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Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat
from the impassioned-defense dept.
Personally, when the PC revolution got underway, I bought an Apple IIe soon after its introduction. VisiCalc caught my eye. As did Flight Simulator, and going online with a 300-baud modem to local computer bulletin boards. But when it came to writing -- in those days, three drafts of a first novel -- I would not abandon my trusty Hermes portable typewriter. The Apple would not tempt me to some writing Eden. The complexity of computers, I sensed, could only sap the creative process.
This reluctance to mix computers with writing ended abruptly in 1988: I began writing professionally. At different writing jobs, I made use of whatever hardware/software combo the employer had. I fashioned text with PCs, Macs, Sun workstations, and still deemed any personal writing project at night better suited to the beloved Hermes.
I soon realized storing words on electronic media meant the professional wordsmith also did "desktop publishing." I had to worry about font selection, repagination, stylesheets. I wondered when I'd have time to find the right word, the original phrase. Once, while "writing" a software manual, I commented that I'd spent far more time formatting than actually writing. That comment went unanswered. I had a sure sense I needed to make an adjustment to new priorities.
Still, I couldn't shake the idea something was being lost when writers got embroiled in desktop publishing. After five years, I gave up the software manuals, the marketing newsletters, to refocus on personal writing. And for the first time, I thought about moving my writing to that Apple IIe. I hesitated. The monitor was filled with text glowing green on a black background. Would those green emissions overwhelm my inner eye of imagination, unlike a piece of paper sitting in a typewriter? I decided to take the plunge and see.
Maybe I looked sideways when I visualized a story scene. I soon found the Apple IIe gave efficiency analogous to replacing handwriting with typewriting. I only retyped what I needed in successive drafts. Counting words was a snap. And, thankfully, Apple IIe word processing was primitive: more a typewriter with memory, not a desktop publishing system. On balance, a good tool. Before long, I was publishing short stories to the World Wide Web.
But by 1999, living with an Apple IIe was Neanderthal. So despite 15+ years of service, I upgraded to an IBM ThinkPad laptop. I was attracted by portability, the renowned IBM keyboard touch, and a promised multimedia experience of the World Wide Web. As for writing, I would use the full-bodied word processor that came with the ThinkPad. This I accepted as a tradeoff for new PC technology. I gave it a go and lived with a plethora of pull-down menus within pull-down menus. I endured help balloons that appeared without bidding. To keep writing, I resisted becoming expert with all my word processor could do.
This strategy of limits on learning worked but briefly. In months, I was driven to maddening distraction with features I thought I'd accidentally turned on and wouldn't, in a blue moon, set right. Gems like capitalization on autopilot. But what really called for a decision was discovery of quotation marks in the wrong font spread randomly throughout a book-length file (and a pair of left quotation marks at that!).
Moreover, the ThinkPad's operating system, Windows 98, caused me to yearn for the stability of an Apple IIe (if not a Sun workstation). I thought about Linux--the alternative to Windows (unless one buys a new computer and goes Macintosh). But in a serendipitous experiment, I installed the very alternative BeOS on the ThinkPad. As operating systems go, it was a vision of loveliness. Scot Hacker, author of THE BEOS BIBLE, aptly described BeOS as combining "the grace of a Mac and the power of Unix."
The productivity suite I bought for BeOS had a "less is more" flavor and the word processor, in particular, worked well. I wrote a novel without struggle. But too often I tackled the day's writing deciding such issues as a font for the day's draft. The point being, I still had too many choices, compared to my beloved Apple IIe. When I finished the 76,000-word manuscript, I found a disconcerting bug in my otherwise dependable word processor. It repeated words, on occasion, in the text. Admittedly, a dozen "doubles" among tens of thousands of words isn't a big deal, but I wondered if my writing might benefit from even less computer functionality. Did those font choices have a price?
With a new novel to write, the time seemed ripe to switch software. I'd like to say I scoured about for word processors, but I didn't. In my novel, one character would write computer programs. The story question was, What software would he use? It had to be vi. Vi, a Unix editor for plain text files created in 1976 by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. I'd remembered working with a software engineer, who saw no advantage to word processors and dismissed the "prettiness" of desktop publishing. He did everything in vi. Could I write a novel in vi? I decided, Why not?
