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Programs will come and go, whether commercial or not. What was more important to me was that the data I created was easily accessible by other programs should the need arise to replace what I was using. I've been burned a few times by using a word processor that was discontinued, and being stuck for trying to get my writings out of the files in which my work contained. Going from Wordperfect to Word to other word processors has been a pain. Whenever many programs are updated, their proprietary file formats also undergo a change that often means no backwards compatibility. This, too, can be a pain. Image processing programs (e.g. Photoshop, GIMP, Painter, etc.) have the same issues.

I finally learned to focus on programs that save in a format that is openly accessible to other programs. Or even better, store that data in a "human readable" format such as XML. When XML-based, it is a simple matter to write a script in PHP or Python to strip my data from the file and save it in another format that another program can use.

Learn to save backup files in formats that are open for other programs to access. Focus on programs that save to open formats that can either be used by other programs or in the event of an emergency, you can extract your work from the file manually. A good example of this in a word processor is Redler's Mellel. Their "native" format is a zip-compressed XML file, similar in concept to an EPUB file. Microsoft's DOCX file is also an XML file that can have the data extracted by a shell script if needed.

If you want a REALLY REALLY GOOD wordprocessor for Macs give Mellel a shot. OpenType support has been included forever, plus tons of other high end features.
And it costs pretty much nothing $49)

Mellel is the best word processor for scientific writing I've ever seen. Its main advantage is stability (of the program and of the layout). One downside is, that it doesn't have a formula generator, but you could use either Grapher or LaTeX Equation Editor to do the job. Here are a few links: On equations on the Mac and Mellel's Homepage

Here, fixed that broken link for you: Mellel

Writing my doctoral dissertation in Word back in 2003 was a repeated lesson in pain

Wow, I feel your pain. After Word couldn't reliably handle a small 100-page thesis I wrote, I switched to Mellel for the rest of my time as a student. Highly recommended. Does everthing a dissertation needs, is easy to use, looks nice, and is fast.

XMLMind + DocBook might also be a good option.

But please, whatever you do, avoid Word at all cost. It's just not suitable for this kind of writing.

http://www.redlers.com/downloadtemplate.html

Last time I did a research paper

I use Mellel for papers and the like. If the thing you're writing is highly structured (wich chapters and footnotes and endnotes and citations), nothing beats Mellel, in my opinion. It's small, cheap, fast, and does everything you would want, easily. Rearrange chapters? Drag and drop them in the outline. Change the font of all second level chapters? Easy. Multiple languages? No problem, even mixing rtl and ltr.

I know I sound like a shill, but I'm actually a paying customer and have no ties - financial or otherwise - to the company making Mellel. Check the app out. It's one of the reasons I use a Mac.

And that is precisely the problem. Your increase in speed has absolutely nothing to do with the latest NeoOffice build, and everything to do with your Intel Mac. In 100% of the cases that I have heard NeoOffice users claiming that NeoOffice has improved, it is because they upgraded to an Intel Mac. Hello?! (And by the way, gasoline must really have improved recently, because I can suddenly drive a lot faster after I upgraded my '84 Honda Civic to a '07 T-bird).

That's great for you. I envy you. But there are a ton of G4's out there that cannot use NeoOffice. Even on my 1.6Ghz G4 (note: the fastest G4 available), NeoOffice is barely usable. Not only does it start slow, the whole interface is a slug. I can run Office 2000 via VirtualPC faster than I can run NeoOffice natively. I am not kidding. I tested it.

The newest Java-Cocoa version of NeoOffice is no faster than the older Java-Carbon versions. It just looks prettier. (Oh, and it has docx and VBA support, ripped from other projects, which will soon be in the trunk anyway. Please.) If the OOo port had reliable font and printer support (and no, the fondue kludge is nowhere near reliable) I would gladly use it's ugly X11 interface for all my work. For word processing, though, I gave up and bought Mellel.

I would posit the latter. Look at some of the ODBC problems in M$ products for Apple. The problems have been around for ages and M$ has no plans to fix them, and hasn't fixed them despite new releases. The solution promoted is to ditch Apple. That company doesn't appear to treat Windows users any better, so my solution, however, was to ditch M$ and that has worked quite well.

Yes, the M$ Office for Apple has been profitable, but another reason for M$ to keep it around would be to maintain the lock on the office file formats. So to drop it now is probably just trying to force the few into Windows and thus the InfoPath / MS OOXML lock-in. IMHO, it's a premature move and will cost them.

