[Ben65]

I know this probably isn't for most people, but I've gone to emacs' org mode for creating documents and spreadsheets. The cost is nothing, it's highly functional, and can be exported to TEX or html if you want to make it pretty.

[semanticist]

emacs isn't suitable for almost all computer users.

Try to imagine telling a non-hacker manager that all their spreadsheet work needs to be done in a command-line text editor/kitchen sink emulator.

It's always easy to forget just how much of a minority hackers actually are - there's far far more computer users out there who aren't hackers than are. Orders of magnitude more.

[fxj]

there was a time when lotus 123 was the de-facto spreadsheet and excel was a pale buggy program.

[semanticist]

That's true, but I don't see the computer accessibility evolution going Lotus 123 -> Microsoft Excel -> emacs org mode.

[listic]

Many people need to also read Office documents, not just write them. If you cannot sign or edit a crucial contract for your company because you are using some Open Source word processor (and all of your partners use MS Word) your decision to move from MS suddenly starts to look very, very stupid.

Also, I heard from a writer that Microsoft Office is superior to any word processor (a.k.a computer program you use to write a novel) to the point that he writes novels in Microsoft Word under Wine.

[lsc]

>Also, I heard from a writer that Microsoft Office is superior to any word processor (a.k.a computer program you use to write a novel) to the point that he writes novels in Microsoft Word under Wine.

published author here[1] who was talked into using OpenOffice to write a book. It was... pretty bad, worse, even than ms office, which (and yes, I tried) is pretty bad when you start passing back and fourth a monstrosity with a bunch of marked changes. But even with the little incompatibilities fixed, god damn, word processors were just not meant to deal with something that big.

You will find few people writing their second book using a word processor. Word processors are pretty great for short documents that need to be made to look nice quickly, and that have limited collaboration. (yes, modern word processors have really basic revision control functionality, but it sucks compared to using a revision control system.) But yeah, next time? some sort of TeX derivative, or I do the book in text and the publisher can do formatting after it's done.

[1]http://nostarch.com/xen.htm

[swombat]

Also, I heard from a writer that Microsoft Office is superior to any word processor (a.k.a computer program you use to write a novel) to the point that he writes novels in Microsoft Word under Wine.

That's insane. Word is a horrible writing environment. It's a passable document editing environment, but to write novels or stories there are a number of infinitely better tools, such as Scrivener or Writeroom (for mac - but there are equivalents on Winblows) on the minimalist side, or some others whose names escape me right now on the "let's have lots of tools to help someone write a novel" side.

Word sucks for writing.

[archangel_one]

I seem to recall hearing that George R.R. Martin writes in Wordstar on DOS. That doesn't make it the best word processor though - you can probably find one fan of nearly any piece of software.

[lsc]

'joe' on *NIX is the tool you want if you like the wordstar keybindings. It was my $EDITOR for a long time because I was used to the wordstar key bindings as used in turbo pascal 3.0. I talk a lot of shit about how useless school was... but I learned a lot in that pascal class in high school.

[lsc]

'joe' on *NIX is the tool you want if you like the wordstar keybindings. It was my $EDITOR for a long time because I was used to the wordstar key bindings as used in turbo pascal 3.0. I talk a lot of shit about how useless school was... but I learned a lot in that pascal class in high school.

[jmcnevin]

Oh really? I heard from a writer that emacs is the best word processor.

http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.sht...

[zaphar]

Thats odd because from a couple of friends in the publishing industry They prefer all the manuscripts to be plain text. The first step after they receive the manuscript is to remove all formatting so they can get it into their typesetting program with the least effort.

Why an author would prefer word or even open office over notepad is beyond me. Word count maybe? It gives almost no benefit and requires extra work when it's time to hand off the manuscript to the publisher.

[listic]

Word count, definitely; maybe other features like that? Open Office is sluggish.

[Splines]

The cost isn't nothing - learning emacs and org-mode, while rewarding, isn't trivial.