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Hi all. I've been wondering: what software do you use for your writing? Is everyone using 'ol Microsoft Word, or is there something better? I'm partial to OpenOffice, myself, but I use GNU/Linux. Which brings me to my other question: on what computing platform are you doing your writing?
[This message has been edited by Kligson (edited September 01, 2003).]
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well, I use word, and windows. Linux is also around and I do use it sometimes...but not for writing. I am rather addicted to my grammer checker. Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I doubt I could write without it. But I can do it in other programs, I would just make more mistakes.
Posts: 807 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I'm a mac osx girl, but I bow to the evil empire and use Word for my writing. I tried other "specialized" software for a while, but I quickly discovered that I didn't need the bells and whistles.
I'd use OpenOffice, except I never could figure out how to get it to work!
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I just wanted to point somethign out--to me it is a no brainer - - - but
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.
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Shawn: What would you say are the main advantages of WP over Word? Is it just the grammar checker, or are there other goodies?
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.)
[This message has been edited by Kligson (edited September 02, 2003).]
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I usually use OpenWriter (part of OpenOffice). Occasionally I use Emacs, with word wrap and flyspell mode. It helps me get my mind out of thinking in pages and about how much I've written. That's a persistant problem of mine -- if you don't have it, don't bother with emacs (though it does have one nice feature the WYSIWYGs don't, which is that misspelled words appear differently if you've used them before -- so it effectively catches mispelled names it doesn't know).
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.
That would be nice. WP is still the best WYSIWYG word processor out there. Reveal codes is wonderful (and under developement for OpenOffice!) Draggable margins and justify-all are little things, but they make life easier. The incredible amount of available table manipulations make it a match for PageMaker. I can only hope all this will get carried into OpenOffice (or brush up on C++ and get to work).
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reveal codes is by far one of the best features--what that does--well you know when all of a sudden Word does something funky with your text and you can't get it to go away--with reveal codes in WP you get a window that shows the codes and presto you can delete the buggy stuff.
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
[This message has been edited by srhowen (edited September 02, 2003).]
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For anyone that is confused by the sudden decrease in quality in the WP versions following Word Perfect 8, I can only offer the hearsay (less hearsay than common knowledge in some places) that just after WP8 shipped and while 9 was still in development some fools bought Word Perfect and fired all the people that had thought up and coded every worthwhile feature that made Word Perfect special.
Which explains a lot of other behaviors, but let us not digress into abuse.
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I will disagree with this one--big time. WP 10 and 11 are great programs--the same platform since WP 6, basicly the same short cut keys that I learned way back on WP 4 when you had the nice color chart on the top of the F1 etc keys. WP was around before MS Word.
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I tried Z-Write and Notetaker, both of which seemed like they might be helpful in organizing my notes, especially since I tend to write my stories out of order. They both has indexing capabilities and unique ways of making bits of information accessible.
In the end, though, nothing beats a good spell/grammar checker...
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I'm another happy user of WP. My version happens to be 8, but I don't know anything about the more current versions. I do know that WP (Corel?) was sold. I prefer it to Word, which I have used. I've been using WP since 1990, when a friend (now husband) laughed at me and my Apple 2c (I was formatting manually), and had me try WP4 on his Amiga! It was like a miracle :-)
Posts: 465 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I had a notbook computer--one that booted from a floppy that used Word Star at the time I htought it was great--but then I started using WP 4 at work and when Word came out I gave it a try and didn't like it--so I still use Word--so many others do that I need to have it, but still feel WP is the way to go.
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Has anyone tried anything besides MS Word and the Open Office Word for Mac OS X. I'm looking for something other than those two. I haven't had good luck with either.
Posts: 27 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Apple's office suite called AppleWorks isn't bad. Depending on how old your Mac is, you might have it. I haven't tried the latest version (6.2.7), but the last one was at least usable. It's not too hot on MS Word compatability, though. (Again, talking about the old version.) You can check it out at: http://www.apple.com/appleworks/.
So has anyone tried the latest AppleWorks for their writing?
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Does Word Perfect allow you to save as .doc? If so, does it lose all those features, like the highlighting changes between drafts?
Posts: 262 | Registered: Feb 2001
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I've been using OpenOffice on Windows XP. It's got a couple of annoying bugs - but then, it's a 1.1 release candidate. Overall it's pretty good. It has really good compatility with Word's Doc format.
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.
If it matters, I've got Gentoo Linux running on my firewall.
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.
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Wow, Shawn, Corel should be paying you commission. ^_~ Now I really want to try WP. Sadly, that means I'd have to obtain a windoze box. But anything that makes the writing process easier would be worth submission to the MS beast....
Posts: 17 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Yeah, the only problem is that there's no current version for *nix. (Or if there is, it's not easy to find on their site.) If only I wasn't such a techno-grouch I'd probably load up windoze just to give it a try. First I've got to get past the idea of willingly using windoze at home...
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After years of seclusion I am once again emerging into the light of the boards (rather more like a moth to the flame, hmm?)
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.
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Actually, Xanaditu, you hit a point I thought this thread was going to get into, along with the regular wp types of software. There is software available like Storybase, Dramatica Pro, StoryCraft, etc. Does anyone use that kind of thing, and if so what do you like, not like, and what is it like?!