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How do you choose your word processor?
- Thread starter MacBH928
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Sure. If you're very familiar with LaTeX and doing something big, it's the best approach to just go full in. But if you're just doing something quick, or you're still learning, having Pages as sort of a place in between where you can still express your math with LaTeX is awesome. I use it a lot for weekly uni reports - also with iCloud collaboration it's great.
I primarily use two; Word and Sublime Text
As a teacher, we get access to an Office 365 subscription that we can install on up to 5 separate devices - our supplied work PC being one. I have a MacBook Pro I use for both work and as a private PC. I also have a desktop PC and used to use a 2012 Mac Mini also. That's four devices, and quite possible more than most would need within reason.
I haven't given Pages, or iWork for that matter, a fair chance to be honest. But since most corporate/government is run on Microsoft Products (Word, Excel, Outlook and so on) it's never been a given/necessity. Some of my students use iWorks and it seems to be quite good. Maybe I'll get around and try it out sometime.
Sublime is for 'everything else'. Quick notes or summaries - that doesn't necessitate firing up Word - or coding in Javascript. To be honest: The one I use most from day to day is without a doubt Sublime: text editing/quick notes, regular expressions and of course coding.
Word is only for reading students' papers and forms from our administration that doesn't fit well with the email-format.
It's mostly compatible. I'll admit it's a great Office substitute for the price but I had lots of formatting difficulty using it to open some of my Word documents. Margins were off and many fonts were missing. Long Office documents had to be reformatted. I still have my copy but have decided to buy an Office 365 subscription instead.
I've used SoftMaker Office, both free and paid, but it never saw all my fonts - it doesn't like .ttc font suitcases. (Many of the Mac system fonts are in .ttc format. Go figure.) I've used Mellel, but I'm not in academics; it's really powerful, and the learning curve seems like it would be very long. I've used both LibreOffice and NeoOffice, but having to open everything every time you want to use it made it slow, and the interface really isn't like a Mac, though it's noticeably better with NeoOffice. Haven't used Office365, though.
I've settled on Nisus Writer Pro and Numbers. I've been cross-platform throughout my computing life, and I don't know if that's going to stop now. Nisus uses RTF as its file format, and practically every word processor on every platform can read RTF. Does everything I need it to do, and it's really fast. If you use their headers, it creates a Table of Contents with them behind the scenes. Thinks and works solely in the Mac environment, too. Numbers has online converters if I ever need to switch to another platform. And RTF and Numbers are first class citizens with EagleFiler, another very large consideration.
I've settled on Nisus Writer Pro and Numbers. I've been cross-platform throughout my computing life, and I don't know if that's going to stop now. Nisus uses RTF as its file format, and practically every word processor on every platform can read RTF. Does everything I need it to do, and it's really fast. If you use their headers, it creates a Table of Contents with them behind the scenes. Thinks and works solely in the Mac environment, too. Numbers has online converters if I ever need to switch to another platform. And RTF and Numbers are first class citizens with EagleFiler, another very large consideration.
Letters docs and such aside, for text manipulation, I go with BBEdit.
When you need odd sorts or indents etc. It's the way to fly.
Makes a good adjunct for Libre office.
Xcode editor isn't bad either, but the highlights and stuff tend to get in the way of straight manipulation.
When you need odd sorts or indents etc. It's the way to fly.
Makes a good adjunct for Libre office.
Xcode editor isn't bad either, but the highlights and stuff tend to get in the way of straight manipulation.
doesn't the formatting gets messed up when opening RTF files in different applications?
If your document uses complex formatting, then that's a distinct possibility. Most of my documents are scrapes of websites using Reader Mode in Safari; they're pretty simple, hence not much possibility of being ill-formatted if opened elsewhere.
But that's true no matter what file format you use if you open it in another program that translates to a different default format.
I know others have answered you, but I wanted to add the reason the LibreOffice was created.
StarOffice is the original program that existed before OpenOffice and LibreOffice. OpenOffice.org split off of that project in order to make an open sourced version of the software. OpenOffice.org was maintained by SunMicrosystems. When Sun was bought by Oracle, many people feared that it would not remain open source, or that it would get a stricter license, so it was forked into what we now have as LibreOffice.
They share a common code ancestry, but they diverged. LibreOffice is more actively developed at this point, and I consider it to be the main development branch of the StarOffice descendants.
As far as the original question, the editor I use depends on the point of the document.
Internal notes, journals, documentation (Things I write for myself) -> Emacs
External documents (Things I'll send to people) -> MS Word 2016 (Or LibreOffice if I'm on a computer with no MS license)
Documents with Photos (Things I'll save as a PDF) -> InDesign / Affinity Publisher
I rarely use Pages. I want to like it, but I usually get frustrated when I use it an turn to one of the above programs.
