3 ms·

I love the user experience description, here. This is an intelligent user of software describing their mental model of what is going on. It doesn't map cleanly

• eitally 12y ago
  Agreed. When I wrote my master's thesis, I started by trying to use Google Docs. That lasted about two hours.... Then I tried LibreOffice. That lasted the rest of the first day. Finally I borrowed my wife's Macbook and switched to Word. It remained an exercise in frustration, even to do simple things like set page numbering in the pre-body content (intro, acknowledgements, ToC, etc) to Roman numerals vs Latin numbers in the body, or correctly setting up headers & footers, or matching footnote styling to the department's style guide. As the author states here, all this complex styling crap is a huge distraction from creating content, but because of how Word works, you can't just work in the old mode and leave the styling for the end. It has to be created inline or you're going to have a really bad time trying to fix it later.
  • hackuser 12y ago
    > because of how Word works, you can't just work in the old mode and leave the styling for the end. It has to be created inline or you're going to have a really bad time trying to fix it later. Why not? I don't doubt you, but I've never understood why it happens.