
The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps - prostoalex
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/new-word-processor-wars-fresh-crop-productivity-apps-trying-reinvent-workday/
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npunt
Just a quibble but I see this a lot - if you're talking about strategy it's
"bottom-up", not "bottoms-up".

A bottom-up strategy is something like marketing your tool to users who then
bring it into their company for wider adoption.

A bottoms-up strategy is drinking until the problem goes away.

~~~
gnicholas
I have the same feeling about this, and I've noticed that folks from the UK
are more likely to use "bottoms-up" to mean both. I rarely hear it from US-
born speakers. Has anyone else noticed this pattern?

~~~
opan
Not a Brit myself, but I've noticed they tend to put an s on the end of a lot
of things. e.g. "maths"

~~~
Vinnl
"Maths" makes sense though, as short for "mathematics". However, "bottom-up"
refers to "from the bottom up", I think, which is singular.

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SllX
At this point I look at Word and Excel the same way I look at bash, gcc, grep,
sed, awk, et cetera: there is so much iniertia that even when different and
arguably better tools come along, it still never truly goes away.

A lot of people still use emacs, vim, BBEdit and so on, but a lot of people
also use IntelliJ, VSCode and Atom or whatever is in vogue this year. Vim and
emacs will never truly go away no matter how many CPU architectures or
operating systems come along this century, and neither will Word. At some
point software is just infrastructure. We can build better bridges than we
could a century ago, but there isn’t an incentive to replace a bridge until it
falls down, and it isn’t like Word prevented Markdown and TeX and HTML from
finding their niches.

~~~
jen729w
Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die.

Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS
window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells.

Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is
possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't
care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to its
functionality/friction curve (assuming you already know how to Excel, that
is).

~~~
amphibian87
Why don't you like Word?

I think it's still going to be the best for a while, if not only because it's
_massive._ My CS professor says it's the biggest program ever written.

It can so so much, like check for passive voice and more subtle grammar
things.

At the end of the day, the subscription model is off-putting, but "needs to
die?" why?

~~~
jonathanstrange
> _Why don 't you like Word?_

Here are my main reasons:

\- It does not allow me to make selections where I point my mouse cursor.

\- It breaks between versions of itself and intentionally breaks
interoperability with nearly all third party software, especially when tables
and formulas are involved.

\- Formula and math editing and typesetting is abysmal.

\- The quality of typesetting is abysmal. I know because I once had to convert
an article with formulas written in LaTeX by hand into Word. The editor of the
journal was very ashamed of the quality of the result in comparison to the
original.

\- Images and other boxes inserted into the text almost never work in the
intended way. They slip between pages, get the wrong flow around them, cannot
be selected, etc.

\- It is practically impossible to import documents produced in other tools
reliably into Word or reliably export Word documents to be processed with
other tools (like e.g. LaTeX). Even pandoc cannot compile to Word files that
work reliably enough. Some of the errors that occur are nearly unfixable, e.g.
bizarre things strange characters in lines that cannot be erased, stretched
and distorted characters.

\- Horrible default auto styles.

\- Ribbon interface and other user interface problems that make Word one of
the most unintuitive pieces of software on earth (many people just don't
realize this, because they have been using it for so long and so often)

