Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient
I just stumbled on this piece about how word processors are stupid tools. I agree wholeheartedly. I have been saying this for years. Most people don't know that there is a way to produce text OTHER than a word processor.
A text editor and a typesetting program makes things so much easier. If you are starting a new section you indicate so in the document. Not, as you would in a word processor by changing something about how the text looks but by (in LaTeX, my favorite type setting program) typing
\section{The name of the section}
You can then do stuff like search for the next section. In a word processor you'd have to scroll through the document until you found it. In emacs (my favorite text editor) you can type ^s\section to jump to the next section (usually ^s\se would be enough). I'm currently editing a document, using a word processor as required by the editor of the book the chapter is going in and he was confused about whether something was a subsection of the larger section because he didn't see the subtle typographical distinction between the section and subsection. If we'd been using LaTeX he'd have known, which would have made the discussion about how my prose was so bad that he couldn't tell that I intended the things to be subsections easier.
My biggest peeve with word processors is that there is no way to move the cursor without taking your hand off of home row. Worse, the interface actually encourages people to take their hands off the keyboard all too often. A frightening number of people don't even know that ^s (that's hold down the control key and press "s") will save your document in virtually every program that you use. If you take your hand off the keyboard, move the mouse to File and then down to save and then move your hand back to the keyboard, you're wasting lots of time. If you take your hands off the keyboard, click the "save" icon and put your hands back on the keyboard, you're still wasting lots of time. It takes about 1/5 of a second to type control-s and 3-5 seconds to click the save icon and get your hands back on the keyboard. That's nearly ten times as long.
But I don't need to rant, you can read the article linked above.