Every time I have to suffer through the archaic UI of Word and enjoy late 1990s performance in the mid 2010s, I am reminded that my Pappy is still dead, even though MS could have made amends. They haven't. And in addition to my Pappy there's a whole other cast of characters that are dead, and they've saddled the entire world with mediocre-to-bad computing experiences. No amends for that either. Perhaps can't make amends, because they are themselves too stuck in the past, unwilling to fix their ways or legacy programs.
The world of computing could have been and would be today a better place if they hadn't dominated through business practices, but instead dominated with products.
Yes. Microsoft Word killed your pappy. Best argument ever.
That is absolutely weak man. If you don't like Word, then don't use it. There are plenty of alternatives. TeX, LaTeX, Abiword, Open Office, Wordpress...
I kid you not, I submitted every single college paper manually typeset in TeX / LaTeX document, created using Vim + Makefiles I hand crafted. Graphs were generated in GnuPlot, maybe R if it were statistics related. Gnumeric was my spreadsheets program, and occasionally I'd use Abiword for times when I needed a more classic "double-spaced 500-word" homework assignment.
Yes, you used LaTeX in school. Best argument ever.
That is absolutely weak man. If you live out in the real world, there aren't plenty of alternatives.
I kid you not, I keep buying MS Word, despite hating it passionately, because it's the only word processing document format that we can share in common with business partners, our legal counsel, accounting, etc.
I live in the real world. I use the tools I need to communicate with who I need.
When a customer asks for a Word Document, I deliver a Word Document. When a customer asks for a 200-page print-out, I deliver it however the hell I feel like it. I'll deliver it using InDesign if I believe its the best tool for the job.
Here's why Microsoft Office is used. Because it works. Sticking with a standard office font works across Mac, Windows, and yes, even Linux (thanks to Crosstools). Abiword and OpenOffice are much better at reading Microsoft Office documents than they are at reading each other.
But when it comes down to beautiful typesetting, semantic markup and the like? LaTeX is quite hard to beat.
When it comes to opening up a 25 year old document and it still looking exactly like how it was typeset in Word 95? Well... Microsoft actually has accomplished that quite decently. Tell me, does Libre Office support the StarWord format as well as Word 2013 supports a Word95 document?
On the other hand, LaTeX supports documents from the 80s quite well, ditto with TeX.
Word changes its layout if you plug a different printer in, never mind open documents from 1995. It was never designed to keep a consistent layout and it fails miserably in practice.
Bah, this is unfair to put on Word. Every word processor will do the same, if the default margins, or the margins set by the user fall outside the ability of the printer vis-a-vis printable page area.
Blaming Word because some cheap printer isn't able to use as much of the page as something else is shooting the messenger. And Word is word processing software. It attempts to do the most logical thing - reflows the document to fit within usable margins. If you need absolute page layout control, use a tool devised for that purpose, like InDesign. To not, and complain, is to complain that HTML and web-browsers can't be relied on with certainty for pixel perfect display.
Fair point. PDFs (and TeX's DVI format) are better for that, but PDFs aren't very editable. Microsoft XPS should be used now for long-term read-only document storage.
Nonetheless, its how Word is used today. I can't think of many tools with a beginner-friendly UI that can do what Word can do.
I'm sorry, but I've just noticed that "If you don't like [Microsoft product], don't use it" is an awfully frequent argument of pro-MS people. An awfully weak argument, too. (Edit: because, you know, sometimes there just isn't a way to avoid using an MS product).
Sure there is. Just don't use it if you don't want to.
Again, use Tex, use LaTex. Google Docs (although I really dislike the cloud). Make .rtf files in WordPerfect if you really want to avoid Word.
I guarantee you, building RTF files is just about the most cross-platform thing you can do. Its supported by damn near everyone, Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, Abiword.
I mean, have you even tried not using a Microsoft Product? Its a hell of a lot easier than you're making it out to be.
How exactly is any of what you mentioned going to help me when I'm being sent an OOXML file (because I work in a business where sharing documents among companies is common)? It won't or it will be partially broken. Yes, I have tried. (and that's just office, don't even try to suggest that avoiding using Windows is easy)
My 9-to-5 work computer is actually a Red Hat machine. So I think I know what I'm talking about. I release .rtf files when I can so that it can be friendly on most platforms.