Vi fast became -- and remains, 100,000 words later -- my writing implement of choice. Most of all, what I like about vi is something that is, well, aesthetic. I like vi's keyboard-only operation. Vi doesn't assault with helpful balloons or racks of toolbar icons. No, vi has a 70s ambience (no mouse, no GUI) that's refreshingly clean. In that sense, vi is a treasured software servant. It works well without showy presence and respectfully stays out of the way.
Sure, vi is only a digitized window on the ThinkPad screen. But, at times, I can almost imagine another sheet of paper filling up with words, not unlike one I rolled into my Hermes typewriter. That's when vi, the minimalist's text editor, lets the words roll freely, as with Hemingway's carpenter pencil, from my fingertips.
Slashdot welcomes readers' original features.
Slashdot County Fair! (Score:3, Funny)
This Sunday at Slashdot Arena:
VI VS. EMACS
Right after the tractor pull and the monster truck races!!
of course Emacs will lose ... (Score:5, Funny)
even freshman Physics students could tell you that...
Parent
vi is good but... (Score:4, Informative)
Having started with Wordstar under CP/M on an Apple ][+ in ~1981 or 82, I found Joe [sourceforge.net] to be just what I was looking for. If I want a graphical editor on a Unix-like system, NEdit [nedit.org] is the only thing I use (I have it configured to highlight/italicize/colourize keywords and other goo in Cisco PIX config files).
It's graphical, yes, but otherwise quite lightweight and responsive. Of course a good working knowledge of vi is useful as it's pretty much the lowest common denominator on any Unix-like system.
Pico? Begone, infidel!
Re:vi is but... another WordStar-like. (Score:3, Informative)
You can still get VDE [punky.com], which is a blazingly fast WordStar-like DOS editor written in assembler. AFAIK, because it loads the entire file into a page of memory it still has a 64K file size limitation, but it has a built-in ability to split and reassemble to and from larger files.
It works great on an 8086 class PC. There's even a Palm version.
Re:vi is good but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Very well put.
I first learned vi in 1991, and while it was a steep uphill battle, I crested the hump pretty quickly and have been totally pleased since then. I have always enjoyed having a familiar editor available on just about any system I've touched (Solaris, Ultrix, Unicos, Linux, OSX, Windows).
Sure it's nice to have Emacs configured to do a gazillion things for you, but I liken that to owning a radio, tv, telephone, answering machine, dishwasher, dog walker, maid, bicycle, grocery cart, and dry cleaner all built into one gigantic thing.
No thanks, I just want to edit files...
Parent
In 1996, (Score:5, Insightful)
While this view maybe considered extreme, the author of the article certainly casts some doubt on the usefulness of complex word processing software. But then, I would not call vi particularly intuitive, but it does cut down on pointless formatting decisions that seem to endlessly arise.
Re:In 1996, (Score:5, Informative)
This is utter nonsense. A writer KNOWS what font he writes in makes know difference, the magazine/publisher will likely decide this. This is akin to blaming the existance of pencils and electric sharpeners for his incessant pencil sharpening. Its just a habit he has to avoid working, get rid of it and he'll find another.
Which isn't to say MS Word isn't a bloated nightmare.
Parent
Re:In 1996, (Score:5, Interesting)
Serif proportional fonts are much more readable for bulk text, as found in the body of a manuscript (this applies to paper printouts, not neccesarily on-screen where the crappy resolution of most monitors compared to paper gives proportional, sans-serif fonts the edge). As for things like word counts, etc, manuscripts invariably appear with an accompanying electronic copy (and often only the electronic copy, e.g. when something is filed by email).
