someone explain to me why there isn’t a decent FREE wordprocessor for OS-X? Note: Neo-office and OpenOffice (with x11) don’t count. Edit: web-based stuff like writely and thinkfree also don’t count. Edit again: I forgot Abiword. It behaves similarly to neo-office only worse. so it also doesn’t count.
It seems that there is enough demand that someone would have developed something natively by now.
wtf.
I need to write my paper and I’m sick of waiting HALF AN HOUR for my mouse-clicks to register in NeoOffice.
Edit for the third time: Let me rephrase my question… I’m not really looking for suggestions on what to use instead of these ones. I’d really like to know why there isn’t a good opensource free alternative for mac like there is with windows and linux. Is it because they have to use java? Is it because mac is hard to program for? are there licensing hurdles that make it hard to write stuff for mac?
I’ve learned the hard way that there are no (legal) alternatives to the problematic options I mentioned above. I’d really like someone smarter than I am to help me understand why.
djwikkid | 01-Jan-01 at 12:00 am | Permalink
maiki_desu | 21-Mar-06 at 1:08 pm | Permalink
you know how to use writely.
of course, that doesn’t answer your question, but it’s a decent alternative, no?
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
writely doesn’t do what I want it to do. it doesn’t do advanced formatting and headers/footers and page numbers and a page-view of the text, etc.
It’s cool, and it’s CLOSE, but not quite.
Same thing with thinkfree. it’s really close, but it’s resource heavy and it’s web-based (which is cool, but what if I need to work offline? what if I need to open documents quickly off of blackboard? I can’t use thinkfree as my main wordprocessor.)
livenolies | 21-Mar-06 at 1:34 pm | Permalink
why doesnt neo-office count?
buddha_x | 21-Mar-06 at 1:49 pm | Permalink
Maybe try abiword?
http://www.abisource.com/screenshots/abi-macosx.jpg
Give up ubuntu?
K
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 1:51 pm | Permalink
because it’s slow and unreliable. It crashes often. I’m assuming that’s because it mixes in java.
It also does things like change the keyboard shortcuts into windows/linux similar ones. It’s basically not designed to actually be part of OS-X… it’s trying really hard, but it’s really slow, and I’m not joking about it taking FOREVER for it to register mouse-clicks in menus, or context-menu popups and all that stuff.
I don’t know why it does that… I don’t really understand the details of it’s design. I just know that as a user, it doesn’t work well enough for me.
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 1:52 pm | Permalink
ubuntu is still awesome.
I just can’t use it on my ibook (no wireless).
Plus there are a variety of reasons to stick with Tiger, considering that I legally own it, and it’s awesome.
And, yeah i just remembered Abiword just before you commented. same problems as with neo-office.
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 2:03 pm | Permalink
you’re much much smarter than me… I rephrased my question, and maybe you can help me understand why os-x wordprocessing is the way it is…?
maiki_desu | 21-Mar-06 at 2:34 pm | Permalink
ah, formatting. well ok. I rarely use such features, so i guess i never thought of it :P
buddha_x | 21-Mar-06 at 3:26 pm | Permalink
I’ve no idea why there’s no Word Processor for OS X, except that the OS is probably just too new, and because it’s proprietary. There really wasn’t one for windows for years and years either, not until Star Office sold their app to Sun who eventually open sourced it. Abiword came out about then, too, but most of the WPs for linux were proprietary.
So I’m thinking it’s just a timing thing, and, I’m thinking that the Apple products are just cheap enough (and nice enough) that peoples’ itches are sufficiently scratched. Most open source people use the Mac to code for other platforms (like web programming), or even to make Apps for the Mac, but not to make the Mac more complete (like they might for Gnome). And people who write code are just as happy using DocBook or LaTeX for documentation, and those tools are free!
Matter of culture, I’m guessing. Sound reasonable? Basially, I don’t know. But since I’ve been to school, I get to say that using lots of paragraphs!
durandal1707 | 21-Mar-06 at 3:36 pm | Permalink
IMO it’s because apple has been including Appleworks, and now Pages, with new computers, and most mac users are satified with apple’s offering. that, and your question includes “open-source” which historically hasn’t been big on mac developers’ agendas.
it’s probably no coincidence that all the open-source apps you listed were developed cross-platform from the start. maybe try one that was made just for macs? something like Nisus, or Mariner Write… these are shareware, but so is a lot of free mac software. or google “mac word processor” and do an exhaustive search.
