It seems, in THE INDUSTRY, the lines are pretty well drawn. In business, everybody uses Word, but in publishing, it seems that there is still quite a strong WordPerfect following.
I use WordPerfect. It's thesaurus is EASY. With Word, you have to right click and pull up a special menu. In WordPerfect, any highlighted word (or the word touching the cursor) will have thesaurus entries pop up in a box near the top of the screen. Sure, the thesaurus isn't the best, but it is pretty good most of the time.
My other basic problem with Word is conversion. I set up my writing programs with all of the available conversion modules intact, but Word (I have MS Word 2003 Professional) seems to garble exported files. Now I don't mean just a couple, I mean A LOT of files. Even RTFs. I have to go back and check to make sure that the integrity is okay on anything that I convert, and I usually end up having to use WP in the end. WordPerfect NEVER has this problem.
Honestly, for publishing anyway, I think that everyone should use WordPerfect. It's cool, it's happening, it's WOW. If only it didn't take so long to spool a 50,000 word document to the printer. . . .
Any thoughts?
Change your printer settings, so it prints before the whole document is spooled.
Shawn
My endorsement goes to OpenOffice. It's compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac. It contains all but a handful of feature found in WP and Word, and of those the only one that is missing that has any affect on an author whatsoever is that it does not contain a 'word count' button, but you have to go into a information screen to get this info. It saves files in either its own .oo extension, also easily as .rtf, and also as M$ Word documents. oh, one last thing, it's FREE. Thats right, you dont have to pay upwards of $300 or more (based on amazon.com price for Microsoft Word 2002) for a word processor.
In addition to a word processor it has a spreadsheet (excel), presentation program (powerpoint), and a drawing program.
EDIT: its available at www.openoffice.org thought the web site is having issues right now please, dont take that as an indication of the Openoffice crew... they're awesome people...
-jon-
[This message has been edited by kinglear (edited March 01, 2004).]
But I'd use chalk on slate to avoid the Evil Empire (ok maybe I'd check out Open Office before resorting to chalk).
Overall, I'd say it was good . . . if you don't want to spend the money for something better, but it's no replacement. I'll try it out later to see if it can export files without corruption . . . but it certainly won't be WP files . . .
http://wp.openoffice.org/filter.html
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. Also, WP is the only one that has printing support to print your manuscript from back to front, so you don't have to re-organize your pages when you're done printing (sure, most printer setups will let you do it, but it takes more time).
Why would you want to print your document back-to-front? That makes no sense to me...
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Plus, OpenOffice has NO grammar check.
True, and there isn't even one in development yet (official position here: http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/grammar.html ). I find MS Word's grammar check to be more of a hindrance than a help, though. But it's been a while since I tried WP (I last used version 5.2 !).
I get your point - OO does lack features. But, I find those features are ones that I rarely (or never) use.
The PDF export feature is _very_ useful for me, and I wouldn't trade it for Word or WordPerfect because of this, unless someone were to throw in a full version of Acrobat at the same time...
JK
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Why would you want to print your document back-to-front? That makes no sense to me...
Hey. I know that one! Because then you don't have to take the time to rearrange all the pages front-to-back once they're printed. If you print the last first, it all comes out ready to read or mail.
However, that last page-by-page once over as you rearrange the sheets can be a last defense against errors. When I recently printed my project and was reshuffling the pages into front-to-back order, I discovered that Word had done some crazy things. I had a few places where paragraphs were divided in the middle with resulting strange-looking spaces, and at least one instance of an extra line space. None of those were in my original when I had done my final reread, but I must have done something to trigger them. Had I not scanned the final printed version, I would have sent it out with some glaring errors.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited March 02, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by Alias (edited March 02, 2004).]
But I really don't want to get involved in this religious discussion.
I use MS Word, and it works great for everything I need to do. I can print back to front -- you can actually make this a default setting so you ALWAYS print back to front -- and though its thesaurus isn't the greatest, NO thesaurus compares to ROGET'S.
Sorry, I just don't get it.
Of course, writers are a strange bunch. They'll argue about whether to outline or not, about whether to write long-hand or not, whether to use a typewriter or not. And I guess in the 21st century, they'll argue about which word-processing program to use.
(Do you think writers are the only people who get embroiled in preference battles? KDE! Gnome!)
OpenOffice for me. I actually like the interface better than either Word's or WordPerfect's. And, like someone else pointed out, it's free.
And it also prints out so the manuscript finishes printing with the first page on top where it should be. I haven't seen anything not do this in so long, it I didn't even think this was an issue!
[This message has been edited by GZ (edited March 02, 2004).]