\- relatively expensive

~~~
com2kid
> Formula and math editing

Word supports LaTeX for formulas now!

That aside, Word's formula editor is really powerful but it does have a
learning curve. I'd say that once learned it is rather nice though.

FWIW Unicode Math, Word's format for doing math input, is a published spec.

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xte
Well... Few time ago I discover my "definitive" productivity app: Emacs. In
few months it became the center of my IT life. And I still have to see ANY
more effective, simple, flexible, pleasure to use modern application that can
only compete with at least some aspects of Emacs.

The problem IMO is that in the glory time of IT software was not a business,
was a free thing that came with hw and if it was good and flexible people are
more willing to buy your iron. Now (not from now) that software became a
product commercial need destroy freedom and evolution creating a modern,
colorful, limited and limiting digital middle-age that can barely stand like
Babel's tower...

IMO sooner or later tower will collapse and the more we wait the more it will
hurt.

More about software: our society mostly live on text: laws are text,
newspapers are text, books are mostly text, text is the cheapest and effective
means of communication we have so if we really want to being productive we
need to have something focused on text. Yes, we have also images, videos,
audios, but they are _still_ marginal. We have excellent audiobooks, super-
nice videos and diagrams/images that communicate something an order of
magnitude better than text but they are still hard to make, hard to design,
rare, not really flexible etc. so while we have to work on them hard and
constantly to better support/integrate our focus must still be on text. For
many years to come.

Try only to do most common task without a keyboard and see how unproductive,
limited and hard they are even with the best touch UI we have, with all "AI"
support possible.

That's a lesson nearly nobody want to learn but that's also the reality we
have to face, willing or not.

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mark_l_watson
While I like to see competition, I still think Microsoft has the market for
the foreseeable future because you get so much value. My yearly subscription
for Office 365 family plan is just renewing and I can;t imagine not paying
$99/year for: everyone in the family gets 1 TB of cloud storage, web based
apps (which work just fine on Linux), and always up to date versions of the
Office apps, if you want those too, and quality mobile apps for access to
documents anytime.

I use markdown and Latex to write my books, but I still find a lot of value in
Office for occasional uses.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
One advantage of Microsoft Office is that I can reasonably expect that in 20
years Word will still be around and will be able to read the files I write
today. With these apps, I would be surprised if in 5 years I could read the
files created with these apps.

~~~
sachin
While we have no plans to go anywhere at Notejoy, we do acknowledge that this
fear is very real. So to address it we support full bulk export of all your
notes to Google Drive at any point, so you can rest assured that you'll always
be able to take them with you.

~~~
arglebargle75
Don't take this the wrong way, but... you've flipped multiple startups. Why
would I believe that "you have no plans to go anywhere" this time?

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daniel_iversen
I’m disappointed to not see our Dropbox Paper in that writeup, although it’s a
good article! Wish they wouldn’t call it “word processor wars” though since
that of course misses the point - it has too many associations to the printed
page whereas I think everyone incl the author and the people quoted knows it’s
about a more collaborative content creation experience.

~~~
watersb
Yes. Dropbox Paper is fantastic.

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jacobkg
Not mentioned in the article but WorkFlowy (YC ‘10) is still going strong.
Minimalist web-based word processor with a flexible outline format. Can hold
hundreds of thousands of items, without you getting overwhelmed.

~~~
sachin
The same author actually wrote about WorkFlowy a few months back:
[https://www.geekwire.com/2018/workflowly-founder-new-list-
up...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/workflowly-founder-new-list-update-
popular-app-keeping-purists-happy/)

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lewisjoe
Good insights on the trends in word processor markets. But, including rich
text editors and note-taking apps into the word processor market is bit of an
overstretch.

Note-making apps are typically for digital screens, with a limited set of
tools for document creation.

Word processors cater both for digital screens and print media. They'd have a
richer tool-set and are for power document making people.

Interestingly _both_ categories have made lots of improvements recently, when
it comes to sharing, reviewing and co-editing.

Take, Zoho Writer
([https://www.zoho.com/writer/](https://www.zoho.com/writer/)) for example.
The product beautifully carries the ease-of-use of simpler apps, without
compromising on the richer word processor features. This takes the game one-
level up. Simple writing apps now have to bring in more document creation
features to compete in the market with word processors. Otherwise, they are
just their own category with their own market.

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matthiaswh
I'm curious what open source options will crop up in this space. So far I
haven't seen anything promising that compares to the Notion or the Air Table
approach.

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honkycat
My problem with these sorts of tools is always the same: I have been spoiled
by my emacs keybindings ( evil mode ), the ability to parse structured text,
org-mode, and command line tooling.

I do not have to open a web browser and navigate, I just launch my helm-
project-search buffer and type `org/work`. I then have a fuzzy search that
matches on file name. Toss these files into a dropbox folder, and you are good
to go.

None of these applications I have seen support structured text such that I can
export / import through Emacs. They cling to your data as tightly as possible
and do NOT want to let it go.

I was working as a hobby on an RPG supplement for a popular anime series. I
was attracted to notion and coda, but was dismayed to find I did not have a
way to turn the data I entered into structured data which I can query to
generate an attractive webpage for the game.

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Djvacto
I'd love to have one notebook-type app that works between all my devices, or
some combination that lets me have the same or similar content.

I loved OneNote back in Uni, though I reached a point where I stopped taking
notes (through the fault of the powerpoint teaching method, and my own
laziness), and OneNote does seem to be a bit bloat-y when it comes to sync.

Stuff like EMACS org-mode (or, preferrably, some kind of Visual Studio Code
equivalent) seems enticing, but I'm not sure how I could hook that into my
phone in a way that isn't a terminal emulator.

Anyone found anything (app, service, or custom setup) that works for them?

