Resources other than Microsoft word to help authors write stories.
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Alternatives to Word
The Alternative I recommend is from Sun Microsystems that is their suite called Star Office 6.0 (That's the version I have) It will open any Micro-Soft documment from it and is have the cost of Micro-Soft Office Group. Richard
Richard
StarOffice / OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice
StarOffice has a free version (doesn't include a few things, but those aren't important for most people) called OpenOffice.org (yes, that's the website address too). After Oracle bought Sun, there was a bit of concern over how Oracle was handling Sun's open-source/free software projects, like OpenOffice.org and Java (not very well, it turns out). So a group of people, backed up by the likes of Red Hat and Novell, forked the project into another suite called LibreOffice, which can be found at http://www.documentfoundation.org . That's the nice thing about free software projects -- if the guys heading it start behaving as jerks, the people doing the work can always set up camp elsewhere.
By the way, there's a version of LibreOffice (it used to be from OpenOffice, but they moved too) which can be run from a flash drive, without installation. You can find it at http://www.portableapps.com . And yes, it's free.
LOL - Read On MacDuff!
LoL... Just FYI, if you read down, you will see both of these points (OOo/LO and PortableVersion) were addressed further down in the thread.
-HuGgLeS-
-P/KAF/PT
I don't
randomly click on links, so I'm not sure what is there. I have used both the Sun mentioned prior and Open Office which works very nicely and is free. I get my Office from where I used to work for free (educational sharing program) otherwise I would be using the free one from Open Office. The last time I used the other one, It was included on a software disc I got from the university....cost was 5.00 for the whole disc.
Alternatives
Stacy
I checked with Erin before I posted this It is there with her approval.
Melanie Dian
IF anyone wants it, I wrote
IF anyone wants it, I wrote up a document a couple of years ago for a writers convention (SF/Writers) in Houston (Apollocon). I can pull the document out, update the information, and post it.
There's OpenOffice.org (yes, it actually is called that, with the .org), which is the same as StarOffice (same codebase). Lotus SmartSuite is also an OpenOffice derivative from IBM.
Scribus is an open source (windows and linux, and I think Mac as well) layout program.
There are a variety of simple text editors that are also pretty good, and there are a lot of Portable document programs that can be run from a flash drive.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Yes please!
I'd like to see this.
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Bike Resources
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Wordsmiths, Rejoice!
Thanks Melanie, for posting this link.
Some time ago, we did have a discussion here, entitled Software for writing, which gained a large number of responses, and some very useful ideas.
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RoughDraft
That was the link that pointed me to RoughDraft, which I tried and have become quite happy with.
On my iPhone I use PlainText, which is no-frills but perfect for capturing my thoughts on the go and saving them automatically to DropBox.
google docs
My person favorite document editor hands down is google docs. It pretty minimalist in function but everything you need is there. But the biggest upside to google docs is that it's pretty much impossible to lose a document. Everything you write is store server side in google massive datacenters.
The secondary advantage is that you can give other people real time editing and viewing right by simple putting in there gmail email into the share function.
I occasionally use OpenOffice
When I decide to use a heavy text editor at all. For most of what I do, though, just plain ol' Notebook and Wordpad do fine :P
I dunno, when it comes to writing stories -- especially if I'm planning to post them online -- I don't see the point of using a fancy word editor. Italics, bold, and all the other things I would rely on the editor to allow me use of don't carry over to the internet well, so why bother? And if I'm going to use bullet points and indentation and other formatting options, I'd rather not have the program try to auto-correct me in the middle of it, or worse, try to force it when I want to stop. Word programs are largely a pain all around, in my opinion. PLAIN TEXT FOR THE WIN.
Melanie E.
Things I Like About MS Word
I am sure that if I was a real geek, I would know how to save files in such a way that I could simply post it to BCTS and it would paste there such that all the text would look exactly like I wrote it. Well, I'm not. I really like the spell checker in Word, and the ability to set the dictionary to UK English; just a little quirk of mine.
