

Ask HN: Why is desktop text editing software still so bad? - willthefirst

For example: Why is Microsoft Word's autocorrect still not using the kind of text editing technology that already functions in all tablets and smart phones?
======
khyryk
I shudder at the mere thought. Word does some simple autocorrecting that has
rarely ever been annoying; besides that, the most helpful thing it does is
underline (potentially) misspelled words and offer suggestions. Given my
experience with some smart phones, I'd rather not have what I type change mid-
way. I even have autocorrect turned off on all of my phones.

------
waivej
After 2-3 years, I turned autocorrect off on my phone and wish I had done so
sooner.

~~~
willthefirst
Why? I would imagine that better and better autocorrect will make us want it
more and more, not less and less. I'm just interested in why you would drop
it.

~~~
saurik
It has not been my experience that autocorrect has become better: it has
simply become more lax. As an example, I would actually find it really useful
if the iPhone's autocorrect was smart enough to realize that my fingers were
slightly off position as I typed (due to the lack of physical feedback) and
could figure out what word I meant to type. However, it seems to just be
running a spell check; it doesn't even realize that if I mash at the screen
four times I intend to have four letters and it should not autocorrect what I
typed to a word with five letters because it seems to be spelled similarly.
The result is that a slight offset on the keyboard doesn't get corrected: it
gets mutated into something hilariously unrelated to what you intended to
type. Meanwhile, it also doesn't bother trying to come up with any kind of
confidence rating for words I type that it doesn't understand. As an example:
if I sit there and type a word with one finger, carefully moving my hand
slowly to each key and carefully lining up each press, when I hit space bar
the iPhone should realize "there is no way in hell I should be correcting this
right now: this was a careful and deliberate action on behalf of this user",
and yet even when you do that it will take a word and butcher it into one of
the words in its dictionary; which, in the case of the iPhone, includes such
words as "it's" and excludes such words as "its"... it doesn't even have the
common decency to run a grammar check, something Word has had a reasonable-if-
not-perfect implementation of for well over a decade now. Honestly: the iPhone
has a /lot/ to learn from Word.

------
Derbasti
Because in order to create a really good new generation of word processor,
someone would have to start from scratch and reimagine the whole thing.

Microsoft lives from taking users' documents hostage and making users pay for
software upgrades, so they won't do it. OOo/Libre Office does not seem to have
the man power to do it. Apple seems to be utterly unmotivated to anything more
than absolutely necessery with its office suite.

That said, there _are_ interesting alternatives out there if you are willing
to part with more than basic *.docx compatibility.

------
lsiebert
The autocorrect on my android is great... until I want to type something that
is "incorrect" like type a linkedlist.c and get an autospace after the period.

I think there can be improvement for keyboards inspired by touchscreen
keyboards, but it's going to be different then what's out there on phones and
tablets because of the differences in how we type between the two. We don't
touch type on mobile devices.

I think the only thing free when typing is our thumbs..

------
pkamb
> _the kind of text editing technology that already functions in all tablets
> and smart phones?_

The reason that technology exists is because we're so bad at tapping small
rectangles with our thumbs. If you interacted with your smartphone using a
full size touch-typing keyboard, the phone wouldn't have advanced autocorrect.

------
debacle
Most typists have a disdain for autocorrect.

------
greggman
Why shoot for tablets and smartphones when there's better tech.

[http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/03/spell-checking-
powere...](http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/03/spell-checking-powered-by-
web.html)

------
brudgers
I own a Dell Venue Pro which has both keyboard and touchsreen text entry.
Autocorrect is counterproductive when I use the keyboard. I wouldn't even
begin to want that in a word processor...or FireFox like I'm using now.

