Myriad Ways to Work & Play With Words
The scope of tools for the creation and processing of words.

Rants, Raves and Revelations – April 2007
By Harry {doc} Babad

Introduction
This article, one of two I’m writing for this issue will introduce you to the large variety of tools work working with words, Identify both sources of lists of such tools and speak to their purpose.

My second article will summarize the tools we’ve reviewed that fit the word processing tools categories I’ve defined and provide you a quick entrée into the commercial or shareware tools we both like and use.

For those of us at macCompanion, there has always been elusiveness in the meaning or scope of tools for word or text processing software. This vagueness occurs in part because there are so many ways to process plan or formatted text, and a bunch of reasons to do so. Our confusion is also fostered by the number of ways developers identify the function of their products, despite the fact that differently labeled products have comparable functionality.

Note: In my articles, I often refer to both the MacUpdate, now newly reconfigured to be more accessible, and the Version Tracker sites. I use these to troll for software product to test and perhaps keep. I’d like to add a newly discovered site, called Pure Mac http://www.pure-mac.com/ that tabulates and gives a brief description of “all the software you really need.” The site does not however rate the software products, for ratings you have to search elsewhere.

Word and Text Procession Thoughts — When you think of word processing software, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Words? [Section quoted from Cindy Krushenisky’s article At The Office, August 1993 • Vol.4 Issue 8: http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?
article=articles/1993/aug93/93n0815.asp&
articleid=5937&guid=%5D/.

“Well, they shouldn’t. Word processing programs no longer mean just words. Many high-quality programs can do more for your computer than turn it into a glorified typewriter that allows you solely to type letters.

“Besides letting you create, manipulate, format and print text-based documents, many word processing programs let you separate text in columns, add unique fonts and colors, as well as create or import drawings and clip art for your reports, newsletters and correspondence. In addition, many word processing programs have their own dictionaries, grammar checkers and thesauruses to make sure the text that you have composed is properly spelled and applied.”

In addition, there are a large number of both integrated [MS Office and Open Office] stand-alone tools [See Image] that allow you to use words better for focusing your documents, letters and other word containing products. Do these products belong in out focused editions? It depends! Your choice, don’t like my categories, pick your own. The information for you to explore further is provided on page 184.

Category Questions - To Include or Not to Include?
• Should we include dictionaries, thesauri and grammar checkers in our focus on word processing? I believe so.

• How about mind-mapping software, to-do lists or information organizers? For the sake of the April and May issues of macCompanion, no not really. However, if you’d like to gain an appreciation of the broad variety of such software checkout the Personal Information Manager [PIMs] category Pure-Mac Site http://www.pure-mac.com/pims.html.

• Word puzzles and games, think Scrabble or Crossword Forge, fall outside our focus.

• Typing Tutors fall outside my focus but software that auto corrects or auto completes you words does not.

• How about software that allows you to make business cards, label CDs or generate great posters or layouts. Doc says no.

• I was torn by the question of whether outliners belonged in this word-text processing category. I decided yes, but without a strong rationale. Pure Mac site whose table I’ve provide above, lists outliners under PIMS, but I use these tools for setting the logic for complex documents and usually when using a stand-along version, port the outline in to MS Word. [Perhaps more important, I’m reviewing OPAL, the grandson of ACTA Outliner for this issue, and simply wanted to belong.]

The Categories of the Beast — The best of two compendia e.g., list collections] of the software that interests us in this April and the upcoming May editions of macC can be found at http://www.pure-mac.com/textword.html/ under the heading Text Editors & Word Processors. The categories included in the Pure Mac listing include products that provide support for Bibliographic software, OCR, PDF, spell checkers, TeX [See the end note], text editors, text utilities, text viewers, and word processors.

The second source of information, other than googling for items in each category is the discussion in the Wikipedia, but of course they include software from those other platforms.

Some of you may be uncomfortable that I’ve excluded page layout programs such as Adobe Illustrator, Belight’s Swift Publisher, Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. However, many authors I know create the copy they want to layout in other programs that are both easier to use and more focused on getting the words down right! These are programs that add the prettiness factor design to catch they eye of the reader.

Finally, with the advent of Web 2.0, whatever that turns out to be, there are many tools such as word processors, dictionaries and thesauri found on the web. [E.g., Google Writely www.writely.com, the dictionary.com or dict.org sites.]

And a Bit of Enlightenment From Wikipedia
[Most of what follows in this section is directly quoted from the source (link) provided. Some of the material was reformatted to meet the needs of this article.]

