A better word processor for Mac?

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Hi,

I am running Mac OS 10.4.11 on an iMac 2 GHz Intel Core Duo.

I cannot seem, for the life of me, to be able to find a word processor I really, really like. I have Word v.X, which I don't particularly like. It has a ton of free-floating toolbars, and I would like to have everything in one window, like on Word for PC. When I open documents, their window sometimes slips underneath the toolbars and it's very annoying to go and move each toolbar out of the way to lower the main window. Word has also been buggy as of late.

I have looked at a demo of the newest version, and I hate it as much as the old one, if not more.

I've also tried NeoOffice for the past few months. I find it very sluggish. If I move the cursor in or out of a table, it seems to take a good 2 seconds to make the transition. Toolbars keep appearing if I click inside a table, which also annoys me. I, however, must say I love its automatic word completion feature.

I've also looked at AppleWorks 6 which came with my computer. Again, the main window is detached from the toolbar. The icons are small and its interface is barebones.

I know these are small details, but when you work on a software everyday for hours on end, it's those little details that make or break the deal.

Are there any other options out there? I would love to have a word processor that doesn't have separate windows and toolbars.

Any suggestions? Thanks a lot!
 

dtravis7


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On an Intel Mac I find Open Office (Where Neo comes from) much snappier than NeoOffice on the same machine. You might give it a try. It's also free. You could also download the trial of iWork and give Pages a try, but I have a feeling due to your complaints about the others you tried, it will not satisfy you.
 
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Have tried them all and come back to Office 2008 for the Mac.
 

cwa107


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Have tried them all and come back to Office 2008 for the Mac.

Ever tried WriteRoom?

It's kind of a weird one, but I like it a lot for casual writing. It reminds me a lot of WordPerfect back in the day. It's so nice to write with no distractions at all.
 
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I have found these excellent (Mellel especially for multi-lingual work): Nisus Writer Pro and Mellel. The styles on Mellel are very different than MS Word, but in the end much more capable.
 

chscag

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I believe Mac development for AbiWord has stopped or has come to a standstill. I used it for quite a while in Linux but then gave up on it as it hadn't been updated for a long time.

I just downloaded it and looked it over again. It's an old version.

Anyway, I agree with cwa107 with regard to Bean. It's a small "Pages" like word processor that works well.

Regards.
 
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If you're using your word processor for hours every day, it's worth spending some time to understand how it works and to set it up how YOU want it - including toolbars and especially custom styles & templates etc - Word has so many options it's taken me until my switch to Mac to really get to grips with it.

Before you ditch Word try this:-

Go to this link and download the document. It's a big one, but can be dipped into for whatever area you want to tweak/understand first..... it's not specifically for Word 2008 for Mac, but it's got great info about templates, styles and also cutomising your toolbars effectively (ie not using the 'standard' toolbar). I quite like the formatting palette as it sits on the side, and then have only one toolbar with only the tools i want on it - and i place it so it sits over the useless vertical screen space stealing 'elements' bar.

Word:mac - Bend Word To Your Will

attached a screenshot of my word 2008 setup...

ps seems like Office 2011 for Mac will have the 'ribbon' which from the screenshots i've seen, will steal even more vertical screen space (never mind usability issues) - although it's meant to be an optional toolbar in the Mac, at least.

Coops

Screen shot 2010-02-25 at 05.55.50.jpg
 
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Try the excellent German software, Papyrus (www.papyrus.com). There is a demo version you can try.
 
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My favorite is NeoOffice but you dont didnt like it. Bean will become your best friend now. Tex-Edit Plus is old school classic text editor but has alot more functions than the text edit which comes with your mac. BBEdit is another awesome program
 
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I'll second the recommendation for Bean. I'm an author and I've replaced MS Word with the little guy. It has an experience that's in a lot of ways similar to Pages. Nice and free little program!

Edit: Also, don't forget JDarkRoom, a free app very similar to WriteRoom
 
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I'll toss my most-used tools in here too:

I do most of my writing in WriteRoom, then typesetting & styles in Pages. For the rare web editing, I use TextWrangler.
 

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