Favorite writing software?

**venustar** · January 25th, 2010, 09:15 AM

I'm in the stone ages, I suppose. I still use MS Word on my PC. It's not as though it is my "favorite"...it is just what I have always used. I hadn't realized the plethora of word processing software out there. Doesn't surprise me though. Maybe I'll check out some of the others. Tell me, are these freeware?

**shevdon** · January 25th, 2010, 09:29 AM

Originally Posted by Tristis

I'm surprised by the concept that any of these programs can't handle novel length files. None of mine has ever had a problem with large files.

Apologies if I gave the impression that Word cannot handle large files. I'm sure it can if you have it configured correctly but that's part of my problem with it. I don't want to have to plough through multiple options screens looking for settings. I just want it to work.

To be fair, Word is intended as a multi-purpose tool, a jack of all trades. It's not aimed at writing novels. It's for letters and essays and project reports.

What Word definitely doesn't handle well is multiple files. My latest project has 28 files of about 5,000 words each. If you have all of them open in Word you have a problem finding anything. Then try searching for certain word or phrase across all 28 files. See what I mean? Finally, have a go at printing all 28 files in sequence with contiguous page numbering through all the files.

This sounds demanding, but RoughDraft does all of these things out of the box, which is why I use it.

On a Mac I have yet to find an equivalent to RD. The Bean is a great word crafting tool, but it doesn't handle large numbers of open files either. It is the best thing I've found on a mac for editing RTFs, though, and it has a beautifully clean interface.

I have tried YWriter and found it too complex in the way everything has meta-data attached to it. I was trying to use it as a writing tool, though. It never occurred to me that it was really intended as a project organiser.

Bottom line? Use whatever gets the job done for you. I'm not saying everyone should use RoughDraft or YWriter or any other program, I'm just saying it's an option.

Take a look for yourself and see what you think.

**shevdon** · January 25th, 2010, 09:31 AM

Originally Posted by venustar

I'm in the stone ages, I suppose. I still use MS Word on my PC. It's not as though it is my "favorite"...it is just what I have always used. I hadn't realized the plethora of word processing software out there. Doesn't surprise me though. Maybe I'll check out some of the others. Tell me, are these freeware?

Both RoughDraft and YWriter are free, though I think you can donate if you find it useful.

**goldhawk** · January 25th, 2010, 09:32 AM

Originally Posted by venustar

I'm in the stone ages, I suppose. I still use MS Word on my PC. It's not as though it is my "favorite"...it is just what I have always used. I hadn't realized the plethora of word processing software out there. Doesn't surprise me though. Maybe I'll check out some of the others. Tell me, are these freeware?

OpenOffice is FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software). So is AbiWord.

AbiWord is a fully featured word processor which takes less time to load than OpenOffice.

**venustar** · January 25th, 2010, 09:38 AM

Hey, thanks guys! I think I'm going to give it a go.

**Cantukeeslim** · January 28th, 2010, 11:55 PM

Scrivener is a nice program for Mac.

It used to be free, but it looks like it's $40 these days.

It was great when I had it. I lost it on a hard drive crash.