Re: Word Processors

[Timothy Ritchey <tritchey vne com>]

> What I don't see any benefits of is to put the physical markup
> of information as the first thing the users see. It will
> inevitably result in people thinking "14pt bold Arial" instead
> of "Header of a sub section". 'Creativity' that means waste of
> money crippling of assumed benefits of computers in a corporate
> environment (hard to index and search such documents for example).

This is the amazing thing about WPs in the bussiness environment today.
Word Processors are a black hole of productivity. Employees are going to
the trouble to mark up documents with fancy headers, bold, underline,
double column callouts, etc. In essence, they are adding extra
information to the document - information that is only searchable in a
VISUAL incarnation. If they would take the same time instead to mark up
a text contextually with information about the structure of the
document, based on standard XML/SGML DTDs, they would be adding
information which would actually make such documents USABLE beyond the
simple act of printing them out.

When all of these reports come out about how productivity hasn't
increased, I have to admit some truth to it. People are too impressed by
EYE-CANDY like 500 fonts on one page in 32 different sizes with embedded
graphics - not to mention animated paper-clips. Employees spend HOURS on
these design disasters, thinking they are "adding value." B*** S***.
computers are about information, and structured documents are the only
way to go.

... okay, I'll get off the soap box now... :)

cheers,
tim