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   Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:20:55 JST Shauna GM

   It just feels like with all our advances in technology we should have a processor that doesn't choke on 126,000 words of formatted text.

   • clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:27:42 JST Shauna GM

     in reply to

     Seriously though, any recommendations for a word processor that can handle large files? LibreOffice (Desktop) and GDocs on both Firefox and Chrome cannot handle 126k words.

     UPDATE: Hacked together something that works for me. I make all substantive edits in markdown in VSCode, which handles 126k words flawlessly. Then convert via pandoc to odt and open in LibreOffice to do the last bits of formatting. LibreOffice handles formatting fine, it was just choking on things like find and replace.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Ian Turton (ianturton@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:27:48 JST Ian Turton

     in reply to

     • Oblomov

     @shauna @oblomov word processors do to words what food processors do to food.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:27:50 JST Shauna GM

     in reply to

     • Oblomov

     @oblomov Me: Why are word processors stuck at a 2005 performance level?

     Word processors: Why are *you* stuck at a 2005 performance level.

   • Embed this notice
     Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:27:51 JST Shauna GM

     in reply to

     • Oblomov

     @oblomov Why is it so hard? It feels like with videogame rendering engines, even an absolutely huge text document should be manageable.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Oblomov (oblomov@sociale.network)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:27:52 JST Oblomov

     in reply to

     @shauna Kind of depends on what you mean by word processor, but that's one of the reasons I switched to things like AsciiDoc. Otherwise the only solution I know of is to split the document 8-(

   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:27:53 JST clacke

     in reply to

     @shauna I don't know that KWord and AbiWord are better, but they're alternatives to try.

     Back in the day AbiWord was considered less of a resource hog than OpenOffice, but I don't know how updated or bugfree it is.

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     ionizedGirl (ionizedgirl@toot.cat)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:00 JST ionizedGirl

     in reply to

     @shauna seriously disappointing that libreoffice chokes at all.

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     Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:01 JST Shauna GM

     in reply to

     • abadidea
     • Irenes (many)

     @irenes @0xabad1dea Yeah, formatting is the main thing I need this for. I have the book already written (!!!) and need to format it so I can query agents with it.

     I have looked longingly at Scrivener in the past but if I can just figure out the export/format step (which cross my fingers, I think I maybe have?) I'll be good without it.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Irenes (many) (irenes@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:02 JST Irenes (many)

     in reply to

     • abadidea

     @0xabad1dea @shauna you asked for a word processor. we don't really do word processors anymore (except for work), we've gone back to our old ways. vim and emacs and even nano and other text editors will all handle files this size no problem. they won't do formatting, of course.

   • Embed this notice
     abadidea (0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:03 JST abadidea

     in reply to

     @shauna it would require some upfront effort to split the chapters (I’m assuming it’s not one contiguous block of text with no logical divisions) but Scrivener is specifically meant for long books and handles them by storing the sections as separate documents in a list that get compiled to one at export time. I can confirm from first hand experience 126k words is not a problem in this scenario. however you sound linuxy and there’s no linux build

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     Nathan Schneider (ntnsndr@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:12 JST Nathan Schneider

     in reply to

     @shauna I just want to say I adore this thread

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     Nathan Schneider (ntnsndr@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:13 JST Nathan Schneider

     in reply to

     • friend
     • Aurora Penguin

     @friend @aurorapenguin @shauna really rocky in my experience.

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   • Embed this notice
     friend@linuxrocks.online's status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:15 JST friend

     in reply to

     • Aurora Penguin

     @aurorapenguin There is indirectly a web version, developed by one of the companies that benefits off of and majorly contributes to LibreOffice, called "Collabora Online".
     @shauna

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   • Embed this notice
     Aurora Penguin (aurorapenguin@furry.engineer)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:16 JST Aurora Penguin

     in reply to

     @shauna wait, libreoffice has a web version?

   • Embed this notice
     Nathan Schneider (ntnsndr@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:18 JST Nathan Schneider

     in reply to

     • Mauve 👁💜

     @shauna @mauve that is how I've done all my books, except in emacs not VSCode. Pandoc FTW.

     Recently I got edits for a book in docx, with a volume of track changes that LibreOffice and Google Docs couldn't handle. Turned out online Word was the only thing that worked.

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   • Embed this notice
     Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:20 JST Shauna GM

     in reply to

     • Mauve 👁💜

     @mauve I hacked together something that works ok:

     - make all substantive edits in markdown in VSCode, which handles 126k words flawlessly
     - then convert via pandoc to odt
     - open in LibreOffice to do the last bits of formatting. (LibreOffice handles formatting fine, it was just choking on things like find and replace.)

     As long as I'm not doing too many last minute "oh shoot I forgot" edits this should be...bearable.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Mauve 👁💜 (mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:21 JST Mauve 👁💜

     in reply to

     @shauna Oh! Also if you settle on an alternative I would love to hear it. Defs relevant to my needs as well.

   • Embed this notice
     Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:22 JST Shauna GM

     in reply to

     • Mauve 👁💜

     @mauve Linux. I specifically need a document that will let me output a very specific format: paragraph indents, double-spacing, chapter titles, etc.

   • Embed this notice
     Mauve 👁💜 (mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:23 JST Mauve 👁💜

     in reply to

     @shauna What OS? Notepad++ on Windows worked great. On Linux I have gotten decent mileage from `nano` (along with making the keybindings closer to what graphical editors use).

     I am not aware of web based ones that don't start stuttering as the file size gets huge.

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     Jernej Simončič � (jernej__s@infosec.exchange)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:25 JST Jernej Simončič �

     in reply to

     • friend
     • Oblomov

     @friend @shauna @oblomov Modern Microsoft Office uses GPU acceleration (with hilarious results when the drivers are having trouble).

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   • Embed this notice
     friend@linuxrocks.online's status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:26 JST friend

     in reply to

     • Oblomov

     @shauna Typical desktop application rendering works very differently from video game rendering.

     The former is mostly done on the CPU with occasionally an image file or similar handed to the GPU to render it, then it's handed back to the CPU and included into the final display frame, which is then shoved back through your GPU to your monitor. This is called "immediate mode".

     Video games, on the other hand, work in "retained mode". All the graphical elements are handed to the GPU. The GPU can make all the rendering decisions and of course, does the rendering with its optimized hardware. And then it provides the rendered frame to your monitor directly, so in particular, there's also a lot less traffic between RAM and VRAM.
     @oblomov

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   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:28:28 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • abadidea
     @0xabad1dea @shauna How does Scrivener fare under Wine?
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:29:55 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Steve Herrick

     @Steve @shauna Not strange at all, I'd do that too. And pandoc rocks, of course.

     If the end goal is a word processing doc though and final formatting touches are needed, working in a word processor the whole time seems reasonable and should be something one could comfortably do.

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     Steve Herrick (steve@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 02-Jun-2023 09:29:56 JST Steve Herrick

     in reply to

     • clacke

     @clacke @shauna I'd like to jump onto this pandoc bandwagon, except I do my writing and editing in vim. This seems strange to many people, writing prose in vim, but it works fine for me.