Kickoff

I use Microsoft Office a lot. One of the things that bugs me about it is how different each of the apps are. For example, in Word, you have paragraph styles that you can apply to paragraphs of text. No such thing exists in OneNote. In Excel, it's quite difficult to even format the font.

Another thing that bothers me is how un-integrated the applications are. When you begin a new document, you have to pick which application / document type to create. Later, if you decide you picked incorrectly, or need the same information in multiple formats, there's no easy (i.e. automated) way to change. Sure there's OLE to embed one document in another, but it doesn't change the fact that you're embedding one document type into another.

The purpose of this blog is to brainstorm about documents and the applications used to create them. I think there must be a better way, and I aim to find it.

I'm calling this blog Document Theory. I chose the name because I intend to explore the purpose of documents, how they're used, how they compare to other forms of communication, etc., and to me, this name fits very well with that purpose. Perhaps the name is inspired somewhat by current fashion (e.g. Constraint Theory), and seems a little lofty and academic, but I don't care.

I think this exploration is fundamental to understanding how we can build better applications that automate document creation (which fundamentally is what Office is, after all).