A: Richard
Hull, TAA Executive Director:
"I put Stephen's
question to a professional book producer and got the following
answer:
'This person
sounds strongly biased against Word, which is typical of many people
who learned their craft on Word Perfect. For them, learning Word is annoying;
like learning a second language that shares so many features of the
mother tongue, they frequently get confused and prefer their familiar language.
As annoying and rigid as I find them, I know that I am equally biased
toward Word for equally annoying reasons (in fact, the same reasons!).
No software will
create an outline not already present in the text. The 'good outline'
is contingent on organization created by the author, not the software.
But if you start with an excellent outline in your work and apply headings
correctly, Word creates an excellent outline. I imagine Word Perfect
would do an equally good job.
It's much cheaper
than Word if you look at retail prices (necessary for them to
compete, but I am able to find prices for Word as low, or lower, by buying
through wholesalers on Ebay). It's fairly compatible; you can open and
use, even save to other files types (but precise work with an editor using
MS Word will be a bother).
Word Perfect
3 comes with built-in pdf creation software (these are not always
identical to Adobe, but probably passable). WP features list states that
pdf files can be opened and edited in WP. While it's hard to imagine these
features are as functional as having Adobe Acrobat, they sound like benefits
quite favorable toward selection of WP, especially if the user is already
familiar with WP.
Both products
have extensive free on-line training available.
So if a person
is thinking of working start-to-finish independently or with other
WP users, why switch? On the other hand, to have asked the question, regardless
of the bias, is an indication that perhaps this person has some dissatisfaction
with WP (perhaps a feeling of being slightly incompatible with
so many others with whom the person works?)
Endnote is fine
so long as the format you require is supported by the software.
I found it extremely difficult to tweak Endnote to spit out the custom
format that I needed. I have read, however, that such customization is
possible. (I was able to get the hang of making the changes, but I required
so many changes that I ended up re-checking every entry manually anyway,
so I prefer to do my cites manually.)
In sum, document
quality from either WP or Word is contingent on the user's competence,
not on the product."
A: Paul
Chance, TAA Member:
"People will
laugh, but if I could I'd use nothing but MacWrite II. It was intuitive,
fast, and did everything any sensible writer could want. I wrote
a couple of books with it and numerous magazine articles. Unfortunately,
it doesn't run on OS X or Windows. I use Word, and hate it. It
is lumbering, temperamental, and cumbersome. It may do a kazillion
things, but all I need is a dozen. The entire publishing industry
is committed to Word, it seems, so you either have to use it or
convert whatever you do use into Word files.
I would love
to learn that there's a small, fast, easy to use word processor
app that runs on OS X and can be converted to Word."
A: Paul
Colinvaux, TAA Member:
"I use because
I have to, because publishers use it, because it is a paradigm of
our times (I define a paradigm as 'You had better believe it because
everyone else does' in a book now in press. The horror of Word is the
gazillion features. I merely want to be able to write, as I could
with a pencil or manual type writer. I wrote my first text on
a manual typewriter at a steady 40 - 60 words a minute. I then
gravitated to electric type writers, and loved the convenience
(with the golfball models) of being able to erase (my manual
did have 'X-ing out' problems). Then came heaven in the form of WordStar,
far superior even to WordPerfect if you wanted only to write,
not dealing with print in columns and other nasty things best left
to type setters. The overriding advatage over WordPerfect was
that you never had to take your hands from the key board to operate
a mouse. Lovely block operations from the keyboard; move blocks;
keep blocks; flag blocks with simple key strokes.
Word has added
to the basic indignities of the mouse a desire to make you write
Word's way. It thinks it knows English writing better than a writer
and has the power to enforce its opinion. I have the version that comes
with Windows XP Professional and I have spent hours trying to disable as
many features as possible but some of the more irritating cannot be
beat. I had that nasty paper clip pop up the other day when I
was quite sure it was silenced. And dare to start an indented
line with a number, and an unseen hand takes over to let you
do nothing different from then on. Try using lower case after
a question mark and see what happens.
My advisor says
I must move to Vista as soon as it becomes available to assure
compatibility. The version of Word that comes with it is sure to be
worse (it claims to have even more features). I live, and write, in dread.