An update to my earlier post: SoftMaker Office will now see all of your fonts everywhere in your system, including TTC fonts.
I use 365 word if i need to interact with the microsoft world.
Pages for my resume`
A text editor (notepad/vi/atom/etc. as available) for everything else.
If your document doens't look reasonably decent in plain type, the problem isn't your word processor
(edit: math formulas, etc. are a niche use-case. latex if you need that. but 99.9% don't).
Pages for my resume`
A text editor (notepad/vi/atom/etc. as available) for everything else.
If your document doens't look reasonably decent in plain type, the problem isn't your word processor
(edit: math formulas, etc. are a niche use-case. latex if you need that. but 99.9% don't).
I use Scrivener for long-form writing (its speciality) and Pages for everything else (preinstalled, easy to use, syncs across devices).
I also like LibreOffice, for novelty, but it's been bugged on retina Macs for about a year now.
I also like LibreOffice, for novelty, but it's been bugged on retina Macs for about a year now.
Softmaker and WPS are most confusing to me, not only are they paid products but you can have MS office with 1TB storage for as low as $7/m not to mention the free version. There are also other free alternatives like Apple Pages, LibreWrite, OpenWriter. Not sure how they make enough money to keep a whole company working on a complex suite of software.
For example businesses. Especially in Europe with their high standard data protection laws, businesses like to keep their data in-house and like to run their own company cloud.
For my company I would love to be able to buy software the old way: high one-time purchase and subsequent reasonable update prices, no nudging, no forced cloud, no regular license fees. You owned the software (and were allowed to resell it – at least in Europe).
There is no real solution to this, as the combination of open source software and software piracy lead to low entry price & forced licensing models. This has ruined the market for software development. Look at the Affinity products: if they charged $ 100 or $ 150 for Photo, they could beat Adobe by having a better product – but users would not be willing to pay that, even though it is a perpetual outright purchase (Photoshop used to be around $ 750 to $ 1000).
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There is a free version of SoftMaker. I am not aware of a free version of MS Office.
Does that mean your company does not connect to the internet? Since they want everything internal then software is not connected to the internet, if it is, then MS Office would work just as good. Plus there is always LibreOffice to do that.
The Web version is free
Pages works fantastically if you don't need to work in a MS environment.
I use it as my go to word processor. I did even use it when I worked in a MS work place ( probably 10 yrs).
Of I need to share ( Pages will do this as well) I mainly used Google Docs. Am trying to eliminate Google due to security issues.
So it’s basically Pages, Apple Notes and Scrivener for my fiction writing. I have to admit I am still using Scrivener but don't really know how to use it fully - but perseving.
I use it as my go to word processor. I did even use it when I worked in a MS work place ( probably 10 yrs).
Of I need to share ( Pages will do this as well) I mainly used Google Docs. Am trying to eliminate Google due to security issues.
So it’s basically Pages, Apple Notes and Scrivener for my fiction writing. I have to admit I am still using Scrivener but don't really know how to use it fully - but perseving.
Microsoft Office because that's what every one I know uses and is most familiar with.
It boggles my mind that Apple made and maintains Pages. Pages has to be one of the most unintuitive productivity apps ever created. It’s hard to believe that Apple would put their name on it.
The way I choose my word processor is a bit of a “victim of circumstances” situation. I need Excel because I work with people who work in Excel. The cheapest way to get Excel is an Office 365 subscription, which gets me the majority of the Microsoft Office Suite. At that point, I already have MS Word, which I would prefer to basically anything.
That said, if I didn’t specifically need Excel, LibreOffice is my preferred productivity suite. Its word processor, Writer, has everything you need and it’s intuitive enough (way more than Apple Pages).
The way I choose my word processor is a bit of a “victim of circumstances” situation. I need Excel because I work with people who work in Excel. The cheapest way to get Excel is an Office 365 subscription, which gets me the majority of the Microsoft Office Suite. At that point, I already have MS Word, which I would prefer to basically anything.
That said, if I didn’t specifically need Excel, LibreOffice is my preferred productivity suite. Its word processor, Writer, has everything you need and it’s intuitive enough (way more than Apple Pages).
You what? Pages is more intuitive than Word and Libre. I like Libre, but when it comes to intuitive, Pages does take the crown. Pages is overall fantastic actually. I use it all the time, and LaTeX support makes it pretty useful even for a lot of my university work. Including great collaboration features. The iWork suite in general is fantastic.
LibreOffice can open, edit and create Excel 2007-2019 xlsx files. It's there something missing compared to Microsoft's Excel?