Has anyone found a decent word processor yet?
Posted 08-01-2008 at 07:06 PM by zaivala
I've been trying to use the available WP programs, in my work as a professional editor. They don't work. They don't hold formats and even change fonts and font sizes, just from opening a Word document and then saving it again... didn't change anything, but it changed anyhow. I have tried OpenOffice.org (latest version, and yes, I have an official and "stable" copy), AbiWord, and a few others. I can't find an old copy of WordPerfect for Linux, but in the last version it would not edit Word files which came from versions later than Word97 anyhow, so that won't help me. Has anyone done extensive testing on KOffice?
I have 3 problems with OpenOffice.org. One is the changing of formats (margins, justification, paragraph vertical spacing) and fonts (often changes fonts to SmallCaps font). Another is that MailMerge truly sux, and even when you get it to work, you can only have output as .odt format (which means 90% of the people receiving my email would get gobbledygook). And the third has to do with copying text frrom a website -- Word does this perfectly, OOo tends to try to cram the whole thing on the first page (it lays out sufficient pages, but all the text that won't fit on the first page gets crammed below the first page's bottom margin). You CAN fix the result of this problem, but the effort involved is considerable, and involves cut-and-paste in blocks of about 4-6 lines.
Yes, I've reported these to OOo. The programmers ignore me, and the users on the forum snipe at me or tell me to report the "bug" that the programmers are ignoring. Which is why I'm asking if anyone knows a program that I won't have (at least these) problems with.
Moss
I have 3 problems with OpenOffice.org. One is the changing of formats (margins, justification, paragraph vertical spacing) and fonts (often changes fonts to SmallCaps font). Another is that MailMerge truly sux, and even when you get it to work, you can only have output as .odt format (which means 90% of the people receiving my email would get gobbledygook). And the third has to do with copying text frrom a website -- Word does this perfectly, OOo tends to try to cram the whole thing on the first page (it lays out sufficient pages, but all the text that won't fit on the first page gets crammed below the first page's bottom margin). You CAN fix the result of this problem, but the effort involved is considerable, and involves cut-and-paste in blocks of about 4-6 lines.
Yes, I've reported these to OOo. The programmers ignore me, and the users on the forum snipe at me or tell me to report the "bug" that the programmers are ignoring. Which is why I'm asking if anyone knows a program that I won't have (at least these) problems with.
Moss
Total Comments 2
Comments
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The answer is SoftMaker Office, aka Ashampoo Office aka FreeOffice. Softmaker is cheap (they make their money selling fonts, so it's a little light in font selection out of the box), older versions are free, support is great, and it is MORE compatible with Word than any other WordProc/Spreadsheet/etc. out there (IF you save your files .DOC or .DOCX).
Posted 12-07-2013 at 03:18 PM by zaivala -
The only problem with using SoftMaker Office (which I continue to do to this day) is that Open Source advocates snipe at you. I should just use the best open source word processor and shut up about my problems with it. Or I should not even discuss non-open-source software. Or I'm just a horrible human being for even using it. Hey, guys, a tool is a tool and you should use the best one available for your use case.
Posted 11-11-2019 at 11:27 AM by zaivala