Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
I used to TEACH Wordperfect for DOS. I'd guess it was printer support that made WP a success on DOS, but WP for Windows was rubbish. MicroPro/Wordstar blew it 1984 with the creation of incompatible and clunky Wordstar 2000.
MS Word for DOS is unrelated to MS Word GUI on Windows/Mac.
MS Office didn't exist when Word was already the most popular on Mac/Windows. They added Access later. Also the awful Powerpoint was bought in later. As was Visio.
Loads of people bought standalone Word even in days of Office 4.3 and Office 95 (the next version).
CP/M and DOS wordprocessing was a big step forward, but it was true WYSIWYG and NAMED STYLES, not inline formatting that was a change. A nightmare to reformat ANY document with inline formatting, as almost all DOS & CP/M was.
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I have used and am quite expert with both. Yes, I loved Wordperfect originally; it did many things brilliantly. Hell, to this day, if you want to have a single line that encapsulates two different text alignments (like the top of a manuscript, one left-aligned, one right), it's the bee's knees.
When I was forced to switch to Word, because legal offices, banks, etc. were switching to it--ages ago, OMG, I kicked and scratched all the way. I hated it. Loathed it! thought it was dreck, believed all that idiotic nonsense about how bad it was and all that.
Then I had to write a new set of CC&R's for a major development that we were doing; a master set that was going to be 300+ pages, by the time it was done. I needed internal x-references, foot/endnoting and the whole schmear.
So, shockingly, I actually BOTHERED to learn Styles and Headings, and the clouds parted, the sun shone, I discovered the Nav Pane, outline mode, x-referencing, index tools and rrealized how incredibly powerful it is. Even the image placement tools, etc.,
IF SOMEONE LEARNS HOW TO USE THEM, are pretty amazing.
Given my personal druthers, I'd rather use WP. sure--but the world doesn't. So I use Word and I simply use it as it's meant to be used. That drivel about how it outputs CRUFT, wah-wah-wah--it's just that,
drivel. The HTML it outputs isn't one iota worse than OO, LO, etc. That's utter bollox,
and yes, I'd know. We do this ALL DAY long here.
With regard to the OP's request, the magical one-tool-fits-all...well,
come on. That's
not going to happen. I mean, Blue Griffon ePUB editor, anyone? Yuck, not to mention, ridiculously priced.
And honestly, that described workflow is bonkers. No offense, but...sheesh.
I've
never found a good mindmap app enclosed with a writing tool, so when I use one, which is VERY rare (I'm not visual; I'm a person who thinks in words and outlines, not pretty pictures), I use FreePlane, which is FreeMind on steroids.
For timelining,
the simply BEST one there is is in YWriter. That's the only app I know that tracks the movements of individual characters in individual scenes and builds the timeline
for you. I mean, talk about excellent! You no longer have to worry about having Joe in two places at once (or leaving a car parked at Walgreen's while simultaneously driving it across town...).
for notetaking...well, there are dozens, of course, the biggies being OneNote and Evernote, both of which are simply excellent. You can build a linked outline, in OneNote and Evernote, both. Or other apps, whatever. (YWriter has project notes, which are also drag-droppable, and scene notes, too, FWIW.) (I guess some people like to work in markdown, but I've been stuck using two different versions of markdown for the last 9 years, and I find it
extremely annoying to use, compared to being able to use a simple keyboard command to do what you can do in markdown with all those
extra keystrokes, myself.)
Honestly, switching all these apps, to write different steps...that feels like make-work to me, but if it works for you, great. I
cannot imagine that your students will take to that. I mean, why on earth would
ANYONE use 2 different word processing programs,
plus an ePUBmaking-program?
If I
had to choose a "one app to rule them all,"
I'd say YWriter. I've tried ALLL of them, trust me. I buy and try everything, because it's my line of work. I've got Dramatica Pro, LSB XE, Novel Factory, Power Structure, the much-vaunted (yawn) Scrivener, Ywriter, and at least 5 other "writing" programs, including Truby's studio and so forth. YWriter, to me, is the BEST of them, if not the "prettiest." (I maintain that most of the mad love that Scrivener gets is because it's "pretty." I mean, how many people go on and on and on about how you can drag-drop--which you've been able to do in Word, in the Nav pane and outline view, for
nearly 20 years?) You can export to ePUB, pretty as a picture. and you can use Sigil to clean it up from there.
And of course, that doesn't mention all the
FANTASTIC other things that YWriter does, around scenes and all that, but...as this is a process discussion....
So, you'd use FreeMind or FreePlane; YWriter, which has the timeline and export to ePUB. Ta-da! Then work in Sigil to clean up whatever you want.
If that's too complicated, use Atlantis, which has a very nice ePUB export feature. Even exports the fonts that you use (pay attention to ePUB licensing and always, always, subset your fonts!). Piece of cake. I don't have mad love for the HTML that it outputs, but so what? That can be cleaned up easily with Sigil.
Hitch