I Want my Typewriter Back [Rant]
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 7:49 am
I Want my Typewriter Back
Well, of course I don't really. But having been through my annual fit of trying to use various word processors (Open/Libre Office Writer and AbiWord -- this time on Windows 7 instead of FreeBSD) I am sick at heart. I had a lot of potential once, you know.
The problem mainly is that none of these things (I'll throw in Word which is what the others seem to be trying to reverse engineer) is a word processor. They are desktop publishers. If you have built a better mouse trap, you can set up your brochure, write a business letter, drag you spreadsheet stuff over for the sales report, and so forth. Hooray. Mousetrap.
What you cannot do is process words. I know. Everything today is in a GUI, but worse, the alleged word processors are WYSIWYG. This is the last thing the wordsmith wants.
Okay, that's the whine. Here's the beg.
What I want:
1. One font. Maybe with an italic face thrown in (or underlining). 2. One size.
Okay. All GUI fonts are largely illegible. Certainly they are way behind good old VGA fonts. But the best bet would be a monospace font since the kerning in the alleged word processors is terrible. Is there an extra space between the y and the w in Hollywood? And is that word kern or kem? No telling in GUI fonts.
3. Project folder. The first thing a word processor should prompt you for is the name of your project. All the data for that project should be saved to that folder automagically. Windows in particular loves to scatter similar documents all over and mix them up, and given the nonexistence of a functioning file manager, you are very likely to see your stuff again unless your word processor fights the system and stakes out a little ground for your project.
4. Spellchecking. Really this is the only thing a word processor has over a typewriter.
5. One heading for the title, one heading for chapters, and some pseudo-headings for bylines and descriptive captions such as "Other Works," "Dedication," "Acknowledgments," "Contents," and so forth.
6. Master Document. Along about page 245 it strikes you that working with a whole book at once is ridiculous, and unlike typewritten dead-tree pages, stuff in a wordprocessing file is not random-access.
7. Table of contents, made only from the chapter headings. Naturally you want to be able to drag and drop these into a different order if the need arises.
8. ISO-8859-1. Stop wasting bytes on Unicode everytime you want an accented character.
9. And speaking of accents, typewriter-like compose function (brings up a box in which the typewriter equivalent for overstriking characters can be entered, such as " and o for umlaut o).
10. Ability to open another copy of the present document read-only, but automagically updated. You cannot really have the same access to what you have written as you could with paper manuscripts, but you want to be able to look back, and have the looked back part side-by-side with the writable document.
11. Cut to scrap. Cut the block to an autosaved file you do not have to stop and name, but can be renamed if you want to. Scrap files should be indexed by major words and it should be possible to flip through them quickly and of course to copy and paste from them back to the writable document. Naturally, you want a "really do completely trash" function.
12. Some kind of versioning system that you do not have to be mucking with constantly.
13. No soft hyphens ever. No full justification.
14. Indented paragraphs by default. Yeah I wish enter tab would be the paragraph mark, while enter alone would just be saved as a space. And there should be an insert blank line function, but otherwise, successive enters should just disappear.
15. Export to plain text and save to unstyled HTML should be a snap. Documents only contain H1, H2, H3, P, and EM elements.
I don't really need the keys to click or the bell to sound when I hit return.
Well, of course I don't really. But having been through my annual fit of trying to use various word processors (Open/Libre Office Writer and AbiWord -- this time on Windows 7 instead of FreeBSD) I am sick at heart. I had a lot of potential once, you know.
The problem mainly is that none of these things (I'll throw in Word which is what the others seem to be trying to reverse engineer) is a word processor. They are desktop publishers. If you have built a better mouse trap, you can set up your brochure, write a business letter, drag you spreadsheet stuff over for the sales report, and so forth. Hooray. Mousetrap.
What you cannot do is process words. I know. Everything today is in a GUI, but worse, the alleged word processors are WYSIWYG. This is the last thing the wordsmith wants.
Okay, that's the whine. Here's the beg.
What I want:
1. One font. Maybe with an italic face thrown in (or underlining). 2. One size.
Okay. All GUI fonts are largely illegible. Certainly they are way behind good old VGA fonts. But the best bet would be a monospace font since the kerning in the alleged word processors is terrible. Is there an extra space between the y and the w in Hollywood? And is that word kern or kem? No telling in GUI fonts.
3. Project folder. The first thing a word processor should prompt you for is the name of your project. All the data for that project should be saved to that folder automagically. Windows in particular loves to scatter similar documents all over and mix them up, and given the nonexistence of a functioning file manager, you are very likely to see your stuff again unless your word processor fights the system and stakes out a little ground for your project.
4. Spellchecking. Really this is the only thing a word processor has over a typewriter.
5. One heading for the title, one heading for chapters, and some pseudo-headings for bylines and descriptive captions such as "Other Works," "Dedication," "Acknowledgments," "Contents," and so forth.
6. Master Document. Along about page 245 it strikes you that working with a whole book at once is ridiculous, and unlike typewritten dead-tree pages, stuff in a wordprocessing file is not random-access.
7. Table of contents, made only from the chapter headings. Naturally you want to be able to drag and drop these into a different order if the need arises.
8. ISO-8859-1. Stop wasting bytes on Unicode everytime you want an accented character.
9. And speaking of accents, typewriter-like compose function (brings up a box in which the typewriter equivalent for overstriking characters can be entered, such as " and o for umlaut o).
10. Ability to open another copy of the present document read-only, but automagically updated. You cannot really have the same access to what you have written as you could with paper manuscripts, but you want to be able to look back, and have the looked back part side-by-side with the writable document.
11. Cut to scrap. Cut the block to an autosaved file you do not have to stop and name, but can be renamed if you want to. Scrap files should be indexed by major words and it should be possible to flip through them quickly and of course to copy and paste from them back to the writable document. Naturally, you want a "really do completely trash" function.
12. Some kind of versioning system that you do not have to be mucking with constantly.
13. No soft hyphens ever. No full justification.
14. Indented paragraphs by default. Yeah I wish enter tab would be the paragraph mark, while enter alone would just be saved as a space. And there should be an insert blank line function, but otherwise, successive enters should just disappear.
15. Export to plain text and save to unstyled HTML should be a snap. Documents only contain H1, H2, H3, P, and EM elements.
I don't really need the keys to click or the bell to sound when I hit return.