Well, then someone said to try Works, and I used it on Ch1 of "Lt Katia". Everything worked wonderfully; I was able to set the Dictionary the way I want it, and the spell checker worked faboulously. AND, when I posted it that first time, I did not have to go back and insert things.
However, on Ch 2 when I posted it, the same old Word problems surfaced again, and I had to redo all 44,000 bytes, Yallah ! I have Ch 3 about half written and am wondering what will have to be different? I seem to remember Erin saying to insert double spaces between Paras, but I will have to go back to her blogs to check. This becomes really cumbersome when writing dialog. One problem with Works is that in the copy/paste operation, it becomes really cranky and I sometimes have to paste in small segments. I really like to use 40k size files.
I have not tried open office yet, but I have heard disparaging comments about it too. I would use word pad if I knew it would work good, though I think my op system effectively uses it to cut and paste, and it sort of complains about it.
Much peace
Khadijah
Paragraphs
" I seem to remember Erin saying to insert double spaces between Paras, but I will have to go back to her blogs to check. This becomes really cumbersome when writing dialog."
Insert a blank line between paragraphs is probably what I said. Double spaces makes no sense because spaces are what go between words. And no, this doesn't become cumbersome when writing dialog, I can't imagine why anyone would think it would, it's one more keystroke out of a hundred or more. It certainly is a burden and an encumbrance to the reader to leave the blank lines out online.
Blank lines between paragraphs are the defacto standard for internet text. Leaving them out is nearly as bad as leavingoutthespacesbetweenwords. It's a question of the limitations of the human eye and mind in interpreting text onscreen.
It used to be that I would reformat all stories posted to BC that did not have blank lines between paragraphs but that gets old when you do it for 10 or so stories by the same authors day after day. So now, I only do it if it's a story I want to read.
And the third or fourth consideration as to whether or not I'm going to read a story is whether it has blank lines between paragraphs.
Another thing that just came up on a story on the front page, Drupal won't process or show a post or story that is longer than about 50k characters if it does not have blank lines between paragraphs. This is because of memory overflow problems that can be caused by such posts, so Drupal just shows them as blank.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Microsoft WORD
I distinctly prefer Word Perfect to MS WORD. MS has probably the worst grammar checker in the industry (finding errors that aren't really errors), doesn't handle parallel columns, and doesn't allow you to view codes and change them. I have written four books using Word Perfect, and have had no problems.
So how much is Word Perfect?
I went online looking for it, and the price was $29 to $350. So which version would I need to buy? I used it in the 80's and loved it.
Khadijah
price on word perfect
I'm not sure, since I have been buying upgrades, but I think around $175-200. I'm currently using version X4, which includes Quattro (spread sheet)
Go Word Perfect
RAMI
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person who still uses Word Perfect. I'm on Version 11, issued in 2003 or 2004. It works very well for my needs.
I find it Perfect for all my needs, it easy to use, etc.
If you want to upgrade thry run a sale every few months, and Staples carries it in their stores. They also put it on sale occassionaly. The best upgrade price I saw was $100.00.
Does anyone remember SamnaWORD?
RAMI
RAMI
Shody, and Incomplete Reporting....
You know... This article to me shows why I no longer read PC World...
Last year, after the Oracle buyout of Sun Microsystems, the Open Source community developers (those not employed by Sun/Oracle) jumped ship from the OpenOffice.Org project. They branched the code, and started their own project called LibreOffice. ( http://www.libreoffice.org/ ) which intends to be OOo Compatible with all upstream modifications merged in.
This was done in anticipation of Oracle's assumed "lack of interest" in the project, as they have all but killed any other free/opensource projects they have acquired in the past.
The Document Foundation (entity behind LibreOffice http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/) was hoping Oracle (whom owns the OpenOffice.Org trademark) would donate the OpenOffice.Org trademark and all the assets which they hold in trust for the community. As far as I know, The document Foundation is still working towards this goal, but it has yet to happen. In the mean time, they needed to continue development, so LibreOffice was born.
Anyways, it seems to me PC World should have at least mentioned LibreOffice when they mentioned OpenOffice.Org, if not completely removed the reference to OpenOffice.Org...
That being said, I wanted to say thank you to Melanie Dian for sharing this mostly informative article with us.
