I'm still waiting for a document editor to approach styling sensibly. I don't want to explicitly set color, text size and others, I want to define style classes that I can easily change later.
I know that the office programs theoretically support this, but I found the flow so terrible to be impractical - no wonder casual users don't use it (all the way to many programmers hating WYSIWYG because they hate the process of manual styling so much).
FrameMaker and Interleaf did this pretty well. And SGML-based tools, and TeX/LaTeX, of course.
The Microsoft Word way has always seemed to support styles more like they were grafted on as an afterthought, without wanting to disturb the least-knowledgeable users, to the point that knowledgeable users have to tiptoe around all the UI that breaks styles.
Framemaker was great, was the tool used by most US military contractors in 90s. Many well known aircraft were designed using this document tool. I still try to configure MS Word to work like it.
Exactly. Interleaf was structured-oriented like that, only a bit moreso. (I designed "styles" heavily in all 3 tools, plus some others.)
Regarding mil/aero, I heard (possibly incorrect) that Boeing did some documentation in Interleaf, and part of routine preservation of those engineering artifacts was to archive... an entire Apollo Domain workstation network. Even though later/other versions of Interleaf were available on later platforms. I guess they weren't going to take any chances.
With some discipline, styles as the sole method of formatting text works well in InDesign, fine in Affinity Publisher, and is possible with heavy caveats in Scribus.
I used to use GREP (regex) styles in InDesign to format heavily structured elements in docs down to specific words without ever touching the style bar.
I also used Framemaker for years, and the DITA open toolkit as well. I get why programmers like FM, but XML/XSLT or rigidly structured tools are not the only path or tool for this.
Dumbfuck-oriented design. As neilv's comment[1] puts it:
> The Microsoft Word way has always seemed to support styles more like they were grafted on as an afterthought, without wanting to disturb the least-knowledgeable users, to the point that knowledgeable users have to tiptoe around all the UI that breaks styles.
This is basically why I have been using Figma for my resume. It makes it possible to break things into components that make it easy to make many different versions and adjust styling across all of them.
Styling predates the Internet - Microsoft Word 1.0 for MS-DOS had style sheets. WordPerfect 5.0 introduced styles on that side. Hierarchically structured text documents with headers, paragraphs etc. are even older: IBM Generalized Markup Language began development in 1969.
Lack of tooling for hierarchical structure manipulation is the mark of aiming for the lowest common denominator - casuals who edit short documents one-off.
Microsoft Word Outline Mode is life. My pet feature request: outline mode - with a ticket opened to Libreoffice since 2011, preceded by an Openoffice feature request from 2002. Probably won't ever happen.
Introducing new UX concepts is always hard, but I'd suggest that most people would understand and appreciate the advantages rather quickly. Everyone knows the pain of manual styling.
Or at least select multiple groups with a similar style at once. So you select the first group of text, then a dotted line will appear around groups of the same styling, and you just hold down control or shift and click each one and it'll highlight then entire group that you clicked.
I know that Apple’s Pages lets you define styles per document, apply them to spans, and then change the style, affecting all spans to which it's applied.
Ehm... Do not take me wrong but "break application silos and connect business data to a single platform" mean "escape many jails, just come in our unified jail".
To be free we need usable data, so for instance instead of strange zipped file formats a spreadsheet (witch should not exists, but that's another story) should save data as *sv/SQLite DB by default, a visual doc should be LaTeX or something similar and so on. The suite should be only a viewer.
LaTeX is very much an open format, or, rather, it is no format—it's just plain text. It can be very hard to look at a LaTeX document and be guaranteed to know what the symbols means, because included packages, and even the document itself, can change the meaning of any symbol, but the document itself is just plain text.
We have various tools and options, some was a bit lost on the road, some are still active and give very impressive results, some are crap, popular or not.
First crap is the WYSIWYG model, it produce not so nice results and demand very complex UIs. To produce high quality documents LaTeX so far is the best tool, PostScript itself is not known essentially anymore, {La,}TeX is often wrapper for instance in R RMD/Quarto docs to produce nice printouts, it's the de facto standard of scientific typeset and have so far no better competitors, so it's a wise choice.
Second crap is the spreadsheet concept, yes sometimes we need tables, and compute something on them. Org-mode show a simple example of table computing without being a spreadsheet, R is another, most modern NotebookUIs from Mathematica to Jupyter do the same as well. Spreadsheets was an idea to offer limited data manipulation to computer illiterate, and failed. The long tail of disasters suggest it's time to abandon such model. So we need something to store data. sv works well for non-giant dataset, they are simple than some ML dialects, for more SQLite is a popular powerful tool offering a self-contained easy to move storage. I do not like it, but for various things is good, for the rest it's deadly simple to export the DB in some other formats.
