Alternatives to Word/MS Office

[Charles Martin]

> From: marina <marina at reliance.it>
> English not being my native
> language doesn't help, of course

Your english in these posts is better than most native-speaking posters 
on this list! :)

> I confess I am still stumped.  Taking into account my "sharing" needs
> only - and I've had no problems, so far, sharing documents from my
> Mac with Windoz users - what exactly makes MS Office v.X a better
> choice than MS Office 98, which I already have and can run as a
> Classic app?

 From that perspective only, NOTHING. MS Office 98 should be able to 
meet your needs, at least until MS changes the format of Word documents 
next year.

But Office 2001 and Office v.X are much improved over Office 98, with 
many new features (quite a few STILL unique to the Mac platform!), and 
thus it makes sense -- particularly if you are doing this for money -- 
to lay aside your prejudice and spend the (very modest) upgrade 
dollars.

> I call this "draft sharing", and the only complexity in this type of
> documents are "raw tables" (i.e., tab-delimited text, using one or
> more of the paragraph or inline styles of the template). So far, I
> have been able to achieve this very satisfactorily using Office 98 on
> Mac OS 9.2.
>
> More complex formatting requirements (headers/footers, page/section
> numbering, footnotes/endnotes, fully formatted tables etc.) only
> apply to documents where further editing is not required - so in a
> way, I believe I am in a privileged position here. What I am trying
> to understand, is whether I'll have to rely on Word for this, too, or
> whether other and better options are open.
>
You'll need Word or something mature enough to handle these "complex 
features" in order to DO those requirements, but once you've done them 
you can simply send people a PDF of the result.

Bottom line: at present I don't think there is anything better than MS 
Word *for what you require.*

> Having used it for many years, I find it a
> nerve-wrecking tool, which wants to "do everything for me" with no
> consideration for my real needs.

Absolutely accurate description. I hate Word myself, but what we're 
addressing here is your need to access what in the word-processing 
world would be considered some very high-end features. To the best of 
my knowledge, that limits you to the following word processors:

1. Word
2. Framemaker
3. TEX

And since only the first one is fully compatible with Word for Windoze, 
there's really no option. As to whether you can stay with Word 98 for 
the time being, the answer is yes -- but be aware that the next version 
of Word for Windows is going to CHANGE THE FORMAT of the way Word saves 
documents (so they say), which will probably wreak havoc with your plan 
to stay with Word 98 indefinitely.

_Chas_

Mnemonic of the Year: ABBA -- Anybody But Bush Again.
http://www.abbaparty.com