I think everyone's stabbing at strawmen here; the author's main conclusion was "But when it comes to the main thing—figuring out what you’re going to say and the order in which you’ll say it—it’s still only marginally better than the back of the envelope or the notepad."
His complaint isn't about "structure", or how hard Word is to use for advanced typesetting, or anything like that; it was simply that Word—a tool, supposedly, specialized to "writing"—has no solutions to problems occurring not on the page, but in the creative process.
Neither does a web browser's text editing control, of course—and neither does any other computer program that suggests it targets "writers." The closest I've found is Ommwriter, because it aids in removing distractions and makes little typing noises that basically turn pumping out words into a variable-schedule reward, like a mouse in a skinner box—but it's still not really a tool for writing, so much as it is a tool for transliterating the writing already done in your head onto a page.
I imagine a tool for writing to be able to "interpret" works with a Prolog-like knowledge engine and check for contradictions; to be able to show a timeline of the events portrayed both by chronology and narrative order; to be able to take a directed graph of events (i.e. a flowchart), compile them together using downloadable "styles" (a bit like a synthesized voice, but from a text corpus instead of an audio one) and spit out a very boring but accurate version of what you plan to write, that you can then set about making interesting; and to hold together all your "this is a cool idea" notes and suggest using them (this character could have that trait, this event could be described using that turn of phrase, etc.)
There are so many ways in which computers could be helping us write, but instead we treat them like pieces of paper that we have to transmit full, linearized sentences into using the keyboard before they'll deign to "process" our words. In many roles, we accept that computers can replace people, even performing their previous jobs so much more quickly and systematically that we can move to new heights (e.g. punch cards vs. a REPL). Why not have the computer replace (or more likely, augment) your alpha-readers/publishing editor/reviewers/writing group, except right there watching you type, instead of with a days-long feedback cycle?
I understand what you're saying. My point is that I don't even use Word for the things Word is supposed to be good at, let alone the features that Word doesn't even try to provide.
His complaint isn't about "structure", or how hard Word is to use for advanced typesetting, or anything like that; it was simply that Word—a tool, supposedly, specialized to "writing"—has no solutions to problems occurring not on the page, but in the creative process.
Neither does a web browser's text editing control, of course—and neither does any other computer program that suggests it targets "writers." The closest I've found is Ommwriter, because it aids in removing distractions and makes little typing noises that basically turn pumping out words into a variable-schedule reward, like a mouse in a skinner box—but it's still not really a tool for writing, so much as it is a tool for transliterating the writing already done in your head onto a page.
I imagine a tool for writing to be able to "interpret" works with a Prolog-like knowledge engine and check for contradictions; to be able to show a timeline of the events portrayed both by chronology and narrative order; to be able to take a directed graph of events (i.e. a flowchart), compile them together using downloadable "styles" (a bit like a synthesized voice, but from a text corpus instead of an audio one) and spit out a very boring but accurate version of what you plan to write, that you can then set about making interesting; and to hold together all your "this is a cool idea" notes and suggest using them (this character could have that trait, this event could be described using that turn of phrase, etc.)
There are so many ways in which computers could be helping us write, but instead we treat them like pieces of paper that we have to transmit full, linearized sentences into using the keyboard before they'll deign to "process" our words. In many roles, we accept that computers can replace people, even performing their previous jobs so much more quickly and systematically that we can move to new heights (e.g. punch cards vs. a REPL). Why not have the computer replace (or more likely, augment) your alpha-readers/publishing editor/reviewers/writing group, except right there watching you type, instead of with a days-long feedback cycle?