Microsoft continues to develop Word and add features. The software is mature and stable.

I use it every day in work as a writer, but I'm frustrated I can’t use it to create professional, high-end output.

You couldn’t produce a great-looking printed book with Word. There’s little point sending Word manuscripts to professional book printers. And Word is not much better when it comes to top-flight on-line layouts or creating classy PDFs.

Word does basic page layout well enough. It seems designed for people who still print documents using laser printers and ink-jets. And it’s fine for emailed documents.

Word’s new fonts are gorgeous. Calibri works particularly well on-screen. However, fonts are part of the problem, you never know which fonts Word will use when you send a document to another computer. Things can go badly wrong when you send Word documents to commercial printers or pre-press companies.

Colour is also a Word danger-zone. You never know what colour you'll see at the other end.

I’ve found if I’m just doing low-resolution work, Word is good enough.

When I’m creating high-end documents or working with professional printers, I still have to use Adobe InDesign. At around NZ$1,500 that’s an expensive sledgehammer cracking my layout nuts.

Want to publish directly from Google Docs to your WordPress site? Setting-up Google Docs is a chore, but once you've done the hard work once, it's easy. Here's how I did it.

Google Docs may not be the world's best word processor, but you won't find a better way of collaborating on documents. Sharing and collaboration works far better than with Microsoft Word.

Recently I used Google Docs to edit some shared documents which would eventually become WordPress posts.

After writing the first post, I cut and pasted the text into WordPress. It wasn't pretty. Eventually I used WordPress' paste as plain text function, but that loses formatting.

I decided to investigate posting directly from Google Docs to WordPress.

There are a number of guides explaining how to do this, but an online applications like Google Docs is a moving target – some of the steps explained in the guides have changed in recent updates.

Here's what I did:

1. Get WordPress ready to receive Google Docs. Go to the Dashboard, select Settings, then Writing.

2. Select the box where it says:
XML-RPC Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols.

3. In Google Docs, open the document you'd like to post in WordPress.

4. Pull down the Share menu in the top right hand corner of the screen and select Publish as web page.

5. You should see two items, the second says This document has not been published to your blog.

6. If this is the first time you've tried posting to your WordPress site from Google Docs, there will be a message saying: You need to set your blog site settings before you can post documents to your blog.

7. Click on the link.

8. If you use a hosted WordPress.com blog, then click the first button (which is selected by default) and choose WordPress.com from the pull-down menu next to the word Provider. If you run a self-hosted WordPress site, you'll need to select the My own server / custom option then choose Metaweblog API and your site address. It's important to end the xmlrpc.php – which is normally in the home directory.

9. Add your user name and password.

The process isn't foolproof – I still ended up needing to edit some HTML code which came through from Google Docs – but if you've build your workflow around Google's tools, this is relatively straightforward.

My plan was to use Google Docs exclusively for two weeks. I wanted to test its viability as a Microsoft Word alternative.

The experiment fell at the first hurdle. I caved in after two days because my productivity dropped too far. Worse, I made many more errors with Google Docs than with Word.

Let’s set the scene. I’m a professional journalist. Typically I’d write 10,000 or more words a week. That’s close to 2000 words each workday and a few more on the weekend. When you’re tapping out that many words, the tools really matter.

Productivity hit

My productivity dropped 25 percent when I switched to Google Docs. This may have been temporary – maybe my speed would pick up as I became familiar with the software. But the price was too high – a 25 percent productivity drop means I working 33 percent longer to produce the same output. This is not acceptable.

What was the big problem? Google Docs requires more mouse activity than Microsoft Word. Both applications offer a full set of keyboard shortcuts and many of them are the same. However scrolling up and down the page to read my work was considerably harder in Google Docs.

Cutting and pasting copy from other documents was also harder. And curiously I had problems switching between web browser and Google Docs. Switching between a browser and Word using alt-tab is easier than control-tabbing through a large number of open browser tabs.

Just to make sure the problem wasn't related to the browser, I used Google Docs with Firefox and Internet Explorer. I also tried using Google Docs in a separate browser Window.

Two days into the experiment my wrists were starting to ache from the extra mousing. I didn’t experience serious pain – I bailed out before reaching that point.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

Speed is important. So is quality.

