Writing Tool

[Robin Miller <roblimo home com>]

A different topic head to cut the flames and get to
business. I'm okay with Nedit as my primary writing tool for
the present, and I'll figure out how to write macros for it
that'll fill my other needs. 

But let's think about the other writers I know. Now and then
I go to meetings of the National Writers Union [NWU]
Washington DC local. In *that* crowd, I'm the uber-geek. I'm
not knocking them. They're all good people, just not
computer experts. 

The writing program used by almost every member of the NWU
local is Word. And they whine about it all the time. Hard to
use, crashes when they're on deadline, etc. A lot of them
have Macs because they have trouble figuring out Windows.
But they still have Word. 

I would suggest, as a potential Gnome development project,
the creation of a word handling program that isn't called a
"processor" or "editor." Call it the "Writers Tool" or
"Writing Tool." Give it different user levels, like a video
game, so that new users wouldn't be intimidated, but more
advanced users wouldn't be held back. 

What features should this G-Writers Tool have? Good
question. I think the best way to answer it, if anyone wants
to get serious about this, is for me to lug my computer down
to an NWU meeting and give a short (two minute) presentation
followed by a long give-and-take session. I could do the
same thing at one or two SPJ [Society of Professional
Journalists] meetings in the Baltimore/Washington area,
although I believe the more diverse membership of the NWU
would give better input.

No offense, emacs and vi devotees, but I can't think of but
two or three journalists, other than a few
computer-specialty writers, in the entire Washington area
who wouldn't run screaming at the sight of a UNIX command or
almost any other command line, so neither of your beloved
editors are really suited for this marketplace. Go to the MS
antitrust trial. Look at the laptops being used to write
stories about it. Here's what you'll see: Word, Word, Word,
Word on a Mac, Word, Word, BeOS (there's one in every
crowd), Word, and more Word. I went. I looked. (I wasn't
there to check OS and word processor choices, but federal
trials are b-o-r-i-n-g.) 

So give these writers something with a little pizazz.
Something with Gnome's basic look and feel, and let's face
it, we're all using Gnome because it looks mah-velous. Make
the G-Writers Tool both prettier and BETTER than Word, and
realize that "better" in this case may mean "easier to
learn," not "more powerful."   

This would be the ultimate act of Linux advocacy -- and
there could be some good money in it, too. TV stations and
newspapers and magazines spend tons of money on computer
stuff these days. MS is going to try to switch them all to
"2000" products that are going to be costly and require
expensive new hardware. Give them an alternative: a
good-looking Writers Tool they can use on their current PCs
that never crashes just before deadline (and has an autosave
feature just in case), that does just what they need, and is
so easy to learn that even local TV anchorheads can figure
it out without a manual, and commercial registrations will
flow in, I suspect, like you won't believe.

-- Robin Miller
(Happy to help with docs and promo etc.)