Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Softpanorama Search

MS Word as Literate Programming Tool

The key advantage of the MS Office -- common macro language for all applications in a suit, is the advantage that is still unmatched by rivals. Also the level of support of MS Office (books, training materials, add-ons, etc) is far superior to the alternatives. That mean that MS Office including its crown jewel MS Word still makes sense in the open world. But if only if :

• You can afford it (not true for many business in Eastern Europe)
• Know how to use outlining capabilities (this is a training issue). Paradoxically many users use MS Word like Word Perfect. In this case Word Perfect is a better alternative.
• You can benefit from macro capabilities. Ms Word have very powerful macro capabilities and that makes it a class of its own. Just look at MS Word viruses ;-). But jokes aside this is one of the most programmable word processor around and you can make it to do amazing things with macros. See, for example, MS Word Macros. Again most organizations do not have enough IQ to benefit from it. If this is case then (outside of the USA) an attractiveness of MS Office in general and MS Word in particular is more problematic and simpler alternatives might make perfect sense.

The main problem with the Office is that until Office 2007 both MS Word and Excel documents formats were proprietary and generally undocumented. But for all earlier versions you still can export documents in Open formats including RTF and XHTML. The latter needs some postprocessing (see, for example demoroniser), if you want to publish it; raw Ms Word xhtml contains just too many Microsoft styles.

Still absence of the internal representation accessibility somewhat limits what you can do in MS Word (and complicate debugging). That's probably the most severe shortcoming of MS Word. and that why I personally often use FrontPage as an alternative to MS Word despite might weaker spellchecker and absence of many vital for word processing capabilities.

Contrary to the opinion of typical Linux zealots, I am convinced that Microsoft Word was and still is a very good program that was innovative at the time of introduction and positively influenced the field previously dominated by somewhat backward WordPerfect (which, paradoxically, has an access to the view of the internal representation of the document). I would agree that from the point of view of supporting open formats like HTML and XML, MS Word still have room to grow, but I am surprised how Adobe managed to monopolize the field of document viewers despite the fact that MS Word viewers would be clearly adequate (and somewhat superior due to the quality of MS Word as a tool for creating them) tool.

In the past (in the MS DOS environment) MS Word was always underdog to WordPerfect, but despite this second place that most PC magazines assigned to in in 1987-1994 (or may be due to it :-) it was always more innovative word processor than WordPerfect:

• I remember that the first DOS version of Word that I used (Word 4, 1987?) already had outlining capabilities.
• Word5 for DOS(1989?) introduced the use of style sheets in a way very similar to CCS, so to a certain extent it was 10 year ahead of its time. People were able to produce pretty complex books using Ms Word as poor man publishing system.

BTW it is funny that generally more conservative WordPerfect has "show the source" concept of showing raw source format similar to HTML editors of today and MS Word never had it. because in other areas MS Word was more innovative work processor. If you remember the days of character-based WordPerfect, you will remember the "reveal codes" feature, which shows an editable view of the current file with the internal formatting codes visible. This gave the user more control of the underlying text-processing than MS Word. That why lawyers always prefer WordPerfect and that's why many advanced users (including myself) for simple documents are now using FrontPage instead of MS Word (FrontPage is now part of Office Professional).

In addition to being rather expensive outside of North America, today's versions of Microsoft Office are huge and try to implement everything possible under the sun. The best original ideas are buried under the bloat of "me too" features. For example how many people use MS Word outlining capabilities, the really innovative feature of MS Word. My guestimate is that less then 1%. If you do not need all the capabilities you can probably use cheaper substitutes. What are the alternatives?

• Microsoft Works 8.0 Paradoxically the best alternative for the MS Word are earlier versions of MS Word. ;-). For example Microsoft Works Suit is a cheap bungle of six pretty powerful programs including MS Word 2002. This collection of software is amazing for the price at which it is being offered. Accept no substitutes :-). The price is ~$20 which is really shareware price. And you can get Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional to run it for ~$35. Here is how Microsoft describes its content of Works Suit 2004:
  
  • Word 2002 Use the same premier word processor featured in Microsoft Office XP. Word 2002 features—such as smart tags and task panes, and improved technology for formatting—make it easy to create professional-looking documents. Enhanced reliability ensures that you spend your time working, not re-creating the work you've completed. Read more about Word 2002.
    
  • Works 7.0 Organize your household with spreadsheets, a calendar, an address book, a database, and more. Open and edit documents created with Microsoft Excel and exchange data with your Pocket PC or Palm-based device. Read more about Works 7.0.
    