There are a quite a few options, that are in most ways better, though different. The weakest points, which could go away in short order, are the file formats. The M$ formats are still undocumented and only some on the list below fully support OpenDocument, though that number is rapidly growing.

• Neooffice
• Mariner Write, Mariner Calc
• Abiword
• NisusWriter
• ThinkFree
• Mellel
• OpenOffice.org (still needs X11, I'm fine with that myself since I use X11 anyway, but others may not be)
• iWork (includes Keynote)

That's just focusing on word processors. There is a similar range of choice for spreadsheets and presentation graphics. Now see how important control of those file formats is.

I don't believe any of them is any better in the quality department.

I'm with Fred_A above on this one. If you can't tell the difference between (La)TeX output and Word, you're not looking. The output from LaTeX, typesetting wise, is top notch--ligatures are used, interword spacing is precisely controlled, the whole thing is polished. In Word, attempting to do full justification results in huge interword gaps, making the page harder to read and visually distracting. Even with OpenType fonts, Word (at least on my Mac) can't do a ligature. I note that even the $49 Mellel gets ligatures right.

For another Mac Word alternative, take a look at Mellel http://www.redlers.com/

Imports and exports Word documents, is fast for large documents, has excellent formatting and organization options, fairly inexpensive. I'm goofy about it.

Someone has already done that but it's for the Mac platform and it's called Mellel. They have made no effort at all to ape Microsoft Word. They have made a lot of great design decisions. To everyone who starts to cry "but existing Word users will never get used to the interface" the answer is "too bad. This software isn't for them. This software is for writers who want it done right." Mellel

I use Mellel, which is not open source (I don't think), but is shareware. It is pretty sleek looking, runs fast, and I haven't had a problem with it. Customer support is great.

It seems like the main users of Mellel are people needing multilingual support, especially for things like Hebrew (reading the other way) and Japanese, Arabic, etc. It also integrates with some of the bibliography software out there. And I'm pretty damn sure it reads in .doc files.

Personally I don't find NeoOffice/J, the Mac version of OpenOffice, very good, but a lot of people seem to like it. I went for a word processor called Mellel, which is rather inexpensive and which I find works quite nicely.

At http://www.redlers.com/ there is a pretty good word processor written in cocoa and is pretty quick. I am evaluating it now, and it looks good for school oriented stuff too. $29 on sale...

I don't word-process very much, but for Mac users there is one great option available for "I just want to write" types: Mellel. It's got tables, styles, footnotes/endnotes, and multilingual support -- all the power features "normal people" use in Word and none of the chrome. All for under thirty bucks, which is a darned good value and (I'm sure) an improvement on Word 5.1 by any measure.

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing your broad-scoped experience to qualify the "ease-of-use" factor across so many platforms.

If you make Linux better than windows and keep it free, it will become more popular.

I agree with you completely. This thread has made me rethink the problems that are faced with ease-of-use and I've finally seen an example that is headed in the "right" (IMHO) direction.

Mellel, simply as an example off the top of my head, strikes me as a really fresh alternative to MS Word which has in it's default configuration become too sophisticated for the general public. In contrast, Mellel is sleek, trim, and different -- too different at first glance, and perhaps not the silver bullet to word processing, but it's a fairly different approach towards creating character based documents.

This type of simplicity would appeal to me from an "appliance" perspective. Turn on, click a button, start typing my letter. Turn on, click a button, get my news.

Take away the desktop metaphor. Take away DLLs, packages, tarballs, etc...

Keep it free.

Bundle it with hardware that makes money for the manufacturer.

Then, package it in a colorful, appealing way similar to the AOL CD cases.

That's my take on beating Microsoft's market share.

Um, this looks like a screenshots page to me.

For those who need a good, basic word processor with advanced language and academic style features, it's hard to beat mellel. Check it out at redlers.com. Cost is $29 shareware, so you can't beat the price, and it is definitely much better than MS "I reformat every document to make it not really Turabian because 'it looks like you are trying to write a letter!'" Word.

I've been using Frame for about 5 years on Mac and Windoze: documenting software, writing scholarly papers, and some modestly-creative writing. Some of the things I have done I don't think I could have done in any other software. I know (La)TeX, I know OO.org, but I'd have bought Frame for OS X without hesitation -- I *loved* it.

