Free word processor

riccbhard

riccbhard

Tech
Does anybody know where I can get a good, free word processor? I would buy microsoft office, but I'm not too friendly of microsoft products. I've tried AbiWord and like it, but it has a very annoying bug. When highlighting or editing text it all gets garbled, I suspose this should be fixed in a future version.

Thanks in Advance! :cool:
 
It would help to know what it is your wanting to do with a word processor.

I've been using TextEdit as my primary word processor since about 1999 (after seeing it in a Rhapsody demo and finding out that it was included with OPENSTEP as a demo app).

It really can be a pretty full featured word processor. The first thing I do is set the preferences for "wrap to page". This gives it a WYSIWYG feel. Second is to add services like OmniDictionary, Nisus Thesaurus, FontSight, TextExtras and WordService. With those installed, TextEdit becomes a pretty powerful little tool.

For me, if I need more than what TextEdit can offer, I'm most likely into the area of page layout, in which case I have Create.
 
FLASH1296 said:
Text Wrangler is a free version of BBEdit. Many people rave about it.
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Both of those are text editors... so if typing into plain text is what you want from a word processor, those are great applications.

Generally speaking, those are designed for people who edit web and system files that are based on plain text formats. I would guess that you could also use them for TeX... but you would need to learn TeX first.
 
With the risk of posting off-topic* re: my falling short of the mark by suggesting a Text Editor such as Text Wrangler; I would like to say that I have tried "Pages" The word processor included as part of iWork. It was just updated to v.1.0.1 by Apple™. It is still a "Work in progress", as was reported in MacWorld (or was it in MacAddict?), but I found it to be far beyond my modest needs, and it includes many excellent templates. It is certainly adequate for simple desktop publishing as well.




* Off-topic as this is not a free application.
 
I downloaded NeoOffice/J 1.1 Beta (with Patch 9) and it looks very Office 95/Linuxey. Is there any other free office suites out there that have a not-so Linux feel and look?
 
Being a software developer myself, I can say that if I were to take the time to create a seriously polished and crafted application like Pages or Word, I'm sure I'd be wanting to be paid. Not that I'm greedy, but that type of thing is simply not something that the average working man has time to create 'off hours'. Applications like that are big, they're complicated, they require maintenance and ongoing support, and then, of course, there are all the upgrades and new features that people ask for. And, oddly enough, people who seek free software are often the most verbally critical and demanding.

So, in short, what I'd like to suggest as politely and respectfully as possible is this... look around at what's out there and if it isn't to your liking, either adapt to what's available or pony up a few dollars and get the commercial software that better fits your needs.

Many of us - the developers - are more than happy to spend time writing code for nothing more than the love of doing so. But there comes a time when we have to weigh return on time spent and what we give up in our real lives; I have a wife and four kids. If I devoted the kind of time it would take to write, upgrade and support something as complicated as an office suite for free, well, I don't think that whole being married thing would work out, ya know?
 
RacerX said:
It would help to know what it is your wanting to do with a word processor.

I've been using TextEdit as my primary word processor since about 1999 (after seeing it in a Rhapsody demo and finding out that it was included with OPENSTEP as a demo app).

It really can be a pretty full featured word processor. The first thing I do is set the preferences for "wrap to page". This gives it a WYSIWYG feel. Second is to add services like OmniDictionary, Nisus Thesaurus, FontSight, TextExtras and WordService. With those installed, TextEdit becomes a pretty powerful little tool.

For me, if I need more than what TextEdit can offer, I'm most likely into the area of page layout, in which case I have Create.
Click to expand...


Thank you for those links RacerX. I downloaded them all, but only had time to look at Nissus Thesaurus. Nissus Thesaurus also seems to be a dictionary in addition to the obvious.
 
chemistry_geek said:
Nissus Thesaurus also seems to be a dictionary in addition to the obvious.
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Yeah, I end up using Nisus Thesaurus as a dictionary too. It is very helpful.

Though I think Pages is a nice start (even if it actually is a resurrection of an older app), I was hoping that Apple would release something along the lines of a TextEdit Plus. Something with a little more functionality, but strongly pushing other developers to step up to the plate to fill it out.

The original idea behind services was that developers would build mini-apps of things they were good at. Then the user could go through picking and choosing what they needed/wanted of those apps to make the perfect mega-app to fit those needs.

Basically that is all that I've done with TextEdit. On it's own, it is a nice hand, but a little under powered word processor. With the help of these other developers it becomes a much more powerful tool.

And best of all, if you use a lot of Cocoa apps (like I do) then you have access to many of these services in those applications. For example when composing text in OmniWeb, Mail or Create, I have many of the exact same features that I would have in TextEdit. It has gotten to the point where I feel isolated from the rest of my Mac when working with Carbon apps.

As a side note, TextExtras is developed by one of the original developers for TextEdit.

FLASH1296 said:
for my dictionary/thesaurus needs I prefer the freeware solution of MacDict X 2.9.2
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Looks like very nice software... it is too bad that the developer made it in Carbon. It would have been a great services based tool.
 
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