I don't know anyone who demands Courier 12/24. Actually, once upon a time, I was drinking with a bunch of publishing nerds, and we tried to work out what booze would go with what fonts, i.e. if Ariel was a drink, what drink would it be? (I did mention we were nerds right?). Anyhoo, Whiskey was the best match for Courier, and Guinness the best match for Times New Roman. The point is, disregarding price, which would most people rather drink a pint of? The longer the text, the more likely I am to want to see it in anything other than Courier.
Parent
Re:In 1996, (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I'm going to jump in here. I thought the point was particularly daft when the original author wrote it, and I think its daft now.
There are no formatting choices when you write a novel. Well, pretty close to zero, anyway.
Lets see:
Typeface: Courier (or nearest equivalent).
Market research shows that manuscripts that are made to look as close to traditional typed te
XyWrite (Score:5, Informative)
vi for writers? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many writers know what a regular expression IS, let alone how to search with one?
Re:vi for writers? (Score:3, Funny)
ctrl-z only works for your last mistake - then it just redoes your mistake over
that would totally suck it big time to lose like 250 pages of work becase your pet walked across your keyboard, startin at the lower left corner... "ctrl-a"
Re:vi for writers? (Score:5, Insightful)
if you think vim is a "typewriter-with-memory" you must have one hell of a typewriter! can notepad do:
the list goes on and on. vim is a fully-featured, powerful, customizable, lightweight and ubiquitous editor that runs on just about any os available. notpad can't even do line numbers.
take that, notepad!
Parent
My observations... (Score:5, Interesting)
and they all completely despise Microsoft Word and Open Office.
some of them even have nasty words to describe both of those products..
basically the jist of all their gripes is the damned "features" you cannot turn off or get in the way, both apps (word and Open Office) are written for childish minds as one of them put it... "any word processor that does anything you did not specifically ask for is a complete piece of crap" (referring to microsoft word.)
Re:My observations... (Score:5, Insightful)
These damned features are *hard* for normal people to turn off. You may think that it's easy as a seasoned computer user. Just yesterday a friend of mine called me on my cell, just to ask how she could turn off automatic spell checking in Word. She is not dumb at all, but for her this was a task that she could not do alone.
I had to support a bunch of secretaries when they started off with Word. They all had problems with the feature overload. These secretaries had to write pathological reports and their former system was text-only in a Novel network. Word for them was hell (and the support for me was hell too *grin*).
Never say that people are stupid because they don't know how to use computers. Otherwhise we are stupid for not being able to write reports at insane speeds.
Parent
Re:My observations... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see...
1. Bring up Help.
2. Type "turn off automatic spell checking".
3. Read the first item, "Turn on or off automatic spelling and grammar checking"
4. Select the stated menu opti
Re:My observations... (Score:3, Informative)
Steven V.
Re:My observations... (Score:4, Insightful)
e.g., spell-check options and auto-correct spell-check options are in different menu trees. The former has a control that says, "Correct spelling as I type," but that *isn't* the auto-correct (but it seems like it might be...). One is in general preferences dialog, the other in "tools." Not, NOT intuitive.
Parent
Mr Duncan (Score:5, Interesting)
I spoke to him the following and explained to him that he was one of my main writing influences. I think I mildly embarassed him since he seemed to lost for words.
Great chap and an excellent writer.
Which is nice.
WFB on WordStar (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a darn old quote; I've no idea what he's running these days.
Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
In the face of $100 million motion picture budgets and teams of hundreds building video games, the words of another author remain quite profound:
"With words alone, I have an unlimited special effects budget."
Textpad!! (Score:5, Informative)
Writing novels with real tools (Score:5, Interesting)
I remain firmly convinced that the combination of a powerful editor and Plain TeX cannot be beat.
The problem, though, is that nowadays publishers more and more demand manuscripts in the form of M$ Word files, which frankly sucks. I am measurably less productive under Word than I am with the combination of (editor + Plain TeX), and I suspect that the same would be true of most authors who are technically competent.
Same here (Score:3, Insightful)
What a word processor does well, on the other hand, are short documents that are due to be printed and consumed immediately, such as letters, applications and so on. For such stuff, you can't really separate content creation and formatting anymore, and LaTeX becomes too heavyweight to deal with it. Of course, with that focus for wordprocessing, 95% of all features are absolutely worthless.
