Word Processors for OSX

[JimyThng420]

I was wondering if anyone knew of a free word processor for OSX. Thanks.

[tdhurst]

Yep, text edit.

[yamabushi]

Try Versiontracker (http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/cat/wordprocessing). I'm sure there are plenty of other simple ones. OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org/) is fairly robust but runs in an X window. Text Edit is included with OSX and now has improved international font support with Panther.

[ThomasW]

Try NeoOffice/J:

http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/download.php

It's much better than OpenOffice/X11 - it's based on OpenOffice, but doesn't need X11 to run. Unfortunately, it's a bit slow, but everything else works great. The developer says that it's not really complete yet, but that's a lie :-D

[robotrenegade]

Originally posted by appleretailguy
Yep, text edit.

Haha, text edit is pimp

[unixkid]

openoffice is the way to go its great i use it all the time.

[trashyspaceman]

KOffice apps have recently been run natively on OS X :

http://ranger.befunk.com/screenshots/qt-mac-konqueror-20031229.png
http://ranger.befunk.com/screenshots/qt-mac-kword-20040101.png
http://ranger.befunk.com/screenshots/
http://dot.kde.org/1073009304/

Download from: http://ranger.befunk.com/phpwiki/

-m

[kidA]

wow, looks like they've ported a ton of kApps. you could replace just about everything with them.
the kOffice apps are beautiful. anyone used them and care to comment on them? stability and speed? my main concern is how easy are they to use and how easy are they to install?

[trashyspaceman]

http://kde.opendarwin.org/

The above site says they're far from stable. You could try anyway, but openoffice should solve all your publishing problems for now

[janey]

yeah i know one
its called microsoft word, and you can pirate it ;)
(just kidding)
OpenOffice is a nice one, albeit slow if you dont have a lot of ram.
TextEdit is useful for most basic text editing.
SubEthaEdit is nice...so is Xcode (for code)
and of course you cant forget vi(m)/emacs/pico :D :D

[MongoTheGeek]

Originally posted by übergeek
yeah i know one
its called microsoft word, and you can pirate it ;)
(just kidding)
OpenOffice is a nice one, albeit slow if you dont have a lot of ram.
TextEdit is useful for most basic text editing.
SubEthaEdit is nice...so is Xcode (for code)
and of course you cant forget vi(m)/emacs/pico :D :D

Text Edit is good for a lot more than you would assume. I am not sure how well it handles tables though

I personally like Emacs.

[janey]

Originally posted by MongoTheGeek
Text Edit is good for a lot more than you would assume. I am not sure how well it handles tables though

I personally like Emacs.
I use TextEdit for most of my stuff.
One thing I don't like is how most Windows users dont know wtf a rich text file is. I doubt any Windows app can even open a .rtfd file too.
It's excellent for what it does, but for some of the more complex stuff its just not that good enough.
emacs lol. I personally prefer vi(m). ALthough I would understand why people like emacs...the commands are all on the bottom :p

[ibookin']

I'm surprised no one has said SubEthaEdit (used to be called Hydra). Syntax highlighting, decently fast, and a cool Rendezvous feature that allows multiple people to work on the same document at once.

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

[janey]

Originally posted by ibookin'
I'm surprised no one has said SubEthaEdit (used to be called Hydra)...
I did, read above. ;)
heehee great minds think alike.
j/k

[coolsoldier]

TextEdit is good if you just want to do typing -- it has fonts, styles, word import/export, etc.

One thing about TextEdit, though, is cross-platform compatibility. TextEdit files with attachments, if you try to open them on another OS, show up as folders full of cryptically named files. If you are persistent, you can eventually get Word to open the .rtf component, but for the most part, if you need to move documents around, TextEdit is not the way to go.

[johnnowak]

The best:
http://www.redlers.com/mellel.html

[janey]

Originally posted by johnnowak
The best:
http://www.redlers.com/mellel.html
helllooooo?
mellel is not the best.
Its urm...SHAREWARE?!

besides, mellel isnt that great for some types of people, that app was written for a specific audience in mind.

[coolsoldier]

Besides costing money, Mellel has a lot of formatting limitations (no columns, for instance). Also, Mellel lacks Word Format support.

It probably has the best implementation of styles in any word processor, but as an all-around word processor, it pales in comparison to many others.

Basically, it's decent, but for most people it's not worth $30 more than TextEdit.

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by übergeek
I use TextEdit for most of my stuff.
One thing I don't like is how most Windows users dont know wtf a rich text file is. I doubt any Windows app can even open a .rtfd file too.
It's excellent for what it does, but for some of the more complex stuff its just not that good enough.
emacs lol. I personally prefer vi(m). ALthough I would understand why people like emacs...the commands are all on the bottom :p

Set the file extension to .rtf and WordPad, MS Word, WordPerfect, and WordPro can all handle a rich text format file.

I suppose you could also condone using proff, troff, nroff with emacs, vi, pico, or even ed. :D It's nice to know that the 1970s haven't left us high and dry.

[coolsoldier]

Originally posted by bousozoku
Set the file extension to .rtf and WordPad, MS Word, WordPerfect, and WordPro can all handle a rich text format file.

This will leave out any attachments. TextEdit saves as .rtf automatically when there are no attatchments, and as .rtfd (which is basically a folder with a .rtf file and all of the attatchments) when there are attachments. The rtf format supported by word, wordpad, wordperfect, etc. doesn't support any kind of attachments.

[mms]

Originally posted by ibookin'
I'm surprised no one has said SubEthaEdit (used to be called Hydra). Syntax highlighting, decently fast, and a cool Rendezvous feature that allows multiple people to work on the same document at once.

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

SubEthaEdit is more of a text editor than a word processor, since it was made to write code. I find that although SubEthaEdit and BBEdit are the best for writing code, it is unsuitable as a word processor, primarily because it doesn't have text formatting, alignment, or tables, and cannot save to Word documents. I'm not saying that SubEthaEdit is bad; it wasn't made to be a word processor, and it's one of the best text editors out there for OS X.

I think the most important feature in SubEthaEdit that you left out was the live Web Preview. I find it indispensible for web designing.

vi(m) and emacs are good text editors but also unsuitable for word processing. Also, since they are in the Terminal and difficult to learn, I would not recommend it for most people.

Many people here have mentioned how .rtfd is incompatible with other platforms; I think a perfect solution for that would be the use of either .doc or .pdf. .doc is definitely compatible with Windows since it is an MS Word document, and pdf can preserve how a document looks throughtout any platform. TextEdit should work perfectly fine for most of your needs if you are using Panther, since it can save as a Word document.