The photography needs to match the timbre of the text, and the typography should cause the whole to resonate. When everything comes together well, a carefully crafted volume will draw readers like famished revelers to a feast. They’ll linger on the artwork, study the captions, dwell on the text, and ponder the message.

About a year ago, I played around with different layouts for such a publication. Initially, I wanted to experiment with a style known as “formalism”, which combines some of the best aspects of Swiss/Modern school with a slightly more relaxed attitude toward using decoration and embellishment. I had planned on developing a template for a side project.

Unfortunately, I never got much further than the layouts that you see here. Life and circumstances prevented me from completing the side project, and the typography didn’t have the right tone for other things I was working on. So, the template I was going to create languished.

Until last week, that is.

A little under six months ago, I got married. As part of the celebrations (which are still ongoing), I created a wedding album for my wife. Instead of working from scratch on the album, I chose to use the “Elegant Book” template. This means, that I’ve finally cleaned it up enough that I feel comfortable releasing it into the wild. I hope that someone is able to enjoy and make use of it! (Merry Christmas, belatedly.)

Downloads

An Elegant Book. This archive includes all of the files and fonts needed to install the template. A PDF example can be found here.

Installation

To install, download the .zip archive. Then, extract it and open up the main document file, which ends in the .sla extension. Once the file finishes loading, select the “Save as Template” option from the “File” menu. Be sure to place a checkmark in the “Include Font” and “Include Color Profile” boxes. Select the directory where you would like to save the template (you will probably want to make a new one). Finally, click on the “Save” button.

When you save a template into the Scribus Templates folder, it will copy the template file, photos, and fonts to the directory you specify. It will also add the template to the template gallery.

Template Use

Once you have downloaded and installed the template, you can create a new document by clicking on the “New From Template” link in the “File” menu. When the template file first loads, it will provide you with several example pages that can be used in your layout. Simply delete the sample text/images and replace them with your own.

To adjust the appearance of a particular block of text, you can apply character and paragraph styles from the “Text” section of the “Properties” dialog. To modify the appearance of a whole page, you can make use of the “Apply Master Page” option under the “Page” menu.

Examples

Below, you can find a few of the page layouts I used in the wedding album. The template contains additional examples.

For months, I’ve been distressed about how LaTeX handles footnotes. (Which, to be clear, is much better than how Word handles them.) Notes are used for subordinate details, which provide additional information, insight, and wit. In that role, they provide an important supplement to the main text.

Depending on which type of note you choose to use – foot, end, or side – there are certain rules which govern how they should be typeset. Robert Bringhurst, author of “The Elements of Typographic Style” and the authority on book typography lays it out pretty well:

Footnotes are the very emblem of fussiness, but they have their uses. If they are short and infrequent, they can be made economical of space, easy to find when wanted, and, when not wanted, easy to ignore …

In the main text, superscript numbers are used to indicate notes because superscript numbers minimize interruption. They are typographic asides: small because that is an expression of relative importance, and raised for two reasons: to keep them out of the flow of the main text, and to make them easier to find. In the note itself, the number is not an aside, but a target. Therefore, the number in the note should be full size.¹

Unfortunately, this isn’t how LaTeX does it. Instead of having a superscript in the text and a full sized numeral in the notes, it uses superscript for both.² Not only is it wrong (as far as anything can be wrong in a war of opinions), but it’s really hard to change. Most of the document classes only give you one or two options for the footnotes, and they’re not generally any better than the default. Nor does the heavy of all footnote packages, footmisc, provide a fix. Which means, if you want to adjust the way that the number appears, you have to hack the class at a lower level. (Sigh.)

Unless, you’re using memoir, that is.

It turns out that memoir provides hooks to customize everything about the footnotes. This includes the style, the size of the font, and … the numerical label. (If you’d like, you can even use symbols.) The code below will give you properly formatted references:

• superscript in the text
• full sized numeral in the note
• numeral out-dented into the margin by 1 em
• note text typeset left flush

\footmarkstyle{#1}
\setlength{\footmarkwidth}{-1.0em}
\setlength{\footmarksep}{1.0em}

The \footmarkstyle macro is used to remove the superscript, \footmarkwidth is the size of the box containing the note label, \footmarksep is how much to offset the numeral from the text.

