As his best friend I can say that he has not gotten far with this, and that it will not be done for some time yet (how long that is I do not know) as he has had many other things to do. However I do know that as soon as he gets other very important things done that he will be focusing more on this project and i will remind him to keep people updated when he can…and I will share as much information as I have that I have permission to being a [as of now anyway] more regular forum user than he currently is.
…but keeping track of which files contain which evolutions is a nightmare in Word–basicly, just NOT possible. It would be nice to just hover your mouse cursor over a file’s name in the directory and see a good paragraph’s worth of description/summary about what that file is in terms of the writing in it just pop-up, rather than having to open a 70,000 to 115,000 word document and try to recognize the subtle and major variations by scanning through it all…
Change the folder view to “details” and add the “Comments” column and you can see the description right there. You can also display the subject, keywords, etc right in the folder view for easy finding. You can then sort the directory by the category of your choosing to make the finding even easier.
I didn’t read any replies after this one, so if someone already brought this up, I apologize.
I was thinking of making a word processor that caters mainly for authors, but also normal people. What features (that aren’t in other word processors) would you like to see?
You should include an animated paper clip that tries to guess what you want to do by making wildly inaccurate assumptions!
Now for a legitimate idea: I’m not a writer but I think a way of grouping a block of text like a <div>* would be useful, especially if you could drag it around the document to put it where you like. Maybe you could assign some attributes to it like a label, when it fits in the time line, or where it is set. Perhaps adding some customizable highlighting to the block of text so you can mark it for future reference would help.
If you have ever customized a Google homepage, that’s sort of what I’m talking about. I think being able to sort specific scenes by dragging them around the document would be a good feature. You could even fit that into the tree idea - the labels of the <div>s represented on another interface where they could be organized.
*A <div> tag from HTML is the best way I could think to describe it. I prepared an example that can be viewed from the following link:
http://palcisko.com/divexample.html
You can’t drag and drop since I don’t know AJAX, but that hopefully helps to illustrate my point.
According to some estimates, there are 30 million lines of code in Mac Office. Let’s assume that Word is 1/4 of that or 7.5 million. According to numerous studies, the average programmer writes about 300 lines of code per month (in terms of total development time).
Let’s assume you wanted to reproduce just 1/10 the of the functionality of Microsoft Word. At 750,000 lines of code, that should take you just 208 years.
Keep in mind that Microsoft Office Mac was written by the best programmers in the industry with 20+ years of experience - a novice would require many more iterations to get things right. Also, Microsoft has a huge organization to support their developers.
As a side node, Windows Vista has about 60m LOC. That would take 16,667 years for a single developer to write. Vista took about 4 years to write, which suggests that Microsoft has about 15-20K developers working on Vista, when you account for the 3-4x group complexity multiplier.
As a side node, Windows Vista has about 60m LOC. That would take 16,667 years for a single developer to write. Vista took about 4 years to write, which suggests that Microsoft has about 15-20K developers working on Vista, when you account for the 3-4x group complexity multiplier.
But that’s assuming Vista was written from scratch… Wasn’t it based on previous Windows code?
BTW, I justcame across some industry estimates which say that Vista took 10,000 developers 5 years to write.
According to some estimates, there are 30 million lines of code in Mac Office. Let’s assume that Word is 1/4 of that or 7.5 million. According to numerous studies, the average programmer writes about 300 lines of code per month (in terms of total development time).
Let’s assume you wanted to reproduce just 1/10 the of the functionality of Microsoft Word. At 750,000 lines of code, that should take you just 208 years.
For starters I’d write a hell of a lot more than 300 lines per month. I’d be disappointed in that. Secondly, I will using VC#. That should makes things a bit easier.
For starters I’d write a hell of a lot more than 300 lines per month. I’d be disappointed in that. Secondly, I will using VC#. That should makes things a bit easier.
Let us say that you managed 3000 lines of code a month then, which by most standards seems pretty good. And lets us assume :
Let’s assume you wanted to reproduce just 1/10 the of the functionality of Microsoft Word. At 750,000 lines of code, that should take you just 208 years
as David puts it. And now let us assume that for some reason you only need half as many lines of code as this. That is still 125 months, or over 10 years , even using REALLY generous figures. Do you see what I am saying?
Do you see what I am saying?
Is that using Visual C#? Or a non-visual based tool? Remember with Visual C# I don’t have to program as much of the interface as it does a lot of the work for me.
Further, 10% of the Word is no doubt well ahead of how much I will need to do.
Is that using Visual C#? Or a non-visual based tool? Remember with Visual C# I don’t have to program as much of the interface as it does a lot of the work for me.
You seem to think MS hand code all the interfaces in Word etc, I would be surprised if this was the case, I am sure they use some of their own tools like VS etc to design interfaces…
Further, 10% of the Word is no doubt well ahead of how much I will need to do.
Well firstly if you are worried bout using less lines of code, VB might be a better choice as compared to C# (C# is not really any faster than VB, the difference between the languages are more a matter of syntax and style).
Programming the interface is only the start, then there comes more tricky things involving often many many lines for things like spell-checking. I would think that at some stage some features ALONE might run into hundreds of lines of code once you include proper error-checking etc etc.
The fact that you are using C# or VB or some other .NEt language does not magically replace the fact that you need a great deal of code to get your word processor to do what it needs to, it just means it might be a little simpler and a little less time consuming.
