Re: [PLUG] Open Source Equivalent of WordPerfect

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 5:04 PM Fred Stluka <fred@bristle.com> wrote:

Casey,

JP has the right idea when he says:

> I switched to markup languages and never looked back.
My votes are:
+1 for markup languages.
+1 for tools that generate markup languages.

The dominant markup language these days is HTML. And as JP
says, there are other less wordy markup languages that generate
it: Markdown, Asciidoc, etc.

Working directly in a markup language is pretty easy. You
simply mix the formatting commands in among the words of
the document. Commands to start a new paragraph, change
text font or color, center a line, insert an image, create a list
or a list item, etc.

I find it better than a WYSIWYG tool like Word, LibreOffice,
WordPerfect, WordStar, Interleaf, etc. Those tools respond to
keystrokes, menu clicks, etc. by doing things they think I want.
But I sometimes find those actions and effects to be totally
unexpected. And all too often I can't figure out how to prevent
an effect that is now persisting for all or a portion of my doc.

My favorite such tool was Interleaf (1990 or so, on Apollo Unix
workstations) because it was a WYSIWYG tool that stored each
doc as an ASCII file of markup, not in a binary format. I
sometimes got frustrated with things like "Why is this line of
text insisting on remaining centered, when I wanted it left-
aligned?!??!". But, I could just open the markup file in any
ASCII text editor (vi, emacs, etc.), scan or search for the
relevant text, and notice that it was annotated with markup
that used the word "center".

Then, I could go back to the WYSIWYG tool, search the help files
for that exact markup command, and learn how to undo it. Or
could make a change in the WYSIWYG tool, then diff or view the
markup file to see what changed, and figure it out myself. Or
could simply delete that part of the markup to fix the problem,
bypassing the WYSIWYG tool entirely.

Furthermore, I could write shell scripts and small programs to
process the text of the markup files, making consistent changes
to all sections of a file, or to multiple files, rather than having to
use the WYSIWYG tool to manually edit each occurrence.

These days, if you're not comfortable directly editing HTML or
even Markup or Asciidoc, there are lots of WYSIWYG tools out
there to provide a simple point/click UI like you see in Word,
WordPerfect and the others. See:
- http://google.com/search?q=WYSIWYG+HTML+editor

Also, many of the tools where you'll want to enter formatted text
now accept some form of markup. Examples: Wikis, GitHub,
BitBucket, Jira, etc.

These days, I do ALL of my documents in HTML: my resume,
my consulting contracts, invoices, design docs, etc. Such docs
can be stored in a single file, backed up, printed, copied to a
USB drive, etc. They can also easily be attached to an email, and
pretty much all email clients can render them without the
recipient even having to fire up a browser to view the attachment.

Here are some samples of docs created in HTML:
- My resume:
    http://bristle.com/~fred/resume.htm
- A typical invoice to a client on my company's HTML letterhead:
    http://bristle.com/Temp/2016_07_HHL.htm

Note that you didn't have to install Word, LibreOffice, or even a
PDF viewer to view those 2 docs. Any web browser or phone can
open them. I only use LibreOffice to view/edit any non-HTML
docs that other people send me, never for my own docs.

I'm a HUGE fan of FOSS. But, I did a search for a WYSIWYG HTML
editors a few years back. I specifically wanted one that would do
these 3 things:

1. Allow me to create and edit docs without ever looking at HTML
    when my goal was to just pretend I was in Word or LibreOffice
    and whip up or edit a doc using entirely a WYSIWYG interface.

2. Offer a dual mode where I could see and edit the HTML directly
    watching the instantaneous effects it had on the rendered doc,
    and could also edit the rendered doc directly via the WYSIWYG
    interface, watching the instantaneous effects it had on the
    HTML markup.

3. Allow me to open a file of hand-crafted HTML from someone
    else, make a minor change via the WYSIWYG interface or by
    directly editing the HTML markup, and save the file WITHOUT
    having the entire file re-indented, word-wrapped, or in any
    other way reformatted. When I sent the edited file back to the
    author and he ran a diff tool, I wanted hm to see only the
    changes that I intended to make, no other noise.

Unfortunately, the only tool I could find to meet all 3 criteria was
Dreamweaver, which is proprietary, not FOSS. So, I bought it and
have used it happily ever since. Are there better FOSS options by
now?

--Fred
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Stluka -- Bristle Software, Inc. -- http://bristle.com
#DontBeATrump -- Make America Honorable Again!
------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 11/17/18 11:37 AM, JP Vossen wrote:
> On 11/17/18 10:33 AM, Casey Bralla wrote:
>> Does anybody know if there is an open source equivalent to WordPerfect?
>> All the word processing programs I have tried all seem to emulate MS
>> Word, which I detest.   I used to be able to make WP sing, but MS Word
>> is a burden since it tries to outsmart me and anticipate what it thinks
>> I want to do, instead of letting me do what I really want to do!
>>
>> I've been using LibreOffice, and it's adequate, but I was hoping for
>> more.
>>
>> Anybody have any suggestions?
>
> I never liked WP, I used MultiMate, then WordStar, then various
> versions of MS Word. I liked Word, and used correctly (which almost
> no one does) it used to be not that bad. Unnecessary feature bloat
> and the "ribbon" interface have rendered Word unusable, at least for
> me. As noted, LibreOffice can be adequate, be even it is far
> overcomplicated. I switched to markup languages and never looked back.
>
> Casey, what are your use cases? Would a wiki work? Mediawiki (powers
> wikipedia) is great for all kinds of docs & notes, but it's wiki
> markup is feeling very old and primitive to me these days. There are
> a great many others, including some local/desktop lines like Zim.
> (Zim is awesome.)
>
> Writing in Markdown or Asciidoc then rendering into HTML or PDF using
> one of the tool chains might work. The tool chains can be a PITA to
> get going, but once you have it working everything is effortless.
> There are "static" wikis that work like that too, you have a Git
> commit hook that renders, so a commit or push to the right place just
> renders & publishes.
>
> Other random musings:
> We wrote the first edition of the _Bash Cookbook_ in OpenOffice, and I
> had to go to some contortions to handle code samples. Then O'Reilly
> converted that into Word, then converted the Word into DocBook because
> that's how their workstream was a the time (circa 2007). That was
> very painful and introduced a lot of errors.
>
> We wrote the second edition in Asciidoc in Git (converted by O'Reilly
> from the 1st DocBook, circa 2017). That was great.
>
> Every so often I look at the current markup languages and think about
> Tex/LaTeX and WordStar "dot" commands and macros, and then think about
> the cyclical nature of tech and IT...
>
> Later,
> JP
> -- -------------------------------------------------------------------
> JP Vossen, CISSP | http://www.jpsdomain.org/ | http://bashcookbook.com/
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