A Pentel 0.5mm Mechanical Pencil (Score:3, Insightful)
While words cannot express the beauty of discovering the frequency of Sol-type stars within 100 light-years of Earth, or Tibetan surnames and their construction without visiting a library, computers (and especially the internet) are a godawful distraction to creativity.
Like now.
Jerry Pournelle's requirement (Score:5, Interesting)
[] Blue background, white text
That option is still there to this day.
Dang, it must be nice to be able to tell Bill Gates what to do once in a while!
Re:Jerry Pournelle's requirement (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
You know... (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, it's not tough to select Courier, 10pt., set the margin widths to 1.25" all the way around, and set the material to double-spacing. That's all that's really required.
Creative people (Score:5, Insightful)
Creative people seem to be among the most resistant to new technologies and/or meduims brought about by technology. The word processor is just one example...but how long did it take photography to be accepted as a fine art? (I'm sure that there are photographers out there right now that will argue that it still hasn't).
A large fraction of those same photographers who are shaking their heads right now -- they refuse to accept digital photography as an artistic medium. Furthermore, much of the other digital "art" mediums have yet to be accepted...what about 3D rendering? This is surely an art form, but is not widely accepted. The demo scene is another that is not embraced by the artsy world.
The point is that the artistic types will tend to cling to their ways...who knows why. But it doesn't seem like, as a group, creative folks tend to enbrace new technology (or in this case a pretty damn old one, like a word processor) I wonder if it's alright to use an electric light Vs. a candle to write?
Bah, computers? (Score:3, Interesting)
But for the more creative writing I still prefer a notepad and pencil for the first draft. I can easily annotate, make drawings, cross out stuff and then decide I want to keep that text after all... and there's just no computer tool that is as easy to use. I find that both the features and the inherent limitations get in the way of creativity.
The drawback of course is that I have to type it ito the computer anyway, at some point.
Metapad (Score:3, Informative)
Work Method (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd recommend writing the raw text first and then formatting later. I've written several lengthy user manuals. The first thing I write is a table of contents. This can be done in a program as simple as NotePad (although I like EditPlus).
Then, fill out each section. Write the content. Trying to format on the fly with something like MSWord is a major pain in the ass (don't even get me STARTED on what a nightmare subdocuments can be). Plus, you end up wasting a lot of time.
vi is for wussies. I use ed (Score:3, Funny)
Pen first, wp later (Score:4, Insightful)
I still remember... (Score:4, Insightful)
The last time I stepped into my mom's office (she's a lawyer btw) and still found people there using Wordperfect 5.1/DOS. Whatever works for your purpose, as my mom tells me "It does legal briefs better than anything else that I know how to use, so why change?" Why should authors use the latest version of MS Word or Vi, or Emacs or anything?
Once people have found a comfortable niche in technology, why change until you have better needs?
Improper use of "office productivity" tools (Score:3, Insightful)
newspaper (Score:3, Informative)
It's absurd to use a word processor that costs hundreds of dollars rather than TextEdit or Notepad just to mark a few words bold or italic (that's all the formatting we keep). It's also too tempting for writers to try to insert tables or images or other nonsense that really needs to be submitted as a seperate file. To make it more difficult, Quark 4.x on the Mac won't open an RTF or SimpleText file and retain the little formatting we need. It'll open a proprietary
Words of Wisdom from Mike Callahan by S.R. (Score:4, Funny)
"Goc damn it, you didn't write it on a "word processor"! Or even on a "computer." What it is, is a goddamn typewrite--a machine for turning fingerstrokes on a keyboard into ink symbols on a piece of paper. (Okay, yours can also be used as a computer when you're not writing--my old Ryal manual can be used as a nutcracker, or a paperweight, or a murder weapon.) The silicon revolution did not change that process--from the user's point of view--much more than did the electric typewriter, it merely streamlined the error-correction process. When it's being used to make words appear on a page, it's a typewriter.