My figures cover something roughly 5% as powerful as Word remember..do you plan to do something less than 5% as powerful?
Well firstly if you are worried bout using less lines of code, VB might be a better choice as compared to C# (C# is not really any faster than VB, the difference between the languages are more a matter of syntax and style).
I thought you once told me C# is more powerful.
Programming the interface is only the start, then there comes more tricky things involving often many many lines for things like spell-checking. I would think that at some stage some features ALONE might run into hundreds of lines of code once you include proper error-checking etc etc.
Well, duh! Mind telling me something I don’t already know?
The fact that you are using C# or VB or some other .NEt language does not magically replace the fact that you need a great deal of code to get your word processor to do what it needs to, it just means it might be a little simpler and a little less time consuming.
Again, well duh! Again. minf telling me something I don’t already know? had you of thought about what i said properly, you woulf seen that I was noly saying that the use VC# would result in less than the use non-visual tools and nothing else.
My figures cover something roughly 5% as powerful as Word remember..do you plan to do something less than 5% as powerful?
I have no idea of the exact comparision. I just know that I won’t have the massive repitition of Word (there is quite a lot of lines gone there) and that I won’t have any of Word’s more advanced features that I don’t think are directly relevant to authors (again a lot of lines gone, more than before in fact). Remember, Writer’s Word is trying aimed mainly at writer’s, not the people that need Word’s more advanced features. Cutting out those features will make a big difference as to the code.
On a side, note: eventually a version will use a dictionary I myself will write, one that only contains words I think are poorly defined in dictionaries (such as ones with looping definitons). However, since I plan to write this any, it will not add anything to what I will have to do beyond a simple means of reference.
I might have told you that, but if so then I suspect I was missing the point at the time.
We are quite easily still looking at 350,000 lines of code…
So lets say you then cut it down to 125000 lines of code (which might be a little unlikely if you want this to be competitive product) that is still 5 years work at the unlikely rate of 3000 lines of code a month. And you are very unlikely to do this many lines of code a month, that is an average of 100 lines of code a day, and then unless you are master of efficient coding you have something that has like 1.5-3% of the capabilities of Word. Now let us go further down and say you get it down to 50000 lines of code and make a super trim world processor for authors. OK, cool, now you might be able to do it in about 2-3 years, however is it then a commercially viable product? Probably not, even though the number of code lines is not everything (you can do some amazing things with very little code after all).
Well it may be that some don’t think of it as much of a word processor, but it’s too advanced to be a text editor. Think about 2 times as much as RoughDraft’s power, which still isn’t much.
Well I have no idea how many lines of code Roughdraft contains, I would imagine quite a lot, but if had been done in say VC# probably quite a lot less (while still having many thousands of lines).
I am not trying to put you off here, I am just making sure that you do realize what you might be in for, depending on whatever level of complexity you decide is right for the project in the end. It sounds like a good project, do not get me wrong, I just think you need to be make sure you know what you are in for. If you want I can provide some help with the coding/testing, however only to a quite limited extent when it comes to coding due to time constraints.
I understand and appreciate the intent. I also appreciate the offer.
Also please bear in mind that the main target is authors, not the average person. However, anyone who wants a word processor that is not cluttered the Word, and even OpenOffice is to a lesser extent, but wants something better than say, RoughDraft or WordTabs, is welcome to it. Well really any individual willing to pay for it is welcome. 
For starters I’d write a hell of a lot more than 300 lines per month. I’d be disappointed in that. Secondly, I will using VC#. That should makes things a bit easier.
Do you realize at Microsoft has some of the best developers in the world? They’ve been at this a lot longer than you. Furthermore, they use productivity tools and procedures that other companies only dream about.
Visual Studio? .Net? Microsoft invented it. How exactly do you intend to be 10X as productive as the world’s best engineers working at the world’s best software company?
Do you realize at Microsoft has some of the best developers in the world? They’ve been at this a lot longer than you. Furthermore, they use productivity tools and procedures that other companies only dream about.
Visual Studio? .Net? Microsoft invented it. How exactly do you intend to be 10X as productive as the world’s best engineers working at the world’s best software company?
Uh, I never said anyhting about how mant lines. That was Dwayne that said 3000 lines a month. I didn’t say anything about that. If you are going to criticise me at least criticise me for things I actually said.
Well, whatever. Just how do you plan to beat a full time senior software engineer by “a hell of a lot” at all?
As I mentioned before, Mac Office has 30,000,000 lines of code. Assuming that you can equal a full-time MS professional (which I doubt) it would take you 8,333 years to reproduce office. If you try to do just 1/100th, it would still take you 83 years. 1/1000th = 8.3 years.
You mentioned RoughDraft. The installer for it is 1232 KB. Assuming that’s the size of the final executable, that’s about 10,000 LOC. Even that would take about 3 years of full time work to recreate.
Well, whatever. Just how do you plan to beat a full time senior software engineer by “a hell of a lot” at all?
For starters, I thought you meant the average, not senior ones. Secondly, with less features I can spend less time on planning and trying to think of the code. Less features also means less time spent on testing. Thirdly, I don’t have to spend times on some things they have to, such as meetings, collaboration, and much much more. All of this results in a hell of a lot more time for programming.
Even that would take about 3 years of full time work to recreate.
I am pretty sure, based on my interpreations of things he has said, that it didn’t take the creator of it anywhere near that long and he was by himself.