Word 2003--I have a beta test version--they took a bunch of stuff Word Perfect has had for years and added it to MS Word.

Windows XP--HATE IT.

Yesterday a friend called me and said ok why is this file like this? (bunch of strange characters mixed in) She was working on a news letter and she had given a guy instructions as to which type of files she could open--Microsoft basicly. The guy sent her a .wpd file.

That's Word Perfect. Word Perfect is not another way of saying Word--WP is a Corel product. Not made by the evil empire--and they make a Linux version.

I checked out the Corel site -- couldn't find a Linux version. Maybe I just missed it. They have some legacy support for old versions, but it doesn't look like they're supporting Linux with the new stuff.

jiuyen: What specialized software did you try? What kinds of bells and whistles did it have?

OpenOffice is pretty nice, but it does take some getting used to. If you're trying to use it under Mac OS X, you're probably using the X11 Beta. This can be tricky to get working. OO.org says they'll be releasing the OS X native OO sometime soon.

One thing that I've found to be pesky about OO is it's difficult to get page numbers working. It's a simple thing that you'd think would be easy, but it's a pain. Another problem I've found with OO are occasional rendering errors. When you delete a word some of the characters stay behind (just like if you used an eraser on hand written stuff.)

As regards WordPerfect on GNU/Linux, they ported 8 for real and distributed it free (as in beer). It was good, though quattro and presentations weren't ported, so you couldn't embed diagrams or graphs very well. It failed, however, to convince their corporate customers to switch over to a WordPerfect-over-GNU/Linux environment, vutting off MS completely. WP9 was sort of ported -- they shipped the windows version bundled together with a special copy of Wine. It worked, barely. It was painfully slow and buggy. This one they charged for. IIRC, they gave up after that. It's not 100% clear what their doing now, but I think they're close to Novell, which is pushing GNU/Linux, so they may be back.

Ease of use is another, the commands make sense.

The compare documents is wonderful--this feature compares two documents and puts the changes in a separate one--blue for deleted text red for added--my agent recently asked for my next draft with the changes highlighted--this worked great. I know the beta Word 2003 has this but it does not work as well as the WP.

The document analysis is great--it tells you such things as how much passive voice you have, grade level (when compared to things like Hemingway, 1040EZ tax instructions, or the Gettysburg Address--you can also put in your own document to compare to.

As a power user of both Word And WP--WP is far better--you never get weird surprises when you print.

Another thing--when backing up to drive A (floppy) WP overwrites the previous copy of the document--thus you do not get the disk full message when saving to A. Why? Word puts a new copy on the disk then gets rid of the old one. WP also has a feature where you can save to drive C and to Drive A at the same time.

The thesaurus window is wonderful. It runs in the tool bar and when you stop on a word, or type a word not only will it make a spelling suggestion but it has a drop down list of synonyms--without having to highlight and look up etc. And it has more suggestions than Word and even suggests word phrases to replace the word.

Want to know what the text will look like in a different font--well in WP when you scroll down the list with the arrow over the fonts it shows you in your document what the changed font looks like. So there isn’t any change look, ugh, change look, ugh etc.

For the spelling impaired--the spell checker is good at phonetic spelling to figure out what you meant to type. It doesn’t auto correct stuff like Word XP does--stuff you wish it would not assume--I’ve had lines appear in my letters because I use one in my letter head so all of a sudden after every paragraph Word XP was putting lines in. WP does not assume much, but will assume you want lists etc. and do that.

I could go on--price WP is cheaper.

Enough I guess.

Shawn

I'm mostly using it because I'm rebelling against Microsoft. Microsoft is so huge that the only things that can really compete against it are things that are free, and things made by people who will never, ever sell out.

And it costs nothing. That's always good.

Yes, you can save as a .doc--though many times when you reopen you have weird symbols for some things.(in Word) Odd that if I open .doc with WP I don't get that at all. But if I open .wpd (WP document) in Word I get them.

I had an old Smith Corona word processor--loved it--I still have some old 3.5 disks from it--Word trips out on them (unknown File format) WP opens them no trouble. It has a lot of very good conversion filters.

And it is cheaper by far than Word.

Not free, but cheaper.

I know both programs pretty well--and if I can help someone write better and with less frustration--Yippy.

Got an off-the-beaten-path reply for you. I'm trying a new program called Storyspace. It's designed for writers of hyperfiction but I'm finding it fits the way I think--and therefore write. It lets you keep a map of all the little scenes you write, if like me you write them out of order, and shows them in relationships which are easily rearranged.

It's relatively expensive--around $300--so I'm trying the free demo. There is also a steep! learning curve. And although it lacks some convenient features of typical word processors I find that a minimal setback 'cause you can import and export the text for things like spell-checking.

I run it on Windows 2000.