The author is writing for a non-technical audience so he uses terms like "active & progressive" to describe WordPerfect and "Platonism" to describe Microsoft Word.
For the HN crowd, I think it's clearer to explain the difference between WordPerfect vs MSWord as "stream oriented" vs "object containers". See links describing and contrasting the mental models: [1],[2]
In other words, WordPerfect formatting was more like HTML inserting <b> and </b> tags to toggle things like bold font on & off. That's why WordPerfect's "reveal codes" was prominently assigned to a function key.
MSWord formatting is more analogous to CSS where "styles" and "templates" are more heavily relied on. There is more conceptual separation between text and its formatting.
So yes, if you carry WordPefect's mental model into MS Word, it will seem like the software is fighting you.
> MSWord formatting is more analogous to CSS where "styles" and "templates" are more heavily relied on.
... and this model scales much better. Once you assign a style to 250 different headers and you want to change its font, is one change versus 250. This is never addressed by what is, at times, a very erudite UI critique, but unfortunately smells like the usual sour grapes of somebody who refuses to learn new tools.
>, but unfortunately smells like the usual sour grapes of somebody who refuses to learn new tools.
To be more charitable, I'd say it's just an issue of the MS Word's mental model not being taught explicity. If you read typical training guides for MS Word, it describes the use of "styles and templates" as "best practices" or "saving time". Instead, the tutorial books should use much stronger language: "You must master styles and templates or you will be perplexed as to why MS Word doesn't do what you want it to do."
In defense of the WordPerfect "stream" paradigm, it is more intuitive because you don't have that extra layer of complexity with "styles". As evidence, we see the pendulum swinging back to "simple markdown" that lets people just insert things like bullet points at the exact spot they need it. With MS Word or CSS, you'd (ideally) define a paragraph style or a CSS rule.
The 2 paradigms of markdown (streams) vs CSS (styles) will coexist together.
But he has learned the tool. In fact he betrays his real frustration with Word: it's not with the Platonic model itself, but the fact that it betrays the model and uses some hidden logic (the >50% rule) to decide whether or not to actually apply the formatting indicated by the style. I've used Word for many years and have occasionally been stumped by seemingly non-applying styles. Now I know why.
This hidden rule should be the most heavily discussed 'feature' of Word. MS Office docs should trumpet it as loudly as they can. (Or they could just fix it.)
As someone who has laid out entire 2-300 page books in Word and LibreOffice both, what you say is a fine idea in theory, but rarely ever works out in actual application at all with the way those tools implement it.
I think LyX/LaTeX presents a saner hybrid here: using styles, yes, but also declarative markup for where to use those styles in the stream. This is far more analogous to how CSS is actually used (ie. in concert with HTML and being auto-applied to standard HTML tags), than how it ever works out in the mainstream tools available.
Except it doesn't, really, scale well in practice. Even now, writing and maintaining large documents in Word is typically an exercise in frustration. Don't get me wrong, there are many things it does well. Books aren't one of them, and neither is technical content (e.g. math) or other complicate typesetting and structuring.
This may just be an implication of mixing typesetting and writing tasks.
Are there any platforms where writing and maintaing large documents is not an exercise in frustration? LaTeX is great but it's not what most people would consider "easy." From my observations, non-technical people don't get Markdown, reST, or other markup-based formatting at all.
Is maintenance of large documents just an "essentially" complex problem, to use Brooks' classification?
I think it probably is "essentially" complex, but that doesn't mean that all tools are equivalent. Sometimes the issue isn't making something "easy", it's making it possible. Sometimes with Word you end up working your project around the tool because anything else is impractical - but that's exactly backwards from how it should be done.
But those are typesetting concerns, not something authors are traditionally concerned with. The fundamental problem with word processors is that they merged these two separate disciplines. In traditional writing, the author prepares the manuscript which is generally not formatted at all other than basic chapter, section, and paragraph structure. A typesetter would then take that and make it look good in the final published version.
With self-publication more and more readily available, that barrier is getting thinner and thinner, and a lot more writers find themselves doing both like I did.
... and this model scales much better. Once you assign a style to 250 different headers and you want to change its font, is one change versus 250.
I've never worked on a Word document that large, but I've worked on Word documents large enough to demonstrate there's a big difference between this beautiful theory and the way Word works in practice.
For the HN crowd, I think it's clearer to explain the difference between WordPerfect vs MSWord as "stream oriented" vs "object containers". See links describing and contrasting the mental models: [1],[2]
In other words, WordPerfect formatting was more like HTML inserting <b> and </b> tags to toggle things like bold font on & off. That's why WordPerfect's "reveal codes" was prominently assigned to a function key.
MSWord formatting is more analogous to CSS where "styles" and "templates" are more heavily relied on. There is more conceptual separation between text and its formatting.
So yes, if you carry WordPefect's mental model into MS Word, it will seem like the software is fighting you.
[1]http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/wordvswordperfect.htm
[2]http://wptoolbox.com/tips/MSWordToWP.html