Not unheard of
Well, since Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line" we were alerted to the vagaries of "Word".
Brit Sci-Fi author Alastair Reynolds says MS Word 'drives me to distraction'
In August last year, one-time-sysadmin and now SciFi author Charles Stross declared Microsoft Word ”a tyrant of the imagination” and bemoaned its use in the publishing world. “Major publishers have been browbeaten into believing that Word is the sine qua non of document production systems,” he wrote. “And they expect me to …
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Tuesday 26th August 2014 08:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not unheard of
"Libre Office is now my favorite software to compose books"
I can only assume you must be on a budget or you are using a *NIX OS for which there is no MS Office version. Libre Office is vastly inferior to Word for pretty much all parts of that task and is far more buggy.
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Tuesday 26th August 2014 10:59 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Not unheard of
MS word is vastly overloaded with feature bloat.
Most people use less than a dozen features of their editor program. The rest is all just padding.
One could as easily use Abiword, which is screamingly fast.
Bear in mind that MS came to dominate the market not by being the best but by being "good enough" to do most functions for most people and "cheap". Once they had market domination they followed the lead of all monopolies everywhere and pursued lock-in as hard as they could.
Libre and friends scare the shit out of MS, not because it's "the best" - but because it's "good enough" and "cheap"
Personally I find the Libre UI somewhat more easy to use than MS's, but I haven't had to undo years of exposure to MS's bad habits first. (I have used Wordperfect, Wordstar and friends in the past, but spent most of the last 20 years not having to deal with secretarial programs)
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Saturday 14th May 2016 19:03 GMT jelabarre59
Re: Not unheard of
> Libre Office is vastly inferior to Word for pretty much all parts of that task and is far more buggy.
If your task is fighting with a substandard, bloated, crash-prone P.o.S. that has one of the most abominable user interfaces this side of Blotus Notes, then yes. Otherwise the only functional use of MSWord is as a doorstop.
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Wednesday 27th August 2014 20:01 GMT toughluck
Why use an unsuitable tool in the first place?
To be honest, I can't understand why anyone would want to torture themselves with a full-featured word processor to write anything serious.
You're the Writer, NOT the Editor. You're there to write, not to edit or prepare for publishing. If the writer is trying to do the editor's job, and even the best writer might be a mediocre editor/publisher, the primary task will suffer and the resulting book will be form over substance.
I can understand a writer emphasizing certain passages, introducing quotations, digressions, etc., but it's the choice of the editor whether to italicize or embolden, not the writer.
What any self-respecting writer should do is to submit his or her work in plain-text or at most in light markup (such as RTF, for all its shortcomings), and the publishing house should be the party to actually decide what the final form will be.
With that in mind, either use a typewriter (with a facility to save text, of course), or software such as focuswriter (it's free) that comes with features specifically for writers.
Do note that the alternative is to let the writer do everything, including (virtual) typesetting, preparing for publishing, sending to the printer, promoting it, hey, why not pay for the whole thing while he's at it, in effect self-publishing, but where the proceeds go to a publishing house that didn't do anything worth paying for.
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Saturday 30th August 2014 22:31 GMT toughluck
Re: Why use an unsuitable tool in the first place?
Did I make even the slightest hint that the work should be submitted full of errors?
1. The tool I suggested (focuswriter) has a spelling dictionary and checks on the fly or at the end.
2. Word is not better (or worse) in this regard.
The software you use is not an excuse for errors. However, let me point out that it used to be common to submit written works as typescript (or manuscript) and the writers did not have the luxury of spellcheckers or even error correction. And the quality of manuscripts and typescripts was vastly superior to some examples of today's works where the writer did not even bother to run a spellchecker on his or her text once.
However, it's Alastair Reynolds we're talking about. So your comment that the publisher would give excuses not to use your work is absurd. Mr. Reynolds has been published extensively and his publisher is definitely not going to give excuses not to use his work since it's basically printing money. Well, okay, I presume if he submitted utter rubbish, the publisher would firmly say 'no,' but otherwise, you're very unreasonable.
Your post reveals that you may have been rejected by some publishers. However, I would offer an alternative explanation. Whatever tools you use (or don't), they're not the reason you were rejected. And they were right -- they want "stuff" that's readable. Yours is not. It displays as three lines on my screen and I can say with all certainty that if I were to read through three thousand lines of such dubious quality, my eyes would bleed out of my eyesockets.
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Monday 25th August 2014 07:52 GMT jake
@ Khaptain (was: Re: Personally ...)
First, it's "vi", not "VI". Second, I'm totally serious.
BSD and Linux (and Minix, Coherent, et alia) were written in vi (EMACS, or other ASCII text editor of choice). vi just works.
Adding rainbows, stars, unicorns and sunsets aren't actually functional.
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Monday 25th August 2014 09:31 GMT Mage
Re: @ Khaptain (was: Personally ...)
I just wrote about 140K words in last two months using notepad++
Tabs for open documents
Wonderful regex search and/or replace on selection, document, all open documents, all in directory or including subdirectories.