TeX is wonderful, Knuth is a god. But try getting your support people to write doc & tutorials in it. And try thinking that a non-technical dissertation looks like it'll ever be publishable staring at that sort of markup, even if it is in a nice OS X GUI like TeXShop. If using TeX, however, I do like (the idea of) the Cocoa-app Bibdesk.

I'm hopeful for OO.org, but, well, I don't like it, not yet. Maybe it reminds me too much of my year using M$Word, maybe it's too slow, maybe that download took too long, or the project too seemingly amorphous. I also like the promise of things like the Pybliographer project and it's plug-in for OO.org.

What I use for (scholarly) writing now on OS X: Mellel. It doesn't have all of Frame's page-formatting features yet, but it seems to be on the right track with OpenType for broad language support. They seem really eager to ensure that those who like Frame and Nota Bene will be happy in their app. As for a nice writing experience on OS X most similar to Frame, this seems the best chance.

Mellel is a word processor for OS X that is made by and Israeli company which supports right-to-left languages including Hebrew. It's very well designed and attractive (aside from the logo) but it's a proprietary format and the RTF export is lacking. I'm sure these will be improved in future updates. Oh, it's $25.

When I am the only one who will have to edit a document, I use Mellel, which is a superb word processor with excellent Hebrew and Arabic support, but when the goal is portability, Word becomes the only choice. There are and have been many word processors that can handle Hebrew on Mac OS X and other systems, but Word remains a stumbling block, because that's what most people use.

Oddly enough, a really good word processor for the Mac platform is made by an Israeli company. If you own a Mac, do yourself a favor and check out Mellel. It has full Hebrew support (which I don't need). I've used it some and it does what it's supposed to do.

The key thing it doesn't do: work with Microsoft documents. Oh, yeah, and you can forget typing in equations and whatnot (but how many people in the real world really need to do that?).

Maybe it's just a way of giving a benefit to the local software market. Mellel, produced by Redlers is an excellent Mac word processor written with Hebrew and other right-to-left scripts in mind (I have no affiliation with the company).

Most importantly, however, it handles Hebrew like a dream (it was written by two Israeli programmers), as well as a huge number of other languages with different requirements -- such as Arabic and Persian. I find Mellel "just works" in the way Mac OS X does.

Check it out. I'm gushing because Mellel is one of the few bits of "real" Shareware that I use every day for something important, and it does the job amazingly well.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Israeli government told MS where to stick it and bought in bulk from RedleX?

Most importantly, however, it handles Hebrew like a dream (it was written by two Israeli programmers), as well as a huge number of other languages with different requirements -- such as Arabic and Persian. I find Mellel "just works" in the way Mac OS X does.

Check it out. I'm gushing because Mellel is one of the few bits of "real" Shareware that I use every day for something important, and it does the job amazingly well.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Israeli government told MS where to stick it and bought in bulk from RedleX?

It's gorgeous, functional, truly multilingual, and rocks my world. It looks like bloody iTunes, which sounds wacky, but actually works astoundingly well. And its $25.

However, I take my writing apps very seriously. For most of my (Mac) friends, I say use TextEdit. It is truly MacWrite reincarnated. Totally dead simple, but with the features you actually need: spell check, ligatures, smart quotes, a tab ruler, Find + Replace, and not a whole hell of a lot else. Oh, well one other thing: the Panther version reads Word docs.

Actually this is not so big a deal - it didn't work natively under Aqua/Quartz, so we haven't lost out on much.

That being said, there are existing commercial non-Microsoft solutions. Mariner Software has decent word processor and spreadsheet software available for a reasonable price. Redlers has a nice little word processor for a shareware price.

The thing is, Mac users have (or used to have) a tendency to monitor what's available for their platform. It comes from being treated like the bastard stepchild of the neighboring axe-murderer by the rest of the computer community.

They've got one - it's called RTF. It's pretty much embedded in the system. If that's not good enough, there's also the option to encode documents as PDF. Additionally, you have XML.

Admittedly, these won't cover every application under the sun, but they can certainly handle the most common of office application requirements.

The way the programming environment is set up, you don't really need Open Office for OS X, since the native classes can build a word processor or a spreadsheet with very little effort.

Take a look at Mellel. If you can ignore the hype about all the new, innovative features (which is pretty much marketing hyperbole), something like that can be cooked up in a weekend or two without much coding at all. And it will be able to save in a format that's readily interpreted by some other application on just about every platform.