I usually just save as pdf if the recipient doesn’t need to edit the document. That way you can be relatively confident that it will look the same on a different computer, as the formatting is often thrown off when you save as an earlier word format (although you can’t see that on your computer).
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PDF for the win!
The most interesting thing about Office is that whenever I need to copy a clipboard of text from Excel to Word or vice-versa, I have learned to pass the clipboard through an ASCII text editor first to prevent the formatting from getting pasted in.
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I’m confused-- Either MSWord is too slow for him, or it’s not easy to use? There’s plenty of alternatives-- could someone just be grumpy because they didn’t have their tea, and there’s some kids on the lawn making a ruckus?
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I don’t think that he doesn’t have choices, but it’s probably the ubiquity he’s addressing. Even though I don’t use microsoft word, I regularly get microsoft documents that will or will not open on my computer. I think that’s his issue. Microsoft tends to not make the use of their formats universal and is constantly changing them.
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My biggest complaint about Word is that you cannot transfer-in/out individual pages to different files (unlike Adobe In-design or Acrobat). This makes using Word with multiple documents a clunky process. Next is trying to format multiple headers/footers in large docs. I’ve torn out all my hair configuring the different “sections.” Using Word sometimes requires the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Finally, I miss ole WordPerfect from the early '90’s - I lworking in “code view” and miss the speed with which it worked. It seems that every new Word version is slower than the previous.
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And, to my mind, an awful lot of foaming-at-the-mouth Apple fanboys come off like shills too. It really depends on where you’re standing, and from what “ideological” viewpoint you see everything.
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Hate Word and have never and will never use it, for all Stross reasons and more.
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Say anything you want. Word is a pig.
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Stross outlines the dichotomy of content–production vs. presentation. As he mentioned early tools were all about the production of the document and external tools for the editing and presentation. Word folded them altogether in an unmanageable form such that the normal user would use the presentation stuff to “spiff up the copy” when copy-editors don’t want that. That’s their job.
The first comments in this thread were most likely trolls as they failed to read the article to the end. Stross uses Scrivener and is kvetching that his editors want Word documents. I chatted with a client who’s a writer about Scrivener, which she loves. There are a couple writer’s tools that don’t have Scrivner’s features but I understand why she uses it.
I don’t use Word unless I have to. When I was trying it out for my story, Word did some things that would probably be annoying to a writer–it automatically inserted spaces and corrected common typos. I turned those features off an was left with the equivalent of a sluggish text editor. So I looked for something better. I ended up with StoryMill and I may switch again to Storyist.
These tools are made for the novel writer. Word is made for writing short to medium documents. Other tools excel in manuals and large documents, but I’ll bet just as PageMaker and FrameMaker died, that Word is the input that the TechPubs department has to parse to pour it into InDesign. And these documents from different authors probably all have different formatting. Again, it’s writers trying to do presentation instead of their content.
I note that the level of analysis and discussion on Stross’ blog go into great depth and detail, far beyond what’s been said here. I’m glad I read the article and comments before adding my 2cents here.
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The most frustrating thing for me is trying to move tables in a Word document. At some point, it just snaps to the side of the page, moves to the end of the document or otherwise does something that no user would ever want. There are ways around it, but working with tables in Word should be MUCH easier, considering how much they are used in documents.
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LaTeX all the way. I can imagine that you might want something similar, but not that, for documents that don’t require much math, but I really like separating the writing from the actual layout by just using a markup language that automatically lays out your text according to a template.
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If you’ve never used it, how do you know you hate it?
He says he uses Scrivener, so probably that. It is a great program, and superior to Word in every way. Cheap too-$40, less if you succeed during NaNoWriMo.
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I remember an article from the '80s, possibly by Dvorak, possibly in “Byte”, about how word processors were destroying productivity.
Once, managers who needed to communicate with staff would take out a pen, write a memo, have it duplicated and distributed to the staff.
Now, the manager fires up his (hey, it was the eighties, it was generally ‘his’) word processor, composes the memo, make a few corrections, additions, moves a line from here to there, decides it might look better in sans-serif, no, maybe Times New Roman, no, maybe bold, or how about italic bold?
Then maybe it needs wider margins, and a better introduction section, and his signature line doesn’t look quite right.
Two hours later, he hits “print”, and of course the printer jams.
Anybody remember it? I’d love to find it again.
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How do I become a paid shill? You mentioned bank accounts.
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Search me… I have no idea, never having been a paid shill as far as I know. But that tends to be the term thrown around when people argue about something like this, and people express strong preferences for one thing or the other. Apple fans tend to assume that people who love microsoft are shills and vice versa…
I do think there is some sort of history of bloggers getting either financial or product kickbacks for extolling the virtues of particular products. I guess you could become a well-known tech blogger and watch the i-phones, androids, tablets, and laptops roll in, then resell them for a tidy profit?
Ach I was hoping more for an easy way in to the gig. “Just say this” and “we’ll pay you a couple grand per comment”.
Can’t be shifting product. I quite like Apple though, although iTunes winds me up. MS Excel is a work of genius, flawed.
Anyone from either side reading? I’ll say anything, without reason, if you’ll pay good money.
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I have used it, almost everyplace I worked up until I started my own biz, and continuously encountering it at companies I work with since then, and always receiving .doc files with the assumption that they are universal. That’s how.
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Sorry… I don’t run a huge technology corporation, I’m just a lowly grad student. If I ever leave the loving arms of academia to take over apple or microsoft, I promise to make you head shill! Or better yet I can do this: one day, I’ll write a book and you can shill for me then, you can write something like this:
“Mindysan33 CHANGES THE FACE of Cold War historiography and how we look at the political economy of corporations. Her work will change the WOOOOORRRRLLLLDDD.”
I will pay you pennies for each comment… as my royalties will probably be shite.
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