Back than it fails because of high costs and general ignorance, people simply do not understand the power of this model so feel no need of it. Such legacy burden plague much the present IT as well, with people still imaging files as sheets and folders as suspended folders full of paper sheets in a drawer. Mentally most people have issue going past the paper tool even today. But today we have hw costs small enough and computers themselves spread enough to push again such model.
This model is the nightmare of all big of IT, from old IBM to modern GAFAM, because they know they can't compete with a FLOSS networked desktops model. That's why they do what they can to keep people on the old mainframe model, now the cloud, and many ignoring this keep mimicking the big e powerful not understanding that they try to replicate an archaic model born out of some Xerox spoils once they see how to change them in anti-users ways.
The "FLOSS alternative to" is the networked, end-user programmable desktop model, not some sightly different clone of some GAFAM platform.
I think I have stayed on target with your arguments, but I'd like to push back a little or widen the view...
Re WYSIWIG:
Rather than WYSIWIG being bad, I think the introduction of scroll bars destroyed WYSIWIG from the start. It only works on a large monitor where one page can be viewed and worked upon. In the early 1990s it was only at uni or in the workplace that this was possible. Not at home on a 12 inch monitor. It's the same reason that a web page that is larger than the screen is a health nightmare (mentally and for poor mouse wrists).
Re computing using spreadsheets:
This made computing available to people who couldn't program imperatively. It's given more power to the average power user than you can imagine. See Scott Hanselman's interview with Oz du Soleil. https://hanselminutes.com/532/data-literacy-and-the-usefulne...
Re data storage:
Without the ability to program in a declarative way (i.e. SQL) it is going to be difficult to both store and retrieve data in a provably ACID way, yet non-programmers still get it done well enough with files.
Re Smalltalk:
Without OO knowledge, this great tool will not be useful to any desktop computing power user that has not formally learnt programming.
My point is that the tools that have survived and got the job done in the
"computerised office" have not required the understanding of a complete pseudo-math model (aka programming paradigm) in order to get useful work done. People did not need to be able to compile a program without errors. They used tools that can be iteratively hacked upon, and allowed non-purist tech people to become power users in the workplace.
TL;DR
Models of software environments that do not have to be programmable have proved themselves and the people who use them capable of getting the job done. That can't be replaced by your suggested model.
I've listening the episode you linked, and well, I disagree: first no, I'm a computer user and I do not use Excel, nor I use SQL much as well, BUT I do not use Windows as well, and that's the key, for the author there is a deep separation between "the professionals and the users", because Windows is built with that idea and he seems to be a Windows guy, instead I was born on unix (just due to a family friend gift when I was a child, a dismissed SGI O₂), so I've seen such separation BUT also shell scripts, unix CLI design/IPCs and having discovered original desktops after, their model, being switched from zsh+Vim to Emacs, till the WM (EXWM) I've see a far less separated world and it's outcomes.
For the author and I suppose for you as well, programming means create a project, an UI, publish the result as an installable package and so on. Yes, that's not for any computer user. But that's not end-user programming as well.
As I said before my OS is Emacs/EXWM (booted by NixOS), so I have most of my digital life in org-mode, org-roam managed notes, OS config included tangled from org-mode notes. My user programming is for instance a quick script to auto-archives pdfs bill from my mobile and landline, ... in their right place managed as org-attach-ments, creating a relevant org-mode heading with a BeanCount babel block. This means that with not much effort, no specific project, UI design, packaging etc I automate a generic end user task in a way no pre-made tool can do. This is not harder than using Excel or MS Office macros, but the outcome is far, far better. With this model I have a full-text search built-in, simply via ripgrep wrapped in Emacs to get live results as I type, no special setup/indexing needed. All my automation, shell scripts, elisp snippets etc fell in this form, single listings, a file at maximum, something simple enough for a non-programmer (like me, because I have a CS degree but I'm not a programmer). Anything fit the same UI, I can link mails (notmuch/ol-notmuch), transactions (BeanCount), binary files that demand specific GUIs to be read/manipulated (a simple elisp: org-mode link) and so on.
This can be done by ANY computer user, if he/she is trained to this model instead of the Windows one. I know for personal experiments with some friends children. While the Windows model end up in the Android model and in the https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc... because that's needed for GAFAM et al. business. The classic model end up in an educated userbase who grow and learn with pleasure for their lifetime. While stuff you learn for Windows or web stuff is rubbish in few years simply because the upstream is changed.
