XyWrite to Word

["Thomas J Hawley" tjh@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Russ Urquhart  on Thu,
23 Mar 2006 22:20:47 -0600

> If my experience is any example, it [Word] has more problems than just being
> slow.

There are two big ones, directly related to each other:

1. Object-oriented programming is not a good choice for a standalone word
processor. To use Word intelligently, you need to understand OOP concepts
like objects, properties, methods, events, inheritance and containment.
These require some effort to master, and most people who just want to get
their thoughts into words don't have the time or inclination to do so. On
the other hand, OOP does provide the framework for integrating word
processing into other things that people need in the current work
environment, like email and collaborative tools.

2. To overcome the "OOP Complexity" problem, Microsoft attached a
poorly-designed menu interface to hide the complexity of the Word object
model from the average user. These menus are really bad, and while they
can be customized most users just accept what comes out of the box. The
menus are also seductive, in that they encourage users to tweak and play
with formatting instead of focusing on their writing; this is one reason
why a move to Word in a production environment is often accompanied by a
drop in overall productivity.

I am certainly no apologist for or promoter of Word, but it is what the
world is using.

Word is an incredibly complex program under the hood, and learning Word is
hard work. The menus may fool you into thinking that you know what you're
doing and don't need any training, but that approach will only take you so
far and produces no little frustration along the way as documents go
unstable or corrupt due to improper techniques.

You are absolutely correct that software should not allow you to do things
that are not correct and will lead to trouble. There are available menu
choices in Word that experienced users know they must never use (and
typically remove using customization so that they are no longer visible).
Microsoft bears no little responsibility for this sorry state of affairs,
but that was the price to pay for giving an average user access to a
complex object model.

(Let me add in closing that learning XyWrite was not so simple either, but
we've all mercifully forgotten those days.)

Tom Hawley
New York
tjh@xxxxxxxx