i get this feeling that oowriter is going to win... but it's so slow and ugly! if i could bring myself to vote for any of the choices, it would probably be abiword since it's the only one that opens at a reasonable speed and looks like it was designed in a recent decade.

can i propose getting lyx, latex and/or kile added? (as well as textmaker, i suppose)

Abi & Open

Open Office Writer 1.1.4

Only votes will tell how many ppl actually use Star Office. Infact I am sure that many people would have voted for Abiword.

I find it not as resource hungry as OOo Writer

Abiword here, fast to load, all the features I need. I don't need a word processor much, lately I've rediscovered the joy of plain text and have been using that as much as possible.

Is it just me, or does kWord NOT render TrueType fonts correctly?? It pissess me off that Times New Roman (for example) doesn't look like it should, and that certain regular characters that reflect the font's unique style are only found in the special characters box, which is a pain to access. For eample, quotation marks. This seems to hold true for all TrueType fonts under kWord.

On another note, does anyone esle find that printing with OOwriter makes the font look a bit too heavy/bold on paper?

swriter

I thought open office is good when those auto-format are disabled. However, oo 1.1.4 changed my opinion.

It's an example (the data are changed because it had some credit card numbers):
IATA_N ;T ;DOC ;DATE ;GROSS ;RATE ;COMMISSION;REFUND_FEE;NETT ;CC;REF
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01; 96.00; 4.12; 7.20; ; -7.20;VI;4343800080008000
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01; 96.00; 4.12; 7.20; ; -7.20;VI;4343800080008001
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01; 96.00; 4.23; 7.20; ; -7.20;VI;4343800080008002
7825202;ATB;8321899999;2004-12-01; 23.00; 4.55; 5.31; ; -5.31;VI;4965800080008000

when I convert it to table in spain locale, number become date and credit card number become scientific number:
IATA_N ;T ;DOC ;DATE ;GROSS ;RATE ;COMMISSION;REFUND_FEE;NETT ;CC;REF
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01; 96.00;04/12/05;01/07/20; ; -7.20;VI;4,34E+015
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01; 96.00;04/12/05;01/07/20; ; -7.20;VI;4,34E+015
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01; 96.00;01/04/23;01/07/20; ; -7.20;VI;4,34E+015
7825202;ATB;8321899999;2004-12-01; 23.00;01/04/55;01/05/31; ; -5.31;VI;4,97E+015

When I change to UK locale, some numbers are shown correctly while the credit card number is convert to Scientific numbers
IATA_N ;T ;DOC ;DATE ;GROSS ;RATE ;COMMISSION;REFUND_FEE;NETT ;CC;REF
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01;96;4.12;7.2; ;-7.2;VI;4.34E+015
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01;96;4.12;7.2; ;-7.2;VI;4.34E+015
7820202;ATB;8346399999;2004-12-01;96;4.23;7.2; ;-7.2;VI;4.34E+015
7825202;ATB;8321899999;2004-12-01;23;4.55;5.31; ;-5.31;VI;4.97E+015

may be ooo is better

The best application opening .doc file is Microsoft Word, it would be fooling oneself to say otherwise. MS Word is just too damn much better usable than any other software.
I use Linux though, and switch to windows+ms word when i want to edit docs, not just view them. Viewing i usually use KOffice

voted star office, but text maker is also good

I avoid opening .doc files -- what for? ;-)

doc files codes are kept secret that's why OOo may have difficulty dealing with them. But really m$Office is tosh -- tit's popular because peolple are used to it.

OOo's amazing but Abiword's great for people who neeed a simple wordprocessor.

OOo-writer's file format is great, very compact -- and you can put in anything you want -- pictures, snippets of Web pages, OOo keeps smiling -- try that with M$ Word...