Have you noticed that it is not rare that people use MS Word document
as kind of
container? They create image gallery in it, embed sounds, videos just
to be
able to have comments aroud them, etc. It looks so natural to them to
bind
things together in that way.
I see nothing wrong about doing that, however, I do not think that the
tool they
are using for the purpose is the most appropriate one. But hey, what
they
should use?
Yes -- I've noticed this as well. I often get emails from clients that
contain just a single image, perhaps a screenshot, but it's embedded in
a Word document. I think it's simply a matter of familiarity for
people: behind an email client, a web browser and various desk
utilities (calculator, music player, etc), what is the single piece of
software that most users in a corporate environment have regular
exposure to? Word. I'm not sure it seems entirely natural for them to
use Word, but what else are they going to use (as Stefan asks above)?
In my experience, many people do use Word in the way that I might use a
page-layout program, like Quark, InDesign, or Scribus. I've even been
describing Etoile to other designers I know using exactly these
comparisons: and they understand it and see merit in it. Thus, it would
be a good idea to model the interface on a program such as this, if we
intend to have a generic document format controlled by the workspace
rather than by a single app.
Another, related idea that I've been playing with is what if we think
of each document as a white board, rather than a page that will be
printed. Rather than use the Word/page-layout model exclusively, what
if we think about and talk about the Etoile interface in more
collaboration-focused terms? I think the print-centric model of Word
and page-layout are a bit outdated: I'm sure many of the Word documents
which I receive from clients never even touch a printer. Many of them
do, however, end up getting marked up, passed around, remarked and
versioned -- exactly the type of behavior we seem to be approaching on
in our discussions. What I guess this really comes down to, is we
should facilitate sharing at the workspace/document level, and make a
truly collaborative environment part of the heart of what Etoile is.
J.
