[Titanium Man]

The ones I use just aren't cutting it anymore. Appleworks is severely dated and it doesn't look like Apple will ever update it. One thing I really want to avoid is having my documents stuck in an orphan file format. Appleworks files aren't readable by anything else. Saving as RTF doesn't quite work either because Appleworks' RTF isn't quite the same as TextEdit's RTF. For one thing, any italics are changed back to plain text when opening an AW RTF in TextEdit.


TextEdit is much more cumbersome when it comes to changing fonts, needing a separate window while Appleworks had a simple and easy to use pulldown menu in each document. With that menu, I could select Times by just pressing T and then the down key twice, which I can do in two seconds without looking. In TextEdit, I have to manually scroll through the whole font list and look for the font. It also can't italicize many fonts that the older Appleworks program can, like Lucida Grande. So if I want italicized sans serif, I'm forced to use something like Helvetica, which can't handle smart quotation marks.


Pages can handle both italics and smart quotes but is even more cumbersome to change fonts. Defining my own styles might help, but styles are very dumb. If I want to change the font on an entire paragraph, it changes all the attributes to that one style. So I can't change a parapraph to Times New Roman without losing all italics in the paragraph.


Three tries with three separate programs and Apple still can't get it right. Is there anything else? Please tell me I don't have to go with the Evil Empire and Office. Or something that may also be orphaned like Nisus (which I stopped using years ago) or Mariner Write.

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

The ones I use just aren't cutting it anymore.

You might want to take a look at abiword which does what you're looking for. It's file format is a documented xml file, So even if every one stop working on the product your data would be readeable. I have issues with it, but it seems that the developers are fixing those.

If you want something a bit eavier I'de suggest NeoOffice/J which is a port using Java for the interface of OpenOffice.

Both of these applications are free.

[brettcamp]

I agree -- try neoOffice and abiword first, as they're free and quite capable. If you're willing to pay, the big 3 MS Word alternatives seem to be NisusWriter, MarinerWrite and, my favorite, Mellel. I recommend you give Mellel's demo a try -- I love its outlining , simple interface and features, as well as its price. Almost an ideal word processor.

I mostly get by with TextEdit these days, even though I have Word and AppleWorks (which has begun crashing like crazy for some reason), but then I don't do much formatting or printing -- mostly just email my copy in. Apple seems to be improving TextEdit a bit with each new version of the OS, and I bet it'll soon be able to do what most folks need. But I still don't understand why they didn't update AppleWorks; Pages doesn't even do some of the basic AppleWorks stuff, like outlining.

[Big Mac]

My vote is within Mariner Write, but that's just a long standing preference based on years of use. I switched to Write a while after WriteNow was abandoned. Mariner Software is a great company.

[monkeybrain]

You could try using one of these programs to add a font menu to Textedit (and all other apps it seems too):

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11606

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12562

Or you could Nisus and have it save as RTF, that should work ok.

I also agree that Apple's insistence on using this font palette is annoying, sure when you use lots of fonts it's a good idea, but it requires more clicks to get to what you want.

[NeXTLoop]

I agree with brettcamp. NeoOffice or Mellel or both outstanding programs. NeoOffice is a full-featured Office suite, complete with MS Office compatibility. Mellel has basic MS Word compatibility, but really shines in its innovative approach to word processing, excellent support, and good price.

[turtle777]

pico

Nah, just kidding...

-t

[Randman]

TextEdit for Panther or Tiger? It has been improved in Tiger. If not, I'd say go with Office. It's M$ but it is better on Macs than PCs.

[Titanium Man]

Looks like Fontcard might help, but using TextEdit means I still have to find a sans serif font that has both italics and smart quotes (and is readable on-screen at 12 point). I've been through my font list over and over and all of them either have one or the other, but not both. TextEdit seems to have the inherent limitation that a font absolutely must have an italic or oblique variant to be italicized. AW has no such limitation. AW would be fine if Apple would just update it to current standards. They need to make it output standard RTF and the font rendering is awful.

I'm testing Mariner Write right now and it seems to do everything I need. I'll save in RTF-Word format so it can't be orphaned. Looked at Abiword, but the screenshots show a hideous, Windows-like interface. I get enough of Windows at work. Why must Apple's own word processors have so many limitations compared to third party products? And if they're just going to do them half-assed, then why bother writing them at all? Well, I suppose it's not all bad if Apple lets some small companies like Mariner stay in business by making crappy software itself.

