Concerning using word processors and opening documents
 

Question 1. Why are Linux word processors and text editors incompatable with processors and editors I would use in Windows? Or are there compatable ones out there?

Questions 2. In order to make a document readable to a non-Linux system I need to save it as a 'plain text' file first and then attach the 'plain text' file to email. Is this the normal proceedure? Is the the ONLY proceedure?

Question 3. When I click on a documemt that was saved as a .kwd file, a dialog box cimes up that gives me a choice of 'save it to disk' or 'open with'. If I choose 'open with' I must click the choose button with takes my to the file tree. But where do I go from there? I can not choose a word processor or editor from the file tree. What does it expect from me? I normally open a word processor and then choose the document I want, but I want to understand the method of clicking on the file and using the 'choose' option.

use openoffice. It can save to .doc. You can download it at www.openoffice.org it's free

Oh. I have open office writer. I just haven't gotten around to trying it. Got hung up using kwriter and kword. I'll try it now. Thanks...

Here is my two cents. Hope it helps...

Answer 1. If I recall correctly from my OS/2 days, Microsoft went out of its way to make sure that their file compatibility with other word processors was poor. In fact, this lead to problems between Word versions in the Word 6 to Word 95 to Word 97 days. You are better off to use a standard document type like Pain Text or Rich Text etc. You can also see this problem in transferring documents from PCs to Macs.

Answer 2. You could save as something like .rtf. Also, if you get OpenOffice, as suggested above, then you can save as .doc etc. Sorry, I only use OpenOffice on this box so I don't know how limited the other options like KWriter and AbiWord are.

Answer 3. I think that you need to figure out where kwrite is to open a .kwd file. Open a shell and type "whereis kwrite". That will be the path you have to browse to find it. Someone else can probably point you toward setting up the file associations to open it automagically.

Fascinating!!!
I opened my terminal, typed 'whereis kword' and got the following paths...
/usr/bin/kword, /usr/lib/kword.la, /usr/lib/kword.so.
I then clicked on a document, browsed to /usr/bin/kword and the document opened.
GREAT!!!
This is the first I had heard of the 'whereis' command and now I know where all my program execute files are...I assume thats what they are.
Thank, I just learned a ton.