Escape from Microsoft Word
Edward Mendelson over at the NYT writes:
Auden's contrast between mediocrity that gets things right and genius that is always wrong is useful in thinking about many fields other than politics. Take, for example, the instruments used for writing. The word processor that most of the world uses every day, Microsoft Word, is a work of genius that's almost always wrong as an instrument for writing prose. Almost-forgotten WordPerfect-once the most popular word-processing program, still used in a few law offices and government agencies, and here and there by some writers who remain loyal to it-is a mediocrity that's almost always right.Good look at the quirks of the modern office's favorite bit of software from a more philosophical point of view. It starts with a quote from Plato, for starters.
I've tried a lot of other software: Mellel, Copywrite, Appleworks, Abiword, Softmaker Office (thumbs up on Linux/BSD), WordPerfect 2013, and a few others. I detest MS Word but honestly I found WP to be kind of a mess and missing important functionality. Too bad, because I really wanted to like it and really wanted it to be my alternative to Word on my Windows machine. No dice. Not only did they want like $300 for it but it was annoying and very obviously not-as-good as Word in important ways (can't remember which ones anymore, but I only gave it a week or so of free trial before deciding 'no way.')
I remember WP on DOS fondly, but systems have moved on. Word sucks, but there's practically no escaping it. Unemployment, maybe would help. And before I forget, the Ribbon sucks!