Seriously, Word, Wordperfect, even OpenOffice…they can all die in a fire!
All I want to do is writing something, it should be simple, but no! If I say, try to make an ordered list like:
1. This is the first thing
2. This is the second thing -
Well, doesn’t the fancy-pants word processor decide to be helpful and apply it’s OWN style to my list – not that I actually wanted it.
And lets say I need copy and paste something from an e-mail or a web page. Well…bad things seem to happen. Mr. Word Processor decides to go and MANGLE everything. If I highlight everything and click something called “Default Format” or “Format: None” that fixes it…somewhat.
I’m also aware that it’s possible to disable these “features” somehow, but really, why are they even on by default? If I want fancy formatting on an ordered list, can’t I ask for it instead of just having it handed to me?
I swear, I’m gonna writing everything in Notepad from now on.
Totally agree, you should try LaTeX (or LyX if you don’t hate GUIs).
LaTeX abstracts away from the bullshit of word processing (hence, typesetting) while giving an endless wealth of customization to experienced users, and for beginners, (at least in domains that it is strong in) has ENORMOUS amounts of extensions in all kinds of different categories, and they generally remain compatible for years after they are written, if not longer. (since it is a programming language)
Even though it is perceived as being hard, if you don’t really care about how the document looks, it’s really easy to quickly write documents with lots of listing levels (without doing crap automatically or resorting to raw font formatting), and if you have more specific needs, once you learn the advanced features you have the best of both worlds.
The only real drawback about it is that it wasn’t really designed for real-time usage, but even that hasn’t bothered me that much. (and when it did, I used WhizzyTeX which enables real time preview for everything but it beamer)
It works with any editor, though I use it with Emacs, because it has lots of commands to speed up list/itemize/enumerate/description creation, and it has the WizzyTeX extension that I was referring.
I always hear word users tell me that Word has “Matched” or “Exceeded” it’s functionality or appearance, but I would assume that they are looking at the most basic functionality, like some simple equations, or putting an image in a document.
Well hope this isn’t too random, but hope it helps!