Charlie Stross: Why Microsoft Word Must Die

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Rapture of the Nerds co-author Charlie Stross hates Microsoft Word, worse than you do. Best of all, he can articulate the many structural faults of Word that make his loathing both understandable and contagious. 'Steve Jobs approached Bill Gates... to organize the first true WYSIWYG word processor for a personal computer -- ...should it use control codes, or hierarchical style sheets? In the end, the decree went out: Word should implement both formatting paradigms. Even though they're fundamentally incompatible... Word was in fact broken by design, from the outset — and it only got worse from there.' Can Free Software do any better, than to imitate the broken Microsoft model? Does document formatting even matter this much, versus content?"

Re:All word-processors suck

[wisnoskij]

You know the alternatives are really crappy when the better one is an Adobe product.

Re:Am I Asking Too Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

My number one wish for any word processor, but especially Word, is a switch that says:

I'm writing a document that will be printed out on paper with black toner.

At a minimum, I don't want e-mail addresses or URLs changed to blue, or underlined, or hyperlinked.

My number two wish is a switch that says:

Anything pasted into this document will adopt the formatting of the line into which it is being pasted.

I cannot think of a single instance, ever, when I wanted the formatting from some web page to be carried over into my document.

My final wish is to find a word processor that assumes, or at least makes really easy to specify, that the Page One Header will not be used on subsequent pages. I don't recall how Word does that these days, but in LibreOffice it involves creating a style just for the first page. Assuming that you've managed to Google the specific forum post that tells you that.

It is a very difficult and arcane setting. Double click the header. ove your mouse over to the menu that word contextually provided to the top option confusingly named
"Different First Page" the following steps are optional. Sacrifice a virgin. Chant in Latin. strip naked and roll in bacon grease.

Re:Here's the real problem he has

[nojayuk]

One of Charlie's comments on his blog described Word as "a rail-mounted Gatling gun firing Swiss Army chainsaws". I want one.

Re:Long live TeX and LaTeX

[dbIII]

No that's Wordperfect for MSDOS. MS Office is designed to have shiny bits that attract the attention of people with purchasing authority instead of being something functional.
It's like going to buy vehicle for a job where you need a small truck, and instead coming back with a Ford Pinto with fins, racing stripes, stickers all over it, and a flimsy roof rack to give it something resembling the carrying capacity of a small truck at the cost of stability problems. It looks really modern due to the new paint job, and they've replaced that fuel tank that catches fire - however this time it's made from magnesium and still catches fire.

Car analogies aside it's fragile and overcomplicated crap for the 9-to-5 clerical worker and has spawned a vast support industry to teach people how to get around its stupid quirks.

Re:Here's the real problem he has

[Opyros]

You'll shoot your eye out.

Re: Here's the real problem he has

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Word?