{"id":551,"date":"2003-09-24T11:58:23","date_gmt":"2003-09-24T11:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/wp\/?p=551"},"modified":"2003-09-24T11:58:23","modified_gmt":"2003-09-24T11:58:23","slug":"kiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2003\/09\/kiss\/","title":{"rendered":"K.I.S.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article on Slashdot about Word Processors: One Writer’s Retreat<\/a> — wherein the author talks about the bells and whistles of emerging technology actually getting in the way of the relatively simple process of writing.<\/p>\n

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?

\nVi 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.
\nRoughdraft is simple enough for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “K.I.S.S.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing","category-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}