Stop using Microsoft Word

Okay, for most things, most of the time, I now have a solution: using the beautiful Instiki wiki engine. It’s simple, functional, easy to install (not using the command line is my friend), and within a half hour or so (well, a little more, but that’s because I managed to forget literally everything I once knew about CSS) I was able to use it to produce clean-printing pages that I can (and do) use for work-related stuff without fear of having it look like a web page.

Now I just need to get some hosting action on so that I can rebuild the Unlikely Glossary Project.

Hmm. It’s pretty cool. It’s probably more cumbersome than working with a well-cultivated wiki with precisely tuned stylesheets…but probably less cumbersome than working with a semi-cultivated wiki with slipshod stylesheets, which is more how I operate. On the other hand, it seems difficult (at least at this stage) to use it to give my documents my unique visual flavor, which is something I’m rather fond of doing. (Wow, I sound like an asshole when I say that. Eh. To thine own self, etc.)

Okay, the next thing I need to do is actually use some of these things. This, of course, required that I actually do something. So, looking at things that I’ve been meaning to work on:

• A short essay on TV. This seems like a good choice for LaTeX, since it’s going to result in the production of one relatively traditional document. And not a particularly long or complex one. (Not that LaTeX can’t handle long or complex documents, but I probably couldn’t, yet.)

• Some notes and plans, and probably a manifesto, relating to a vague cluster of ideas for projects around this goal. This is probably a good fit for private moining, since it’s going to be amorphous, multi-stranded, etc.

• I also have a long-term, highly quixotic project that may require different features, including graphical, database, and other bits. I’m not going to assign this one just yet.

Okay, I’ve installed MoinMoin on my computer, and also got some variant of LaTex and/or some software to help me with same. (Honestly, figuring out which names to apply to which aspects of producing a document using (La)Tex (or is it LaTeX? Ah, screw it) is like trying to parse Hegel-all the lines are blurry and everything points to something that points to something that points to something else). LaTex is kind of cool-at least, I appreciate the logical structure of it, and also the maniacal urge to control things like the space between a closing single quote and an adjacent closing double quote. Also, and this is a big mark in its favor, it looks like it might not be that hard to do, if not devanagari, at least semi-standard indic romanization. And I don’t mind having to click “typeset” (or perform the equivalent action) when I want to see what my text looks like.

But it’s not really that intuitive, and while I probably prefer typing an annoying string of text to format something to pulling down a menu or pressing some totally illogical key combination that involves previously undiscovered muscle groups, it still doesn’t come close to capturing the simplicity of using wiki-markup.

Thus the MoinMoin. Now, unfortunately I don’t have the knowhow or the wherewithal to actually administer on my own a wiki that other people could use, but with some effort I have (barely) managed to get one working on my laptop for myself to use. (This despite the perfectly adequate instructions for installing on OSX)

The trouble with wikis is that, as much as I love using the simplified markup formats, none of them are really as powerful as I would like—I suppose if they were, they’d be as anal (and verbose) as LaTeX. But I’ve been favorably impressed in the past with MoinMoin’s handling of things like section numbering and footnotes (I think), so I might as well give it a shot.

One of the upshots of working with a wiki is that I can more easily work with others if either (a) acquire the ability to host a wiki, (b) pay someone else to do it for me, or© just slap some of the things onto, say, http://riters.com/kukkurovaca, which I haven’t really used previously.

Word blows. It crashes. The files are huge. The program is huge. It’s not very good at complicated documents (lots of outlining, footnoting, etc.). And all too often, when I hit backspace, the formatting decides to go all kuh-razy just to piss me off. I’d rather not pay money for that.

So far, I’ve looked at a number of programs, judging them based on a variety of factors, including:

Feature set: Does it do all the things I need a word processor to do? (Other than the obvious, this means the ability to handle headings and footnotes and endnotes sanely, and also the ability to accept devanagari text input and do something useful with it (thank you, OSX), among other things)

Layout: Are things where I expect them to be? Or, possibly, somewhere better?

Appearance: Is it ugly?

Simplicity: Can I just plunk down and do what I want without tweaking, tweaking, tweaking?

Control: Can I actually make things look the way I want?

etc., etc.

Word: Rich feature set, but its bugs and idiosyncracies are constantly interfering with the writing process.

WordPerfect: Inexplicably but intensely unappealing. Like margerine.

AppleWorks: Functional. However, feature set is a little on the thin side, and, much worse, the design aesthetic is a holdover from the pre-OSX universe. Ewww.

OpenOffice.org: Rich, rich feature set. Good ethos. Stupid name. But it’s spectacularly ugly. As a friend pointed out, it comes from Unix, where everything is ugly and they don’t know any better. But still…

AbiWord: Pretty, but shallow. Also, text mysteriously lags when I type.

Mellel: Attractive, in a cold, Uma Thurman in
Gattaca kind of way. Simple, lightweight, but heavily structured. Good for academic writing. But doesn’t like Devanagari, and that simply won’t do.

MarinerWrite: Eh. MacJournal: Very, very cool, but not for this.

VooDooPad: Brilliant, but not. A wiki without the annoyance of browsers? Good. But where did my markup go? I want the intuitivity of wiki-markup, not a return to menus and key combinations.

This actually brings us around to my best conclusion so far: screw word processors, just use a wiki and CSS…

(Alternatively, LaTex, which I’ve never used, and my friends are uncertain whether I’ll like or not.)