Word Processor for Snow Leopard

[Slrman]

I need a word processor for Snow Leopard that will read and write to the .doc and .rtf formats. I had NeoOffice but it is basically far from ready for prime time. It will not format picture inserts properly and dropped two out of three pages of my document when I saved it. Yes, I did have the Snow Leopard upgrade for it. No, you can no longer access the help forums and post there unless you donate cash to them. Obviously, I have no desire to donate to something that doesn't work.

Does anyone know of another, non-Microsoft program that actually works with Snow Leopard?

 

[Consultant]

iWork (pages)
Open office mac

 

[Slrman]

Thank you for the reply. As you probably know, Open Office and Neo Office are essentially the same other than Neo Office was supposedly "optimized for the Max OSX. Apprently, not. But I will look into giving iWork a try.

 

[Sgaar]

I need a word processor for Snow Leopard that will read and write to the .doc and .rtf formats. I had NeoOffice but it is basically far from ready for prime time. It will not format picture inserts properly and dropped two out of three pages of my document when I saved it. Yes, I did have the Snow Leopard upgrade for it. No, you can no longer access the help forums and post there unless you donate cash to them. Obviously, I have no desire to donate to something that doesn't work.

Does anyone know of another, non-Microsoft program that actually works with Snow Leopard?

http://download.openoffice.org/

 

[Slrman]

Thanks for the reply, but NeoOffice is OpenOffice that has been "optimized" for the Mac OSX. So OpenOffice really won't be an improvement. I am going to give iWork a try, though.

 

[Mal]

Thanks for the reply, but NeoOffice is OpenOffice that has been "optimized" for the Mac OSX. So OpenOffice really won't be an improvement. I am going to give iWork a try, though.

Wow, you're quick to dismiss it. OpenOffice works better than NeoOffice, IMO, at the moment. NeoOffice is always a few builds behind the official OpenOffice and it is fully "optimized" for OS X in any way that matters. Why don't you try being a bit more open to suggestions instead of buying into any little bit of BS some website told you about their own product?

jW

 

[Slrman]

Well, as a matter of fact, I have had OpenOffice and it had the same problems. It cannot handle graphics placement well and, when going back and forth between it and actual Word (as happens when exchanging documents with others) any graphics may or may not move from where they should be. So OpenOffice is not an improvement.

Instead of being sarcastic with others when you have incomplete information, why don't you try asking if something has been tried.

 

[Mal]

You replied as if you knew that OpenOffice could not possibly make a difference simply because NeoOffice was "optimized for Mac OS X". Surely you can appreciate that your post came across as both ignorant and arrogant?

Eh, I'm not going to bother responding again anyways, but good luck finding something that works! Make sure you don't dare listen to anyone else's suggestions that don't agree with a company's advertising claims!

jW

 

[exegete77]

I need a word processor for Snow Leopard that will read and write to the .doc and .rtf formats. I had NeoOffice but it is basically far from ready for prime time. It will not format picture inserts properly and dropped two out of three pages of my document when I saved it. Yes, I did have the Snow Leopard upgrade for it. No, you can no longer access the help forums and post there unless you donate cash to them. Obviously, I have no desire to donate to something that doesn't work.

Does anyone know of another, non-Microsoft program that actually works with Snow Leopard?

I have had success using Nisus Writer Pro in every day use; it saves natively to .rtf, but also opens and saves to .doc format. It feels like a word processor should and doesn’t intrude into my writing. Having used it in OS X for the past three years, I don’t ever remember it crashing. And it was recently updated to be compatible with SL. Also, includes 30 day free trial.

Now, regarding picture inserts, it depends on what and how that is done. The Nisus forums feature the staff as well as very accomplished users.

I also use Papyrus which is cross-platform, very mature and great to use. It runs in memory, so very fast, efficient word processor and semi-page layout. However, I have not used it to work with .doc or .rtf files.

 

[Slrman]

Mal, If you think I was arrogant for having used OpenOffice as well as Neo Office and knew that both had the same problem handling graphics, then that is not my problem.

