One of the super frustrating things about this: I have to write lots of documents, but I am required to use horrendous software to do that. It cannot even number sections automatically, nor can you insert cross-references to other sections. Simple stuff like that. It all has to be done manually.
Even Word 97 could do shit like that …
I’m gonna need some medication if I have to keep doing this. 😬 It’s infuriating.
Automatically numbered sections, 1978 in nroff / ms: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Bell-Release/usr/man/man7/ms.7#L231-L233
I was able to dig up StarOffice 3.1, which I used in the 1990’ies on Windows 95. This was the highlight of my day. 🥰 As you can see in the photo below, this CD includes a version for Windows 3.1, 95/NT – and OS/2! How cool is that? My CD back then did not have the OS/2 version.
StarWriter of StarOffice 3.1 can do a lot of the stuff that I’m missing in the tool at work. Like automatic numbering of sections/chapters and cross-references to other parts of the document. Essential basic stuff like that.
All the following screenshots are from QEMU VMs (OS/2 2.1, Windows 3.11, and Windows 98), but I think I’m gonna install this on my real OS/2 Warp 4 box soon. 🧓
What really blew my mind is this feature, though: You can rearrange your document’s structure using drag-and-drop. Here’s a demo (Window 2000):
https://movq.de/v/67523d0d3f/so31.mp4
I really, really wish the tool at work would have a feature like that. It would have saved me so much time already. 😭
I spent some more time with StarOffice 3.1 and it is indeed a bit clunky (of course it is, it’s from 1996). For example, a table of contents does not update automatically – you have to delete it and re-insert it. Sometimes it has graphical glitches. Font rendering isn’t too great.
And yet, I wish we would use this instead of $the_other_thing at work. It’s much faster (on my Pentium 133!) and more featureful. 🫤 (Or, you know, StarOffice’s modern descendant: LibreOffice.)