Modern document authoring software works mainly on the principal that the author wishes to see what they’re getting – hence the whole WYSIWYG principal of accurate visual representation. I’ve been writing some pretty big documents the last few days in MSWord, and have come to the conclusion that I’d basically prefer not to see what I’m getting. I’d rather work with an interfaced that was focused on helping me write what I need to write rather than caring about what the final presentation format will be. I find that whenever I use Word I end up messing around with the formatting, trying to get it to do what I want and look how I intend for it to look, and always fail. The end result is that the content suffers and the presentation is still pretty shoddy.

I don’t think this is simply a discipline issue – it’s more like a usability problem to me. I usually spend my day working with web technologies that enable me to separate style from content (XHTML and CSS) only choosing to combine them in the final presentation format (a browser on screen). As soon as I start using Word, all this goes out the window and I’m forced into working with a printed document on screen. The default page layout even looks like a piece of paper. This is fine for knocking out a quick covering letter or what-have-you, but useless for authoring a document with a complex structure (like a technical brief or a proposal document).

Most documents more complex than a letter involve some sort of structure, with sections, subsections and so on. Yet all of this is presented and manipulated in the linear format of the output medium – and for what benefit? Why does Word (and editors of its ilk) trap us into a paper- and presentation-focused authoring environment rather than providing an environment more focused on content production? It’s such a poor and unhelpful way to compose a structured document.

This may require some sketches. I’ll get my pencil sharpened.