Word Processing — The referenced Wikipedia site contains a bare-bone list of word processors all provided with links to other Wikipedia articles. Note: Documents created by a word processor generally contain file format-specific “control characters” beyond what is defined in the character set. These enable functions like bold, italic, fonts, columns, tables, etc. These and other common page formatting symbols were once associated only with desktop publishing but are now commonplace in the simplest word processor.

The word-processing categories that Wikipedia lists include Free/Open Source software, Proprietary (e.g., commercial) products, freeware, and online products. The article also includes a lengthy list of historical products that are mostly unsupported or perhaps even unused. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processors This list, which I both scanned and randomly clicked contains a few errors (e.g., Word perfect 3.5e for the Macintosh is not included) but serves as a good overall departure point for any word processing user.

In addition to the clickable list for each software title, there is there are tables that provide general information about 36 selected word processors and their characteristics. The feature comparisons (characteristics) are confined to the availability of grammar checking; graphic editing, mail merging and spell check capability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_word_processors/.

Operating systems related information for the selected programs is provided for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, BSD, BeOS/Zeta, MorphOS, OpenVMS, ReactOS, SkyOS and UNIX. Finally this excellent resources
provided details of both the import and export capabilities of AbiWord, KWord,
LyX, MS Word, OpenOffice.org Writer, Papyrus, Ted and Word Perfect.

Text Editors — A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files. Text editors are often provided with operating systems [e.g., TextEdit for Macintosh OS X] or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code.

In a manner comparable to the Wikipedia treatment of Word Processing Programs, the articles tabulates and provide information for a large variety of Graphical and Text User Interface products. Checkout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_editors/

If you want more information on the general capabilities of Text Processors, checkout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors/.
The article contains details information on:

• The Differences — Plain text files vs. word processor files
• History of and types of text editors.
• Finally there is a good discussion of typical features of text editors. The later includes: Search and replace, copy, cut and paste, undo and redo, as well as Importing and filtering.
  

Office Suites — The ability to work with text in a variety of ways, as compared to either numbers (spreadsheets) or graphics is often an integral part of office suites, integrated collections of software that serve a variety of functions. In computing, an, office suite, sometimes called an office application suite or productivity suite is a software suite intended to be used by typical clerical and knowledge workers. The components are generally distributed together, have a consistent user interface and usually can interact with each other, sometimes in ways that the operating system would not normally allow.

Typical kinds of application sets may include a: word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application, and an email program. Other modules released by developers also may contain flowchart tools, drawing (bitmap/vector), or formula creation: mathematics/chemistry. Then there are suites that may focus on data management, project management, desktop publishing, web design or just the act of collaboration.

The tables in the article compare general and technical information for a number of office suites. The Wikipedia tables only include systems that are widely used and currently available. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_office_suites

Other Processing of Words Related Tools — I’ve chosen not to add discussions, from Wikipedia or elsewhere on the categories:

• Bibliographic (reference management) software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliographic_Software
• Optical character recognition tools [OCR —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition/
• Portable document format (PDF) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/
• Spell and grammar checkers, or text utilities such as thesauri.
• Nor have I dealt here with outliners but Wikipedia has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner/

But the few links I’ve provided should tide you over spring’s rainy days and provide you with added choices to express your self in the printed word.

In Closing
There are some great and not so great tools out there for dealing with words. [That’s why you read macCompanion and the download sites that publisher product reviews.] In this article I’ve attempted to give you a broad first look at the tools of the trade and provide you with Internet links to information that helps you explore further. No one site whether print or solely electronic can give you everything you want in support of using the best writing tools for you. Explore alternate tools to those you’re are now using. Be brave, the results my pleasantly surprise you.

You can certainly gain additional insight about such writing tools by googling say perhaps Macintosh Spell Checkers [1,260,000 Hits] or Macintosh outliners - 494,000 hits which includes Ted Goranson’s fine articles at, http://www.atpm.com/. You can even study the history of such tools and their underlying principles by googling [e.g., history of word processing.]

If you just looking to find out what tools exist keep these categories and their associated links close. The linked articles will help you check whether you’d like tools other than those that came with your operating system or computer. Or perhaps for home use, tools other than those that were chosen by your school or company. If your present spelling checker or thesaurus sucks, there are lots tools more out there that play nice with your Macintosh.

Harry doc_Babad

TeX – An end note — TeX is a typesetting language. Instead of visually formatting your text, you type your text combined with commands in a plain text file. That file is your TeX source. You then use TeX to produce the final layout. Contrary to a normal word processor, the source and the output are basically separated in two different files. For more information check out http://ii2.sourceforge.net/tex-index.html/

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