13 ms·

> Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination, a petty, unimaginative, inconsistent dictator that is ill-suited to any creative writer's use. Microsoft Word

• GuiA 13y ago
  > Your average college professor isn't going to learn how to use a version control system to suggest changes to his student's thesis-in-progress. Word has version control though, and it's appreciated by many in academia. Version control for humans is a Big Startup Idea, I wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox and Github were trying to tackle it (from 2 different angles: Dropbox from the "how do we get average the user to get features for nerds", and Github from the "how do we get the average non-nerd to use us")
  • daned 13y ago
    Couldn't agree with you more. My SO is a PhD candidate and she doesn't know what she's missing when it comes to collaborative version control. They spend a lot of time sending around modified office docs.
    • kleiba 13y ago
      Well, some people claim that tar balls and patches are a much superior source control management system than CVS. So you could say that unless you want every Joe User to master git, sending around modified office docs might not be the worst of solutions.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  • r0muald 13y ago
    Version control in Word (and pretty much any WYSIWYG editor) is fundamentally broken. I can't recall how many days of work I lost just because 1 out of 15 co-authors was not able to use it and fucked up everyone's text. And normally there's just 1 out of 15 that IS able to use it. If you're authoring papers on your own, heh, you could just be using pen and paper.
    • raverbashing 13y ago
      The problem there is having 15 co-authors. Really And if some of them can't use it, teach them. And revert to the previously non-fucked up version (it's on someone's email by the name of Article_1_fixed_2_corrections_10_10.docx)
      • unsignedint 13y ago
        I had to deal with that situation before but I was actually the middle of three parties. (I was B of A-B-C where. A and C was not talking to each other for political and linguistic reasons.) It was nothing but a mess, my inbox would be piled with revised document that often lost tracking, one party sending revised document based on outdated version. (And not sure which version was it.) Something I like about version control is that it at least ensures continuity of the version.
• wfunction 13y ago
  > Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing... Word was designed to help office workers produce business documents And that's why they released a "Home and Student Edition".
  • kijin 13y ago
    Home Edition: "People are familiar with using Office at work, so they'll probably want to use Office as well when it's time to design that Garage Sale flyer." Student Edition: "Give them Office now at a discount, and they'll keep using (more expensive versions of) Office when they get a real job." Office is named Office for a reason. Its entire existence revolves around the typical 20th-century white-collar office. All other use cases are secondary.
    • wfunction 13y ago
      Instead of being cynical, maybe consider the fact that students find it easier to type essays with Word than with other products, so Microsoft gave them a discount so they could afford it? Win-win. Just a thought.
      • TheZenPsycho 13y ago
        what other products?
        • creatio 13y ago
          latex?
      • el_muchacho 13y ago
        Between Word and Wordperfect, the latter was the better product. But Word was easier to use for simple documents.
  • dr_preston 13y ago
    I purchased the "Home and Student Edition" for my wife to use on her new MacBook Air. A few months ago she started writing short fiction, which we have since self-published on Kindle. We had to switch to Libre Office, though, because when I contacted Microsoft support and asked them about the "Non-Commercial use" restriction, they told me writing a novel counts as commercial activity.
• Ygg2 13y ago
  >At the end of that novel, <SPOILER> Winston loved Big Brother. </SPOILER> Because he probably realized that no other program Mostly because he was drugged, physically and psychologically tortured and reduced to his basic instinct and given option to experience its greatest fear or 'love' Big Brother. That's closer to real world than it being the only good option. LibreOffice needs a good compare function, not the whole review shtick.
  • rbanffy 13y ago
    > Mostly because he was drugged, physically and psychologically tortured and reduced to his basic instinct and given option to experience its greatest fear or 'love' Big Brother. Sounds remarkably like using Microsoft Office.
  • mcgwiz 13y ago
    One way or another, you have to achieve product-market fit.
• mathnode 13y ago
  Desktop application software for collaborative editing? No way. Confluence? Twiki? Or equal such centralised documentaiotn and revision service, be it SaaS or locally hosted, Yes.
  • Joeri 13y ago
    As someone observing and partaking in the process of migrating a large svn repository of word documents into confluence I can tell you that confluence's markup and review functionality (even with add-ons) is a very poor substitute for word. It's still beneficial to do it for the ease of access and the improved searchability and document linking abilities, but it's definitely a trade-off where you lose while you gain.
