Talk:Comparison of word processor programs

Bean is not open source anymore

FYI (sorry but I don't know how to edit the table by myself) 178.198.83.160 (talk)

OpenOffice cannot write or read RTF

The formats table is incorrect, because OpenOffice can not read or write RTF files ... correctly. Broken support is the same as no support. To test this, try to save a simple ODF doc to RTF and try to open this RTF on Wordpad or Word for example. Or vice-versa (open on OpenOffice one RTF created on Wordpad or Word). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.189.118.10 (talk) 16:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Tables/Comparison

This article was in serious need of improvement and progress- I have not bothered to check the facts that are already on the article, I am just going with them (although the requirements that are listed don't seem quite correct):

I think that the following comparison tables should be included:

• General Info (creator, first release, latest stable version, cost, license)
• Characteristics ( spellcheck, grammar check, image editing, mail merging)
• Import File Type Compatibility (.odt, .doc, .abw... list more please)
• Export File Type Compatibility (above)
• Operating System Compatibility (Windows, Mac OSX, GNU/Linux, BSD, Unix, Open VMS, BeOS/Zeta, MorphOS, eComStation... add more if necessary)

Add more if you think that they are necessary!

• update: I added GI and Characteristics. Commence the filling in! Smartalecks 16:13, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
• another update: added Operating system comparision chart. filled most of it in (some one double check), but as you can see there are still alot of gaps. I hope I got this started tho, it really needed it.Smartalecks 16:13, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

HTML

I think word processors should also include HTML editing because otherwise it's just another text editor and there is already a page for the pursose of comparison of text editors. The purpose of this page is to provide more insight into word processors or very advanced text editors. Here we're talking about more features and advantages that a text editor does not have.--Nadyes 21:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with mentioning HTML editing, but historically it is not a criterion for something being a word processor. Word processors as opposed to text editors predate HTML by a long time. Surely WordStar, MS Word in the 1980s, WordPerfect in the 1980s, as well as batch word processors such as Troff, Scribe, and TeX, were word processors, yet none of them provided HTML editing. Some of them still don't. The distinction between a text editor and a word processor is the finer control of graphical detail that a word processor provides. Word processors often come with other facilities, such as HTML editing and spelling correction, but these are not part of the definition.Bill 22:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

• If there are any features that are not necessary for word processors to have to be a word processor, or are not shared by every word processor, they should be included. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 02:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
  • The Word processor page lists...
    • batch mailing using a form letter template and an address database (also called mail merging)
    • index of keywords and their page numbers
    • table of contents with section titles and their page numbers
    • table of figures with caption titles and their page numbers
    • cross-referencing with section or page numbers
    • footnote numbering
    • spelling checks
    • grammar checks

as common features. But I don't know about grammar checks - AbiWord doesn't have it. Also, keep in mind that this list should not feature historical applications. Import/export file capability should be factored in, as well. Table support and the extent thereof should be added. OS support, obviously. HTML support. Open/closed source. I support auto spell checking as a feature to be included in this table, as Ted does not have it.

This is not a comparison

WTH? This is a list, not a comparison. The article should be renamed or merged. ~~Anonymous User Dude

Judging from both the content and the comments by Nadyes, what it actually is is a presentation of a few peoples' ideas of what a word processor SHOULD be. As such, it might be an acceptable blog post or business proposal, but it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia at all. I think it should be deleted.Bill 00:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, especially since there already is the List of word processors. Anybody have time to put it up for deletion? Mütze 18:48, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Deletion was just discussed but defeated. There was, I think, consensus that as it stands the article isn't good, but those opposing deletion were of the view that since there COULD be a good article on this topic, it should not be deleted. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anybody who wants to take the trouble to make it into a good article.Bill 19:01, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Is there no better tag to the article than "This article is in need of improvement"? I would have suggested something like "This article needs to be written". It is a very promising title but the content is useless. Mlewan 19:48, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Improvement

Please see Comparison of text editors for the standard that needs to be aimed for. Tyrenius 02:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Defintion of Word Processor

A think the best definition I can think of for a word-processing program is a text editor that is WYSIWYG and geared toward producing documents to be printed. Theshibboleth 07:59, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely Wrong

This page is so utterly wrong in so many respects that I can't conceive that it was written other than in jest.