Minimal markup when imported later to something else:
_and_ for auto itallics
*and* for auto bold
Auto tables from comma separated lists
Auto headings base on line spacing
I now distribute copies for proof reading etc to Kindle etc using .prc fornat
(text -- > Word or Libre Office --> Save as filtered HTML --> Mobi Creator --> eBook)
Kindle DXG is nice for proof reading and allows markup. The "share" feature is rubbish sadly.
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Tuesday 26th August 2014 11:14 GMT Alan Brown
Re: @ Khaptain (was: Personally ...)
nano is derived from pico, which was a purpose built mail editor.
The keybindings are the same ones used by tcsh and the bourne shell- the idea being that people who were comfortable in a shell environment didn't have to learn yet another set of command strokes.
FWIW: Joe uses wordstar bindings by default but can switch to _any_ of the common text editors commands - something which keeps the jed diehards here very happy.
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Monday 25th August 2014 16:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @ Khaptain (was: Personally ...)
No novels. But I've written documentation, programmes, HTML and collaborative stuff by the shed load in vi(1). Much easier than Word or similar, much quicker and I can call any shell level command within it (e.g. sort(1)), mark up with HTML, troff(1) or whatever else you like. For personal notes, programming etc. I still use it (and for the ksh command line history :))
I rather think the original C manuals and lots more were done in vi(1) or something very like it and the output is just the text you want, not the overhead deemed essential by the supplier. If you look at the older text books, they often say they were marked up in troff or similar and those were for text files that would be thoroughly broken by word processing software. So a text editor, usually vi(1) or emacs(1) was the normal tool.
An incalculable advantage for those who can touch type is that one need not move the fingers away fro the home keys to reach arrow keys, function keys, <insert> and so on. This provides speed and simplicity. And, being text, a text editor provides true portability.
Finally, interesting subsitutions and rearrangements across thousands of lines and simple macros are simple, quick and can be automated (using the vi(1) subsets, ex(1) or ed(1) or, the streaming, ec(1)-like sed(1).
The missing feature, for collaborative work, is inbuilt change mark-up. Somehow, with decent source code control systems, such as RCS, Subversion or even SCCS, we managed very well.
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Monday 25th August 2014 18:29 GMT TimeMaster T
Re: @ Khaptain (was: Personally ...)
I am amazed at the number of down votes to such a simple comment. I know some people have issues with vi but I never imagined them to get this incised about it.
vi is a great editor, it can handle files of arbitrary size, has no formatting info to worry about, and the resulting file can be imported into any full featured editing suite without issues.
Personally I wouldn't use it for a novel but hey, to each their own. It what makes vi so great, if you want a clean text editor it just works.
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Monday 25th August 2014 08:36 GMT Khaptain
Re: Personally ...
Jake as much as I agree that "vi" just works, I find it hard to believe that today someone would choose vi over the multiitude of WYSIWYG solutions. As an example "Scrivener" is a dedicated writing program with a multitude of tools that can assist the writer. Whereas vi is a just "text editor". ( yes I know it is more than just a text edit but you get my point).
What advantages does vi offer a writer ?
Personally, on Linux, I use nano because I really do not like vi. I never remember the shortcuts, which forces me to pull out my cheat sheet, which i don't like having to do.
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Monday 25th August 2014 09:37 GMT jake
@ Khaptain (was:Re: Personally ...)
"What advantages does vi offer a writer ?"
The ability to just write. My goto for shifting ASCII from my brain into my computer has been vi (with the help of a Model M keyboard and a serial attached so-called "dumb" terminal) ... to the point where I have a user-name "write" that uses vi as the shell. When I'm writing (code, documentation, contracts, dead-tree letters), I don't like distractions.
Once the words are on the page, I'll format them as I see fit.
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Monday 25th August 2014 14:12 GMT Primus Secundus Tertius
Re: Personally ...
@Adrian4
For producing simple narrative text, Notepad will do; or Geany/Kedit on Linux machines.
But for a complex technical document with tables, illustrations, and captions, you may not have the time to faff around trying to remember the Latex directives. So it is Libre Office or Word. Also, I need the spell check: not because I can't spell, but because I can't type (to a professional standard).
I like using One Note for first drafts.
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Monday 25th August 2014 14:39 GMT ElReg!comments!Pierre
Re: Personally ... (@Primus...)
> But for a complex technical document with tables, illustrations, and captions, you may not have the time to faff around trying to remember the Latex directives.
If you only have tables, illustrations and captions (all quite simple) you can use something simple like aft or ReStructuredText.
For more complex stuff I prefer Lout to LaTeX, as the whole install is around 1 MB instead of 5-700 MB for a usable LaTeX setup. It is also a single piece of software, maintained coherently, which means that everything from the C code to all the high-level metacommands is coherent. Makes it very easy to remember the parameters you may want to faff around with.
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Tuesday 26th August 2014 11:16 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Personally ...