As for you not replying again, that won't be a problem, either. If you had been helpful and actually bothered to read my post, then I would be disappointed. As it is, I'm not.

 

[angelwatt]

TextEdit handles rtf, doc, and docx among others. OpenOffice does everything I need though. I find MS office can't even be compatible with itself so it's no shock you're seeing issues across apps, especially when it comes to images.

 

[Slrman]

exegete77, Thanks so much for that very helpful reply. Nisus Writer I have heard of, but never used. For sure, I'll be giving it a try. Papyrus is new to me, so I'll have to try it, too.

Right now, I'm playing with iWork. So far, it seems to be doing OK, but I haven't gotten back into the really tricky stuff yet. I'm busy trying to re-create the text that NeoOffice somehow deleted for me. There must be some evil computer demon that causes these things just before you do a back-up. I clone my entire hard drive every day, sometimes more if I have done something particularly important and sizable. As usual, these pages vanished before my normal back-up.

Well, back to the grindstone. Thanks again for two good tips.

 

[Slrman]

angelwatt, you make some good observations. TexEdit does all you say and quite well, too. But it cannot handle the graphics files (photos) I am using. Wow, if it could everything would be totally cool.

Thanks to some good tips here, I am doing better, I think. I appreciate all the help.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Bean

 

[exegete77]

With Papyrus, I wrote a book, 230+ pages including ~100 photos, with auto-captioning and chapter files. Movement of images was instantaneous and auto-numbering was updated very quickly. Never once crashed. Ultimately I produced PDFs that I sent directly to the printer, who then used them to print. The only really problem was two scanned photos that didn't do well (not the fault of Papyrus, even the printer couldn’t improve on what was done).

I don’t use Papyrus for any work that requires Hebrew. While it will allow each word to be written right-to-left, the words themselves have to be written in reverse order in the sentence. For anything requiring Hebrew, I use Mellel - superb word processor, and unmatched style sheets, and multiple independent note streams (footnote or endnote), and auto-titling.

 

[Kristenn]

I second Pages 09. Its the best WP for Mac OS X imho. I don't much like MSW in Mac OS X. I just feel like microsoft office looks better on Windows and makes more sense. I'm weird though.

 

[txhockey9404]

Another vote for iWork '09 and Pages!

I have used all the major office suites, both Mac and PC, including Office 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2008, as well as OpenOffice (PC and Mac), Neooffice, and of course iWork '08 and '09. My favorite for word processing is probably Office 07, but that's PC only and 08 just isn't on par with 07. Personally, I use iWork 09 for everything, but have Office 2004 installed just to check compatibility.

If you have to worry about compatibility and sharing, I can't help but suggest Office 2008, but since you said you only need .doc, iWork should be fine. Most things work perfectly from Pages to Word and the opposite way. The biggest problems you will see with conversion in iWork is from .xls to Numbers. Keynote to .ppt can be problematic depending on how intricate your show is as well.

 

[Slrman]

I agree. iWork Pages seems to be doing very well. OpenOffice and its clone, NeoOffice cannot really keep graphics stable going back and forth to Word. They also have some shortcomings in Find and Replace.

For example, neither can do manual hard or soft line breaks. Often, when converting .txt or other files, I want to replace multiple line breaks with just one or two. Or sometimes, I want to replace paragraph marks with space after with two paragraph breaks with no space, as those work better when converting to .txt files. O think both Open- and Neo-office can sirt of do these with some involved work-arounds, but that's not the same as having it native to the app.

I have a lot of ebooks, (over 700) and I've found that, unless graphics are involved, .txt files are best. So being able to do some things with Find and Replace is a big help.

I also tried Nisus Writer pro and it was even worse in the graphics department, so that's out of the running. Papyrus was no better. Winner - iWork.

Thanks to all for your suggestions and I'm still open to ideas, if anyone knows something else.