  • YeahKIA 13y ago
    Wait. What? Have you tried collaboration with a Word before saying this? I make my living collaborating on documents in Word. Which part of it did you have a problem with? I have found only OneNote to be any better than Word but alas it lacks a bunch of Word features.
    • roel_v 13y ago
      Of course he hasn't, none of the people here claiming that 'emacs + git is better than Word' or 'LibreOffice does all 90% of people use' have. If actual users had only 10% of the problems with Word that are being described in this thread, they would have flocked to other products years ago. Fact is, they didn't, and it's because Word works well enough for the vast majority of them. Of course, they all bitch every now and then, but then again so do they (and I, this is not a 'stupid users' rant) about anything.
• DanBC 13y ago
  > Type a few word, hit "Save", and automatically get reasonable default fonts and margins? Check. Type a few more words, make some typos, have them fixed automatically? Check. Certain words need to be italicized or underlined? Check. Certain words need to be in a different font? Check. Who cares if it's consistent, the boss wants it bold so just make it bold. Indent the first line by X inches, double-space here, single-space there? Check. All accomplished with a few clicks of the mouse. No need to learn any command-line programs, formatting \Syn\{TaX}, or keyboard shortcuts. It's exactly what the majority of office workers need. That's Abiword. A much smaller and cheaper piece of software. That is all that most office workers need. So why is Office, a huge piece of software the default?
  • coryfklein 13y ago
    s/huge/expensive Most users don't care so much about the "size" so much as the cost.
    • normloman 13y ago
      Again, AbiWord and Libre Office are free. You both got it wrong. It's not about size. Not about cost. It's about compatibility. People use word because their boss, publisher, or professor uses word. Because an entire ecosystem of office software integrates in word. Because kids taking a computer class in school learn Word commands, and nothing else. Because a perfectly styled document in LibreOffice doesn't always look right in Word. More than 20 years later, Microsoft still survives off the popularity of DOS on IBM compatible pc's in the late 80s and early 90s. Their strategy since has been to further entrench themselves into our daily lives.
  • pmelendez 13y ago
    >"That's Abiword. A much smaller and cheaper piece of software. That is all that most office workers need. So why is Office, a huge piece of software the default?" Abiword's grammar checker is not nearly as good as Word's. That is specially in non-english laguanges. Also I would add to that list all the templates and design that Word brings out-of-box. I am a weird case because I use Abiword at work and Office at home. And at least for short documents (10 pages max.) the experience on Word is just more enjoyable to me.
• WinstonOrwell 13y ago
  At the end of the book, Winston Smith is brainwashed by a "re-education process" of pervasive intimidation. He is subjected to the persistent threat of a death sentence, and the threat of rats-eating-your-face torture. He's behaviorally lobotomized and broken by coercive psychological manipulation. ...and oh yeah, they take away his QT 3.14 too.</SPOILER> Don't bastardize the message and theme of the book. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
• asdasf 13y ago
  >Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing, programming, or any such thing. He pointed that out. And he pointed out that the industry was still foisting it on him. That is why he wants it to die. This was the summary at the end of the article in fact.
  • YeahKIA 13y ago
    Curious what kind of foisting. I'm sure people might have preferred things in word format. Its just a matter of convenience. But I doubt its foisted. I've seen PDF files to be as annoyingly common particularly in academia. I hate it but I get around by just saving my document as PDF and move on. He's just being overly dramatic.
    • rbanffy 13y ago
      Most likely when he sends a plain text file to his editor, he gets back a .doc file with the revisions and annotations.
    • bediger4000 13y ago
      I assure you that "Word" is foisted on people who otherwise wouldn't touch it. It's foisted in many, many ways, from project managers who ask for "a word version", to software process methodologies whose official templates are in "Word" to requirement tracking systems that demand "Word" versions of every single document, because the tracking system produces "Word" docs. I don't think most people distinguish "Word" docs from any printed doc, except those sophisticated enough to use "Excel" to produce columnar-format data ("Word" tables are hard to do and sucky looking).
  • ShirtlessRod 13y ago
    Then shouldn't he be far more mad at his industry, not the tool?
    • Sagat 13y ago
      Why blame the people you know when you can blame a piece of software that can't fight back?
