Between too much and too little

[tonyvella]

Once in a while I have a project that does not require all the bells and whistles of OO/LO Writer or MS Word but a few more "conveniences" than MS Wordpad. My question is actually two questions:
1. Are there any third-party add-ons for Wordpad to make it a little bit more than next-to-nothing?
2. Is there any alternative word processing software out there that falls somewhere between Word/Writer and Wordpad?

I have "binged" and came up with a zillion offers of stuff that does everything but the only way to find out is to download, install, use and uninstall (leaving all kinds of crap in the registry).

I have come to the experts for advice.
Thanks in advance and regards.

 

[whs]

1. No
2. Try Libre Office writer

 

[tonyvella]

Thanks very much WHS for your reply.
It might have inadvertently escaped your attention that I mentioned LibreOffice in my original post and was asking for something like it but with fewer bells and whistles BUT with more than Wordpad.

 

[whs]

Yeah, Writer escaped my attention, sorry. But it is a good alternative. I use it in Linux all the time. If you have Word, I would use that. It is the best. You need not use all the bells and whistles.

 

[Berton]

I, too, missed your mention of Word/Writer as referring to LibreOffice.

I also use LibreOffice, on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. My first word processor was WordPerfect for Windows 5.1 back in '92, haven't been without it since because it has a few features I find easier to use. There's also the free Apache OpenOffice and the free IBM Lotus Symphony with its WordPro word processor and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet.

 

[whs]

I think Libre Office is the better and more up-to-date version of Open Office.

 

[strollin]

Look into abiword. It's available for many platforms.

 

[Berton]

The only issue I've had for a few clients that used to run Works on WinXP is that OpenOffice 4.x does not have support for the older Works files while LibreOffice 4.x does.

 

[Layback Bear]

Take a look at this and see if it meets your needs and desires.

FREE Word Processor Based on Microsoft's WordPad Engine

 

[strollin]

Take a look at this and see if it meets your needs and desires.

FREE Word Processor Based on Microsoft's WordPad Engine

Great find, Layback!

It even has a portable version so it can be put on a thumbdrive and run from there, no need to install.

 

[Layback Bear]

Glad you like it. I have used it for years. I like it so much I got the pro version.

 

[lonwinters]

I've wrested with this very thing for a long time. My issue is fun. I like a less cluttered application because it seems simpler and more fun. Also, I like faster loading. Yes, it's only 5 more seconds to load Word, but them's the times we live in. Here's what I did.

I created abut five Word templates - not .dot files, just .docx, each with different fonts for headings, sub heads, paragraph, etc. I also created a file containing ordered and unordered lists using each font so I could copy and paste. Finally one more file with various headers and footers.

Also, for each "template" I applied basic formatting that I prefer - such as "no paragraph spacing". So for each new document, I open the one I want and go from there. I just have to remember to do a Save As before starting to type. As an extra precaution, I keep a copied set of my templates.

Did the same thing with Excel.

Note: if you work with anything web based - web page editing and don't want to fire up the main editor, Notepad++ is a nice text editor that does have some basic formatting but show line numbers for code. Thought I'd mention that just in case you may want to try that one out. Plenty of web-based options out there too - both for actual document editing and even things like web mail. I actually like the text editor in WordPress (I just haven't tried converting these into Word, or tried a copy/paste)

Oh, almost forgot. I don't use it much, but the speech to text engine in Win7 works pretty darn good if you ask me. Yeah, I don't generally like people around me listening to my input, but it's cool on occasion. And I'm just using the mic built into my webcam