Notes

1. The footnote is flagged by a superscript in the text, but the note itself is introduced by an outdented figure of the same size for the text of the note. (Taken from “The Elements of Style,” page 69.)

² Which is, frankly, unsightly and distracting.

In the graphic arts world, a sizable number of graphic design users have this idea that the only software worth using is a suite of proprietary (and extremely expensive) tools. For that reason, one of the stated goals of LibreGraphics magazine (part of their manifesto, in fact) is a desire to shatter this idea.

They want people to know:

As users of [free software], we know that our work, when executed well, is indistinguishable from work produced by more traditional means. Thus, ehre we will unite all our previously disparate successes. We will elevate the discourse around LibreGraphics as a professionally viable option, raise awareness, and show that it is the vision of the artist (and not the cost of the tool) that is important.

They do an excellent job.

Issue 1.3 of the magazine was just released. It takes a look at what it means to work collaboratively. It is available for download on the LibreGraphics website or for purchase. (If you have trouble downloading from the main site, there are mirrors available.)

This morning, while I was fact checking a few things for the book, I came across this video by Tom Wujek. In it, he talks about the neuroscience of understanding and how the brain understands the world of ideas. Though a bit dated (from the 2009 TED conference), it’s still excellent.

Of related interest, you may want to take a look at the TED project he references, TED Big Viz.

LibreGraphics Magazine

First, the magazine:

LibreGraphics magazine is designed to serve as a catalyst for discussion; to build a home for the users of Libre Graphics software, standards, and methods. As users of these tools, we know that our work, when executed well, is indistinguishable from work produced by more traditional means. Thus, here we will unite all our previously disparate successes. We will elevate the discourse around Libre Graphics as a professionally viable option, raise awareness, and show that it is the vision of the artist (not the cost of the tool) that is important.

There are two issues currently available. Both are great examples of what a LibreGraphics and open design magazine should be. They provide tutorials, opinion, perspective, and healthy doses of ideology. (Not too different from the publications written for open source code jockeys, actually.)

You can download both issues from the project’s website, or from one of the handy mirrors.

LibreGraphics Conference

Like LibreGraphics Magazine, the LIbreGraphics Meeting exists to “unite and accelerate the efforts behind Free, Libre, and Open Source creative software It’s the premiere conference for developers, users, and supporters of porjects such as GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Krita, Scribus, Hugin, the Open Clipart Library, and the Open Font Library to gather and work.” In short, a meeting of magic and liquid awesomeness.

The conference organizers are currently looking for help on two fronts:

1. They need money. Since there are many open source developers and volunteers who would dearly love to attend and might not be able to afford the travel costs, they are trying to raise money for travel grants. They estimate that they need about $12,000. Please donate.
2. They are also in need of presenters. If you are doing amazingly creative things with open source, consider submitting a proposal. The submission deadline is April 20th.

I’m really excited about the talk and I think it’s going to be excellent. (I know, having high expectations for your own performance is the route to obscurity, disappointment, and insanity.) If you live in the bay area, or are going to be near San Francisco next Monday and Tuesday, please consider coming.

While I think you should come to hear me, you might also be interested in the conference as a whole. There are going to be a number of interesting talks that covering KDE developments and core technologies.

(I’m particularly excited to hear about what KOffice/Calligra is up to. The abstract talks about “Office Engines” and how KOffice/Caligra can be used to build custom applications. I’m wondering if the technology might be adapted for a mobile project I’m working on. The talks on QtWebKit and the Qt Graphics tools also look neat.)

One of the reasons why I’m so excited about my talk is that it brings developments with the book full circle. I first started writing “Writing With Open Source Tools” due to a request for proposals  launched by KDE nearly two years ago. Now, I’m going back to KDE to talk about the (nearly) finished project.

I’m also going talk on other developments I consider timely. For example:

• How open source publishing tools can be used to target print, web, and eBook platforms from a single source file.
• How editors, writers, designers, and production people can work together in a seamless, collaborative manner.
• The strengths of an open approach and where things stand to improve. (Especially for writers and designers.)

While there will be motifs common to the Salt Lake Linux User’s group presentation, most of it is exciting and new. (Which also means untried and untested. So, if it goes well, you expect to be enlightened. If it goes poorly, expect to be entertained. Either way, it should be a good time.) Since I haven’t quite finished the presentation, it’s also adaptable. If there is anything specific you’d like to see covered, let me know in the comments and I will try to oblige.

