Replacement for Appleworks Word Processing?
 

Hi there. I'm a college student, so naturally word processing abounds. However, Appleworks has been eating my essays . I'll save it (even changing the name to confirm it occured and doing multiple "Save as..."), then when I try to open the document again, half of what I wrote is completely gone, reverted to the last saved version.

So, for my last paper, I had to keep updated copy/pastes of my report in mail.app, and one on my iDisk, and one of the files became corrupted anyways... I had it saved in text form, but still, I'm not able to save footnotes that way.

Enough of the sob story, I've decided that Appleworks word processing is a little risky. I'd like to go to another Word Processing client, but I'm not sure Word is worth it, especially when I don't have a need for Powerpoint nor Excel.

What's another good OS X word processor, Shareware or Freeware, that allows footnotes and spell check and such? Preferably writing to a more universal format then Appleworks? Also, multi-language writing and saving is a must (Russian Langauge major). Is it worth it to just cough up the dough and get the Teacher/Student Office Package?

Thanks for your input!

Will

Hey Will. I gotta say, even though I'm not a fan of Microsoft, Word is probably the most powerful no-hassel wp on the Mac. However, checkout openoffice.org and see if that doesn't suit you. I'm just starting to use it (on Linux though) so I really can't attest to the user experience (I'm sure other forum members will shortly) but if does what it says, you'll be happy. The BIG reason to use it is that it is supposedly totally compatible with MS Office. In other words, if you creat a document, spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation on OpenOffice, you should be able to open the file with no problems in MS Office on your PCs and Macs at school.

By the way, my alma mater had a deal w/ Microsoft that gave students the most recent version of Office for $10. You should check with your computer lab, bookstore, or library to see if that's an option.

mike

Thanks for your advice, I'm starting to agree that it may be best just to suck it up and buy Office. Sadly, my school offers no discount on the Student/Teacher edition. Is there any way to buy Word alone, as I'll never go back to PP after keynote, and Excel is mostly useless for my purposes?

Thanks for your response, and I'll check out OpenOffice :-)

Any other thoughts from the community?

Go here for Word alone... http://www.microsoft.com/mac/product...x?pid=howtobuy

I bet if you order from the bookstore you can get it at an educational rate.

Also, honestly, Bill Gates doesn't need your money right now my friend. As far as I'm concerned, download Office from LimeWire for free, then when you're in the real world making money buy the full version. Personally, this is what I do frequently. I used an "illegal" copy of Photoshop 7 and then started making money with it so I bought the fullversion (if I hadn't started off with a copy I would have never learned the software and thus would have never bought it). I highly respect you if you just don't want to go that route, but in the end it's all about karma so to speak. When you need you take and then when you have you give.

mike

excellent OSX WP review
 

Hi there, there is an excellent OSX WP review at:
http://www.ultramookie.com/more/817_0_1_0_M/

As for myself I find that Nisus Writer Express and Mellel to be the nicest ones... for $$$$ reasons I went for Mellel and I'm more than happy with it...

Hope it gives you some hints...

TFS

Hehe, good plan Comrade. I'm trying OpenOffice.org now, and if that doesn't work, I might have to fire up limewire and download the People's copy of office.

Thanks for the advice all!

Take a look at Mariner Write . It's really come along over the years and got a decently solid review from MacAddict recently. (Despite the fact that they tend to like the "power features" of Word that I experience as intrusive frustrating bells & whistles).

You might want to take a look at AbiWord if you have the X11 environment set up (you probably do if you're playing with OpenOffice, although I guess they have an Aqua port nowadays).

Personally, I'd use anything except maybe the DOS version of WordPerfect in preference to MS Word (I really hate Word). Speaking of WordPerfect, you can still snag the free Classic version of WordPerfect 3.5e if you look around for it, and run it in the Classic environment.

You might also check for updates on AppleWorks. I've never experienced the problem you're describing, it's possibly a bug that was version-specific and fixed in a later release.

What about simply using Textedit.
Also, I know of Nisus Writer Express which works very well, and is a nice design.

Dale

My main problem with text edit is that it is incapable of using footnotes, and that's how I usually organize things. Thanks :-)

In terms of writing school papers, it is actually preferable to include the biography "within the text" (Maths Book, Oxford, 2004. p. 12) or so I'm told "by my teachers" (idem. p.24). However, there are other uses of footnotes.

Dale

Hehe, well, I humor teachers that require it, but I really dislike Parenthetical Notation. To me, the ideas matter more then the references, thus, an unobtrusive number and section at the bottom of the page is far nicer than an unwieldy parenthetical note. Just personal preference though, thanks for the recommendation :)

Will

Anything but Word...
 

You probably want to stay away from Word for anything longer than a three-page business-letter...
If you don't want to renew the experience of shot .docs in Word (talk to some of your elders and be frightened), there are serious options:

http://www.ragtime-online.com

is an integrated software with a free version for private use (Solo) which I think should be what you need.