i’m not sure there really is a reason, though. i’m personally not motivated to develop an open-source mac word processor…
djwikkid | 21-Mar-06 at 3:36 pm | Permalink
I think the main reasons you don’t have as many options on the mac as you would a pc are:
you have to actually own a mac to test stuff out on. you could get a pc for $300 if you know what you’re doing, macs are much more expensive. not all coders make $100k ;)
for years PCs have always been more of a “project” environment. you can open it up, swap out parts, build your own, install any os you want (besides macos), customize it to your liking. macs have been sold as polished solutions, and i think that discourages developers from tinkering with them.
you have more of an audience to develop for if you write for a pc
free software on a mac? we are talking about the target audience that will pay an extra $50 if the product has an “i” in it’s name, yes?
mac’s whole thing is built on “things just working”. that’s very daunting if you’re a developer, because things have bugs. personally speaking, if i wrote code on a pc, i’d feel comfortable saying “hey, it’s not perfect, here’s the source, fix it if you like”. whereas on a mac I would think the majority of users would through a fit if something didn’t work exactly the way it “should” ;)
but yeah, send me $500 for a mac mini or a good torrent for osx-x86 and i’ll gladly write you some software :)
vanbeast | 21-Mar-06 at 3:53 pm | Permalink
I don’t understand. What are the “good” alternatives for Windows and Linux that don’t exist on the mac?
There are native ports of at least a few of the cross-platform OSS office suites. Just search for their name and osx native.
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 4:52 pm | Permalink
OpenOffice is the alternative that I ideally want to have on my ibook, and I want similar stability, reliability and speed, but it doesn’t happen that way with neo-office or the OO+x11 option.
I know, I know… I’ve been told I’m just being a whiny cheap bitch, but being a poor English major, I need something free, and as feature-full as OO or Word, (and I need it right now).
What did you use on your ibook? Do you still have one?
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 4:56 pm | Permalink
My ibook didn’t come packaged with any software like Pages or Appleworks. So… I’ve got to find alternatives.
And, believe me, i’ve done several exhaustive google searches for os-x word processors, and there are no options that compare with OpenOffice (on linux/windows) that are free. That’s what inspired this post!
vanbeast | 21-Mar-06 at 5:02 pm | Permalink
If NO or OOo aren’t running well on your laptop, something is probably wrong. How old is your iBook, how much RAM do you have, and what OSX are you running? Which X server are you running? How long since you installed your OS? Did you do an upgrade or a clean install?
I’ve got a powerbook, but I don’t do any word processing on it. If I did I’d probably use NO or OOo. Maybe AbiWord.
Really, if none of those options work for you, the problem is likely on your end. I’ve used both NO and OOo without troubles in the past.
vanbeast | 21-Mar-06 at 5:03 pm | Permalink
(you could always be a Real Man and use tex :D)
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 5:42 pm | Permalink
my ibook is about a year old, has 512mb of ram, I’m running Tiger, and I just reinstalled in January. At the time I did a clean install because I was playing with dual-booting with ubuntu, and then reformatted to remove all that I’d done. When I go home, I’ll install the x11 that comes on the Tiger dvd, since that’s what OO people say to do. I would try that right now, just to see if it would work for this paper, but the DVD is at home and Tiger-happy x11 isn’t available on apple’s website.
When I was using panther, I used open office with x11 and it was the one I was told to install by the osx instructions available through apple. At that time, i switched to neooffice because running x11 (I assume) on top of OO made it hard for me to have more than a few things open at a time, plus I needed japanese input to work and it didn’t work in x11 and OO.
When I was using Panther and neooffice, I had the same types of response-time problems and infrequent crashes (characterized by things like scrolling up and down breaking, or complete freeze-ups) that I’m having now.
It’s very likely that the problems are on my end, but I don’t have any fellow mac users who DON’T PIRATE MICROSOFT WORD with whom to compare with. I also don’t think that it’s a problem with my system because other than NeoOffice, everything is really stable.
And yeah, your below comment. I want to learn how to use LaTex, but it apparently can’t handle MLA format for papers, plus that’s not something I think I could learn in the next few hours. It’s on my list of things to do though. For shizzle.
vanbeast | 21-Mar-06 at 6:00 pm | Permalink
NeoOffice is sorta crap. It was crap when I checked on it a year or so ago and from all accounts it still appears to be.
OOo/x11 should be pretty good. If you’re going to end up doing a lot of word processing here, it might be worth it to bite the bullet, save up for a while, and buy Pages. It’s really sweet from what I’ve seen. I used it for a couple of weeks with the demo that came on my powerbook.