Other Cool Stuff

On a somewhat related note, I just came across the work the people at RSA animate.  In their videos, a talented ilustrator draws images as a speaker presents a topic. They are absolutely riveting. (I also know that they’ve been around a while, but this is the first time I’ve really come across their work.)

This video, for example, features Ken Robinson and his thoughts about education. Specifically, about it destroys children’s ability to create.

And this one examines where good ideas come from. (I think it was part of the promotional efforts for Steven Johnson’s fantastic book of the same title. If it wasn’t, it should have been.)

I love the quality of both videos, and I’m trying to figure out how I could capture a similar feel for my presentation on Monday.

Considering that it is a major anniversary of a catastrophic event, I’ve been somewhat surprised at the response. Or, I guess I should clarify, the lack of one.

A quick search on Google News shows that it is being covered, but the world seems far more focused on the happenings in Egypt and the upcoming launch of Verizon’s iPhone. While the norm for most sites was thundering silence, I found one major exception in my RSS feed this morning, a photo essay posted on the Fox is Black.

Compiled by Alex Dent, it includes the footage of the explosion and is accompanied by a haunting model of the smoke plume. In closing Dent says, “Today is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. There are no words.”

When I first saw the images, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. At first, I wasn’t sure what they were, and I was puzzled. Then, after I reviewed a few more in the series, I recognized them, which triggered a reaction very similar to the first time I saw them.

1.

When Challenger exploded, I was six years old. I was a first grade student in Ms. Deacon’s class.

I don’t remember if we were watching the launch live, or if it was a rebroadcast. But I remember seeing the footage and being very confused. I worshiped astronauts. I wanted to be an astronaut.

They were the people who walked in space, soared amongst angels, and saw the wondrous whole of creation. A type of demigod that routinely accomplished the impossible and most assuredly did not die. Or at least it seemed to the mind of a six year old.

Yet, Challenger was gone. Because of a faulty design, the shuttle exploded only 73 seconds into the flight, blown into a twisted white cloud of debris. The impossible had happened. NASA, the same group which had safely returned Apollo 13 to earth after having a “problem”, had seen its first casualties in space.

Unless you were lived it, it is very difficult to describe the effect that Challenger’s explosion had on the mind of the country. It was shocking, traumatic, and no one knew how to respond to the news. We mourned the loss of the astronauts, but at the same time we also lost our innocence.

2.

Indeed, even though it’s been 25 years and much of the immediacy of the trauma has faded, I’m still not sure that America knows how to respond to Challenger. Certainly, in addresses and eulogies, we speak of hope and the dreams embodied by the astronauts, but we’ve done little to further the ambitions for which they gave their lives.

For, the moment that Challenger exploded, so did a generation’s hope for reliable and safe access to space. By showing their fallibility in such a catastrophic manner, NASA demonstrated that no manifest destiny propelled man toward the stars, or even that the efforts of Earth’s best and brightest could be good enough. Predictably, there was outrage and careful investigation. We demanded to know why our heroes had been taken for us.

The results from the commission were not encouraging. Instead of a NASA populated by super-heroes and immortals, it uncovered an organization pockmarked by humanity. And, predictably, oversight and scrutiny of the shuttle program increased enormously. At the same time, though, resources did not. There isn’t a more effective way to kill an audacious dream by demanding the impossible, delivered at a budget price.

3.

Which may be why I had such a mixed reaction to Dent’s photo essay.

I know that he is trying to restore humanity and understand how such a disaster could become abstract; but when I see the photos of Challenger, I don’t see an abstract event lost in the mists of time.

I think of the loss of the astronauts, a traumatized six year old, and the moment that a dream died. These are powerful and distressing emotions, which is why they should be balanced by the bravery of the astronaut’s lives. The people onboard Challenger embodied a powerful and inspiring vision, yet, evidence of that vision is absent from Dent’s essay.

Unfortunately, it is also absent form other public commemorations of the tragedy.

There is little hope that Americans will soon walk amongst the stars again, or that we even dare to propose bold things. In February of 2010, Obama killed the last vestiges of America’s manned space flight programs. Nothing has been yet taken its place. Instead, NASA has been transformed into yet another advanced research lab of the government; from an agency that does great things, to one that thinks about doing them. That is a tragedy, and a wholly unfitting memorial to the fallen.