First, the "basic criteria" listed are incorrect. WordPerfect was released for DOS in 1982, and it was indisputably a word processor. Wordstar was released for CP/M in 1978, and it was indisputably a word processor. Neither had GUI's, web design capability, graphic-editing capability, Word Art, table creation, chart or graph creation, and even the ease-of-use was arguable.

What both did possess was formatting capability, which is what defined a word processor then, and what defines it now. The distinctions have blurred, but a text editor is still essentially used for producing plain text and a word processor for producing formatted documents. Yes, Microsoft's WordPad *is* a word processor, even if a very basic one.

A word processor released today would fail without including spellcheck, but it would still be a word processor. If this article were named "What Features a Word Processor Must Include to be Successful in the Market Today," I might still quibble over its content, but at least the title would be more accurate. Of course, if that were the subject of the article, then I wouldn't consider it suitable for Wikipedia.

OpenOffice.org Writer Grammar check?

I don't think OOo has a grammar check. it does have spell check though. please verify. --165.230.46.78 23:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC) http://www.danielnaber.de/languagetool/ was the only one I could find, but it is not native in OOo. 165.230.46.78 23:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC) It does not have a grammar check, just as the article on OOo Writer states. If somebody can show that it indeed has grammar check, then they can change it back to a 'yes'. (And also tell me where you got the grammar check because that's why I got rid of Writer) --165.124.118.23 21:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC) OOo Writer does have a grammar check tab as of 3.0. 3.4 is the current version at the time of writing. http://www.openoffice.org/lingucomponent/grammar.html 28 May 2012

file type support

Whether or not different file types are supported should be included e.g., .doc, .odt, .txt., .rtf, etc. --70.111.218.254 03:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

KWord Import/Export

According to the history "Den fjättrade ankan" removed the import/export details about KWord ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_word_processors&diff=91145318&oldid=90504679 ). Why? I reverted it cause it does not make sense to have them for all apps except for KWord.

No, I have not removed anything. There never were any entries for KWord for these. Den fjättrade ankan 11:43, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

NPOV: Red and green: a subtle point.

This page subtly (and presumably accidentally) slightly violates the NPOV principle. In the "Open Source" column of the"General Information" section, "Is open source" is green, and "Is not open source" is red. The other uses of this color scheme are green = good (feature included), red = bad (feature not present); additionally, that same bias is fairly prevalent in US culture (and, I believe, other English-speaking cultures). Stating outright that "Open Source is better" would violate NPOV. This subtle manner does so as well. I would therefore suggest removing the color for that column. 141.149.210.101 23:10, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing and then saw your comment so fixed it. --Chris Pickett 05:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Then [1] reverted my fix for "deleting information". Please discuss here. You can't simply change the colours, {{yes}} and {{no}} are templates. I think it looks better and presents a more NPOV like this. I don't see how my change deleted information; the links to the relevant license are still there, I added links to Proprietary software in several cases, and the column header is accurate; it's not about whether it's open source or not, it's about the license... otherwise, why differentiate between BSD, GPL, etc.? --Chris Pickett 19:33, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I reverted his revert, and he immediately reverted me again. I added {{npov}} tag. It would be nice to discuss things before reverting. --Chris Pickett 19:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that this is a NPOV violation. From the perspective of the end user, having open source code is always good because it means that the user community is free to make improvements to the software and continue supporting it even if the original developer abandons it. As loaded as open source discussions are, I doubt anyone would dispute that knowledge of the source code is valuable -- even if it's not useful to everyone. I think NPOV tag should be eliminated. On the other hand, I don't think "open source" is a very meaningful term. What about eliminating the column and just listing the license under which it is released? --Ari Epstein

Also, far more common than "green = good" and "red = bad" are "green = go" and "red = stop". Open source software is software that offers significantly fewer restrictions on what you can do--go ahead and use it as you like; you're not stopped from doing anything with it. This is a much more natural way of viewing the matter than any alternative that could be contrived where "proprietary = go" and "open source = stop".