To speak of your "word processor" is like refering to your car as an "exothermically powered, myocontrolled matter transporter." [ed. or refering to a flashlight as a "low voltage high density photon projector"] The only purpose of the term is to cue your listeners that you can afford to use a computer as a typewriter, and all it really tells them is that you're insecure enough to worry that people might think you still used one of those old-fashioned things to type on.
--Mike"
Take it for what it is worth...
Cuneiform is essential (Score:3, Funny)
Good writing should really be done on the primary writing environment - that is cuneform and clay [solstation.com].
You should really forego the modern inventions of typewriters, ink and paper and such as they will contaminate the muse and offend the gods. Nothing like the smell and feel of freshly pressed clay tablets.
My Dream Writing System (Score:3, Interesting)
I prefered the Thinkpad for a couple of reasons. First, it had the best keyboard I've ever used. Second, I deliberately never installed games, nor hooked it up to the Internet. So I was never tempted to check email or surf the web when I should be writing.
As for my word processor, OpenOffice did not until recently have a decent "draft mode" type view until recently. ABIword was too unstable (I don't know about the new 2.0 release.) So I've been using WordPerfect 10.0, which has the speed and flexibility I could desire, great footnoting, plus the ability to view embedded codes on the off chance your document gets screwed up.
I'd say right now, my dream system for writing would be:
A mini-PC
Flat panel
Thinkpad 600 Keyboard (how I wish I could buy the keyboard alone, that's why this is a dream PC.)
WordPerfect
A little shopping around for a used 1.6 Mhz system, and the whole thing shouldn't cost more than $400-$500. I couldn't ask for anything better for writing.
LyX (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, I figured someone would have said this by now (maybe they have and I need to refresh again :) but what this guy really needs is
LyX [lyx.org]. It's basically a pretty word-processor-style front end for LaTeX. The help files and tutorial explicitly tell you that LyX follows a "WYSIWYM" principle -- What You See Is What You Mean. It tries to avoid pushing details like formatting into the writer's head, and instead focuses on getting the words organized into a meaningful structure. The program takes care of formatting everything based on the style you choose (you can choose any style at any time and the whole doc reflects it on the next preview). It's more or less the whole MVC paradigm that the XML/XSL folks push, but it's actually practical.
After discovering it I became a lot more productive with my writing. Admittedly that was limited mostly to writing college papers, but I spent a lot less time fighting with the word processor over formatting, focused on the writing, and the output was usually awesome looking.
YMMV I guess, if you're a formatting control freak then LyX won't work so well for you. Sometimes it's tough to make it do exactly what you want in the formatting phase too, so I eventually switched to using raw LaTeX or TeX for my docs, but LyX is a good middle of the road solution.
Writing tools (Score:4, Informative)
Modern-day typewriters (Score:4, Interesting)
AlphaSmart 3000 [alphasmart.com]
AlphaSmart Dana [alphasmart.com]
They're (basically) Palm Pilots with full-sized keyboard functionality, w/o any irritating clip-on devices, etc. Their "word processor" is quite minimalistic with basic features such as spellcheck. Definately a nice tool for the mobile geek writer.
Fiddling vs. "Good Enough" (Score:5, Insightful)
Put differently, it all goes back to the aphorism "Perfection is the enemy of (good/progress/etc.)" which is true not just because in trying to make things perfect you often either ruin them or never finish them - it's true because everyone's idea of perfection is different, but most of us can agree on "pretty good".
Additional Simplicity (Score:5, Interesting)
To that end, I have an AlphaSmart(.com) - a small portable keyboard, 4 lines of text, capable of storing about 100 pages (12pt. single spaced courier) of information. It runs on 3 AA (LR6) batteries and gets between 500-700 hours (no, no missing decimal points) of active use per set. I honestly haven't changed them in over a year. All active memory too, never worry about saving - it's always there no matter when it's turned off.
It emulates a keyboard when hooked up to a host machine, so open your favorite app and hit "Send" and the text is put in wherever you want it; connects via ADB, PS2, and USB. The only additional feature I've ever wished for was a VI interface on it to speed up some editing proceedures.
