New poll: What's your favorite word processor?

[jnailen]

Hi Jeff,

Hi Sascha,

What do you mean by Papyrus's clipboard and 'mummify' function?

Jeff

Papyrus has a clipboard next to the text window where you can drag text snippets to, for future use and the like. Or put down notes.

http://www.papyrus.de/pap_pics/Mac08_snap.png (the thingy on the right.)

Also, with “mummify” you can select text and hide it without deleting it. Say, if you’re editing a short-story and figure “na, this paragraph isn’t really necessary”, you just hide it. If later on you realise that the paragraph is still needed, you un-hide it. No need for multiple copies or snapshots in the editing process.

Cheers,
-Sascha

P. S. The makers of Papyrus will release a special version for writers come the Frankfurt book show. Might be interesting to have a look, then.

Thanks for the explanation Sascha. When is the Frankfurt book show?
Thanks,
Jeff

[crimewriter]

Jeff, the Frankfurt Book Fair is 15-19 October this year.

cw

[ExperimentalArmy]

Also "google docs" is pretty good, its reliable and always there so if you have an old computer or your computer crashes, you do not have any issues with recovery. I currently use it as a backup storage.

[exegete77]

Re InDesign, to be honest I haven't liked it since it launched, and I admit it's partly just because I was a hardcore Quark user for many years. Also, I never liked Illustrator to start with, so when ID came along with basically the same structure and UI, I was less than impressed.

But I've ranted about this before, so I shan't repeat myself. Suffice to say that if Quark were still a serious contender, InDesigned would never have touched my machine

OpenOffice 3.0 officially launches Oct. 13.

[antony]

Lovely, but I don't see how OpenOffice is relevant to what I said...?

[lenf]

Re InDesign, to be honest I haven't liked it since it launched, and I admit it's partly just because I was a hardcore Quark user for many years. Also, I never liked Illustrator to start with, so when ID came along with basically the same structure and UI, I was less than impressed.

What do you find to dislike in ID? I used XPress for many years, and was very quick to move to ID instead. XPress files could be properly constructed and still wreck havoc on output, while I've never had a problem with ID files. The typographic control in ID is, IMHO, much finer than in XPress.

Then again, I always enjoyed Illustrator as well. I think there were two years or so between the time I got my first Laserwriter and Illustrator, during which I had to code all the graphics and such directly in PostScript. Given PostScript's UI (grin), I was delighted with even the first versions of AI.

[antony]

I was a FreeHand user, and Illustrator's UI always felt very sloppy in comparison. In addition, it just seemed very imprecise compared to FH.

When I first saw InDesign (and I saw a prerelease copy, as I reviewed it for Computer Arts magazine) I sighed at the UI being essentially a mashup of Illustrator and Photoshop. ID 1.0 was also filled with bugs, and blatantly failed to map shortcuts and the like to QXP, which was a claim they explicitly made. So we kind of got off on the wrong foot to start with

ID is much improved since then, I won't deny that, but there are still many things about it that bug me. Maybe it's because I was trained to do layouts with linotype, rubylith and gum arabic but the Quark workflow of "you make a box, then you fill it with content" just made complete sense to me. I also appreciated that Quark's keyboard modifiers (such as alt for precise nudging) were consistent across tools, whereas in ID they're different for almost every tool. Also, ID's plugin architecture is horrible, and the cause of many a crash.

Anyway, the point is that I use ID because it's become the defacto standard since Quark pissed their market dominance away faster than you could blink, and I've learnt to live with it. But I've never felt truly comfortable with it, whereas with QXP I was totally at ease. Sadly, Quark's reponse to the competition was and remains absurdly poor.

[exegete77]

Lovely, but I don't see how OpenOffice is relevant to what I said...?

Sorry. I have been on the road, not getting enough sleep, etc., and thinking without thinking, y' know? Anyway, it wasn't what I intended.

Continue with regular discussion

[bluloo]

I generally use JeditX for simpler projects and notes. I like the tabbed interface and I don't need to fuss with formatting too much when writing. I also don't need to be concerned with umpteen features I don't currently need interfering with the writing process.

When I need to format I'll use Word or either NeoOffice or OpenOffice. If I can stay away from Word, I try to do so. If collaborating on a document and I need the features of Word because it's what most others are using, I use it. Even then, I try to create my comments in something less complicated and cut and paste into Word. I hated it when I was forced to use it full time at work and when using it for academic papers, it caused me no small amount of grief. I must say that MS's MBU has put in quite a bit of effort to improve the current version. (IMO, it would be better served as two different apps, one for formatting/layout and another for the actual writing process.)- anyhow, enough on my Word rant.

I do own Pages and Mellel. I haven't taken the time to familiarize myself with either because I generally need to use Word or a highly compatible cohort when collaborating on documents and both have more issues than the open source alternatives.

When I write, one key feature is the ability to have split views. It's extremenly helpful when re-arranging written text or re-evaluating my thought process on paper. Scrivener shines here for more complex projects.

AFAIK, neither Pages or Mellel does this (Its been requested many times on the Mellel forum though I haven't opened the app in some time). Also, AFAIK, it's a pending feature in the open source alternatives mentioned above.

So, for me, the writing generally occurs in one app and what I call final formatting/layout in another.