[Fusion]

My vote goes for Nisus Writer Express if you are not privy to Pages.

[Titanium Man]

Okay, that's it. I've had it with Mariner Writer. Maybe it's just my system, but the darn thing crashes every time I click on the Font menu. I do mean every time. I can reproduce the problem on demand. Maybe I have too many fonts.

Worse, when it crashes, it takes the Dock with it. Relaunching the Finder doesn't help. The Dock recovers after a couple of minutes, but still!

[wataru]

How many times do you need to switch fonts? Maybe you should be concentrating more on writing than on eye candy. I have written many papers and reports in TextEdit with no problems. For anything more heavy-duty, I use NeoOffice/J.

[Randman]

Wataru's correct. What are you planning to write?

If you are more interested in changing fonts, use Pages and create Favorites and access via one click.

[Titanium Man]

Maybe I don't use eye candy. Did you consider that maybe I write and edit in one font, then when I'm satisifed with a paragraph or a section, I change the font to visually distinguish it as finalized? So in the end, the completed document is all in the second font, not in a zillion fonts as you assume. Don't jump to conclusions. Different people use different writing techniques.

[Fusion]

Have you tried Nisus Express yet?

[nonhuman]

Hey, Mellel does look pretty good. Except that all the palettes are in brushed metal! Gah!!!!

I could probably get past that if it works well, though. Would be nice if it was free. But for what little writing I do I just use Word since my company has a site license.

[m a d r a]

i use mellel. it's un-bloated, fast and has a nice clean interface [brushed metal aside]. plus there is also a spotlight plugin available for it, so spotlight will index and search your mellel documents.

that said, i'm also concerned about the proprietory file format. i know in theory you can save out of mellel as 'word' or 'RTF' but in real-world usage, i find that saving files in these formats is a pretty hit'n'miss affair as regards getting them to display identically in different word processors.

abiword, with its XML file format sounds an ideal solution but, not having tried it myself, i'm dissuaded from doing so by the poster who complained about its windoze-looking interface. i don't think i could bring myself to work on sommit that ugly!

[Titanium Man]

Maybe I was a bit harsh in describing Abiword as Windows-like. Take a look yourself. It might not be that objectionable to you. Totally agreed on the distaste for proprietary file formats and that RTF is no guarantee of portability. But I think I've figured out how to get around that problem. After I've finished writing something, there's really no need to ever edit it again. So, at that point, I could simply export it as a PDF, which is not likely to go away in the foreseeable future.

[nonhuman]

I wouldn't really call Abiword Windows-like. It's certainly Word like, though. As I recall, the early versions were much more TextEditor like (it's been a very long time since I tried out Abiword), but it worked very well. I can only assume it's gotten better since then.

[Randman]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

Maybe I don't use eye candy. Did you consider that maybe I write and edit in one font, then when I'm satisifed with a paragraph or a section, I change the font to visually distinguish it as finalized? So in the end, the completed document is all in the second font, not in a zillion fonts as you assume. Don't jump to conclusions. Different people use different writing techniques.

Word > Annotation. Much easier and cleaner for editing. Plus, you can use Pages and/or TextEdit then import the files into Word and Annotate.

And I meant it when I said Office for X is superior to XP's version.

[wataru]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

Maybe I don't use eye candy. Did you consider that maybe I write and edit in one font, then when I'm satisifed with a paragraph or a section, I change the font to visually distinguish it as finalized? So in the end, the completed document is all in the second font, not in a zillion fonts as you assume. Don't jump to conclusions. Different people use different writing techniques.

Yeah, great, so why is TextEdit's font palette so terrible if you're only changing the font one time, at the end? Sounds like there is no problem to me.

[Macnnmember]

I just downloaded Mellel 1.9.1. They have an option to turn off the brushed metal appearance to an aqua look, I don't know if this is a new feature but the interface looks better.

[Titanium Man]

Gadzooks, man. You're dense. Read it again. I change text a paragraph or a section at a time, as each is finalized, just so when I come back to the document, I can instantly see what still needs to be rewritten, appended or edited. I'm not making one change at the very end. It's all one font at the end, but it was changed in several hundred steps, a little at a time, over the course of weeks or months. Clear enough for you?

As for Word - thanks anyway, Randman, but writing isn't worth $200 for me.

