User:Maury Markowitz/Manifesto for a Better Word Processor/Who are the users and what do they do?

I can think of a number of different types of users, typed by the way they construct their documents:

1. hackers: perhaps a loaded term, but true to the original definition. The "hacker" is a user who likely doesn't write all that much at all. They will not want to spend any time at all learning the product. That means that the software should be configured out of the box with enough smarts to make a simple and great looking document. Simply type and print. Pages does a great job at this, and their out-of-the-box styles are fantastic. My only complaint is the way you have to add new pages strikes me as something I shouldn't have to learn.
   1. Supply good styles, make it painfully obvious how to use them. Default to a view that displays editable areas for headers and footers so you can add in page numbers and such.
2. writers: I don't know how many people fall into this class, but it would seem that many authors do. Writers basically start typing and stop when they're done. Then they go back and make edits to give the document strucuture.
   1. I think these people would want to use a view with NO on-screen layout at all -- just a big text editor. It should be easy to make selections and incorporate them into chapters/outlines. It's also reasonable to have some sort of "typed in markup" to make this even easier -- perhaps using wiki-like lightweight markup language markups that will automatically enter anything with a ''' into a chapter heading for instance.
3. editors: editors seem to be ignored by most products. Editors will likely want to work in a WYSIWYG view, but have the ability to easily turn on and off various bits of markup, and add notes and comments.
4. journalists -- especially journalists who review software by trying to use the software to to write the review.
   • word count. Ideally a "live word count" in the status bar at the bottom.