If you want to go further in the professional direction, a "peoples version" of InDesign is probably a good thing to look into.

Last not least, if you are not afraid, TeX is still out there to do perfect work for those who dare tame the beast.

Whatever your choice, all the best for your paper...

(La)TeX
 

I wouldn't write a document in anything other than LaTeX now, having lost too much work to the likes of Office and Appleworks. You'll never have your document mangled, as it is edited as a plain text file before being typeset (to a very high standard). It has all the footnote and bibliography features you'd ever want. Pure raw TeX would be overkill for most documents.

It is free, but you'd be well advised to spend a few of those dollars you would have spent on a commercial package on a good LaTeX book instead.

LyX is probably the way to go for you though as it provides an easy GUI way to get at LaTeX features. Definitely worth checking out.

Nisus Writer Express is pretty neat. It has very nice support for multiple languages in a document (better than Word's I think) but I haven't used it for Russian. The program isn't completely polished but it's pretty nice. There's a 30-day trial I think.

Mellel is made in Israel (Mellel is Hebrew for "Word"). It would do you quite well. It is the closest thing to my beloved "WriteNow". Use the demo for your work and save it as Doc or RTF files.

http://www.redlers.com/mellel.html

Tell me more about NISUS
 

I would be very interested in hearing more from Nisus Writer users.

I have been using Word for more than a decade, but am bothered by a number of shortcomings that I can’t find a way around. (I won’t go into detail yet.)

So, what’s good about Nisus? Is it a great application? How would you compare it to word?

With best regards,
ArcticStones

I agree, LateX is the way to go. It's free and it compiles on every platform probably even on commodore 64.

Well, it is a Cocoa application written from scratch on Mac OS X (started life as Okito Composer). It takes full advantage of services from the system like image rendering, color selection, spell checking and text service and third party services like Nisus Thesaurus, OmniDictionary, TextExtras, Create, etc.

And they seem to listen to they users about features and fixes (something that doesn't happen from large software companies).

I'm not much of a writer, so TextEdit (or even Okito Composer ;) ) work just fine for me. Word is way over kill for me and the last version I enjoyed working with was 5.1a. :eek:

A couple apps
 

You might want to check out NeoOffice or the the Aqua build of Abiword.

Thanks for posting.

Yeah, Word seems like overkill. But I feel trapped. I only use a small fraction of the features, not because I’m lazy or an ignoramus, but because as a copywriter I deliver texts to advertising agencies and other clients – and it raises needless hassles if those files contain unnecessary formatting.

Word has a strange mix of functions that merely get in my way, and others that are sorely lacking.

One thing that really annoys me is the abominally poor spell check in Word. I would like, for instance to (seamlessly) replace Microsoft’s word list with the entire listing from Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary or Oxford’s Concise English Dictionary. And a corresponding Norwegian dictionary. Can’t do it! Microsoft has apparently blocked such an option!!

I would also like to have a digital equivalent of Roget’s Thesaurus available/integrated. Another handy function would be to have easily accessible the full range of special characters from various European alphabets – enabling me to write the names of Polish artists, Czech writers and Sami musicians without endless frustrations. (Something more comprehensive than PopChar X)

In short – I want to use my word processor as that: to process words. Not for page designs, diagrams and all sorts of other stuff.

But I have to be able to deliver Word files to my clients. I cannot risk any compatibility problems.

Do you recommend Nisus Writer for this purpose?
I would be interested in any additional thoughts on Nisus functions and plug-ins.

Best regards,
ArcticStones

From my point of view (as someone who does technical writing in marginal english) Nisus Writer Express is on my short list for a word processor.

Given Your list of needs, and based on what I've heard about these products, Mellel sounds like it might be a good option to explore.

My only problem with Mellel is that they replaced the normal text services dialog with their own font mechanism. As you sound like this is not needed for your purposes, that wouldn't be a problem.

The services from Nisus Thesaurus and OmniDictionary will work with Mellel, and for access to Roget’s Thesaurus (including the International version) along with a large number of other references I've been using Watson (attached is a list of resources from Watson's References tool). The problem with this is that Watson is out of production and Sun is (way) behind schedule on the replacement they were developing.

Also on Mellel's page there is a comparison chart (it is old, and other products have been up graded, but it is a starting point). Almost everything these days can save text to at least Word 97 format which can be then read by most word processors.

With my limited experiences with people in your area, these are the best leads I can offer currently.

I've had to go searching for a replacement
 

word processor switching to X .... I've tried Mariner Write, Nisus and Mellel. They are all good. They will all open a .doc without blinking an eye, some retain formatting better. At 40 Bucks, Mellel is a steal. Nice slick bit of work that is. without double checking .. Nisus is the only one with a direct save as .doc format. The other two use rtf

Sigh...
 

All this talk makes me miss WriteNow. Mellel is great but still has a ways to go to catch up with what WriteNow could do.

omg ...
 

now isn't that a blast from the past