~~~
newen
I use orgzly to take notes in my phone. It can create and edit org files and
sync the files through Dropbox. Then you can edit the files in your computer
through a Dropbox sync folder. It's just a nice app for taking notes for me
though. I haven't even edited the notes through my computer. Good to know that
my notes are backed up without having to use some opaque backup method.

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netcan
There was a Firefox thread on here yesterday. Interesting one.

My take was that 10-15 years ago, FF's feature gap was enourmous. Tabs.
Extensions like firebug for web development, adblocking for browsing, various
"social add-ons" that were innovative and exciting. IE 6 was a dinosaur.

The question for these is.. what more do you/we want from a word processor?

~~~
chapium
Integration with documemt and version control with anything other than
sharepoint. Something that is guaranteed to work without application crashes.
Configurable Cloud storage/saving. 100% open document formatting to allow for
interoperability.

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ecpottinger
I thought Wang made the first word-processors.

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shanghaiaway
Notion and Coda are attractive, but I'm wondering if the learning curve is too
steep. Not sure if my team would use them without me setting everything up.

~~~
bkanber
I use Notion for personal projects and love it. Very easy to learn. I used it
to plan and execute my NaNoWriMo challenge last month and really have nothing
bad to say about it. Works well on all my devices.

But it's unstructured. I think in a work environment it's most useful as a
wiki/project planner/lightweight tracker, but still can't replace the
MS/Google office suite, and can't replace Jira/Asana for in depth ticketing.

~~~
elithrar
I’d agree: Notion is great for individuals, a household, maybe even a small
business? But it’d be a tough ask to scale to 100 people in an engineering
org. But who knows, maybe it will find a niche like Basecamp did?

It is a wonderful replacement for Evernote though, and it makes you wonder
what Evernote has been doing all these years? The formatting, drag/drop,
multiple views on the same docs are _great_.

~~~
hnzix
Evernote started the trend but Microsoft destroyed them in the same way they
killed Netscape; OneNote is free beer and it's deeply integrated with the
Office suite.

I can scan a whiteboard using MS Lens on my phone and it's instantly available
on my laptop in OneNote. Oh and I don't have to convince the SOE nazis to
allow install.

~~~
briandear
I can do the same thing with Apple Notes. And I don’t have to pay Microsoft
anything. And it’s all available to iWork. Notes even has document scanning.

With Continuity Camera in Mojave, I can take a photo from my iPhone and
instantly place it within a Pages document.

For power Excel users, Numbers isn’t yet a replacement, but for everything
else, the stuff that is built in to MacOS works great and is free while
working seamlessly across all Apple devices. I don’t work with massive
spreadsheets nor use pivot tables so for me, iWork + Notes solves office
productivity pretty darned well, plus Keynote puts PowerPoint to shame.

~~~
freddie_mercury
> I can do the same thing with Apple Notes. And I don’t have to pay Microsoft
> anything.

I don't understand what this means. I use OneNote and have never paid
Microsoft anything.