 

[sharkync]

I'll throw my hat into the ring with a vote for Pages as well. In my limited experience with it, I have had no problems whatsoever.

 

[angelwatt]

They also have some shortcomings in Find and Replace.

I had trouble with it at first, but once you realize the appropriate syntax, the find and replace is much more powerful than MS Office's.

 

[Eric S.]

NeoOffice is OpenOffice that has been "optimized" for the Mac OSX. So OpenOffice really won't be an improvement.

That may have been true prior to OpenOffice 3 but it should no longer be the case. By "optimized for OS X" you probably mean that NeoOffice used the native Mac windowing system while OO was still an X11 app. But OO 3 went to Mac windowing on Intel systems a year ago. Additionally OO gets the latest updates before NeoO, months earlier in some cases. So OO should now be the first choice between the two for Intel systems.

 

[Slrman]

Eric S, Thanks for the reply. IN fact, I have OO 3.0 and it still has difficulty in keeping graphics in place when going to Word and back. Here's what I mean. I creaed a document in Word and carefully positioned pictures and artwork to be next to the relevant text.

When I opened it with OO, they had moved. Some by quite a lot. In some ways, OO seems to have better controls for positioning objects and pictures than does Word, so it really wasn't difficult to get them back where I wanted them. So far, so good, right?

Then I sent the document to a friend who opened it with Word. The graphics were out of place again. My friend sent it back to me and when I opened it with OO, they were out again, even though my friend had not tried to correct anything. I will have to say that, as long as I stay with OO or NeoOffice, they are fine. But, in today's environment, that really isn't practical.

I cannot state that iWork Pages is going to be better as I haven't tried that yet. But I will in the near future as I have access to an older H-P with MS Office 2000 on it.

Angelwatt, I know what you are saying, but the system is pretty complicated and really isn't worth it to me in light of my real problem with the graphics. Even if they incorporated it as a standard feature of OO, and I think they will, it stil won't address the problem with the graphics as I have detailed above.

Just so you all know where I am coming from, I write technical and instruction manuals, so accurate placement of illustrations and picture graphics is very important. I'm just hoping iWork Pages will be the answer I need.

What I am trying to avoid is using MS Office as I really would like to have a Microsoft-free zone here. I can't expect everyone to do that though, so I have to maintain some compatibility.

I'll attach my Windows-Free logo for the amusement of all.

 

[shwc]

Mellel is fantastic for front end engineering of a document (Style sets) and their outline function is fantastic for large writing projects. Give yourself time to learn this program and it will save you many hours in the end.

That said, Pages is the best for graphics + text layout.

I write my scientific papers, grants, etc. in Mellel, but but I do the final layout with figures in Pages.

 

[Slrman]

Shwc, thanks for that reply. What I don't understand is, if Mellel is so good, why the final layout with figures has to be done in Pages? Everything else is going to be just text and possibly tables. So why not just do the entire thing in the program that does it all?

Over the years, I have written manuals by hand and had editorial assistants enter them in rudimentary text programs, then in things like Paperclip (really old word processor) Word Perfect, every variety of MS Word, MacWrite, and some I can't remember. (probably didn't want to ) But from the start, I always strove for simplicity in tools and never used two or three when one would do.

Many times, I even created the graphics with the drawing tools in Word. This didn't always prove to be the best choice as Graphics created in word are not often portable to other formats. But here's a few examples. All were done in Word but I scanned the pages to make .jpg files so as to preserve the work.

Well, I've digressed enough. Thanks for all the help everyone!

 

[SpaceMagic]

I've always been an MS Word user and fan. It's pretty great and of course compatibility is king.

If I were a business with Macs, in most industries, I would use MS Office for Mac.

But... I've been using Pages a lot recently. It did take quite some time to get used to it but now I'm happy. A lot of functions are really neat and the styles section is pretty good too. The problem with Pages is, you can't just "give it a go". You have to get involved and use it for a fair few weeks to see its potential (but potential, there are a few bugs there which are annoying).