Which, I suppose, is why I’m writing this essay. Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe sacrificed their lives in pursuit of discovery, and yet, that very sacrifice seems partially responsible for stifling American greatness.

Who are the great heroes of science and exploration now? Do names leap to mind? What titans of industry, art, science, and engineering propel us forward?

Or, do we tell today’s children that they can’t be astronauts, because astronauts don’t exist anymore? Have we let the fear of risk overshadow our ability to accomplish noble, great, or beautiful things?

4.

I don’t know the answers to these questions, which scares me. What I do know, however, is that the questions need to be answered. Humanity requires explorers and adventurers. We rely on such to drag us, often kicking and screaming, into the future.

I think Reagan summarized it well:

I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them …

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Scribus includes a nifty “Calendar Wizard” that lets you generate date grids for any month or year.  But though the Calendar Wizard works well, I found that it didn’t support all of the features that I would like.  Therefore, I spent a little bit of time and put together my own template.

In addition to a date grid, the template includes modified styles for the weeks, days and months (set to use the Linux Libertine typeface); the lunar phases; common North American Holidays; and miniature calendars for the preceding and following months.  I’ve also added image placeholders for all of the different pages.

Using this template, you should be able to create a  handsome, interesting calendar in almost no-time.  Though I had a “fine arts” feel in mind, it seems to work well with funny cat-pictures.  The sample pages shown here were all created from the template.

(The images in the examples were taken from Wikimedia Commons and from the Creative Commons photos posted on Flickr,   though I converted them to black/white.  You can probably tell that I’ve been pretty influenced by Nick Brandt.  These are not the images that will be used in the thank-you calendar.  Just pictures I’ve been practicing photo-manipulation techniques on with GIMP.)

Because it might be of interest/benefit to other people, I thought that I would post the template here.  The download file below includes everything required to make the template work.

To install, copy it to your Scribus Templates folder.  (The templates folder is included in your Scribus user folder.  For Linux users, this is usually a folder called “.scribus” in your home directory.  If you wish, you can change it from the “Preferences” dialog.)  Because the template was created with Scribus 1.3.9, you will need that version to make it work (or, alternatively, you will need to use the SVN version).

Downloads

2011 Scribus Calendar Template (Formal).  A formal calendar template for users of Scribus covering January to December 2011.  The template includes a calendar grid, the lunar phases, miniature calendars for the preceding and following months, and common holidays.  By default, it uses Linux Libertine as the typeface, though this can be adjusted using the available styles.  (Typeface bundled with the template.)

The template is released under a creative commons, attribution, share and share-a-like license.  If you make any changes or enhancements to the layut, please be kind enough to provide a link in the forum.  That way, everyone can benefit.

Example Layouts

To the many kind people who have asked, I am still alive. Yes, I am still working on the book.  Large projects have minds of their own, and I am having a very hard time convincing this one that she should be “finished.”

Every time I think I’m nearing the gate, I discover something else that needs to be done.  Writing a book is amazingly like writing software, at least in that respect.  They are the only two activities I’ve ever done where the inside usually ends up being bigger than the outside.  (Well, that and horse training.  But for different reasons.)

You look at the size of the job and think, that won’t be so bad.  Then, once you get inside it, not only is it worse, but worse on an unimagined scale.  Things take ten times as long and you realize that you need to produce about twice as much material as you thought, only to kill half of it.

Then, you hit every bump in the road, and realize you need another illustration, but there’s no budget. So if you really want it, you’ll have to produce it yourself … which takes a long time, and further destroys your objectivity about the project … To say nothing of image licensing …  You get the picture.

Writing books is hard.

(To the million or so souls who are participating in NanoWriMo this month, I wish you my best.  May you meet your word counts and find inspiration.  And I sincerely hope you are spared from murdering your ideas.  It’s painful.)

But before I get lost in the, “Writing books is hard”, rant, there is actually a purpose to this post.  I have favors to request and a couple of things to announce.  So … to the meat.

Layouts

First things up, I need to put out a request.  One of the chapters in the book is on layout and design using Scribus.  For this chapter, I would like to include nice examples of different document types.  (I’ve written on this before.)