The model I propose is the school model, we start learning, learn a bit for some years, profit from life keeping learning, producing new things. The Windows/GAFAM model is those of the ignorant user, where anyone can start clicking around and arrive to a point of being able to do something, still unable to grow, still not mastering their tools. This models seems to be quick at first, but it's a dripping project that ensure persistent frustration and ignorance, impeding innovation and controlling the users like sheep.
I run a Cryptpad instance and it is okay. Cryptpad fails a little bit because you must live within Cryptpad (you have import/export documents with no automation about it). What I ended up realizing I needed had the following features:
- Encrypted syncing between machines
- I want to write using Sublime Text or LibreOffice Writer, I don't want to load up a browser as I often need to focus
- Collaboration features
The first one is made possible by setting up Syncthing on my machines. The next two are already provided by LibreOffice. The missing piece is if I want to share the document with someone. Well this is covered by email OR I have been building a small service to sit infront of my remote syncthing to allow me to set specific documents/directories as viewable. This is basically an Nginx proxy with some fancy configs.
If Cryptpad was more interoperable with retrieving documents I would use it more as a remote interface. However it's too concerned with it's own idea to ever grow in that direction. I really like the Forms you can build with it however. I often use that feature for creating invites to parties I'm hosting. In the future though my sharing program may have a form build feature and Cryptpad will be non-useful to me.
I didn't know anyone ever closed their browser anymore. Honestly trying to imagine a workflow that doesn't include regularly using a browser seems very alien at this point.
If it’s alien that means you’re not trying to have a focused experience. You just prefer living in services with lock-in. Perfectly fine to do that.
For me a dedicated desktop app means I’m isolated to the tasks associated with it. I can always open a browser when I need it. There are plenty of equivalent apps in the browser that have eaten that workflow now but there are many more restrictions too (vpn compatibility, auth flows, ads distracting, user hostile flows) where a dedicated app shines is that I’m not stuck on the net. 90% of the time I just need text syncd in some manner. I shouldn’t have to load a web service for that.
Your meaning of Focused is as in capitalism though. There’s no real benefit to having Google host your calendars and to do list other than “synergy” and “one login”. Maybe provides some buttons that will copy-paste some things for you.
Yeah like I said if you like using a browser and risking performance issues, networking issues, user hostility issues of a browser than living in that world is fine. I’m not too lazy to spend a Saturday setting up a self-hosted service as I enjoy working with software and hacking on it. Since most of my stuff isn’t a complex web app trying to keep me locked in, issues are easy to solve, not locked behind unattended customer support like Google services. If you want to be in all the hip social circles though lock-in is the way to go.
Nothing beats shutting off the ad engine though and just having only my blank Fade In window to stare at though. Never a risk of distractions.
Oh, I'm a dunce. I did think of that before. For some reason, when I thought about it, my mind went to slide shows and discarded any thought of using images in spreadsheets. Thanks, much appreciated!
Looks great! Apparently the self host docker has collaboration features also. Does anyone know if you can integrate it with nextcloud or owncloud or similar?
I hope they add that ability, I'm pretty fed up with onlyoffice and nextcloud office (collabora) frequently breaking and having terribly buggy/laggy UIs.
Seems buggy, if your try the first example (https://www.univer.ai/examples/sheets/) then go to data validation, try to type chars in the date field, this is crashing the whole page ... wow
and this is paid stuff?
Another pro feature is realtime collaboration: " Enterprise Edition -- Provides a commercial version for enterprises with specific needs, including but not limited to multi-person collaborative editing and browsing, data connectors, and Live Share for collaborative browsing."
At least personally, my chief concern if I was considering "open source alternatives" for office software would be to ensure interoperability. I use office software for both personal and business purposes, and I need my documents to get across in perfect shape to their destination for the latter purpose.
For better or worse, that is ensured not by whether source code is open or closed but rather by simply sticking to industry standards, also known as using what everyone else is using. That means Microsoft Office by far and Google Docs to a lesser extent, whether anyone likes it or not.
I suppose I should put it out there I also like paying for and using Microsoft Office anyway. I get back much more than what I pay.
You would then need to make sure to contact your regulators to make sure that open source companies are allowed to use "industrial standards". All open source alternatives I know do support industrial standards (ODF). It's just Microsoft office which doesn't use them.
I know that the office programs theoretically support this, but I found the flow so terrible to be impractical - no wonder casual users don't use it (all the way to many programmers hating WYSIWYG because they hate the process of manual styling so much).