The model of the wysiwyg word processor is pretty much broken; but that doesn't mean that LaTeX or separate content/presentation is the answer for this problem

The model of the wysiwyg word processor is pretty much broken; but that doesn't mean that LaTeX or separate content/presentation is the answer for this problem set. Instead, I think if more document processors took the approach of the early DTP apps, users would have a much easier time. Quark XPress 3.3 is an excellent model for how to do it: boxes, that you put on a page and then fill with text or pictures. If you're just bashing out text, it can works largely as a word processor does today, just with one text box filling the page. But if you want to position or format things with any accuracy, you can manipulate them directly into boxes without the heartaches of doing so in any contemporary word processor. It's a very simple conceptual model, easy to grasp and easier to use. I skipped both of my parents straight past word processors and after the vaguest of introductions to XPress they're now both producing complicated documents that are effectively impossible to create in Word. Of course, something like XPress takes processing power, and it wasn't available in the early GUI days -- typing a document straight into XPress or Pagemaker was an exercise in frustration. So developers and users went down the "enhanced typewriter" route of MacWrite. If we could start again, however, Mid-90s-style DTP would be the way to do it -- you don't need the complexity of something like InDesign: just a few simple tools and a floating palette for fonts and styles. Most of the common frustrations people have creating documents today would just vanish. Apple has taken steps towards this model with Pages, but they haven't had the gumption to go the whole hog just yet, and what Word Processor DNA remains hampers it a bit. But it's going in the right direction.