this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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Word is not horrible as a word processor. The issue is that people try to use it to do typesetting, reference management, and all kinds of non word processor shit. And Microsoft encourages this. If you understand what the tool does it’s really a decent tool.
But most don't. Which makes it a bad tool.
A screwdriver doesn't become a bad screwdirver just because someone is using it to drive nails. There is a lot to hate about Microsoft, but its basic Office tools are really quite good, when used in the manner in which they were designed. There really are no meaningful competitors for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Outlook as an email client is not great, but its strength is calendaring.
But if it looks like a hammer...
Office loks like an extended text editor but hides the xml aspect. No wonder most people use it as an extended text editor, doing formatting wrong.
Words problem is partly because they tried to make it into a swiss army knife, but it just ended up being one of those goofy "multi-tool pens", that don't do anything good.
Okay, maybe thats an bit of an exaggeration, Word is amazing for text and pretty much any text related formatting you can think of*, but the second you want to add an image, it becomes a nightmare.
*from a non-technical person/ease of the GUI perspective. I know LaTek is much better getting your end goal efficiently, but Word can still get you there...eventually.