Green merely indicates "yes" and red merely indicates "no." See the template talk pages. If you wanted them to mean good/bad, you'd also have to make a value judgement as to whether it was good to have ANY other feature. NPOV tag removed. --Karnesky 00:42, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Notability of red linked packages

The recent additions of several programs is great. I hope that stubs for the redlinks can be started. Do people know about RoughDraft? It has been deleted twice for spam. And Evermore Software (creator of Evermore Integrated Office) was deleted after being PRODed. Do these belong in this table? --Karnesky 19:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

AbiWord - PDF

Need some explanation of how AbiWord "partially" supports PDF as the ref link is dead. --Britcom 09:34, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Abiword's PDF export support seems limited to suggesting the use of a third party PDF printer driver on Windows, use Mac's built-in PDF print option, and I'm not sure how it suggests it on Linux - it starts of by saying there are 'a number of options'. Source: [2]. 203.217.94.116 (talk) 14:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

AbiWord - Word export

Abiword's export to Word is limited to using RTF format with a .DOC extension ([3]). Such a capability is covered adequately by the "RTF" column, so a "Yes" in the "Word" column should denote more than just RTF capability. If we give AbiWord a "Yes" to export in Word format, then we would need to give a Yes to every word processor capable of outputting RTF, for it would be quite possible to export from any RTF application, saving it with a .DOC extension and open it in Word. 203.217.94.116 (talk) 15:01, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

We should probably replace "Word" with "Word DOC" and/or OOXML-DOCX for clarity. --Karnesky (talk) 17:03, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

XML Import - what does this mean

Need some explanation on what constitutes "XML" import. I'd be inclined to remove that column entirely, as XML isn't a file format and it confuses the issue - does this mean "at least one of the input formats it supports is based on XML"? 203.217.94.116 (talk) 14:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

:I think it means the ability to import a file with a .xml extension in Windows. But I guess the extension means different types of files to different programs, right? I'd be OK if the column were removed if you think it's inaccurate.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 18:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC) [banned user]

Merge with List of word processors

After a thorough comparison between the two articles i have noticed that the two articles can be merged with certain modifications helping this article to attain a good standard, I request editors to come forward and comment on this notification. Edeskonline (talk) 14:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

TextEdit: PDF export

TextEdit currently has "no" to export in PDF, but like spelling and grammar (which it has listed as "yes"), PDF exporting is provided as part of OS X when going File > Print; shouldn't it therefore be labelled as having the ability to create PDFs? Robert (talk) 17:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Appleworks-6.0-wordproc-mac.png

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WordPad

WordPad is absent from every comparison table, though it's as much a word processor as OSX's TextEdit (bundled and pretty basic, but often good enough). Furthermore in 7 it gained r/w for both Office Open XML (docx) and Open Document Text (odt) formats. Shouldn't it be added to the 4 comparison tables? Masklinn (talk) 13:16, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

WordPerfect Reveal Codes

Does any other word processor have a feature that compares to Reveal Codes? I haven't used WordPerfect myself for years, but with the push for OpenDocument format and XML, I would expect more word processors to implement such features. I wonder if anyone else feels that a column should be added to indicate that the word processor has or doesn't have a Reveal Codes-like feature. D. F. Schmidt (talk) 02:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

There is now the column asked for and besides WordPerfect, LibreOffice is marked Yes. But the reference (about styling LibreOffice) says nothing about reveal codes or showing the XML tags. (You may of course unpack the file and read the XML. Reveal codes seems to mean showing the codes while working.) Thus the Wikipedia page shows no evidence that LibreOffice has such a functionality and indeed LibreOffice seems not to have it. --Dominique Meeùs (talk) 20:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Reveal Codes is not simply some information or commands about styling or structure or fields. It is a view of the tagging of the document, to control and even correct it while working on the document. (Think of an HTML editor allowing to toggle between WYSIWYG and HTML code.) This is a feature request in LibreOffice, thus not an existing functionality. I removed the Yes. --Dominique Meeùs (talk) 21:23, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Google Docs =