Here is what I’m looking for, specifically:

1. Double Page Spreads
2. Flyers
3. Posters
4. Research Related Posters

I’ve created several layouts on my own, but for this chapter to work, I would love to have examples from others.  If there is anyone who wouldn’t mind having their layout work included, please contact me at:

lyx-devel@oak-tree.us

Scientific Content

There is also a second part to this request.

I really want to include one or two examples of Research Symposium posters.  The book is skewed toward an academic audience and research posters are the most visually oriented document that students/researchers produce with regularity.  Moreover, few layout/type books talk about their design, nor do they include examples.

(Or if they do, they’re utterly ghastly.  Not just bad, mind you, ghastly.)

Thus, if there are any research scientists who wouldn’t mind contributing examples, I would be tremendously appreciative.  Or, alternatively, if you wouldn’t mind contributing text and images toward an example, I would be happy to help you put one together.  You keep the copyright, a copy of all the template files, and everything else that gets generated. The only thing I need is a right to include a version in the chapter on layout and design.  Consider it free design work, even if the “designer” is mostly just an enthusiast.

(After checking multiple conference websites, AHA Scientific Sessions, HRS, and others, I don’t believe this type of use will cause problems with submissions or “prior publication.”   The purpose of the chapter is to show layout, not release scientific content.  Moreover, it will be printed at a size which renders the type mostly illegible.  If you are think this might interest you and you are concerned about your work being accepted due to previous publication, please check the specific conference guidelines.)

If interested, please send me an email.

Spam

For the past month or so, I’ve been fighting a losing battle against comment spam.  I’m not sure why, but it seems that Akismet has mostly stopped working.  Yesterday was particularly bad and I had more than 35 variants of:

Great post man.  Love the blog!  (Click here for penis enlargement!)

I’ve already talked about why spam bothers me, so I won’t get into it a second time.  This note is mostly to talk about a couple of things I’ve done, or rather the filters I’ve installed:

1. TanTan Noodles’ Simple Spam Filter.  This plugin comes highly recommended as a way to catch spam.  I installed it this morning.  It appears to be working.  Since installing, I haven’t seen a single spam comment.  But then, I haven’t seen a single real comment either.
2. Anti-Captcha.  This is a technological solution meant to kill spam-bots.  It uses a bit of random trickery and nonce key to prevent automated spam submission.  Again, it comes highly recommended.

The reason I am talking about this is because, with new filters in place, I’m worried that real comments might be marked as spam.  And, what is a blog without comments?  I’m an attention whore and this website gives me a (relatively) healthy outlet for those tendencies.  (It also makes me less obnoxious in family, professional, and social gatherings.)

Comments matter to me.  If your comment gets marked as spam, please send me an email.  I’ll try and fix it.  Also, if you wouldn’t mind leaving a comment on this page to say hi, that would also be appreciated.  (I’d like to test the filters and see if they work.)

Poster PDFs

As the last piece of miscellanea, I’ve had a couple of people ask about PDF copies of my posters.  (Not just the maps, which you can find here, but the actual posters.)  There have been enough requests, that I have decided to post them.  Download options can be found on the poster page:

http://www.oak-tree.us/posters

Note: Because those particular posters actually have a specific purpose – to fund the development of LyX-Outline and Time Drive – I am charging for them. The PDF proofs of the maps are still available, and always will be.  If you would like to support Time Drive development, please consider downloading a copy.  Or, you can donate directly from the software development page.

While I am supposed to be working on the Open Source Writing book, I read a very interesting piece on ZdNet this morning that I wanted to respond.  Entitled, “The new reality: Technology must be self-evident,” the piece caused two simultaneous reactions.

First, I agreed with the spirit of the message.  For new technology products to be successful, they must be “self-evident”, which means they must be intuitive.  You must be able to understand their fundamentals by sitting down and starting to explore.

But even though I understand and appreciate the big message, I couldn’t disagree more with the way that Jason Hiner (the piece’s author) says we need to get there:

The new way of building tech products is about less rather than more. It’s about removing (or never implementing) rarely-used features rather than piling on as many as you can cram into a product. It’s about not being hyper-reactive to a handful of user requests that may not reflect the larger user base. Most of all, it’s about discipline — the discipline to stick to a product’s core functionality and avoid the temptation of product creep.

