Musing: September 2003 Archives

An interesting article on Slashdot about Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat -- wherein the author talks about the bells and whistles of emerging technology actually getting in the way of the relatively simple process of writing.

With a new novel to write, the time seemed ripe to switch software. I'd like to say I scoured about for word processors, but I didn't. In my novel, one character would write computer programs. The story question was, What software would he use? It had to be vi. Vi, a Unix editor for plain text files created in 1976 by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. I'd remembered working with a software engineer, who saw no advantage to word processors and dismissed the "prettiness" of desktop publishing. He did everything in vi. Could I write a novel in vi? I decided, Why not?
Vi fast became -- and remains, 100,000 words later -- my writing implement of choice. Most of all, what I like about vi is something that is, well, aesthetic. I like vi's keyboard-only operation. Vi doesn't assault with helpful balloons or racks of toolbar icons. No, vi has a 70s ambience (no mouse, no GUI) that's refreshingly clean. In that sense, vi is a treasured software servant. It works well without showy presence and respectfully stays out of the way.

Just for the record, I won't be writing any novels in Vi. That said, I will point out that I've never written anything creative in Word for many of the reasons the author cites in the article above: I like my word processing program to be that: a processor of words... that's it: no helpful capitalization, no auto-correct, and certainly no desktop publishing features poorly implemented and largely unnecessary.

Roughdraft is simple enough for me.

A man holds a tentacle of a 'Arcciteuthis Dux' squid on La Isla beach, in northern Spain, September 15, 2003. Scientists are trying to find out what caused two enormous squids, one of them 40 ft long, to wash up dead on Spain's northern coast this week. 'It's not a natural death and it's not the Prestige,' Luis Laria, president of marine protection agency CEPESMA said, referring to a massive oil spill from the Prestige tanker late last year. He declined to speculate on the cause.

Could have been lifted right off the front page of the Arkham Gazeteer.