Read on Twitter
Seeing google docs pop everywhere, used both as a writing and publication tools, makes me feel we have completely failed at designing open, usable, accessible web-writing and writing-on-the-web tools. More than how it felt back when I was working on digital publishing circa 2012.
A big issue back then was implementing standards - epub is still as much, if not more, of a mess now than it was then.
The development of graphics and video tools since then has been pretty impressive, but I& #39;m not sure we& #39;ve developed anything comparable to what flash enabled - direct interactions with images and videos.
I had high hopes for block-based writing interfaces back then (<3 @twinethreads), but none of the current, largely used, implementations are satisfying. That includes Medium, Wordpress Gutenberg editor, Behance...
It& #39;s still incredibly difficult to this day for a novice to deploy and custome a proper cms. I like Perch and Grav a lot, but they& #39;re not as easy to collaborate on. Surely there should be more tools enabling to write and publish specifically structured text and data.
I& #39;ve been closely following notebooks initiatives, like @ProjectJupyter, but again barriers to entry are * high *
Beyond using google docs as both writing tool and reading interface, GDrive has been used as de facto CMS for lots of other cool projects ( @OKFNLabs timemapper, @line_graphics) - and I can& #39;t say I don& #39;t understand why.
There& #39;s lots of great open source projects out there - starting with @paged_js ( @julieblancfr has a great timeline here > http://recherche.julie-blanc.fr/timeline-publishing/),">https://recherche.julie-blanc.fr/timeline-... but nothing that fundamentally changes what I& #39;m saying above.
I recognise the irony of writing this on Twitter, yet another close, proprietary platform, implementing a rigid but nice block-based writing logic, allowing the type of paragraph annotations and comments I& #39;ve long hoped to see open and widely used (> @hypothes_is).
Now, I love @ScrivenerApp and @RoamResearch, but the price is a huge barrier to entry for bottom-up writing collaboration.
I& #39;ve used everything from shared pinterest boards to @AREdotNA to @WordPress to NetlifyCMS to Webflow to markdown based tools to write and publish with others, and I still come back to google documents after a while, and this is honestly terrifying.
That& #39;s relying way too much on a single set of tools, which is NOT accessible, and I know from experience it& #39;s hard to get away from it, even using open source alternatives like @framasoft. I& #39;ve tried 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ" title="Loudly crying face" aria-label="Emoji: Loudly crying face">
I& #39;ll keep trying but the truth is, someone always goes "why not switch to google docs?", and everybody follows. And that& #39;s not even getting into the matter of the difficulties many, many people experience using these tools.
Again, from experience, it& #39;s virtually impossible to get most of my colleagues to use collaborative documents consistently - thinking about the structure of the writing at the same time as writing. I& #39;ve tried @NotionHQ & #39;s templates, but that& #39;s not been a success.
Anyhow - this was the lament of the open-source believer using way too many google docs, brought to you by another day of long distance collaborative writing. #AcademicChatter
Returning to this thread to say that if you want to write and publish with your students of all ages, give do-doc by @latelier_cherch a try - it& #39;s a great project. Also someone is replying from a private account, so I can& #39;t see the comments https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đŹ" title="Grimacing face" aria-label="Emoji: Grimacing face">
Addendum 2: google documents have to be looked at considering the sheer size of Google and Alphabet, well phrased by @shannonmattern in a different context that also has a lot to do with controlling our means of writing https://placesjournal.org/article/post-it-note-city/">https://placesjournal.org/article/p...