My other problem with Google Docs was proofing. That’s the business of rereading your words to find and correct mistakes or improve the text. At first I struggled to find why my proofing was so bad. Then it hit me. Text in Google Docs extends across the entire width of the screen – while Word text is restricted to relatively narrow columns. Proofing is harder with wider text columns.

There maybe ways to work around these problems, but I need to get on and earn a crust, so earlier today I went back to Microsoft Word – a better experience.

Training scares many bosses. They worry if they spend money training workers, they'll take their new skill to find a better job elsewhere.

Maybe, but if you spend money wisely giving workers the right skills a training investment pays off quickly.

Take a trivial example: Microsoft Word.

Many knowledge workers spend a lot of time with Word – without mastering the software. A one-day training course will teach most workers everything they need to know about the program.

Typically a one-day out-of-office course costs between $250 and $500 per person. You'll also lose the person's labour for a day.

The average Australian worker earns around A$27 an hour. In New Zealand the average hourly wage is around NZ$25. Knowledge workers will earn more.

So the investment making employees more effective with Microsoft Word returns a dividend once you've saved 10 hours.

You can realistically reckon on reaching that point in two months. Probably less. What's more, your employees will  produce higher quality documents, which will reflect better on your company.

Perhaps the most important pay off is in motivation. Workers like learning skills; it boosts their self-esteem and shows them you feel they are worth investing in.

There's another reason to spend money training your staff: The Hawthorne effect.

There are many low distraction writing tools. I’ve used Q10 and Darkroom on my PC. Both are good.

I’m told Mac users have something called Bean. I can’t comment, I’ve not had a Mac in five years.

And there are web-based alternatives.

I’d like to see Microsoft Word 2007 tweaked for distraction free writing.

Like it not, Word is the industry standard. As a professional writer I’m usually expected to turn in copy as Word files. Some clients expect me to use Word’s abysmal review and comparison features (don’t get me started).

My problem with Word is that it is massively overpowered for everyday writing. And massively overpowering to look at.

Can we fix it?

Get rid of those ribbon bars, the menu bar and the never-required left-right scroll bar. In fact get rid of almost everything. Default to the draft view with standard fonts and a handful of standard styles. Allow for all the Word keyboard commands. Can you see where I’m coming from here?

Whisper this, Microsoft’s Live Writer is almost what I’m after. At least it would be without the screen clutter. I’m writing this with Live Writer now and it’s functionally all I need.

See

Back-to-basics text processing: Where less can be more

Some knowledge workers are dumping heavy-duty word processors like Microsoft Word and switching to plain text editors.

Plain text appeals because it is a lowest common denominator. It always travels smoothly between applications, operating systems and devices. The same can’t always be said for Word documents.

Text is compact, efficient, quicker to search and easier to manage than word processor documents — geeks write small programs to merge, sort and otherwise process text files.

They already spend large parts of their working life dealing with plain text. The format is widely used for settings and configuration files.

Simpler than word processors

Text-editing programs are simpler than word processors. Many have been around for 30 years or more with roots in the pre-graphical-user-interface computing world.

They use keyboard commands — writing memos and other notes this way may look scary to non-technical types, but it isn't much of a stretch if you've used the same tools to handle your everyday technical tasks for a decade or more.

There's an added bonus to simple text editing; the applications can bypass the computer mouse. Given that mouse movements are one of the most troublesome sources of strain injury, switching to more keyboard-oriented writing tools can make a lot of sense for those technical types who spend hours hunched over their machines.

Ergonomics

Similar ergonomic concerns explain why some professional writers are turning their backs on conventional word processors. However, this group has another problem: modern word processors are busy-looking. It's hard to concentrate on writing when there are so many distractions.

It's tricky, but the old Dos favourite WordPerfect 5.1 can be shoehorned into working with Windows XP. Making it work with Vista is more of a challenge. A small but vibrant user community at WP Universe provides tips and even drivers to make the software work with modern operating systems and hardware.

You'd need to buy WordPerfect. Two recently developed applications channel its spirit for free. Darkroom and Q10 are both stripped down text editors designed to offer distraction-free writing.

Darkroom fussily requires Microsoft .Net 2.0, a deal breaker for some, while Q10 mainly gets on with the job, but I did detect some beta-software strangeness with both programs. Perhaps for now, this is a trend to watch and not follow.

There's a useful review of Darkroom, Q10 and a number of similar programs at bweaver.net.