{"id":1335,"date":"2005-11-18T06:58:57","date_gmt":"2005-11-18T10:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1335"},"modified":"2005-11-18T06:58:57","modified_gmt":"2005-11-18T10:58:57","slug":"gmail-is-not-a-word-processor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1335","title":{"rendered":"Gmail is not a word processor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was bewildered by Vic Keegan’s article<\/a> on gmail as a word processor; I should have been illuminated. It shows how many journalists still use a computer as a typewriter with fancy formatting.<\/p>\n\n

He wants a fast and lightweight program with which to process words. Don’t we all? Word is too big for him, and OOo too nerdy. The plain text editors, he’s heard of aren’t powerful enough. ”I’ve tried a few free ‘memo pads’ but they are primitive as they do not want to provide competition for paid-for alternatives”<\/span><\/p>\n\n

So now he writes his articles as gmail messages, because it has the “word processing” features that he needs —<\/p>\n\n

“seven fonts and four type sizes (including huge) plus colour, bold, italic, indenting, justification and quite a good spell checker.
\nIt also has a link button of the kind you get on blogs, which inserts a hypertext link to a website behind a word you have highlighted without the need to type in any code. The only thing it seriously lacks is a word counter.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Absolutely none of these, except a word count and, perhaps, for a link button, would be on my list of essential text editing functions. My lightweight word processor needs only have:<\/p>\n\n\n