[mdlug] [OT] Perspective

[M. D. Krauss]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:56:42 -0400
"A. Kalten" <akalten at comcast.net> wrote:

> > I used to be a big WordPerfect fan. But now I just don't like using
> > the WYSIWYG word processors anymore, they are too restrictive and
> > they often don't do what you try to get them to do. Word is the
> > worst at that, it always infuriates me when it thinks it knows what
> > I want to do, despite me telling it to do something else. I now
> > only use things like Word when I have to put something in that
> > format. I use groff for most documents, and LaTeX for a few things
> > groff can't do, all put into PDF format.
> 
> > Well, of course, Word is awful.  There are just a ton of issues that
> > make anything beyond the most basic formatting a total headache.
> > OOo Writer is Somewhat better.  Abiword is much cleaner.  At the
> > end of the day, though, I've never seen an office suite that
> > actually impresses me.
> 
> 
> This is all much too vague and general.  What, specifically, are
> you, or were you, trying to accomplish?

Well, first of all, your quotes above mix up something Michael Corral
said (the first paragraph) with something I said in response (starting
at "Well, of course, Word is awful").  Just want to be clear, I have
not given up on word processors in general.

This being the case, I can't answer your question; there is no pinpoint
thing I can say I "was trying to accomplish" over the past few decades.

> The biggest mistake is to expect too much from a word processor.
> They can only perform certain limited tasks.  They cannot accommodate
> every possible whim of the human imagination.

OK, this I can work with.

Some of my expectations from a word processor are that it:

* handle styles correctly and consistently;
* put graphics where I tell it to, rather than teleporting them around;
* not behave differently based on the size of the document;
* allow me at least as much control over formatting as I would have
	with pure XHTML and CSS;
* handle Word DOCs correctly;
* and not crash.

MS Word falls far short on all points, except handling of DOCs.  OOo
Writer does much better in general, and handles DOCs well.  Abiword
does very very well in general, but handles DOCs poorly.

Not that I wouldn't like to have higher expectations.  Word processors
fit a very awkward niche between text editors and desktop publishing
systems, trying to make it easier than DTP and give you more control
and better results then a plain text editor.  When formatting is
everything, I am likely to use a DTP or vector graphics package
(Inkscape, Scribus, etc.); when format is irrelevant, I am likely to
use Emacs in text mode.

> Most often, the design of a document must conform to the
> capabilities of a particular word processor and not vice
> versa.  Thus, it becomes incumbent on the user to fully
> understand what a given word processor can do and what it
> cannot.  (How many casual users spend time studying the
> voluminous software manuals?)

Really, this is a pretty sad thing to admit, but is effectively true.
My real position is that traditional office software is just based on a
very poor model of how to do things.

Regards,
Matthew

(Huh.  "Teleporting" is not in my spell-check dictionary.)