[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If you drive a car, and do it wrong, you crash.
...<snippage for brevity>

One of my ex-colleagues is a graphics designer. In his new company, he has been looking into writing some HTML/CSS and Javascript so he can make little changes to templates. Some time ago he told me:

"I've followed some tutorials, and it's going quite well. Programming is way easy; one doesn't need an education for that."

Well... excuse me?

THIS, 1,000x this. It drives me INSANE. It's so cavalier, uttered by people who don't know what they don't know.

I see this on the self-publishing forums all the time. Smug self-pubbed authors, telling other newbs not to pay for formatting, cover design, OR an edit. It's freaking mind-boggling. "Sure, you can do it ALL in Word, with GRAMMERLY!" Urk. We don't even OFFER cover design at my shop, and I still tell people, constantly: "get a professional cover design." Get a professional edit (don't offer that, either). Same thing with software. An entire generation of Jobs-think has made computing LOOK easy, and convinced people that they don't NEED to know what goes on under the hood. Really?

I've seen embedded software, written by 'self-taught' mechanical engineers, wo thought to program their machine themselves. The fact that it actually does something after powering it on is a miracle in itself. Spaghetti-code would be a very *nice* term to use.

For some reason, people don't seem to understand that using computer software well is difficult, and writing good software is hard. As soon as a computer and/or software comes into play, people either don't touch it, or they underestimate it.

Amen, brother.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I can cook and I still burn dinner on occasion. (Usually the cream style corn).
Also do not try to shred lettuce with the kitchenaid shredder.

Now as to computer software, I once spent 3 days looking for word wrap on MS Word 97 or 98. I thought it would be a useful feature for printing recipes. Turns out it was just the concept and meant nothing more than don't hit enter when you get to the end of the line.

If I was a professional anything, I would want to use the best tool for that particular job.

Oh, heck. I've burned cream corn before. (Not often, as I don't like it, but my spouse does.) I learned, originally--yeah, verily, t'is true--on the olden IBM OS/6, in the 70's. (Gosh, how time has flown). So, the concepts that pulled into the early WP programs were already familiar to me. I was lucky. I've also found, though, even way-back-then, some people will never understand the "what" and "why" of what they're doing. They can follow instructions, and push the right button (icon) at the right time, but not the WHY.

Originally Posted by CRussel

@Hitch: I feel your pain. As a professional writer who uses Word every single day, and all too often has to work with documents created by someone else, I continue to be ASTOUNDED at the ignorance of supposed professionals about the tool they use to make a living. Though, I admit, I think some of the blame belongs with Word -- it makes it all too easy to do lists, headings, etc., with absolutely no understanding of what you're doing. And what the consequences are!

There's no two ways about it, Charlie--Word does make it easy, because they decided, early on, to run essentially an "inference engine," to infer what the user wanted. Nobody, then, could have foreseen what we'd be doing today with it--exporting the guts to HTML, etc. It's a titch unfair to expect MS to have executed what they themselves perceived as "a computer typewriter for secretaries" as the publishing software of the future. Not like it's used today. I really hated Word, originally; I was a dyed-in-the-wool hardcore Wordperfect user, and wouldn't budge on how AWFUL Word was. But when I was writing a multi-hundred page set of CC&R's, for a major project we were doing, I had to give in and learn to use the freaking thing, and once I understood Styles, Outline view, Headings...holy crap. I realized I'd grossly underestimated it.

You and I know that many of the features that Scrivener users RAVE about, claiming they can't live without it, are ALREADY in Word (e.g., drag-drop chapters, sections, parts, etc.). They simply have never bothered to learn the tool, so they don't KNOW they already HAVE it.

Now, that's not to say it ought really be used for print book layout. It ought not. CAN it be done? Sure. SHOULD it be done? Not really. Even if you can't afford, don't want, etc., INDD or one of the others, use MS Publisher. Much better tool for the purpose. And Publisher runs much like ye olden Adobe Pagemaker, so...if one learnt one, you kinda already know the other. INDD has a much, much, MUCH steeper learning curve.

I learned about heads back in the PCWrite days, when my book files had to create explicit tags for A-Heads, B-Heads, C-Heads, etc., because the publishing software was fussy, not very smart, and frankly a bit peculiar. But if I'd turned in a document without them to my publisher, I'd have had it rejected as "not suitable". And no advance cheque in the mail! I learned early that if I did things right in the first place, not only was my job easier, but the editor's job was easier. And if the editor likes you, you get more work!

And THIS is the point I keep trying to make with people. Learnign HOW to use your own damn tools *will* make your OWN. LIFE. EASIER. Not just mine; yours.

But, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The idea of creating a TOC and/or index manually is simply too absurd to contemplate. (And oh, btw, a good indexer is worth every penny you pay him or her! We often specified both the actual indexer and the number of pages of index in our contracts once we had the gravitas to demand that.)

I know, right? Can you bloody IMAGINE? I was gobsmacked. I mean, I'd sort of expected it, after the lead-in, but I thought...nyah. No. Nobody would do that. For 13 2-column 6x9" pages? Who in their RIGHT mind...? And sho' nuff, there it was. Oh, yeah, AND the TOC.

The bizarre part is, I think that she did use a commercial indexer. The index itself (ignoring the technical part) is FABULOUS. It's right, in terms of what should be in there. No page numbers, of course....but the content is correct. Curiouser and curiouser.

Oh, well. Another day, another nickel. Still don't know what on earth I'm going to DO with this damned thing.

Fare-thee-well, fellow travelers on the Path of Rant, for the bulk of my working day....

Hitch