[wataru]

You're right, I didn't read your post carefully. Now that I have, my recommendation is that you switch to a style of writing that doesn't involve pointless font changes.

Or, for the hundredth time, NeoOffice/J. It's free and powerful.

[madmacgames]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

Pages can handle both italics and smart quotes but is even more cumbersome to change fonts. Defining my own styles might help, but styles are very dumb. If I want to change the font on an entire paragraph, it changes all the attributes to that one style. So I can't change a parapraph to Times New Roman without losing all italics in the paragraph.

Like hell you can't. If you switch the style, then yes the paragraph inherits all attributes of the style you selected, because they are S T Y L E S. But you do not have to use styles. If you want to change the text of a paragraph, select it and do any 1 of the following:

- choose the fonts button from the toolbar
- OR hit Command + T
- OR select Format -> Font from the app menu

The 3rd one *might* be a bit cumbersome for some people, but how one can think the first 2 are cumbersome, is beyond me. And as for styles being dumb, that might be your opinion, but you don't have to use them and you can use the program just as easy without them. But then again, you apparently couldn't even figure out that the "Fonts" toolbar button would let you change the font.

Pages is about as basic as you can get. (It can be powerful as well, but is also easy to use to do basic word processing) There is no word processor for the illiterate, and if you can't even figure out that a button labeled "Fonts" is for editing/changing the font, then my guess is you will never find a word processor suitable for you.

[kcmac]

I pretty much use Pages anymore.

You could have one style for your "start up" work and another style for your edited or completed work. Just click anywhere on the paragraph that you think is done and you can change it instantly to the font that you like letting you know that it is done.

If you want some of a paragraph to have a different font or be bold or italic, you can still do that. But you will notice that when you have the cursor on that paragraph that you get a little warning color for that style if you have the styles drawer visible. Just don't modify the style for that paragraph.

Pages has a different feel to it at first because it really does center itself about style and layout. But you can avoid that and just type away if you want. Stick with it a little bit more and quickly read through the manual that Apple provides. It will suddenly become very natural. The key is to spend just a short amount of time at the first of a document setting up your different styles so that they are available for you to use quickly for the remainder of your work.

It will also make you hate how Word uses styles. I do agree with Randman about Word however. It is always my second choice. If I do use Word however, I almost always send it to Pages for final style cleanup and organization.

[Randman]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

I change text a paragraph or a section at a time, as each is finalized, just so when I come back to the document, I can instantly see what still needs to be rewritten, appended or edited.

And Pages doesn't work? You can have a different font/size/color format set as a Style, which you can activate at one click.


You could type what you want, click on the edit Style then click back on the text Style.

[Titanium Man]

As I and Madmacgames pointed out, using a style on a completed paragraph is a very blunt instrument because the paragraph gets changed as a block. Any differences within the paragraph, such as italics or boldface, are wiped out.

When I wrote "styles are dumb," I meant that they're not smart. They don't differentiate between one previous style being overwritten and several. In my case, it's better just to change the font than apply a style. I work with a great many titles, which with the stylebook I must abide by, means lots of italics. I can't afford to have the application or change of a style suddenly strip out all my italics.

BTW, I'm ignoring anyone who, without the benefit of having to jump around in several hundred pages of text being rewritten and edited in a non-linear fashion, decides his way is the only way to write and any other way is pointless.

[Randman]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

BTW, I'm ignoring anyone who, without the benefit of having to jump around in several hundred pages of text being rewritten and edited in a non-linear fashion, decides his way is the only way to write and any other way is pointless.

Perhaps you are the one who has decided your way is the only way to write and any other way is pointless.

Anyway, I'm talking from more than a decade as professional journalist. I've written two books (the last using Pages then Word) and I've worked/am working as an editor on a few others.

Perhaps, also, if you had been more specific in your original post and given more details, it would be easier to help you out with your needs.

[red rocket]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

I change text a paragraph or a section at a time, as each is finalized, just so when I come back to the document, I can instantly see what still needs to be rewritten, appended or edited. I'm not making one change at the very end. It's all one font at the end, but it was changed in several hundred steps, a little at a time, over the course of weeks or months.