As for document writing... I've mentions practical alternatives already. WHY are they sending you an OOXML file? Is it for collaboration? In which point, a Wiki is more than suitable as a replacement. Are they sending it for final consumption? A PDF file is good for documents where the layout must be faithfully preserved.
If you're documenting code and leaving the documentation in an SVN server, .doc documents are treated as binary and don't really get revision editing you'd like. Its better to document using Doxygen (which is much akin to HTML) than .doc in many cases.
Sure, let me just change the habits in hundreds of companies in the EU, including not very tech-savvy people. Brilliant idea.
I would have moved to some other OS if it wasn't for the Office issue and the fact that huge number of games is under DirectX.
Exactly. I use LaTeX for almost everything that most people use Word or Powerpoint for. Yes, with vim and makefiles. There is no matching my productivity there in a word processor.
And I use Gnumeric (and assume you do too) because of the latex export function.
If Microsoft wants my business back, having really good LaTeX export from every MS Office program would be the place to start, along with native Linux clients.
Why would they? Latex is garbage to 90% of the normal human beings they're trying to sell to. I finally learned it for a comp models class a year or two ago and I have no intentions of ever touching it again. I use Libre Office now but given all the incompatibilities with the rest of the world, I'd use Word if it worked on Linux.
I use Gnumeric because its one of the most reliable spreadsheet programs on Linux. Its simply a high quality piece of work, and I've had no issues with it.
MS Word however, will forever be incompatible with the notions of LaTeX. It solves a different problem than LaTeX anyway. An export tool would be nice though.
> That is absolutely weak man. If you don't like Word, then don't use it. There are plenty of alternatives. TeX, LaTeX, Abiword, Open Office, Wordpress...
I'm not sure what Wordpress is doing in the list, but the fact is that dealing with Word documents can be pretty much unavoidable (depending on where you work), and they don't always open correctly in Open Office.
Many companies are using Wordpress where MS Word documents were once used before. Giant word documents with cross references that documented procedures are instead replaced by Blogs and Wikis.
Best part about Wordpress / Wikis, is that you get open collaboration, instant publishing, RSS, Emails, and everything. Its the perfect publishing platform.
On the other hand, a number of businesses still pass around Word Documents like the internet hasn't been invented yet. Tell me this, which is easier to collaborate on. A Group-Blog hosted on Wordpress? Or the 20 copies of a Word document that your office is passing around by email?
Enterprise wikis are where documents go to die. Enterprise wikis are 'WORN' - write once, read never. (And edit/refactor even less often than never.)
If I want to know what the spec was six months ago before someone changed it, I'll go check the wiki.
There's little motivation to keep them up-to-date. They are usually sold to companies on the basis of feature lists rather than getting the simple shit right. I can't edit Confluence in text/plain any more.
I'm a Wikipedia admin. We actually know how to use a wiki and there's at least some motivation to make shit presentable because even minor topics are going to have a couple hundred readers each month. There's no such motivation in enterprise wiki-land. I can write a long and detailed document, put it up on the wiki and people still won't read it.
However... its no worse than Word documents rotting away for 10+ years.
Enterprise Wikis, while the project is active, are usually kept up to date decently. When the projects die down a bit and enters "maintenance mode", thats when the real trouble begins.
But the update problem happens exactly the same with Word Documents and classical media.
Also, to ing hell with Confluence. Piece of . But its still easier than emailing Word Documents to everyone and getting lost between the versions.
> On the other hand, a number of businesses still pass around Word Documents like the internet hasn't been invented yet. Tell me this, which is easier to collaborate on. A Group-Blog hosted on Wordpress? Or the 20 copies of a Word document that your office is passing around by email?
You won't find in me a staunch defender of collaboration via Word documents (or of Word in general). However, the fact that Wordpress and Word share a relatively small use case doesn't mean Wordpress is a viable Word replacement, otherwise I'd point out that you could just as well setup a private Git repo and collaborate that way.
The world of computing could have been and would be today a better place if they hadn't dominated through business practices, but instead dominated with products.