[LINK] ArsT: 'Microsoft Word, RIP: 1983 - 2009'

[Paul Bolger]

>>How else would a novelist write anything? (Declaration 1: as much as I
>>loathe Word, I have in the past written a 65,000-word book with the
>>infernal software. Declaration 2: you'd have to drag me screaming and
>>kicking to use it for most purposes, but I am yet to find an
>>alternative that would work as well for the same number of words - as
>>much as I have tried).

Well you could try Lyx http://www.lyx.org/  and you could use
Subversion for versioning. Or you could try Google docs. I have no
idea how Google docs would handle very large documents - and I'd be
interested to hear if anyone has tried stress-testing it to see what
happens.

I do remember a rather amusing anecdote about a very large commercial
law firm in Sydney who had a 500 page statement of claim document
written in Word 'collapse', get its knickers in such a knot the text
was irretrievable, the night before it was due to be lodged. The
junior lawyers assigned to the case were forced to stay in the office
overnight re-typing the document from the last printout.