I think this is the same reason Microsoft Office is so popular when there usually are "better" alternatives. Because Word is like pen and paper with spell check. You can add whatever shit you want wherever you want with zero effort. But you don't realize the technical debt you will have to pay for later because nothing is consistent, diffing is a nightmare and your data is everything but normalized.
Want a header, just increase the fontsize, Is that really a header?
"Hmm, it's thick and big, whatever, did anyone say lunchbreak?" Save exit.
For small temporary documents like party-invitations this is fine, doing anything else would be silly. But companies actually use word for serious documents like 100+ pages technical specifications valid for years with tons of versions of each document. It is scary how much mission critical information that is stored in this form, at one of my previous jobs if changes happened outside our division, every document depending on this data had to be updated by hand because it's just plain text in word, nothing is connected or autogenerated. It's grunt work but it actually gets the job done sooner or later. I've seen this in several places. Word and excel keeps the world spinning even though it at the same time requires much more manpower than is reasonable.
Someone has to make an alternative to word that is as easy to use but doesn't allow you to do all the stupid stuff. Enforce styles, make references and other data-connections easy, smooth and reliable and provide a good diff.
I think this is one of the greatest challenges in software development, allow freedom at the same time as you have a strict data model that can be analyzed, processed and generated by a program. Something that paper will always beat, regardless of what kind of paper you get you can always write and highlight on it, with software that is very exceptional.
> Someone has to make an alternative to word that is as easy to use but doesn't allow you to do all the stupid stuff.
Notepad? Vim? Plus a little bit of Markdown?
I had to do a big certification project. A guy went on with a MS project massive file on my team with milestones, completion percentages and so on. I couldn't see it without nausea (and obviously I couldn't see it at all on my Linux box), so I dumped it as text, reformatted it with some Mardown and custom markup, and did a little parser highlighter in a week-end. Then I could put this under version control, have meaningful commits and diffs, and the MS project guy stopped trying to micro-manage my team, and was fired eventually...
That is to say that for me (but not for everyone, I am aware of that issue) nothing beats plain text and, when needed, some markup. Exceptions could be printed books and magazines. But I would not trust MS Word with a 500 pages specification document, and more so because it is important and long, and must be precise. As far as I can tell, TCP/IP specs are written in pure text with some markup.
>Someone has to make an alternative to word that is as easy to use but doesn't allow you to do all the stupid stuff. Enforce styles, make references and other data-connections easy, smooth and reliable and provide a good diff.
That is why I'm building (actually finishing the ALPHA release) of a little FOSS app named Paste Box.
It is a paste bin/simple word processor with one click saving ( to a db ), syntax highligthing, user accounts, one button search feature, anonymous pasting, and a simple (but easy on the eyes) UI.
It also features a simplified install process, to keep the IT dept. from going postal.
The first release is a PHP/sqlite version, then a .NET version will follow (desktop and ASPX versions), and then a RoR version.
After those are done, I plan (if people actually use the thing) to add simple text formatting features with JS.
--
I came up with the idea after realizing that office people have a pretty bad workflow when dealing with text files.
They have to open up Word (which depending on their system, can take up to a minute), then they have to save the document, but not without deciding on a name. Worse if they have to create a directory to store the file into. This does not take into account all the different options that Word offers in terms of file types (which most people don't understand.
I just want to save people time (and whats left of their sanity).
The git repo for the project is over at github/codepockets.
All the code in there is just prototype (read: ugly, non-working)(I follow TDD).
Once the thing is ready and tested, I shall announce it to the community. Deadline is the last day of February.
Proves the articles point even more. Even when all the features are there, people still just wanna get the task out of their hands as quickly as possible and press the bold-button because it takes them one click less than choosing a style, and it is still enough to consider the task complete.
(I know choosing a style is also a one click operation but i'm generalizing)
I think this is the same reason Microsoft Office is so popular when there usually are "better" alternatives. Because Word is like pen and paper with spell check. You can add whatever shit you want wherever you want with zero effort. But you don't realize the technical debt you will have to pay for later because nothing is consistent, diffing is a nightmare and your data is everything but normalized.
Want a header, just increase the fontsize, Is that really a header? "Hmm, it's thick and big, whatever, did anyone say lunchbreak?" Save exit.
For small temporary documents like party-invitations this is fine, doing anything else would be silly. But companies actually use word for serious documents like 100+ pages technical specifications valid for years with tons of versions of each document. It is scary how much mission critical information that is stored in this form, at one of my previous jobs if changes happened outside our division, every document depending on this data had to be updated by hand because it's just plain text in word, nothing is connected or autogenerated. It's grunt work but it actually gets the job done sooner or later. I've seen this in several places. Word and excel keeps the world spinning even though it at the same time requires much more manpower than is reasonable.
Someone has to make an alternative to word that is as easy to use but doesn't allow you to do all the stupid stuff. Enforce styles, make references and other data-connections easy, smooth and reliable and provide a good diff.
I think this is one of the greatest challenges in software development, allow freedom at the same time as you have a strict data model that can be analyzed, processed and generated by a program. Something that paper will always beat, regardless of what kind of paper you get you can always write and highlight on it, with software that is very exceptional.