Someone should add this, but I don't have the appropriate expertise.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.149.67.183 (talk) 16:24, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I was rather surprised not to see this included. In fact, the Google docs article even references this one under 'See also'. I may get on this if no one else does. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.39.187.3 (talk) 08:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

LaTeX

I don't want to be anal here, but LaTeX isn't a word processor. 66.183.50.162 (talk) 02:31, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't see anywhere on the page where it is listed as being a word processor: it is listed as a file format and some word processors that use LaTeX are listed. --Karnesky (talk) 17:12, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

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KWord

Is KWord or Calligra Words being compared here? Because I'd like to change all occurrences of KWord to to be seen as and feel like Words. 71.217.64.96 (talk) 06:22, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Pages now has math support without extensions.

I've never edited Wikipedia before, but that just kinda bugged me. Bigboss171 (talk) 14:38, 27 July 2018 (UTC) Ryan

References

MobiSystems OfficeSuite

Since MobiSystems OfficeSuite is in the list at the bottom of the article & it has its own article, it should be added to the tables. It is for Mobile & Desktop (Win.) platforms. Its word processor is called Documents.2600:1700:B6F0:A200:39E9:662C:1CF7:EB47 (talk) 02:34, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Discontinued or no longer in active development

Issue: Some word processors in the article are discontinued (no longer in active development) without any indication of this. It could be misleading or a nuisance depending on what you are looking at the article for.12think (talk) 00:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Solution: Highlight discontinued products the same way as Comparison of web browsers, achieve this by:12think (talk) 00:41, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

1. Use the cell format "rh2". "rh2" changes the background colour, it also left aligns text, so "rh" is needed for all other cells in that column to keep the cells aligned.
2. In the first table only, append the word discontinued in bold, just to the product name.
3. In the text above the first table only, append the text "Browsers listed on a light purple background are discontinued".
4. Additionally, append "A search for discontinued products last performed yyyy-mm-dd." to the line above.

Summary: I believe this is the most appropriate solution. I do not believe discontinued product rows should be deleted because they may still be in use and could be useful for comparison. Is it OK for someone to go ahead and make this change?12think (talk) 00:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Note that the article Comparison of email clients also uses the "rh2" cell format but does not include the word discontinued in bold in the first column, this could be standardised. Is it OK for someone to go ahead and make this change?12think (talk) 00:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Operating system compatibility

Issue: There are newer operating systems to add here, and also we could take this opportunity to remove some lesser used.12think (talk) 00:17, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

1. Add columns for Android, Chrome OS enhanced, iOS, iPadOS enhanced.
2. Add a paragraph at the top explaining what enhanced means.
3. Move BeOS/Zeta and AmigaOS/MorphOS into the other column
4. Do we leave unknowns blank or with a ??

What goes on this page and what doesn't? Who decides and how?

The criteria I came here to learn about - what are the regular expression search and replace capabilities of the various word processors - isn't included at all. That appears to be because there's an entire table missing - the one that details one's actual ability to edit files - search and replace, tables, columns, headers & footers, non-keyboard characters, that sort of thing.

Is that an actual decision to not include any of that, or simply a "nobody did it" default? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.113.170.201 (talk) 23:46, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe it is a case of simply "nobody did it". Keeping what is already here up-to-date is probably a priority. 12think (talk) 09:18, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

LibreOffice Writer Export as .png

LibreOffice Writer has had export to .png picture files at your choice of several resolutions. (600 dpi seems to make very good printouts.) The version I use is 5.4.7.2, which seems to be the last version that works on XP3. Version 7.2 still has it, according to the .pdf manual. Some of the things that can be done are modify font characters that you can't find a suitable version of in any available font, change word spacing to fit the line or page, make upsidedown text, etc. After processing the .png picture files, I put them in a new "text" document and export to .pdf at lossless resolution, so it will always print correctly.

I do not know if any other word processor has this feature, so I hesitate to put a new column in the export features section. This feature does need to be shown somewhere, as it puts LibreOffice way ahead of ones that don't have it.

agb — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.233.167.50 (talk) 20:38, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Apple Pages partially supports LaTeX

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102138 FilippoFederici (talk) 20:45, 7 November 2024 (UTC)