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Emacs! Vi! Ed!(Do you think writers are the only people who get embroiled in preference battles? KDE! Gnome!)
oh dear lord lets not start in on that topic. Next thing you know we'll be engaged in good old fashioned distro wars (Go Fedora!) or even worse, browser wars! (Go FireFox),..
oh yes.. and VI kicks emacs buttocks.
-jon-
Lila
[This message has been edited by Lilamrta (edited March 02, 2004).]
I layout the Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop newsletter in Word Perfect 9, and I can save it as a PDF file (so OO isn't the only one).
I edit stuff using Word (because I like the way their tracking tool works).
If I'm going to take something from Word Perfect and import it into Word, I save the document as a text file and import the text into Word. Word is nasty about any other word processing format, and I'd rather not import anything else into it. (Word Perfect is much more accommodating.)
The word processor I write my stories in is a dinosaur, though. LEWP.
You should use what works best for you for the job you want it to do.
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I found out that only SOME printers print out backward. My inkjet does, but my laser at work doesn't.
Ah, do some still do that? Every printer I've used for about the last 10 years doesn't do it like that. Even the ridiculously cheap lexmark inkjets I've had from time to time (cheaper to buy a new printer than a new ink cartridge!) get the output in the right order.
Word does have nice tracking tools, though. That's one thing that I really like about Word. But I hate how it always tries to autoformat everything. I also find it harder to find all the formatting options I want, but that could simply be a result of my being more familiar WordPerfect.
And here's one of my favorite bits:
OEM version of WordPerfect Office 11 Professional: $18.
OEM version of Microsoft Office XP Professional: $200.
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I can't count the number of times that I've been frustrated while trying to fix screwy formatting in Word.
Office XP has a "reveal codes" thing, but it's pretty useless compared to WordPerfect's. In a pane on the side, it shows you the formatting of whatever your cursor is on.
[This message has been edited by Jon Boy (edited March 03, 2004).]
Wordperfect deals with only it's own built in template. Sure, you can load additional templates, but it will always return to the default. It sounds to me like Word allows changes to be inadvertantly made to its default template. I can imagine that unless you are a "power user" you could come across many problems.
Basically, for those of you who don't know, "reveal codes" allows you to see ALL formatting changes that have occured from the beginning of the default document: every page break, soft return, hard return, bits of formatting, etc. It doesnt' sound that helpful, but it REALLY is.
Honestly, WordPerfect has a lot of function beyond word, but most users won't see beyond the basics, like the better spellcheck/thesaurus/grammer check, etc. There are some HARDCORE advances made with the author in mind, though. There is formatting that is specifically for writing novels, allowing breakup and management of chapters and much more. Really, you'd be fine using anything, but sometimes the extra features can you a LOT of time.
I had to use Word quite frequently at my job last summer, and I felt like I was always wrestling with it. I can't remember any really specific problems that I had, though.
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t sounds like normal.dot is a log of changes made to your default template. I can see where that would cause problems
Normal.dot _is_ the default template. If you delete it, it recreates a default default for you :-)
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Basically, for those of you who don't know, "reveal codes" allows you to see ALL formatting changes that have occured from the beginning of the default document: every page break, soft return, hard return, bits of formatting, etc. It doesnt' sound that helpful, but it REALLY is.
Word can be made to show page break, hard line breaks and paragraph breaks symbolicaly. It can't show formatting codes though, only the breaks.
One thing I learnt about Word that helps a lot when formatting stuff - it stores the paragraph settings in a marker at the end of the paragraph, so if you delete this, the formatting of the following paragraph will get applied to your current paragraph. This is rather bizarre, but once you know what it's doing, it becomes much easier to predict what will happen...
http://www.wpvsword.com/wp11vsword11/
By the way, does anyone know how to import large chunks of dictionary/spellcheck into WP? Or where you would find those large chunks?
By the way, WP is owned and operated by Corel, who also produces CorelDRAW, which I highly recommend, having used it since it was CD version 2. I think the Corel people did some great things for usability and friendliness I had already viewed in CorelDRAW before they acquired WP.
Did I mention that I HATE HATE HATE word?? Just checking. =)
It's quite a step down from Adobe Illustrator, but then Illustrator is ridiculously expensive...
If Word could even concider the ammount of detail I can get out of WP I might keep using Word for writing, but Word just doesn't have it.
Now I will pop open word for a quick letter, or use it for a quick items that I need. But for writing, WP is just better.
There are a few other reasons that makes me like it better, but the grammer and built in dictionary/thesarus (any chance of a built in spell checker in the forums Kathleen?) made it clear.
LDS
But I've never used it, and I don't know if there are similar programs for other browsers.