The end game of this disciplined approach is building products that have a user experience (UX) that is almost completely self-evident. That’s why products with stripped-down GUIs and feature sets like the iPad, Android, Gmail, and Salesforce.com have become meteoric success stories.

and then he offers a few concrete examples of “poorly designed products”:

Let’s pick on Microsoft Word as an example of the old way. Although it is far from alone in this phenomenon, it is one of the most popular software applications of all time. The product started out great. It was one of the first word processors to offer WYSIWYG and introduce a toolbar. It quickly conquered text-based Word Perfect by the mid-1990s.

But, then lots of different Windows and Mac users told Microsoft all of the things they wished the product could do or ways that they wished it would work and Microsoft took the best suggestions and kept adding on .more and more features and options to the point that today’s Word is so bloated, over-complicated, and bogged down with options that it’s often difficult to figure out how to do basic tasks. In fact, it often requires a bunch of documentation and training to figure out how to use it.

Simplicity is the Realm of the Stupid

I’m sorry, but this where I have to start “kicking against the pricks”.  Less is not more.  Usually, it’s just less.

It may be tempting to say that hammers/nails and screwdrivers/screws accomplish the same purpose (fastening materials together), and for that reason we should eliminate one of the options.  We may say to ourselves “Let’s get rid of screwdrivers/screws, since they are more complicated.  It will result in a cleaner and more productive workspace.”

But before doing that, let’s step back and ask an important question: What purpose does this action serve?

Yes, we free up space in the workshop and reduce confusion.  It’s no longer necessary to teach people how to twist screws.  A cleaner workspace is a bonus.  But we take the action at the expense of a well-designed and elegant option.  Because of their larger surface area and manner of installation, screws can be used in instances  where nails are less useful.  They result in a better join.  Thus, trying to get rid of a well-designed option in the name of “simplicity” or “choice abundance” is actually harmful.  It results in the proliferation of an inferior option because the superior choice is “more complex” or might require that we seek out a bit of training and learn when to use one tool over the other..

But the insanity doesn’t stop there.  In an attempt to simplify, a product designer invariably indulges in the stupidity of Average Joe User.  She attempts to craft a generic human being that is meant to stand in for you, your mom and anyone else who will make use of the product.  She then meets Average Joe’s needs, or what she thinks are average Joe’s needs.

But of course, there’s just one problem.  There is no such thing as Average Joe User.  He. Does. Not. Exist.  I don’t use a computer in the same way as my mom.  Or my grandparents.  There is no average of our activities that will somehow make all of us happy.  This is why people submit feature requests and lobby for new options.

Yet, Microsoft Word does an admirable job of meeting our respective needs because people like me, my mom and my grandfather have requested certain capabilities.  My mom (who is a school teacher) can sit down and write a lesson plan, my grandfather (who is a businessman) can write a letter, and I can use it to write a scientific report.  If some product manager tried to start removing arbitrary features that my mom (who probably best reflects Average Joe) doesn’t need, it would negatively affect both my grandfather and I.

Rather than improve the quality of the product, it would castrate it into uselessness.  All in the name of simplicity and “confusion avoidance.”

Aim for Elegance

Which really brings me to my main point.  In software engineering, what we are aiming for isn’t simplicity.  Rather, it’s the intersection of good engineering and smart design, which I’ll refer to as “elegance.”  Edward Tufte has a quote that sums it up my feelings nicely [paraphrased]:

Confusion isn’t the result of complexity, but of poor design.

An elegant product is self-evident and clear, but still retains its power and functionality.  And it’s infinitely preferable to a “simple product.”  As an example, let’s return to analyzing Microsoft Word.

If Word is so confusing or undesirable, I’d really like to know, where is the Word processor or document writing system that challenges its hegemony? Who is advocating that we drop Word in favor of other tools? Where is the simple piece of software software that accomplishes everything we “need” and nothing we don’t?

Can it be found in Google Docs or OpenOffice (which is just as complicated as Word, if not more so)?  What about an alternative system like LaTeX or a LaTeX front-end like LyX (my own personal choice)?

While the alternatives are compelling and work tremendously well, they haven’t stolen any significant market share from Word. Microsoft Word enjoys dominance because it is a capable Word processor for most people. Full stop. All of the other products taken together probably don’t even amount to more than 5% of Word’s user base.  This is because Word is an elegant tool.  It’s not often the best tool for the job, but it is usually adequate and often good.  Nor would I call it “complex” or alienating.  As I said earlier, it works for the majority of people most of the time.

