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13 Responses to "Word"

1. | Reply Mark Davis
   Posted 17 Dec 2004 at 10:44pm #
   

   If Microsoft Word was simple to use than community colleges wouldn't make so much money offering courses. I live in a small town and I've even seen my own high school offer classes on learning microsoft word.

2. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
   Posted 17 Dec 2004 at 11:04pm #
   

   Whither my AppleWorks update?

3. | Reply Philip
   Posted 17 Dec 2004 at 11:42pm #
   

   At my former high-school, learning Microsoft Word and Excel (for Windows) was mandatory.

4. | Reply Matthew Swann
   Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 12:14am #
   

   Don't blame me, I only work on the Office Server System! 🙂

5. | Reply Rob
   Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 1:14am #
   

   You might want to give Nisus Writer Express a try. I'm not affiliated with Nisus, just a satisfied customer. I also have AppleWorks, but I've given up that Apple will ever update it, which is a decision I just don't understand, but whatever.

6. | Reply Amod Lele
   Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 1:47am #
   

   Alternately, you could try Mellel, a startlingly full-featured, stable, and cheap OS X word processor. Both Nisus and Mellel can save in RTF, so that Word users can read your files without difficulty (and like all OS X programs they can save to PDF too). The dark days when Word was the only OS X game in town are over. No need to wait for AppleWorks when real alternatives are available already.

7. | Reply Jeff
   Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 2:01am #
   

   Yes Nisus and Mellel are nice (although I hate the metal interface on a word processor) but neither imports Word files well.

8. | Reply zach
   Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 2:44am #
   

   The thing that bugs me the most about Word is the sound effects. Honestly, why the sound effects?

9. | Reply Erik Hollensbe
   Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 5:28am #
   

   I've taken to using texinfo as a way to format anything formal - it's a macroed version of TeX that is designed to write hierarchial documents.. It's markup is mostly simple and out of the way - figuring out how to "bootstrap" a document is the only hurdle and easily templated for later. It generates to a million formats - word is not one of them, but PDF is and that more or less solves that problem. It also versions much nicer in a RCS, and it's consistent and nice output generally makes my clients happy.

   No - Seriously, it's simple - so simple that I cannot understand why people toil over word documents the way they do.

   It's generation comes from the command line and is fairly simple - if you have fink, 'apt-get install texi2pdf' should get you started, and a perusal of the manual[1] will get you started fairly quick. The manual was generated with texinfo as well - more or less, any format that TeX can output to, it can...

   [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/

10. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
    Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 9:01am #
    

    I was wondering what dummy would mention TeX first.

    I want a word processor, Hollensbe, and all that comes with it: WYSIWYG, easy sharing of the documents with other people (and so that they can easily edit it without having to learn any more than what they already know), no "compiling" or anything, etc. LaTeX is not a solution here. Nothing from gnu.org really is.

    I removed Hollensbe's first attempt at a follow-up for violating the rules of the blog: no need to get snippy, Hollensbe, just because you think TeXinfo will screw you at night and cook you breakfast in the morning. It ain't a "word processor" in the ways I need.

11. | Reply John C. Welch
    Posted 18 Dec 2004 at 2:42pm #
    

    One thing i *highly* recommend is Word's online help. It's the hidden feature in that application/suite, and it's really quite decent.

    I'll also say that if you want a simple word processor, Word may not be your best choice. I have needs that align with its features well, but there's a lot of other choices out there.

12. | Reply Tim Buchheim
    Posted 19 Dec 2004 at 2:36pm #
    

    Any time I try to use Word I end up frustrated and confused.

    I generally just use TextEdit. It does everything I need. (And the Tiger version is starting to look pretty cool, although most of the new features are not quite ready for real use yet.)

    Of course, when I want a professional-looking document on paper, I nearly always end up typesetting it. But I was a math/cs major, so I'm used to using LaTeX (had to use it for lots of classes) ... I wouldn't suggest it for the average person. And actually, I just finished typesetting a book in LaTeX, so I'm a lot more familiar wit it than most people. (The memoir document class for LaTeX is my new best friend. Practically every extension to LaTeX one normally needs, all in one place. Yay, no conflicting packages!)

13. | Reply chris
    Posted 22 Dec 2004 at 12:51am #
    

    I used to use Tex-Edit for most of my word processing needs, since I would say for a good portion of the user population, what they really need is just a styled text editor, which Tex-Edit is. Its main selling point is its incredible AppleScriptability.

    Within the past year or so, however, I've found myself using it less and less. I never used the AppleScriptabilty of Tex-Edit much, so I've turned, like Tim Buchheim, to TextEdit more. When that fails to suffice, I use Mariner Write, which can read and write Word-friendly documents.