devi | (no subject)

(no subject)

Does anyone know of a good downloadable word processor that will run on a Mac (OSX) and get on well with Word files? Or is that a tall order?

Edit: I've downloaded OpenOffice and will be upgrading to Panther as soon as possible. Thanks to everyone for your help!

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Thanks - you have beaten me to it.
It will indeed handle Word (hawk,spit) files adequately.

Yeah, open office is about the best of the bunch

I've got OpenOffice installed on my Mac.

It seems to work OK, though I don't actually use it as I also have Microsoft Office itself.

Very important question: does it have a word count feature?

It does on Windows. So it is very unlikely that the Mac version does not.
Goto File->Properties and the word count is on dialogue box along with characters, paragraghs and lines.

Yes, File->Properties->Statistics does give a word count on the Mac version.

Looking good so far.

I don't *like* Word, but I use it because a) agents use it, b) publishers use it, c) lots of little magazines (though not Smoke, kudos there) use it, d) the school where I work (which is the only place I can print stuff out) uses it. Sigh. So the next question is, could Word read an OpenOffice file? And if so, how badly will it get mangled?

Sorry that is where things get more difficult. It is possible to save as RTF and edit that in word but any clever formatting will probably be lost. Or you can save as a PDF and print that out most places.

Whoops I am wrong. There is an option to save as word file (95, or 97/2000/XP) but I am not sure that I have ever trusted it enough to use it. :(

The simple answer is kinda. Native Open Office docs can't be handled by Word (what, support the competition?), but Open Office can save as Word docs.

So you just keep everything as docs and it should be fine.

Sigh.

Not only does it need OSX 10.2.something where I have 10.1, it also seems to need about five other pieces of software in order to run at all. Looks like I'm here for the long haul :/

I have Panther CDs, but will any of my files disappear if I reinstall? Stupid question, I know.

I went to Panther from Jaguar (10.2), and had no problem at all. Which was a good job, because it only occurred to me halfway through that I should've backed my stuff up first ;-)

Good stuff. And I've found that all the other bits I need are part of the OO download, so it's not so bad.

But aren't we on Tiger now?

I know little of these things, not having had the ability to download anything bigger than a small text file for many years :)

Panther will be a good step up compared to what I've got, anyway.

The Panther upgrade should be OK, but backing up your data files at least is probably a good idea.

From what I remember, installing OpenOffice was quite easy (though it took a while due to the size).

I think the maiin other thing it needs is the Apple X11 Server (which you can get from Apple, and I think may also be on the Panther discs).

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