Who said anything about latex? Fancy froufrou stuff ;) (note, I’m not hardcore enough to use any flavor of tex). As I understand it, it’s just a markup language that you then translate into postscript or whatever, so making it support MLA format (or any other format) should just be a matter of googling for someone who has already done so.
buddha_x | 21-Mar-06 at 6:10 pm | Permalink
I think there is an MLA package for LaTeX out there somewhere. I think I sent you a link to it once.
http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/mla-paper/
He’s got a template and everything. But, yeah, the biggest hurdle will be setting it up on the Mac, and I bet that’s probably pretty easy by now. Not to mention someone’s probably got a handy editor just for it.
Might be interesting to try over the break. I’ve got books if you need ‘em.
Good overview of Mac Options, with lots of screenshots!
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/02/03/latex.html
durandal1707 | 21-Mar-06 at 6:11 pm | Permalink
just get appleworks from a friend or something. if your ibook is a year old, it definitely had appleworks with it when it left apple hq.
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 6:45 pm | Permalink
that’s really really cool.
and yeah, this conversation is going way over my head because I don’t know ANYTHING about latex at all…
starladear6 | 21-Mar-06 at 6:48 pm | Permalink
actually, no it didn’t. but this will quickly become a he-said/she-said argument. it didn’t come with any packaged software at all. I bought the least expensive ibook available to students. It has textedit, and that’s it really.
And I don’t have any friends who have legal copies of purchased mac software to share.
durandal1707 | 21-Mar-06 at 7:16 pm | Permalink
sorry for not being your friend :(
durandal1707 | 21-Mar-06 at 7:17 pm | Permalink
er, i mean, i do have this legal copy of appleworks here that believe it or not came with my imac, that i’d be willing to share with you
procyon112 | 22-Mar-06 at 12:49 pm | Permalink
Aye.
I am a dev. If I am going to write closed source to a closed source API, because that’s how I make my money, I am going to write to Windows because it has the largest market share. If I am going to write something I need and don’t plan to sell it, I write it to open standards and it runs great on Linux, and I can generally get it to go on other OS’s. There is no way I am going to write to a closed standard for a non-existance market share. If OSX has trouble dealing with X, GTK, SWT, or Swing, then they better implement the Win32 or it’s tough patooties, I’m not going to spend tens of thousands of dollar-hours implementing to a non standard with no market share to speak of.
In addition, there is already OOo. It runs, it’s decent, it’s gotten much better in the latest release, it goes on my 800Mhz p3 w/ 512MB running Gentoo just fine, as well as my WinXP box, so I would honestly prefer that no one write any other MS Office “clones” so that the mindshare of the community stays focused on the one we have. Either support the working projects or do something innovative; the world doesn’t need “Yet Another Word”.
procyon112 | 22-Mar-06 at 12:53 pm | Permalink
I tried out LyX a while back and it was a pretty nice document editor for tex. It’s *not* a word processor though. It has a much more docbook style pardigm.
djwikkid | 22-Mar-06 at 1:24 pm | Permalink
Well put. On one hand, a word processing suite NEEDS to function like what’s currently being taught in schools, used in business, and countless web applications ranging from online word processors to CMSes. On the other hand, there’s GOT to be a better way to approach word processing than Word. With still being user friendly enough to have my mom use it (sorry, no TeX) ;)
starladear6 | 22-Mar-06 at 2:01 pm | Permalink
ok wow um… thanks for explaining. I feel like running off to hide now because it sounds like I’ve been totally reprimanded or at the very least someone is rolling their eyes at me for being a whiny girl who didn’t understand and just wants things…
Yeah, well said. Makes sense.thanks.
question answered… :)
*hides*
procyon112 | 22-Mar-06 at 5:59 pm | Permalink
No need to hide :) It never hurts to ask.
Actually, alot of people *do* work on OSS projects to closed APIs, but typically not enough people to get a good product out the door because most developers feel more like I do on the matter.
Cygwin is an example of a project that is in that vein and successfull.
nhuisman | 11-Apr-06 at 3:09 pm | Permalink
LOL, legal my ass :P
starladear6 | 11-Apr-06 at 5:27 pm | Permalink
legal my ass?
I own it! I don’t care where YOU got it from. it was a gift! I’ll send the feds to you, byotch. :) :) :)
Anyway, I’m dual-booting with Dapper as soon as it comes out. I heard a rumor that there are working drivers for the airport card.
Penny Hero (dot) Net :: OpenOffice to become a native Mac App!! | 30-Aug-06 at 5:04 pm | Permalink
[…] I’ve blogged about my wordprocessor pain before and it resulted in some big discussion, which basically added up to “you’re screwed because no one writes FOSS for OSX. […]