I used to do publishing and editing as part of my job, so I know a good word processor.
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I used to do publishing and editing as part of my job, so I know a good word processor. Physical chemistry, electronics, manufacturing documentation, I enjoyed every minute, including the terminal and graphical interfaces throughout the decades.
This handiwork from #Microsoft is not it. Can't even center justify. Default toolbar, where did it go? Can't zoom page width. Does my employer have to pay extra for these basic editing features that have been with us long as I have been alive?
Now I have to wait until I go home and do this on my Linux laptop. This entire document should only take an hour and 20 pages for a quality rough draft.
I am writing training manuals for the techs here, because I accepted a new job offer. The better information they have will greatly improve profits after I leave here. And this proprietary software is astonishing steaming shit. Oh, and there's AI... Why do people still use this, because it is made in USA?
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I used to do publishing and editing as part of my job, so I know a good word processor. Physical chemistry, electronics, manufacturing documentation, I enjoyed every minute, including the terminal and graphical interfaces throughout the decades.
This handiwork from #Microsoft is not it. Can't even center justify. Default toolbar, where did it go? Can't zoom page width. Does my employer have to pay extra for these basic editing features that have been with us long as I have been alive?
Now I have to wait until I go home and do this on my Linux laptop. This entire document should only take an hour and 20 pages for a quality rough draft.
I am writing training manuals for the techs here, because I accepted a new job offer. The better information they have will greatly improve profits after I leave here. And this proprietary software is astonishing steaming shit. Oh, and there's AI... Why do people still use this, because it is made in USA?
@dianea those features are all there just buried
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I used to do publishing and editing as part of my job, so I know a good word processor. Physical chemistry, electronics, manufacturing documentation, I enjoyed every minute, including the terminal and graphical interfaces throughout the decades.
This handiwork from #Microsoft is not it. Can't even center justify. Default toolbar, where did it go? Can't zoom page width. Does my employer have to pay extra for these basic editing features that have been with us long as I have been alive?
Now I have to wait until I go home and do this on my Linux laptop. This entire document should only take an hour and 20 pages for a quality rough draft.
I am writing training manuals for the techs here, because I accepted a new job offer. The better information they have will greatly improve profits after I leave here. And this proprietary software is astonishing steaming shit. Oh, and there's AI... Why do people still use this, because it is made in USA?
Curious. What do you use for editing on your Linux machine? I gave up on Word eons ago and just used plain vanilla TeX for all my teaching notes, papers, proposals, departmental junk …. It was faster, easier …
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Curious. What do you use for editing on your Linux machine? I gave up on Word eons ago and just used plain vanilla TeX for all my teaching notes, papers, proposals, departmental junk …. It was faster, easier …
I have been using either AbiWord or LibreOffice Writer. They have an interface that helps me stay focused and not derail my long trains of thoughts 🫠
I am still looking for a perfect text editor. I may just have to spend more time with Vim, I like how minimalist it is and it can do just about anything and I'm sure someone even got Doom to run on it
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I have been using either AbiWord or LibreOffice Writer. They have an interface that helps me stay focused and not derail my long trains of thoughts 🫠
I am still looking for a perfect text editor. I may just have to spend more time with Vim, I like how minimalist it is and it can do just about anything and I'm sure someone even got Doom to run on it
Now I have five hours to burn until my shift is over. I need to find some trouble to get into
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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I have been using either AbiWord or LibreOffice Writer. They have an interface that helps me stay focused and not derail my long trains of thoughts 🫠
I am still looking for a perfect text editor. I may just have to spend more time with Vim, I like how minimalist it is and it can do just about anything and I'm sure someone even got Doom to run on it
Thanks. I've been trying Libre Office. Guess will spend more time with it. Will look at AbiWord
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@dianea those features are all there just buried
@jstark @dianea You can spend hours decrappifying Word's menus snd ribbons, hiding junk (does anyone serious use WordArt?), and exposing useful bits. You shouldn't have to do this with a professional tool.
The two unresolvable problems I had were constraining typefaces to the 3-4 I actually use* and merging my master bibliography in BibTeX with sources.xml. There appears to be no way to hide the hundreds of display and web fonts that won't ever be used in our documents which is simply punitive. There are third-party tools for managing sources.xml but ultimately it's a brittle and undocumented file that the typical tech writer shouldn't be expected to understand.
Word is simply not fit for purpose for creating formal technical documentation. It's bloated and unfixable because there is zero incentive at MS to fix its problems and make it a professional tool.
[*] Yes, semantic styles are generally the right way to format text vs manually changing font. Sometimes there are exceptions
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I used to do publishing and editing as part of my job, so I know a good word processor. Physical chemistry, electronics, manufacturing documentation, I enjoyed every minute, including the terminal and graphical interfaces throughout the decades.
This handiwork from #Microsoft is not it. Can't even center justify. Default toolbar, where did it go? Can't zoom page width. Does my employer have to pay extra for these basic editing features that have been with us long as I have been alive?
Now I have to wait until I go home and do this on my Linux laptop. This entire document should only take an hour and 20 pages for a quality rough draft.
I am writing training manuals for the techs here, because I accepted a new job offer. The better information they have will greatly improve profits after I leave here. And this proprietary software is astonishing steaming shit. Oh, and there's AI... Why do people still use this, because it is made in USA?
@dianea Once upon a time, I had to interface a new Unix downstream system with a VMS system. There was a good doc for the format of the source system's daily data dump written in FrameM^H^H^H^H^H Interleaf.
It was so well structured that I cut/pasted the structure description into a Perl dictionary (Perl was what ran on all systems in play) and had the interface done the next day.
Today, I tend to write docs in reStructuredText, but I get that it's niche. Having the original in plain text means revision control and merge works really well.
The way folks use word processing, particularly the style sheets, is often revealing meta-data on how well they are organizing their thoughts and their attention to detail.
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I finally was able to use Microsoft Word to write this technical document. The quality is poor, but I was able to include paragraphs and pictures, the bare minimum. This software is so hopelessly broken. Not my proudest work, but it is something.
Now I'm waiting for Microsoft's MTA to send an email to the desktop. Should take a few milliseconds, right? Almost ten minutes. The Epstein Files were released faster than this...