-P/KAF/PT
* -- Edited to add thank you to Melanie Dian
Shoddy...
Perhaps they didn't know. Of course, not knowing is not an option if you tout yourself as being a source of information for the computer users community.
Anyhow... I didn't know, either, so I did a little looking. LibreOffice is now available as a portable app http://portableapps.com, and they were congratulated for making it portable so quickly. It hasn't shown up in the Synaptics Package Manager on Linux Mint, though. When it does, I'll be getting it. I'm in no hurry, though. Like Rasufelle, I don't find myself using a full-featured word processor all that much. I generally use gedit, Notepad++, or Notepad. I like having a spell checker, but all the other bells and whistles are of little use when writing a story. When I do want to deal with formatting, I generally use HTML.
5 days earlier....
I found an article from another contributor 5 days earlier... That was a fully "Hands on with LibreOffice 3.3" deal... So if the author of the one article didn't know, there should have been some supervising editor or someone somewhere that said "Hey, you should...." and then point them to the other article... With editing like this, I can't find any reason to purchase this magazine for sure, and I will definitely think twice before using it as a source in the future.
I came to realize a while back, that the most useful tech info comes from independent journalists and blogs. Make sure to use the "Trust but Verify" mantra for sure, but generally an independent journalist works harder at trying to verify their information, as opposed to a staff writer whom is just punting the article to make a deadline or submission quota.
As for portable apps, I have used a few, and have a stick that I carry just in case, but I more than likely have my laptops with me whenever I have the portable apps stick, so don't use it often... But like you, I do commend them for taking the steps to put it out there in such a format... It's innovation like that, which makes me strive to innovate myself...
-HuGgLeS-
-P/KAF/PT
P.S. Here are 4 Articles From PC World about LibreOffice:
Text editing alternatives
I would also like to add my 2 cents worth here!
* For general text editing of documents to be printed as one off (e.g. essays, letters, etc.) I have been using OpenOffice for several years. Since I work in a multi-lingual (at least 3 different languages), the free availability of a long list of language dictionaries is a big bonus. So far the only feature from MS-Word that has not worked as well for me in OpenOffice is the "Master document/Subdocument". The later transition from Windows to Linux has been completely transparent from the data file point.
* As a plain text editor for the windows platform, I have not found any better than "Notepad++" (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/). This is a open source product which includes syntax highlighting for many programming and markup languages (like e.g. HTML, XML, TeX/LaTeX) and very powerfull text manipulation tools.
* For page layout for publishing others have allready mentioned Scribus, another open source application available both for Windows and Linux. And with the common data-file format moving between the different platforms should be transparent. From the functionality point, this is simmilar to PageMaker.
* For completeness sake, I want to at least mention the typesetting system TeX available in severeal different packagings for most computing platform. This markup language is supposed to give the exact same result on all platforms. The data files are actually plain text files and can be edited with just about any text editor.
One commenter mentioned the feature of parralell columns in WordPerfect. That is one feature I have found only in WordPerfect (since version 5 at least) and that no other word processor application seems to have implemented (not even MS).
Personally I prefeer an open source application to a propietary alternative. And I have found the quality and usability to be surprisingly high all round.
Jessica
Another alternative is to go
Another alternative is to go with an online editor of some kind. Google Documents isn't nearly as able as OpenOffice.org which in turn is lacking a lot from MS Word. But it can do most of the functions that you need if you're only writing a mostly-textual-in-nature story.
I've heard a lot of good about AbiWord and LyX, but I have no personal experience with either.
Then there's a whole set of other programs that aren't word processors but that can act that way: HTML WYSIWYG editors. Some of these are no worse for writing non-paged stories than a regular word processor would be.
Open Office
Been using it for a while now, I still have the old version of Word but I will probably dump that. The last few things I've posted have been using Open and needed almost no tweaking, whereas Word I needed to re-space lines quite often. All I've had to do of late is redo the italics I use for thoughts which is pretty simple, so for me Open Office seems good.
Now if I could just rid of IE as I don't use it..... don't think that's possible though.
Kristina