The discussion about text editors made me wonder what more one needs. What should a writer’s word processor do?
- Never crash or lose work.
- Move and delete words, sentences, and paragraphs.
- Transpose letters.
- Count words.
- File plain ascii copy without fuss.
- Start up so quickly you have no time to faff and think again.
Is there anything else that matters? The list above is all you need for journalism. For books, or long and seriously edited articles, I’d add some things.
- Notes, comments, marginal annotations
- Bibliography and quotation tracker for copyright
- Some kind of navigational and outlining framework
- Revision marking to deal with the maybe four editors in the whole world who know what it is.
- MS Office compatibility because that’s what the people at the other end will be using even if you’re not.
Anything, it seems, could be used for journalism. Yet I don’t know any program which offers all the book-writing things without add-ons.