Factors:
1. Accessibility. Not everyone has really fast (or stable) internet.
2. Environmental. There's no reason to use more computing power than necessary for the task at hand. It's wasteful. Very few people need the fancy features advanced text editors introduce.
3. Interoperability. Text files I write and send are readable *everywhere.* Try loading up Google Docs on a 1024x768 screen with a 256MB RAM Pentium 3. You'll be lucky if Google Docs even loads.
4. Privacy. A text file is easy to protect. GPG is the most straightforward. It remains small, and there's no way middle-men can read it. Google Docs? Google has root and they're not encrypted from them. So, good luck.
5. Account requirements. Text files require no accounts anywhere. All you need it an Internet connection and a DNS server that'll point your computer the right way. SaaS requires that you also have up-to-date software, a powerful computer, and that you register an account with them to access files shared with you.
6. Storage space. A text file takes kilobytes. A .docx file takes megabytes. My daily journal, which granted has some meta-data but is still plain text, is nearing on 580kb after three years of diligent, detailed journaling. I can't help but doubt that Word would even open a .docx file that large if formatted natively. (Thousands of headings, links, timestamps, etc.)
6. Feature-set. Plain text lets you do enough for 99% of all tasks. Yes, it's not as pretty, but within the bounds of putting characters into a file, you have complete freedom. Proprietary services, on the other hand, have a very very rich feature-set, most of which is irrelevant for 99% of users. The drawback of this is that every user is forced to load these rarely-used functions onto their own computer when the applications load up. That's wasteful, and likely cost the world hundreds of millions in unnecessary energy expenditure already.

TL;DR: Use plain text unless you absolutely positively can't help it. It's seriously better in every way.

#plaintext #emacs #txt #notepad #bloat #bloatware #saas #googledocs #msword #microsoftword #rant

RE: https://fed.bajsicki.com/notes/a6uy06mot0

Did you know that the history of Interlisp crossed with the history of modern word processors and MS Word?

1/4

@UnCoveredMyths

Remember, #Office365 has everything that you enter into it also go into their #AI called #CoPilot .This might not bother you, but if the subject of AI scraping your documents is important to you, then try to find an older offline copy of #MSWord . But then one problem would be to have a copy of Word on every device you use.

You can also use #LibreOffice (which I am told is very similar to Word) or #GoogleDocs (a Cloud program that probably shares your data to Google's AI), which is very similar to Word.

Another new blog post for you: "2025 Photo Calendars (part two)"
https://www.wolfnowl.com/2024/12/2025-photo-calendars-part-two/

Another new blog post for you: "2025 Photo Calendars (part two)"
https://www.wolfnowl.com/2024/12/2025-photo-calendars-part-two/

#rant #Windows #MSWord

Hab ich schonmal erwähnt, dass ich Word hasse? Und ganz besonders das kollaborative Online-Word. Sooooowas mega nerviges und unintuitives wie diese Art zu schreiben macht mich echt kirre.
Wie kann Mensch mit so einem Müllprogramm Texte schreiben?
Echt, man ey...

"Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.

If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.

I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:

On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”: File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”"

https://medium.com/illumination/ms-word-is-using-you-to-train-ai-86d6a4d87021

Another new blog post for you: "2025 Photo Calendars (part one)"
https://www.wolfnowl.com/2024/11/2025-photo-calendars-part-one/

NB: We've updated this post to include creating output with #CaptureOnePro

Another new blog post for you: "2025 Photo Calendars (part one)"
https://www.wolfnowl.com/2024/11/2025-photo-calendars-part-one/

NB: We've updated this post to include creating output with #CaptureOnePro

If you use MS Word and you don't want their Copilot AI to access your files, go to Options > General > Privacy Settings.

Then untick all the boxes they've "helpfully" ticked for you.

Ein Doktorand von uns schreibt ja seine Dissertation mit #texlatex .

Jetzt will seine Doktormutter aber die Datei nicht als #PDF sondern als #Word Dokument.
Tja. Wie bekommen wir das schnell umgewandelt?

Der #Adobe Reader kann das, das ist aber eine Premium Funktion, für die man bezahlen muss. Online Konverter wollten wir nicht nutzen.

Dann zufällig heraus gefunden, dass man eine PDF Datei auch mit #msword öffnen kann und es dabei automatisch als Word-Dokument dargestellt wird.

Announcing the Office Add-ins Development Kit for Visual Studio Code (public preview).

#m365 #vscode #office #msoffice #addins #development #excel #outlook #msword
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/announcing-the-office-add-ins-development-kit-for-visual-studio-code-public-preview/