> I didn't say that. Like, not even close, where did you get that from? In fact I haven't noticed a single improvement in Word since 2007 except the installer.

I have /taught/ MS Word 5.0 in 1997 or so, and written large documents (technical translations) in Word 6.0. Given that I had deadlines and I needed to pay our rent, I had really nerve-wrecking experiences when the whole system failed to work in the early morning hours before our dead-line. Well, Windows is more stable today, but usability of MS Word has not improved. All over all, I am saying that the WYSIWYG or "glorified typwriter methaphor" is just plain wrong if you want a consistently formatted large document. Consistency matters, and it is only achievable if standardized styles are applied to pieces of text. At the some time, enormous flexibility is needed, and this is where WYSIWYG fails. Some people here mentioned that formatting text for the web is different from optimum typesetting of paper documents, which have a fixed width. To some extend, this is true. But here is the rub: The fixed-length lines of paper documents, as well as the whole page layout, is optimized for easy reading - as well as everything else, for example the fonts. Of course you can have a web document with arbitrarily long lines. But there is no browser which formats it for good readbility on a 38 inch wide-screen display. It will make lines that are more than 120 characters long, when optimum readbility is at about 65. LaTeX takes care of the latter, that is why LaTeX documents are more readable.

> Please note that I think that both Word and LaTeX are pieces of shit, I simply think that Word is slightly less shit (or, well, shit in a way that bothers me less and you're free to disagree).

If you really know LaTeX well, it is excellent for formatting large technical documents with minimum efforts. You have to learn how to maintain and compile a biliography, and an index, but this is not really difficult with the tools which TeX and LaTeX provide. Admitted, some documents are not worth that effort, but everyone who has worked with a large software or API knows well that once documentation is longer than maybe 70 pages, finding information becomes the real issue. Again, Word is of no help here.

That has nothing to do with empathy. It is a technical question. Maybe word is useful for some rather limited uses, but even for a one-page letter, LaTeX is less fuss if you care about consistent formatting.

> I'm seriously bothered that you're accusing me of being a talking head for some multinational corporation. I'm a moderately happy customer, that's all. Our financial relationship is 12 euros a month, from me to them.

It would be totally dumb to accuse an individual of astroturfing for a company, because it is nearly impossible to prove. (However, actually I have managed to spot at least one paid shill who admitted it later - if you know German, you can read about it [here](https://www.gen-ethisches-netzwerk.de/agrobusiness/umkaempft...).

That said, it is totally obvious that Microsoft is taking influence here (probably by using various intermediate companies) , and the strategy is clearly to mention Microsoft products as often as possible in comments and contributions which appear to be, but are not, from unpaid users. Microsoft is even well-known to do that since a long time, so this is not a outlandish accusation but simply a fact. The desired effect is totally clear as well - if something is mentioned often enough, it becomes familiar, and what is familiar becomes unconsciously associated with "liked" or "proven", and if then people have to make a choice with limited information and under (possibly self-inflicted) time-pressure, they chose what they have heard or seen often. It is exactly how advertising works, and it should just be called as that.

Of course, the solution is not to accuse individual contributors of astroturfing which cannot be proven, but rather to lay out how the product which is promoted is really inferior and a really really bad choice for the task in question. Let's keep it at that level.