Moving from WordPerfect 5.1 to MS Word 6.0 was probably the biggest struggle for me as far as changing the way I used word processors. I tried to use the keyboard mappings to make is easier but no matter how much I tried, ctrl-shift-f7 it was just easier to learn the new way to work. After that, I tried Lotus Word Pro as it had Notes FX features that made mapping fields to a Lotus Notes database easy. However, it seems my needs for a Word processor have stagnated since. I like the spell checker, don't like the grammar suggestions, I liked the print preview but no longer print stuff out.
I ended up setting up a load of short cuts to get my styles all mapped so that I could structure the document with headings, lists, and paragraphs to make the table of contents as easy as possible.
However, when I really look into the core use for me, XHTML covers all the major parts of a document (headings, lists, paragraphs, and structure). So, to me I should probably just switch to XHTML for my documents.
This would present a number of wonderful side benefits: the ability to use any type of version control system, easy reversioning and well supported viewing.
However, I am probably a bad example of most users. I tend to be too technical and end up in code as a first solution. Whereas most users would never code their way out of a problem and tend to already have their word processors setup and working.
So, as much as I would like to change the way world does word processing, I would prefer to allow users to just to share what they have already produced. I guess according to
this article, then I prefer bloat but I don't see it that way. Rather than saying the choice is between simplicity and bloat, I see the choice as between the familiar that most of my business colleges are using and a new tool they have to underscore and asterisk their way around.
I think it is too easy just to make a new tool and throw away all the users built up knowledge and tell them to use something else. However, it would be better to let them build on what they do know and just provide them a better way to overcome the short comings with as little "rip and replace" as possible.
In the programming world, we see this all the time, too many developers would prefer to write a new program than to maintain an old one that needs some fixes. Fixing the old is far less glamorous but it is this less glamorous work that the users really appreciate.
To conclude, I don't see writeboards as a big advantage to the problems with emailing around documents that you are collaborating on. I do see them as a really neat solution. The first priority would be to get the current MS Word documents out of email onto a shared collaboration space rather than emailing them around. So, I would prefer to see users share their existing documents in a better way rather than changing the tools they use to create the documents.