If that's the way you work, I suggest you give Jer's Novel Writer a try.

http://www.jerssoftwarehut.com/index.shtml

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

...I change text a paragraph or a section at a time, as each is finalized, just so when I come back to the document, I can instantly see what still needs to be rewritten, appended or edited. I'm not making one change at the very end. It's all one font at the end, but it was changed in several hundred steps, a little at a time, over the course of weeks or months....

couldn't you just use a different colour for the paragraphs which aren't finalised yet and then change them to black when they were done? that's what i've done in the past when writing in the way you describe - changing the colour is usually a one-click process [although you've gotta keep the colour palette floating about somewhere for quick click access] which disnae alter the formatting and it's just as easy [if not more so] to quickly scan a document and see that all the [eg.] grey paragraphs still needed tidying up.

macnnmember - you're right, latest versions of mellel have provided the option to get rid of hideous brushed metal. i'd forgotten that.

[Millennium]

I've had good luck with Nisus Express. I'm looking into AbiWord, however, for a variety of reasons.

[Titanium Man]

Originally Posted by Randman

Perhaps you are the one who has decided your way is the only way to write and any other way is pointless.

Anyway, I'm talking from more than a decade as professional journalist. I've written two books (the last using Pages then Word) and I've worked/am working as an editor on a few others.

Perhaps, also, if you had been more specific in your original post and given more details, it would be easier to help you out with your needs.

Ease up. I wasn't referring to you. I was referring to Wataru who said the way I changed fonts was "pointless," despite the fact that Madra does something similar. What started that row was that poster getting the mistaken impression that I use lots of different fonts when I wrote that Mariner Write crashed because "I might have too many fonts." That's too many fonts in my library, not in the document. In other words, Mariner acts badly enough on my machine that I can't even make one font change because it will instantly crash when I click on the Font menu. That has nothing to do with my writing techniques.

In point of fact, I've already taken your advice and switched to Pages, adding my preferred fonts to the Favorites and shrinking the palette to show just them. I'm still not thrilled that "modern" Apple word processors won't allow italicization of fonts that don't have an italic/oblique variant, like Lucida Grande, when older products like Appleworks will.

[willed]

Swallow your pride and get MS Word. Does everything you want, and is completely customisable. Everything can be there at a keystroke or a click of a button. If money's the issue I recommend getting in touch with your brother/nephew/son/daughter who may still be in school and getting the academic edition. In the UK at least this is exactly the same feature-wise and comes at a fraction of the cost.

[Chuckit]

If you're going to use the edu version, you may as well just buy it yourself — they don't check.

[midwinter]

How about instead of changing the font, you just bold finished sections? Or highlight?

With that said, I'm with the others who have pointed out that this is a pretty weird technique.

You might also consider writing in something like OmniOutliner.

[Titanium Man]

You guys are so hung up on criticizing my technique that you're completely ignoring my complaint about Mariner Writer. The program crashes. Every time. It doesn't matter if I'm trying to change the fonts once or a thousand times. Text selected or no text selected. And it takes the Dock down when it crashes, the first time I've ever had an app do that in more than three years of using OS X. What good is a word processor that can't change fonts at all? Should I be locked into the default font forever? Besides, a properly written program is supposed to be able to handle any reasonable technique. How is it that the venerable Appleworks has no problem with what I'm doing but something newer can't handle it? I would still use Appleworks if its font rendering and RTF support were better. It's not my technique that's the problem. Focus on the bad software. You may not use or like my technique, but it doesn't make any unreasonable demands on software.

I've settled on Pages per Randman's advice.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

Pages can handle both italics and smart quotes but is even more cumbersome to change fonts. Defining my own styles might help, but styles are very dumb. If I want to change the font on an entire paragraph, it changes all the attributes to that one style. So I can't change a parapraph to Times New Roman without losing all italics in the paragraph.

Sorry, but that is not true. You are either intentionally lying to badmouth the program or you never even tried it. Both changing the paragraph style as well as changing the font directly from the font palette do preserve italics within the paragraph.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Titanium Man

You guys are so hung up on criticizing my technique that you're completely ignoring my complaint about Mariner Writer. The program crashes. Every time.

If it crashes every time you open the Font menu then you likely have a corrupted font. You can use the Fontbook application to check for corrupt fonts. Open Fontbook, select all the fonts then do File->Validate Fonts.

[mitchell_pgh]

I use Word and Test Edit.

The two work VERY WELL for me. Rich Text Format is as open as you can get (everything accepts FTF)... and Word is Word (in all the Microsoft glory)

[jhogarty]

I didn't really want MS-Office either, but I need to stay compatible with work and friends who refuse to come to the "light" side.

