyboards, but it's going to be different then what's out there on phones and tablets because of the differences in how we type between the two. We don't touch type on mobile devices. I think the only thing free when typing is our thumbs..

8 points by willthefirst 14y ago

For example: Why is Microsoft Word's autocorrect still not using the kind of text editing technology that already functions in all tablets and smart phones?

waivej 14y ago

After 2-3 years, I turned autocorrect off on my phone and wish I had done so sooner.

willthefirst 14y ago
Why? I would imagine that better and better autocorrect will make us want it more and more, not less and less. I'm just interested in why you would drop it.
- waivej 14y ago
  I was stubborn and tried to like autocorrect for a long time. My partner laughed when I gave in because she turned it off within 20 minutes of getting her new phone. I found that autocorrect was intrusive and would interrupt my flow of words. The final straw was a few emails where I fought with it to get the word I wanted. I could have hit the X to cancel a change, but this required attention and it seemed hard to click in the right spot. It's easier to look for red underlines before I send an email.
- saurik 14y ago
  It has not been my experience that autocorrect has become better: it has simply become more lax. As an example, I would actually find it really useful if the iPhone's autocorrect was smart enough to realize that my fingers were slightly off position as I typed (due to the lack of physical feedback) and could figure out what word I meant to type. However, it seems to just be running a spell check; it doesn't even realize that if I mash at the screen four times I intend to have four letters and it should not autocorrect what I typed to a word with five letters because it seems to be spelled similarly. The result is that a slight offset on the keyboard doesn't get corrected: it gets mutated into something hilariously unrelated to what you intended to type. Meanwhile, it also doesn't bother trying to come up with any kind of confidence rating for words I type that it doesn't understand. As an example: if I sit there and type a word with one finger, carefully moving my hand slowly to each key and carefully lining up each press, when I hit space bar the iPhone should realize "there is no way in hell I should be correcting this right now: this was a careful and deliberate action on behalf of this user", and yet even when you do that it will take a word and butcher it into one of the words in its dictionary; which, in the case of the iPhone, includes such words as "it's" and excludes such words as "its"... it doesn't even have the common decency to run a grammar check, something Word has had a reasonable-if-not-perfect implementation of for well over a decade now. Honestly: the iPhone has a /lot/ to learn from Word.

Derbasti 14y ago

Because in order to create a really good new generation of word processor, someone would have to start from scratch and reimagine the whole thing. Microsoft lives from taking users' documents hostage and making users pay for software upgrades, so they won't do it. OOo/Libre Office does not seem to have the man power to do it. Apple seems to be utterly unmotivated to anything more than absolutely necessery with its office suite. That said, there are interesting alternatives out there if you are willing to part with more than basic *.docx compatibility.

debacle 14y ago

Most typists have a disdain for autocorrect.

brudgers 14y ago

I own a Dell Venue Pro which has both keyboard and touchsreen text entry. Autocorrect is counterproductive when I use the keyboard. I wouldn't even begin to want that in a word processor...or FireFox like I'm using now.

khyryk 14y ago

I shudder at the mere thought. Word does some simple autocorrecting that has rarely ever been annoying; besides that, the most helpful thing it does is underline (potentially) misspelled words and offer suggestions. Given my experience with some smart phones, I'd rather not have what I type change mid-way. I even have autocorrect turned off on all of my phones.

pkamb 14y ago

> the kind of text editing technology that already functions in all tablets and smart phones? The reason that technology exists is because we're so bad at tapping small rectangles with our thumbs. If you interacted with your smartphone using a full size touch-typing keyboard, the phone wouldn't have advanced autocorrect.

greggman 14y ago

Why shoot for tablets and smartphones when there's better tech. http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/03/spell-checking-powered-by-web.html http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/03/spell-checking-powere...

lsiebert 14y ago

The autocorrect on my android is great... until I want to type something that is "incorrect" like type a linkedlist.c and get an autospace after the period. I think there can be improvement for keyboards inspired by touchscreen keyboards, but it's going to be different then what's out there on phones and tablets because of the differences in how we type between the two. We don't touch type on mobile devices. I think the only thing free when typing is our thumbs..