[qw]

The most annoying part is that their functionality is tightly woven in with the rest of their application. Why would we need separate Word/Excel parsers? Couldn't you just separate common functionality to a shared library...

It's the GIMP problem all over again. If they would just separate each functionality into components, it would make it easier for others to create "shells".

I see potential for a lot of improvement in the GIMP and Photoshop interfaces, and someone with better design skills than me could potentially make a Photoshop-killer.