Or perhaps someone could show me the army of ignorance that struggles to do simple things in Word?

Yes, people often struggle to do hard things (mail merge, query databases, build interactive forms, etc). But they this is true of hard things in other programs as well and in simple programs, the options aren’t available.  Which is like comparing a duck to a cow.

From within Word to do simple things is straightforward. You open the program and start typing. You click on the bold button, or on an appropriate style.  It’s all self-evident and available. The UI is clear.  There is no significant learning curve. I’m not sure that there is a learning curve at all for basic tasks.  You simply start writing and place one word after another.  Billions of people are able to do this without any significant difficulty, including people with physical disabilities. While I might like to knock it, Microsoft Word is a piece of Very Good Software.

So what does stripping features accomplish?  It doesn’t make the use of basic features more obvious.  Nor does it enable the use of advanced options (since they are simply removed).  For that matter, it might not even influence the speed of the program (the so-called bloat), since that is more of a question of program optimization than number of raw features.

In the case of Word, simplicity isn’t a virtue.  But elegance is.  Instead of removing the features, the goal should be to integrate them into the program in a better manner and to make their function more obvious.  It is, in effect, a design challenge.  Word 2010 is a better program than Word 2003 because it allows you to both do more and makes the tools more available.

Sometimes Complexity Is Important

Which raises another relevant point.  Sometimes a tool needs to be sophisticated and specialized.  For example, where is the serious contender to Photoshop?

Maybe someone can point me at a few consumer level photo tools that are meeting the needs of mom and dad, but there is no “simple” piece of software that is threatening Adobe’s flagship product.  Nor do the alternatives address a wider variety of needs.  Photoshop is used by graphic designers, illustrators, artists, scientists and engineers.  Yes, it’s complicated and requires instruction, but after you’ve mounted the learning curve, the UI and palette design is also highly logical, consistent and useful.  In this case, sophisticated is better than simple.

And it’s obvious.  If you look at the world of digital art, Photoshop (and other specialized tools) are the choice for content creation.  Certainly, some stuff has come off of “simple” tools, like the iPad, but these these are akin to a symphony played on a collection of iPhones. They are novelties, and interesting for that reason. iPad is simply not the equal of a computer + Photoshop + Wacom.  I would even go so far as to say that the “simplicity” is a handicap, as It is much harder to create something of quality.

(Please no videos of sketch artists using iPad.  I’ve seen them, they’re utterly inferior.  Wacom can interpret pitch, pressure and different types of point.  It comes very close to the subtlety of real artistic tools.  It’s like comparing 5 year old soccer to the world cup.  There is no comparison and anyone who seriously advocates such an option is simply not worth my time.  Go spend some time around working artists, or better yet, take a few classes and try and use an iPad.  Then we can talk.)

iPad is an interesting machine, and Salesforce.com is tremendously cool. But they both serve niche markets and since they are so targeted, they don’t really fall into the inanities of “Average Joe.” In fact, I would even go so far as to say that their success has little to do with “simplicity” and much more to do with elegance.  They meet specific needs very well.

The iPad is a companion device optimized for consumption: reading, email, websurfing.  These are major activities for many users, and for that reason, it’s enjoyed success.  Salesforce.com also nicely meets a very specific targeted need.  It helps find contacts and push products/services.  Again, a very narrow niche that is targeted well.  But even there, it has hardly replaced Outlook. It’s much more a complement than a “simple replacement.” A case of “More is more.”

Conclusion

So while I agree with the Hiner’s tagline, “Technology must be self-evident”, I disagree with the eprescription on how to get there. Rather than aim for simplicity, tech needs to aim for elegance. In the physical sciences, we use Maxwell’s equations because they elegantly summarize many phenomenon, not because they are simple.

Ditto for good software. If the features are present and elegantly incorporated into the UI, they will be discoverable and that brings value to a product.  Which is why people stay with Word and MS Office. Yes, they could switch to “simpler” alternatives, but in many cases those options are the bad “simple”. They’re crippled, which makes them worthless.

Give me elegance any day.  An elegant product meets the needs of its users.  It incorporates features, good engineering and smart design.  It makes hard things easy and enables the impossible.  It is, simply, superior in every way.