I m writing my thesis as a part of competing my master degree. Its over a 100 page document with images at 300 Dpi. In english, there are a lot of pages with each page having an image more than 2MB. This drastically increases the size of your Microsoft Word document, well if you added it with the text you are writing. I do, just to improve the text I write for it.
Some people argue that latex is the best method and it actually helps them in the writing process. If you are that person, this advice is not for you, otherwise lets dive more into the specifics.
Well my final report will be in LaTex, of course, but this is describing the process that I go through while you are writing you document.
Truth is your document is probably being read by Google and the worst aftermath you get suggested with ads all over the internet. There are some easy ways to get through them.
I started out in MS Word, just like I usually used to. I use a Macbook Pro and MS Word 2011 seemed pretty old, so I used 2016. However, it doesn’t matter which word version you use. It will crash if it has to crash. And then in the back of my mind, well 2011 doesn’t crash that much, then why do i have 2016 released in the first place? Lets not go into the software development life cycle, Microsoft tests its latest app for osX version a Yosemite, another el Capitan will come. There will be compatibility problems with it but that shouldn’t stop you from updating. At least, I keep it to the latest software (Usually with some rants of how cool Mavericks was compared to Yosemite, but it has the perks it has to offer)
Why Google Docs?
Well, coming to the primal question, by now Microsoft should have eliminated the button or the menu option called Save. At least kept it just for the sake of the 70’s kid. Who saves the document three times before closing the file.
When you do it with Google Docs, every key stroke is saved! No problem that what you wrote for the last 30 minutes was gone. And you whine about the once in a life time flow of writing a document. I feel, it actually gets better while rewriting it provided i don’t procrastinate.
That is all there is, I mean that is all I would want. Oh, that one cool argument, well you need internet all the time! are you raising that? When is the time when you have written something offline?
Well, Google docs provides offline content creation but i m not sure about its magic there.
You have a ‘define’ and ‘research’ button, just gets results off from Google search engine. Haha, no, please don’t say that… yeah Microsoft has the exact same function in office 2016 Mac, but the problem is you need to get it running all the time without crashing and you should be happy with the Bing search results. I don’t blame or complain, I say that there is too much positive energy that MSFT could possibly absorb. There are probably far too many cool ideas, it not useful until the 70’s kid uses it.
That being said, you have Google search results right next to your document, when you need it.
It saves for every keystroke so you don’t have this high-pitched complaining cry of
I ALL OF LOST IT, LIFE IS SO HARD!
Actually its not hard, things get just as easy as you can easily cry with Do you want to send the error report to MSFT and restart and recover your document! yes, its that easy
- You don’t, install anything. probably you already use Google Chrome
- You don’t think if you want to update your software, probably Google Chrome updates and you don’t know it!
- What if it crashes with the latest version, then you wouldn’t be using Google Chrome
Well, it did restart and recovered, but most of time it was from few hours back and said welcome back, 2 hours ago. “TEARS” right! I’m sure software can be done right, if you are actually paying for it – it should be done right.
Why am I talking about Chrome when I have to talk about Docs?
- That is all there is too using Docs, open your browser, goto docs.google.com
- Yes, it used to be a part of drive.google.com, i dont know when it changed, but i know it did and it is great!
- you probably already have a fake email in Gmail. Use that, or there is a professional email as well, use this.
Not saying Google Docs is the perfect solution, because it changes every day or it limits the size of your document to the size of your Google Drive. Unlike every year by other App companies. But to me, its a good thing, “we have cool features cooked at the lab and is waiting to be served next year” is better than you get once its done!
Developers get instant feedback, there is so much room to innovate with user insight. Iterations create better software. At least thats what I think how it works for Apps unlike operating systems (OS).
Here comes the next killer feature! I love it! I use it! and it works! even with the indian accent!
Google Voice Input
Yup, click to speak, speak to write!
Mac has dictation that you can use anywhere in the OS, but personally, It didn’t handle indian accent quiet well! Asian Netflix, woot? even Netflix wouldn’t know what this meant!
On the contrary, Google voice input handled it pretty well. I did 12 pages in the time I did 4. It was quite great, but the problem was with the white spaces. Docs didn’t show me if there was an extra white space. LaTex would freakout. So I included MS Word in the process. Well it played a great role, Copy from G Docs, format and edit on MS Word for white spaces and other grammar changes, add images. Hit save as much as you could. Each button you press is valuable and you probably won’t find the same problem the next time.
I don’t want to say more about how easy it is to send the document to someone to get it proof read. Wow those commenting options, those amazing time savers you get from simultaneous editing.
To sum up, it not autosave,
- I will call it intuitive save
- Voice input irrespective of accent
- Google search results right next to the document
- Zero installation time, probably a decent internet speed to load the Docs app page
- No panic on software update
- Sharing and Simultaneous edits
- Available on every computer, even on your grandpa’s Windows XP
- yeah, don’t have to make sure that you save it in doc format.
- did i miss something, probably lots, and i will add it as i see fit!
Thank you Google, Microsoft for giving the right tools choose from for the right things!
This is not a review or a versus writeup, its just saying until MSFT writes better software like Google (which is in the near future), I would have a writing process like the following
- drafting in Google Docs
- compiling in MSFT Word
- Formatting and editing in MSFT Word
- Typeset in LaTex
Aaaaand Google, one request, generate LaTex code right out of Docs, then i compile to the prescribed template format!
(1242 words in less than an Hour, good job WordPress with the new distraction free editor)