  • Picture It! Photo Premium 9.0 Use photos from digital cameras, scanners, photo CDs, and e-mail attachments. Organize your photos, correct common photo problems, create great photo projects, and share your photos online. Read more about Picture It! Photo Premium 9.0.
    
  • Encarta^® Encyclopedia Standard 2004 Access more than 38,000 up-to-date articles, plus photos, illustrations, hundreds of videos, animations, and audio files. Encarta is the ideal multimedia encyclopedia for everyday use. Read more about Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2004.
    
  • Money 2004 Standard Organize and manage your personal finances quickly and easily. If you're new to personal finance management software, Money Standard is a great way to get started. Read more about Money 2004 Standard.
    
  • Streets & Trips 2004 Find maps, points of interest, routes, and driving directions without waiting for an Internet connection. Create and download maps to your Pocket PC.

  You get MS Word 2002, Money 2004 standard edition, Street Finder, Encarta and Picture It! for 1/5 of a price of MS Office Standard Academic Edition.

  Most people need MS Word which is a de facto standard in document processing, but an average user seldom needs Powerpoint or Excel. At home one can benefit from such useful programs as Money, Street Finder, and Picture It. The last is Microsoft's publishing photo program and it alone usually costs around $60. This makes MS Works suit a real bargain and the best alternative for MS Office, especially for family use or student use.

News

MS Word is notorious for containing private information in file headers, but not any longer. Microsoft has quietly released a tool to scrub leaky metadata from documents edited with its software. The Remove Hidden Data Add-In will permanently remove hidden and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint files. For Office XP/Office 2003 only, we should add.

WindowsDevCenter.com -- Batch-Running Word Macros from the DOS Command Line

When processing manuscripts for shiny new O'Reilly books, I often need to run a particular Word macro on a batch of files. While this is certainly possible using VBA directly, it becomes quite challenging when either the name of the specific macro to run (it may be one of dozens of utility macros), or the files to run it on, are constantly changing, as is usually the case.<

Spoiled by the large percentage of my day spent on a Unix command line, I started looking for a way to easily run any Word macro, on any number of files, right from the DOS command line. This article shows how to do just that, using three popular, free, and Windows-friendly scripting languages: Perl, Python, and Ruby. You'll need at least one of those installed on your Windows machine to use any of the code in this article. If you don't have one, see the sidebar, "Picking a Scripting Language."

Is One Note the new powerful paradigm ?

Recommended Links

Microsoft Office Word - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Outliner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Outlining Enhances Writing Creativity - Strategies to Succeed in Writing

Microsoft Word Living with the Beast

I use built in Word bullets and numbering, I leave the styles as "normal", I work with normal.dot .. and .... I use macros to set formatting for 3 levels of header. The macros aren't perfect (I'm no guru), but they structure my document headings quickly and consistently. They assign headings outline levels, so I can collapse/expand in outline view and navigate using the document Map feature. (The macros won't work, however, in outline view. Word is like that.)

• alt-0: clear outline level and remove all formatting
• alt-1: outline level one, larger size text
• alt-2: outline level two, medium sized text
• alt-3: outline level three, italics.

That's all I do. It turns out to be enough to make my documents navigable and consistent.

If you know a bit about Word macros, you can view my macros and copy and paste them into the word macro editor.

comp.programming.literate FAQ

- WinWordWEB
------------

Developer: Lee Wittenberg <leew@pilot.njin.net>
Version: Unknown
Hardware: Needs Microsoft Word for Windows, v.2.x, and, of course,
MS-Windows 3.x.
Languages: Any programming language.
Formatter: Word for Windows 2.x for text formatting and file
maintenance.
Availability: Anonymous ftp from:
bart.kean.edu:pub/leew
LPA:/machines/ms-dos
World-Wide Web (WWW)
Readme: WORDWEB.DOC in the downloadable package describes the
system.

Description:

WinWordWEB is a set of a Word for Windows macros (plus a paragraph
style) that provide a crude literate programming environment. The
``look and feel'' of the system is based on Norman Ramsey's noweb, but
can easily be modified to suit individual tastes.

Support:

None. WinWordWEB was written as a prototype to see if a WYSIWYG
literate programming system was possible. It is intended as a jumping
off point for future work by others. However, the system is
surprisingly usable as it stands, and the author is interested in
hearing from users (satisfied and dissatisfied).

Anyone interested in actively supporting (and improving) the product
should contact the author via email.

Security

MS Word is notorious for containing private information in file headers, but not any longer. Microsoft has quietly released a tool to scrub leaky metadata from documents edited with its software. The Remove Hidden Data Add-In will permanently remove hidden and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint files. For Office XP/Office 2003 only, we should add.