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Subject:Re: Word in 2010 From:<quills -at- airmail -dot- net> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com, Chris Borokowski <athloi -at- yahoo -dot- com> Date:Tue, 08 May 2007 13:55:45 -0500
On a whole I could do without Microsoft. If they weren't here, someone else would be. And thier software might be
immeasurably better. Word is not a tools for large, complex, or structurally intense documents. It's just peachy-keen for writing
letters though.
Word isn't, wasn't designed to be a common denominator. It was designed for a specific niche very early in its development.
Writing letters. Small, short documents that weren't layout or structure dependent.
It will never be anything else without a massive redesign and rewritting of its code. Which will not happen. Also MS hasn't the
expertise and knowledge to do software of that nature. Microsoft doesn't understand the need that we have, and isn't
interested in our requirements.
Scott
On Tue May 8 8:44 , Chris Borokowski sent:
>Imagine you're a contractor, journeying between
>organizations. There are fifty-four tools out there.
>You will be hired partially on the basis of what tool
>you know. Now imagine the same situation where there
>are four tools available. Do you see what I'm saying?
>
>I don't consider Microsoft Word to be the right type
>of tool for technical writing, but I'm not anti-Word.
>It does a lot of things quite well, like the whole
>Office suite, and I'd use it immediately before
>picking up some bug-ridden disaster like OpenOffice or
>WordPerfect suite. It is not intended for structured
>document authoring, in my opinion. It is a tool that
>tries to capture the broadest cross-section of all
>those who must type words into a page and save it, and
>so much of its functionality is a compromise.
>
>I have seen overproliferation of software, and in the
>end, it can be destructive, just as the cross-browser
>problems in web development have become. This is why I
>argued for a middle ground in this case, because while
>I'm not in favor of a Microsoft-only world, I'm also
>not in favor of the chaos the open source and small
>software companies would unleash on the profession
>without some kind of large anchoring force like
>Redmond.
>
>$0.02, spend wisely ;)
>
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