"But for a complex technical document with tables, illustrations, and captions, you may not have the time to faff around trying to remember the Latex directives. So it is Libre Office or Word. "
As soon as it goes for publication the first thing that will happen to your document is that it gets fed into LaTeX for reformatting - if you don't want your stuff being buggered around with, use the right markup editor in the first place (where "right" = "what the printing industry uses")
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Tuesday 26th August 2014 17:46 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Personally ...
But for a complex technical document with tables, illustrations, and captions, you may not have the time to faff around trying to remember the Latex directives.
There are LaTeX editors, such as LyX, which will remember most of them for you.
I wrote my undergrad thesis in plain text with roff markup, using vi. I wrote my doctoral dissertation1 a few years later in WordPerfect. When I wrote my MA thesis last year2 I went back to plain text, this time with LaTeX, and mostly used LyX as my editor - though I occasionally did some stuff in vim when I wanted to make a quick change or just throw some text in without markup.
The last published piece I did (a book chapter) had to be done in Word format - the copyeditor and publisher insisted - so my co-author and I used OpenOffice. Round-trip collaboration was OK (though we both missed having the easy revision control that plain-text plus git would have given us) until the copyeditor got involved, at which point it became a tremendous mess.
I loathe Word. I have to use it for work, and every time I do anything with it I come to hate it a little bit more.
1Incomplete; I'm ABD on that degree. Life and general procrastination interfered, and I didn't have the job market as an incentive to finish and defend.
2Getting the master's before the doctorate is so predictable.
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Monday 25th August 2014 15:52 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Personally ...
>WYSIWYG
If you are an author you don't need to care about layout - that's what you have publishers, editors and cover designers for.
It's like saying a composer should use a mixing desk because they need to know what level of compression will be used when they music is played on Radio3.
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Thursday 28th August 2014 12:11 GMT dajames
Re: Personally ...
If you are an author you don't need to care about layout - that's what you have publishers, editors and cover designers for.
It's like saying a composer should use a mixing desk because they need to know what level of compression will be used when they music is played on Radio3.
No, it's more like saying that a composer should not compose at the piano because he's there to write the music not to play it.
It overlooks the fact that while some composers may be happy to write straight to manuscript paper without playing or hearing the work as they go, others will want to play passages through, listen to them, and maybe solicit the opinions of their friends and families; and that some composers go on to perform their works in public themselves.
Just as some writers write only text that is later edited, laid out, and published in house style by a publisher while others want to see and review their text laid out (not necessarily in its final form) and ohers again may be publishing their own work and have to perform the tasks of writer, editor, and typesetter themselves.
There's more than one way skin a cat!
No animals were harmed in the production of this comment.
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Tuesday 26th August 2014 11:03 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Personally ...
"I find it hard to believe that today someone would choose vi over the multiitude of WYSIWYG solutions"
Show me any serious author who uses anything other than a text editor.
The first thing a publisher does is throw out the formatting and select an apprioriate font/size based on the target market/papertype/sale price.
Prettifying your words is the mark of an amateur or a sales droid.
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Monday 25th August 2014 09:24 GMT keithpeter
Re: Personally ...
"I can imagine that you might do some scripting with VI but 250 pages of Sci-Fi novel sounds a bit dubious."
I don't write books, but study packs in the 30 to 90 page range can be done in 'mark up' quite easily using a text editor and a previewer now and again to check the typesetting.
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Monday 25th August 2014 11:31 GMT ElReg!comments!Pierre
Re: Personally ...
Why so? For simple things (text, the occasional title, table or image, regardless of length) rst markup is enough (usually I just rst2pdf it). For more complex stuff I use lout. Never a problem with putting half a word in italics or with randomly-shifting left alignments etc. That alone makes it worth trying... not to mention, the result is beautifully typeset.
For collaborative work, comments and corrections à la MSWord are a source of problem as often as a solution, so while I understand the reason people use them, I personally find inline corrections with comments markup (or a quick diff) more useful.
Matter of taste and work habits I suppose. There's something you can't argue against though: ressource usage. I typed entire sections of my last article on my Ben Nanonote.
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Monday 25th August 2014 13:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Personally ...
@khaptain
Aye, aye, sir ...
I maintain a 2000+ pages book almost exclusively with vi. Sed and awk come in handy. Actually, it is 2000 distinct pages in 13 books. Part of my work is tech writing.
Never had an issue - I must say that I use wiki style for markup, links, and tocs ... if I need to move a chapter of 5 topics, I open the toc file, locate chapter, "5dd" move cursor to correct position "p", done ... no select, cut, [prays the scrollbar does not freeze] scroll & paste hoping the formatting is not all down the gutter.
I even have a preview function in vi that renders the stuff into HTML and opens a browser, complete with links, images, etc, etc ... spellchecker, grammar checker, markup checker ... you name it. I can output almost any format.
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Monday 25th August 2014 17:48 GMT John Gamble
Re: Personally ...
I can imagine that you might do some scripting with VI but 250 pages of Sci-Fi novel sounds a bit dubious.
Seriously?
First: Look up "typewriter".
Second: Do a page count of Brit Sci-Fi author John Brunner's novel Stand On Zanzibar
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
