scoured the net a bit, cant seem to find a 'good' CONSOLE based word processor...

ie. with spell chk, grammer etc.

any recommendations?

thanks

As far as I know, Emacs is fully extendable, so you should try that. I used it for programming, so I don't know if it has a spell checker. Try going to www.gnu.org.

vi is also said to be good, however, I'm also not sure about spell checking. Personally, I use a graphical one, or use nano in console...

use `ed`

any others?

Well, there's also some non-free software.
I also counterchecked: emacs _does have_ spell check.

If you want a better one, use Ispell.
http://www.gnu.org/software/ispell/ispell.html

Pico I use it for HTML and Python programming. It has spell check, cut and paste and other few functions as justify. If you are using RedHat 9.0 install pine and you should get pico .

Personally I like jed. It has ispell integration for spell checking and works more like you'd expect an editor to work, and less like vi or emacs. Such as using arrow keys for choosing where to enter text! No use of the "insert" key for some crazy reason. Also it's completely customizable; set up your own keybindings, emacs emulation, emulation of other editors... all with an intuitive interface.

Contrary to popular belief, emacs and vi are *not* word processors. They are "text editors". Now I am not really sure about the nuances between these, but a text editor's main objective should be to write programs, edit config files etc without dealing with the structure, the headings. TeX is not one either, since it is a "typesetting system".
I am confused too...

I have heard that old versions of WordPerfect were excellent console-based word processors. Apparently Corel sacrificed some functionality when designing the new versions for X, and I know that people are looking for the old ones .

But I am too seeking for a nice processors working in the console! My searches on the net resulted in mostly X11 software. Does anybody have another advice? Maybe a TeX macro might do the job?

Cheers

maybe corel will give away their old console based word processors code?

bah like that will happen...

for the programmers out there: WE NEED A CONSOLE BASED WORD PROCESSOR!!!

please...

port abiword to console or something

i personally would reccomend tex/latex, they are not wordprocessors, they are typesetters but have just the same if not a lot more functionality, they do however lack the wysiwyg interface.

to show you what they can do, have a look at this i did it last year in a few hours so i could learn latex, its not meant to be wonderful or accurate. you will also find once you become accustomed to it, that its a LOT faster than a word processor.

the other main advantage is file corruption, a latex source file is pure text so if a byte or two gets changed then theres no problem, you can still load it up and fix it. if a byte or two of a binary format file is changed then youve lost the whole contents of the file.

its not just for maths/science either, me and sk8guitar figured a really nifty way to get it to do mail merge.

Now that I have made my research, I can unveil my conclusion. I agree, kev82, though only partly. I knew from the beginning that TeX and LaTeX were not word processors as I said, but then I felt pitiful for discarding such a magnificent work. The ultimate word processor should definitely be based on this typsetting system, yet it should be faster to use. I thus found LyX, the document processor!! On their website (www.lyx.org) they only show the GUI version, though it should also have a console version. I can't tell since I haven't been able to install it properly yet ( I think it will not work with my TeXLive installation ). Still it is definitely worth a try!

lyx is basically a wysiwyg interface to tex, trust me with time you will find it is quicker to type the latex commands than it is to select them from a menu but its much easier to start with something like lyx, i did. there is no console version of lyx.

Ok I believe you. I am always looking for challenging tasks anyway, and learning TeX is a major one! By the way, I looked at the pdf file you created. It is really a nice job, did you do it with TeX or with LaTeX?
I am asking this to know whether you choose all the font types by writng
\it{} and \bf{} everytime, or did you just typed what the words are (like headings or section numbers)?

its done in latex, i should still have the source somewhere, if i find it i'll put it online for you.

here you go, these are for a previos version but theres plenty there to look at.

**bewarned this was done before i learned to format my latex code nicely**