

All Word Processors Suck - hitonagashi
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=11809

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bradleyland
Everyone wants an application that does everything they want, but only what
they want. The result is that application developers have to create software
that includes features representing a cross-section of their users'
requirements. This is not an easy problem to solve.

I find more recent versions of Microsoft Word far easier to use. The Ribbon
has tucked away infrequently used features to UI spaces that are easy to
reach, but not "in your face". My first stop is the "auto-correct"
preferences. Once you've turned all that crap off, the software is perfectly
usable for me.

Perhaps the author should consider some of the popular applications that are
targeted specifically at authors: Scrivener, WriteRoom, Ulysses, etc.

However, anyone expecting powerful software to work _exactly_ as _you_ expect
is setting themselves up for disappointment. I can't think of a flexible,
powerful tool that doesn't involve a learning curve of some sort.

~~~
Splognosticus
I don't think that the learning curve could really be said to be the problem
when you're talking about a word processor that deliberately deletes three
days worth of saves when it crashes.

~~~
bradleyland
That's not even the argument I'm trying to make. The crashing issue is just
bad software. There's no argument against that. It's implicit in the points
that I make that I'm referring to his frustration with bloat and his
perception that some rather advanced features should be "easy" (chapter
markers, for example). In order for a machine to parse text, it must be given
some specific information. It cannot read the language and understand where a
chapter begins or ends based on some arbitrary value that we have in our
minds. We must use the machine's language, because the machines are not able
to understand what we mean. Hell, many humans frequently fail at understanding
what is being communicated to them.

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jweede
This article just started an echo chamber in my head, "Just use LaTeX".
Seriously.