• ChuckMcM 13y ago
  "Call me again when it gets the Review function right. Your average college professor isn't going to learn how to use a version control system to suggest changes to his student's thesis-in-progress." I suspect this is the ultimate longevity of Word. Retraining is a real pain. So the only way to kill Word is by a thousand cuts. One of those cuts seems to be Google's documents. A number of non-technical folks can now send me a document in Google Docs so I don't have to switch from my Linux desktop to something else to access it, and Google has done a reasonable job of auto importing Word. So domain specific solutions, with "good enough" import/export may be the solution.
• walshemj 13y ago
  The problem is that Publishers still tend to recruit Oxbridge first eng lit grads whose computer knowledge is probably about the same as Jenn from the IT Crowd. Unfortunately as Publishing is now having to deal with online and electronic it means they are not best placed to deal with the changes. And book publishers have sclerotic processes (makes teh Laudry service seem slick and efficient) to take a book from delivery to publication and extra month or so playing with word is't going to make much difference
• Lagged2Death 13y ago
  Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing, programming, or any such thing. Then indeed, its influence over those fields should be allowed to wane. LibreOffice? Call me again when it gets the Review function right. I was required to use the Review feature as a sort of half-assed collaborative editing system for tech specs on a couple of projects around 2008-2010. I found it to be a buggy, work-destroying trap of a feature. Things would actually have gone more smoothly for my project Microsoft had never implemented this feature. I haven't tried any similar features in LibreOffice. If it doesn't do anything totally crazy (like randomly duplicating blocks of text in odd places) it's probably better. I read an interview with some high-muckety-muck in the MS Office group years ago. He actually said, in response to a question about features vs. bug fixes, that he was sure users preferred new features to bug fixes for old ones. That features got people excited and no one really cared if they lost a little work every few hours. He didn't say he'd asked any users. He was just sure. I wish I could link to it, but I don't recall where I read it.
  • blowski 13y ago
    > he was sure users preferred new features to bug fixes for old ones He's probably right (if you think of users as being the person who approves the payment). I can't imagine the CFO at a Fortune 500 company approving a few million dollars to be spent on bug fixes. The obvious question would be "why did we pay for defective software in the first place?". So perhaps one side effect of the subscription model will be less buggy software, since the business model relies more on keeping users than getting them to upgrade.
    • davidgerard 13y ago
      Yep. This is why Excel is actually a really good spreadsheet: the people who approve the purchase are in fact the people using it - the bosses and the accountants.
• stcredzero 13y ago
  > Microsoft probably consulted with a bunch of Big Business customers when they designed Office. Yep, the kind of Big Business that uses Java classes like EnterpriseBusinessInterconnectInterfaceFactoryFactoryFactory. Basically, you pulled this out of your butt because it hit the right notes and because it fit the preconceived notions of the readership of HN. WYSIWYG word processing was actually pioneered at Xerox PARC and MS Word has a direct lineage from there. Fitting the office correspondence conventions of the time was the obvious place to start. In a world that still operates off of paper, this is what makes sense at first. Java classes like EnterpriseBusinessInterconnectInterfaceFactoryFactoryFactory are a direct result of the deliberate crippling of the Smalltalk runtime model that Java was based on. The very small and minimalist Smalltalk runtime model was another product of Xerox PARC, BTW. Back in the day, even Java was one of these subversive back-door hacker/engineer things management wasn't hip enough to be a part of. (Unless you were one of the even hipper folks into Smalltalk, Dylan, Common Lisp, Eiffel, Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python, what have you, in which case, you knew better than to fall for Java.) Heck even SQL, Fortran, and COBOL were the new hip thing back in the day. (Even if that came with corporate backing.)
  • pjmlp 13y ago
    > Java classes like EnterpriseBusinessInterconnectInterfaceFactoryFactoryFactory are a direct result of the deliberate crippling of the Smalltalk runtime model that Java was based on. The very small and minimalist Smalltalk runtime model was another product of Xerox PARC, BTW. Actually, they are a consequence how easy Java allows to write such type of code and how enterprise architects design software. I have seen EnterpriseBusinessInterconnectInterfaceFactoryFactoryFactory examples in the enterprise done in lots of languages. The same way there are developers that write FORTRAN in any language, there are those that make Skyscrapper designs in any language.
    • stcredzero 13y ago
      Whichever the case, the gp poster still pulled the alleged causation out of his/her butt for no other justification than that it feels "truthy."
• sinkasapa 13y ago
  I just finished writing a lengthy grant application where the humanities professor used Word and I used LibreOffice. We used the review functionality and I didn't even know there was supposed to be a problem. Though, I don't really do more than touch the surface with word processor programs because I don't personally like them very much.