Please Bill G., with all your resources, have some of your people spend
a few days writing a simple word processor for writers, imagine you are
Charles Dickens writing in an exercise book on his lap, a program
at least as good as WordStar but that will be compatible with
the output of Word so that the poor writer can sell his work. The
essential requirements are: The mouse not needed.; Never
presume to anticipate a need; The writer is always right; Block
operations with function keys."
A: Stan
Gibilisco, TAA Member:
"For what it's
worth, I compose my work in Windows Write (also called WordPad) that
has been part of the Windows operating systems for years. I give all
my files the default extension .rtf, and set the computer to
open them in WordPad.
I have saved
the old Windows Write from Windows 3.1 because it is a compact file
that, in fact, makes the computer work like an electronic typewriter. It's
fast and almost never crashes. I am not sure, but I think the WordPad program
that comes with Windows XP is a little bulkier.
When opened in
Word, files from WordPad or Write don't require much, if any, modification.
Some of the symbols might appear differently depending on what fonts
you have on your computer, and depending on how you created the symbols in
WordPad or Write. But this is rarely a major problem.
Either of these
are a lot faster than Word, which tends to crash a lot. Also, it
has (if my suspicions are correct) been hijacked a few times when
I have left the Internet connection enabled.
When there is
a lot of mathematics in a manuscript (as there often is in mine),
I find that WordPad and Write are not always adequate. But I have
been too lazy to learn TeX. Maybe the new Word version that comes
with Vista won't be so bad. You will probably be able to turn
off the features that you don't want. And I suspect it will still
import files from the old WordPad and Write programs.
All this is PC
stuff, of course, not Mac. But the .rtf format is pretty universal,
I think.
I see one more
worm crawling out of this can. Does anybody know about so-called
'online apps'? Some techies say we are all going in that direction whether
we like it or not. Will the day come when one can't write anything
for a major publisher without being plugged into Google or Microsoft
or some other corporate site to use their apps (and paying them a
royalty)? Or is this a paranoid notion resulting from my having
composed this at 2:30 a.m. when spooks are flying around in these
here hills?"
A: Helen
Solorzano, ESOL Materials Writer:
"Does anyone
have experience using Open Office, the open source -- and therefore
free -- program (see http://www.openoffice.org)?
It includes a word processing program, as well as a math function creator,
spreadsheet, presentation program, drawing tool and database.
I am planning on trying it out sometime soon when I have some
time to spend on it.
In the past,
I think it had a problem b/c documents created in Open Office
couldn't be opened in Word, due to Microsoft's restrictions on their
file format, but now there is a way to save in a word-compatible
format. You do have to install all the whole program, not just
the word processor. It works on Windows, MAC, Linux and other
platforms.
I've used Word
for years but can do so only after turning off all the annoying
parts (which takes a bit of research).
I'd be interested
to know of anyone's experience with Open Office, or I can report
back when I get around to trying out myself."
A: Cory
Nimer, Manuscripts Cataloger/Metadata Specialist:
"I have been
using OpenOffice.org since its first release, and I have been
quite happy with it. It does everything that I need it to, although
its built in bibliographic utility is not as robust as it ought to
be. There is another open source bibliographic application, Bibus (http://bibus-biblio.sourceforge.net/),
which integrates directly with OpenOffice.org that makes a good replacement.
As far as compatibility
with Word goes, OpenOffice.org files (ODF) cannot be opened directly
in Word. However, OpenOffice.org does include the ability to
save documents in a variety of formats including Word (DOC),
Word 2003 XML (XML), and Rich Text (RTF). It can also open these formats
directly, as well as WordPerfect files (WPD).
For most users,
OpenOffice.org is a good Word replacement, and the vast majority
of Word's features. Some things are in different places in the menus,
which adds a little time to learn the differences up front, but at
times this reordering is an improvement over Word. OpenOffice.org also
includes some added bonuses, such as integrated PDF generation. Due to
the open source nature of development, OpenOffice.org users also benefit
from community efforts such as the Open Clip Art project (http://www.openclipart.org/)
and the OO Extras project (http://ooextras.sourceforge.net/).
And of course
it is available for download at no cost, so the only investment
to try it out is bandwidth, hard-drive space, and your time."
