Jan 6, 2025
Sony Produce 200 (1988)
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Sony Produce 200 (1988)
It looks like you're trying to screw up your layout. I can help.
WordStar by MicroPro, 1984.
Ever since I was a kid it has annoyed me when I receive an official form to fill in and it looks like it was hastily assembled by someone who'd never used a computer before.
Does this make me some kind of snob?
The fact of the matter is that my mum, back in the eighties, saw the way things were going and did two important things. 1. She took accredited courses in the use of computers in an office setting (word processing etc.) 2. She taught her children what she learnt.
As a result of the above I have, for as long as I can remember, not only used computers but done so to what I suppose must be considered a professional standard. When I was, oh, maybe seven years old I was making pretend newspapers on an Amiga 500; hundreds of words formatted in columns, with little clipart type images and the text wrapped around them. Ask me about oil-slick pancakes some time.
So yeah, when I'm handed a form or sent one to print out and it is unjustified, mixed fonts for no apparent reason and in seemingly random sizes?! With no actual boxes or horizontal rules?
It drives me round the bend!
Evelyn Berezin (1925 - 2018) ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/obituaries/evelyn-berezin-dead.html
Post #329: The New York Times, Evelyn Berezin, A female pioneer of the digital development all over the globe, 2024.
I'm thinking about exploring new writing software, because word feels clunky these days and fuck google docs. I've heard good things about Scrivener and Ellipsus - does anyone with experience with either of them have thoughts?
Magical Unicorn Doc Editor
So I think a lot of the GDocs kerfuffle is a bit overheated (they *say* they don't scrape docs for AI, adult content is specifically allowed in the TOS, and I haven't seen any real examples of them shutting down or restricting access to documents due to content), but I'm still a fan of privacy and I don't find Google to be trustworthy any more. I have turned off Gemini at every possible interaction point, but its uninvited introduction to multiple systems as an automatic opt-in was gross.
Microsoft Office is a hard pass. So intrusive.
I tried Ellipsus last year. I didn't love it due to some unaddressed reliability issues, though the interface is pleasant. I know Ellipsus is everyone's darling, but I'm also a bit sus of their business model, as in they don't seem to have one past "we'll need to have a paid plan in the future at some point".
So far I'm leaning toward ProtonDocs, mostly because I really need to be able to edit in a browser session. I write on my phone a LOT. It doesn't have document tabs which is very close to a dealbreaker for me. I already pay for their storage plan and have a soft spot for Proton in general.
Have any of you used Obsidian or Scrivener, or can you tell me anything new about Ellipsus?