5 thoughts on “the tools you use matter”

1. I read that as well and found it an interesting discussion. I tried vi for a while, but just couldn’t get myself to adopt it. At the same time, I now find myself limited at work to either Notepad or Word XP, neither of which I’m particularly fond of. I tend to use Word in final draft stages, but in times past (previous jobs and at home), I usually find myself using TextPad – a pretty basic text editor with the functions I want (and need) but without the ones that drive me crazy.
   I’m hoping they’ll let me install it on my work computer …

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2. I’ve been happy with the word processor part of Open Office, something I blogged about in August ( http://ghw.wordherders.net/archives/000620.html ) and which I’ve been using since about last January. In order to share electronic documents for reading, I’ve just been exporting them as PDFs. It will also save in MS Word format, although I don’t know how well this works.

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3. Interesting. If I ever replace the hard drive on my bulky useless laptop, I’m installing Linux and Open Office I think…

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4. MS Word format doesn’t work well at all, I’m afraid. This was *very* frustrating, until I discovered that the native format doesn’t have problems saving! Then everything was happy, because (like you) when sharing, I just export as PDF.

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5. Longhand

   According to this interview (via Slashdot), Neal Stephenson admits to writing the first draft of his new 900-page novel Quicksilver longhand, using a fountain pen. And you thought David James Duncan was cool for using vi. This revelation is followed

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