Student/Teacher Version of MS-Offices is like $150. I walked into the Apple Store and bought it. In fact, on a previous visit to the store they sales people said I didn't need to be a student or teacher. The only drawback is the version is not upgradeable.

J.

[kcmac]

I think a few of us could care less about your technique and in fact have given you solid advice on how to handle it using Pages and other software.

Again. Using Pages, set up a few styles with each having whatever font/color/bold/italic that you want to use to identify to you the level of completion that your document or that section/paragraph is in.

Use those styles as you go.

This setup would work for you very well. If you don't give it a try, then why come here asking for help? Usually, I have found writers to be a lot more open minded than what you appear to be. Good luck being stubborn.

[Old Toad]

Take a look at TextEdit Plus. It has a tools window that allows easy font substitution, etc. It may do the trick for you.

[Titanium Man]

Originally Posted by kcmac

I think a few of us could care less about your technique and in fact have given you solid advice on how to handle it using Pages and other software.

Again. Using Pages, set up a few styles with each having whatever font/color/bold/italic that you want to use to identify to you the level of completion that your document or that section/paragraph is in.

Use those styles as you go.

This setup would work for you very well. If you don't give it a try, then why come here asking for help? Usually, I have found writers to be a lot more open minded than what you appear to be. Good luck being stubborn.

God mit. How hard is it for people to read threads before replying? I have taken Randman's advice and am using Pages the way he suggested. Now stop telling me to use Pages.

As a test of what styles does, I used some paragraphs with mixed italic/plain text in Helvetica 12pt. Created a style from selected 12pt Times plain text in the same document using "Create new paragraph style from selection." Positioned the cursor in a paragraph and applied the style. It did exactly as I wrote, changing both plain and italic Helvetica to plain Times, contrary to Tetenal's accusations. Repeating the test in various paragraphs produced the exact same results. This is precisely why I don't use styles.

Edit: Surprisingly, sometimes, even when I'm just changing the font using the font palette, Pages still removes italics. Something is not right here. I suspect Pages is still buggy, being a rev 1.0.x product.

[Randman]

In Pages, if you use Paragraph styles, it will not change items such as italics and bold in a copy. You can create a new Paragraph style, keep the coding then revert back when done.

I just tried it on 3 different files and no problems and no loss of formatting.

[Randman]

[Titanium Man]

I'm just telling you what's happening on my system. Styles is very inconsistent. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, it will change all of the plain text but leave the italics in the original font. Sometimes, it won't work at all. Whether I put the cursor in the paragraph or highlight all the text in the paragraph, it just sits there in the original font when I click on the style. I can click over and over, but the text will not change. Double clicking on the style will finally change the paragraph, but then at the cost of losing italics. I'm trying it as I type this and experiencing these problems at this moment.

And yes, I'm using 1.0.2 and I've tried both the Styles drawer's dropdown menu and the + button to create the style.

Edit: It gets even wackier. Sometimes, I'm losing formatting in unstyled paragraphs even when I just change the font using a favorite in the font palette. I wish I could start and finish with the same font so I wouldn't have to change it, but the fact of the matter is that Times and its variations aren't very readable onscreen for me. Helvetica is much more legible. If I were to use the dual color technique like Madra, there's still the problem of changing the document to Times when I prepare it for printing, which could be extremely problematic if all of the formatting were lost during that one font change.

[Randman]

If you want, send me an email and I can forward the template. You can try saving it as a template then see if the same problem exists. If it does, it's either an error with Pages (then you can try a reinstall of the app if you wish) or operator error (and if so, we can try trouble shooting that as well).

Edit: I've tried it on 4 different templates on two different Macs at home (a PB17 and a Mac Mini) and am getting the same results as the shots above.

[Titanium Man]

Here are the steps I'm taking to use a style:

1. Highlight a block of text in one font and plain text with no formatting.
2. Either use the dropdown menu or the + button at the bottom to create new paragraph style from selection. Type in a name when requested.

The style should be usable at this point.

3. Either place a cursor inside a paragraph to be styled or highlight some portion or even the whole paragraph.
4. Click on the style I created to apply it to the paragraph. If it refuses to apply, double click on the style, but as I wrote, that eliminates italics formatting.

Not much room for error there.