I highly recommend any freelance writer, journalist, novelist, student, etc. take a look at the device. They have a newer model running PalmOS for those who might be interested as well (no Linux, yet).
For All those saying "Use Notepad!" (Score:3, Informative)
1. Search / Search Replace are terrible. To search you are required to bring up a new window and is not very featureful (regex, incremental search, etc). Replace is equally or more lacking.
2. Undo is only one step.
Both of these things are in emacs and vim. Emacs and vim are ported to nearly every platform in existence, and both emacs and vi, can also serve many other purposes besides writing text like programming, publishing (w/ latex, nroff, etc.), letters, mail, and news.
In defense of Microsoft Word (on Mac) (Score:5, Insightful)
Back around '89 when I first got Word 4.0 on my Mac SE, I did procrastinate by too much formatting. But I got over it! The key is just to define your standard template. Get that template down, and you're writing object-oriented with styles. Understanding how to use styles and tabs is critical to efficient Word use. Instead of doing it spaghetti-code style with formatting applied directly to units of text, build the right design for each style, and religiously only use styles. If you need to change the style later, it's changed in all instances. Much, much easier.
I NEVER mess with formatting when writing articles anymore, since my standard template has my styles all set up the way I want them.
The real strength of Word is that it lets you deal with your content in a variety of modes. I actually write all my first drafts in Outline mode now, so I can see and tweak the overall structure. This means I don't need to write linearly, like a typewriter is required. I can write what I'm inspired to write that moment, skip back to get terms used later defined in the appropriate place, and that kind of thing. And since the outline headings are styles, formatting concerns just disappear into the background. And because, the structure is always visible, it's much easier to remember what you intended to do, and to pick up on structural errors in my original plan for the piece.
When I'm editing, especially someone else's work, I use Normal mode. Thus I'm not distracted by where page breaks are and that kind of thing. Just the text.
Page Layout mode I use rarely. Word isn't designed for any kind of detailed layout. Still, it's nice to see where the page breaks fall before going out to PDF or anything. But I'll just import into InDesign if I need fine control.
So, big picture:
Use Styles to make structure, not formatting, central.
Use the right viewing mode for the stage of your project.
More technical pushes for simplicity (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash forward a few years. Now I am a writer about computer programming. And mostly because of that transition, I absolutely cannot stand to write anything other than plain text. Well, almost plain text, I have my own little variant called "smart ASCII", which uses just a few of the conventions that email and Usenet often use: *bold*, -itals-, and so on.
In fact, I have written hundreds of articles, tutorials, and the like about programming [gnosis.cx] (for well-known publishers like IBM, Intel, O'Reilly, etc.), all in plain text. My book Text Processing in Python [gnosis.cx] is written the same way.
Well... once in a while I am compelled to use something awful like MS-Word--or something that exports to it, like AppleWorks or OpenOffice--but I hate doing that. It is tools that convert my smart ASCII into formats like HTML, XML, LaTeX, PDF, and so on. But those tools come at the end of the process. After I put the words down, then is the time to worry about niggly details like fonts, layouts, and so on... all in a way that is far more consistent than a wordprocessor is likely to produce. My book, for example, has been praised as particularly attractive typographically... I did all the preparation myself, by eschewing all the GUI nonsense that gets in the way during writing. David Mertz
Re:Tools of the trade. (Score:4, Interesting)
Call it a result of my lousy public school upbringing, or a result of my 17 years of piano lessons, but I can type at 95 wpm and handwrite at only 15-20. Typing, I can almost keep up with my thoughts, and I find that papers, essays, and stories flow much easier from my mind to the page. Writing by hand, by the end of a long sentence, I've gotten so wrapped up in the mechanics of writing - loops, curves, dotting the T's and crossing the I's - that I've lost the flow, and have to frequently read back the same line over and over again to complete the thought.
I'm not saying it's for everyone, but when teachers stopped insisting on handwritten rough drafts, I was a happy man.
-T
Parent
Re:Tools of the trade. (Score:3, Interesting)