atw: Re: Which version of Office to use with WIndows XP
- From: "HALL Bill" <Bill.HALL@xxxxxxxxx>(by way of Michael Edward Granat <megranat@xxxxxxxx>)
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2005 15:21:26 +1100
(From Bill Hall, redirected to the list at his request.)
My experiences with WordStar and WordPerfect parallel Michael's.
My favourite word processor was (and in some ways still is) the CP/M
version of WordStar (by MicroPro). As a touch typist, I found its
ergonomically sensible keystrokes for functions and formats meant I
never had to take my hands off the keyboard. Robert Sawyer -
http://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm - explains why the pre-Windows
WordStar is still the best creative authoring environment of any word
processer yet invented.
In 1985, when I was documenting new software in a Concurrent CP/M
environment, I ran 3 different applications (e.g., WordStar, the
application being documented, and various utilities) concurrently on a
Z80 chip set with 380 K of memory. Then we went broke because DOS
couldn't support our multi-user, multi-access software and none of our
potential clients would consider a CP/M operating environment in place
of Billy Gates' feeble DOS rip-off.... Is it any wonder I hate MS
products.
MicroPro lost the plot when they tried to build a WYSIWYG GUI for
WordStar, and totally destroyed their ergonomics in the process.
With its automatic paragraph numbering schemes, macros and an excellent
merge printing control language, WordPerfect was a major increase in
functionality over WordStar. However, they also stuffed up the
ergonomics of composing. Anything in MS Windows is even worse for touch
typists. We just aren't equipped with three hands.
Both WordStar and WordPerfect had reveal code functions that allowed you
to see everything applied - even the dreaded [unknown code] in
WordPerfect that identified the start of a file corruption. By finding
and deleting the [unknown code] you could sometimes restore an otherwise
broken file. Maggies also sometimes worked for corrupted WordPerfect
files when you couldn't see (or fix) the source of an error. Of course,
when WP tried to move to a Windows environment there were many more
problems.
WordStar and WordPerfect could provide a reveal codes function because
they used markup codes around the affected text, and only ever held one
version of the markup in the file at any one time. It is probably
mathematically impossible for Microsoft to give you an equivalent to
WordPerfect's Reveal Codes function because its formatting is computed
independently from text and is based on pointers from complex (and often
fallible) formatting tables hidden in section breaks and under the
paragraph mark at the end of the whole file. One of the reasons Word so
often goes belly up is that old versions of these tables are not
normally flushed (?I presume they are kept to support unlimited undo?),
which is why you can end up with a 5 MB file containing only 50 K of
ASCII text. Maggie's process gets rid of old formatting tables by only
importing currently active formatting along with the visible text.
The sooner we move to an XML standard for all word processing the
happier I'll be. We will no longer be tied to one proprietary system by
network externality (where we have to use the same systems our clients
do so we can readily exchange information with them). At least with XML
there can again be open competition between application providers.
Regards,
Bill Hall
Documentation Systems Analyst
Head Office, Engineering
Tenix Defence
Nelson House Annex, Nelson Place
Williamstown, Vic. 3016
Australia
Tel: +61 3 9244 4820 (Direct)
URL: http://www.tenix.com
Mailto:bill.hall@xxxxxxxxx
| -----Original Message-----
| From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
| [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Michael Edward
| Granat
| Sent: Thursday, 3 March 2005 2:14 PM
| To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
| Subject: atw: Re: Which version of Office to use with WIndows XP
|
|
| A fascinating discovery, Peter F.
|
| Had never even heard of, let alone tried that "feature" before.
|
| Most disconcerting and distracting to use, though
|
| Nothing at all like Word Perfect's reveal codes, which was
| like giving the
| author a pair of X-ray bifocals, with the bottom third of the screen
| showing the entire structure of the part of its document
| universe nearest
| the text cursor. Plus you could edit in the codes screen and
| watch your
| edits happening in real time above, as they would look.
| Quite stunning.
| ...and yes, a precursor to the better HTML Web page editors of today.
|
| Hey, maybe if you played the first Matrix movie from your PC DVD-ROM,
| while running WordPerfect, you'd only have to press Alt+F3 to
| reveal the
| Matrix itself and make the whole thing make sense from the
| beginning. ;-)
|
| ...and yes, indeed, Warren L, Word has nothing to match the power and
| fluidity of the WordPerfect reveal codes system. (More a system of
| operation than just a feature.) Something that was a real
| bonus for us
| technical authors but really freaky for the beginner user.
| I'm afraid that
| Microsoft went for the old populist appeal approach with
| (deeply) hidden
| functionality, so as to not scare off the plebs.
|
| Not a totally unreasonable compromise in usability terms but,
| with Word,
| everything became so deeply nested that the marketing view
| seems to have
| buried the author view, making Word so confounding to use,
| unless you use
| it all day every day and get used to most of its quirks.
|
| I must admit that I loathed both WordPerfect and Word (in their MS-DOS
| and early WinDoze forms to begin with, only because I had
| absolutely loved
| using the then seemingly awesomely powerful Wordstar clone
| text processor
| "Scribble!" on the Amiga, back from 1986, then Final Writer, WordWorth
| (graphical word processors that were later also available
| free for the PC
| in the early days of Windows 95) and PageStream (an object oriented
| desktop publishing tool that gave 360x360dpi output from a dot matrix
| printer!) years before the PC word processors started to get
| their graphical
| act together.
|
| So much fabulous software has gone by the wayside or has been
| forgotten
| and we are stuck with only a couple of mainstream choices on
| which local
| MS systems based businesses insist. That is why, for me
| anyway, it is so
| encouraging to see people on this list talking about competing word
| processing tools again. It almost feels like the MS
| marketers haven't won
| complete dominance of everything, just yet.
|
| But remember, it is oh so rare for engineering excellence to
| ascend, under
| the pressure of so much entrenched marketing might. Just
| like with the
| Internet Exploder Web bruiser, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
| Microsloth will only keep it free until they can kill off
| their competition
| then, as with Word (which used to be far more affordable when it had
| some mainstream competition) they can charge what they want and do as
| they like, regardless of how unusable, unsuitable and unstable their
| product becomes.
|
| Still, it seems that, from these recent discussions, we have
| started to come
| full circle, which is healthy for the software industry and
| for us, because
| it gives us back something that seemed lost for far too long
| - a viable choice.
|
| Regards,
|
| Michael Granat
| Write Ideas
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