https://www.libreoffice.org/

It's free.

I find it just as good as MS Word.

Download it and use it.

Thank you.

I've been looking over old material again, hence this post.

No, recent Authors, this post is NOT aimed at you! Your format was fine. Let's just go easy on that ENTER button, no matter what program you use!

Paolo wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 9:33 am https://www.libreoffice.org/

It's free.

I find it just as good as MS Word.

Download it and use it.

Thank you.

I've been looking over old material again, hence this post.

No, recent Authors, this post is NOT aimed at you! Your format was fine. Let's just go easy on that ENTER button, no matter what program you use!

LibreOffice is a free and powerful office suite, and a successor to OpenOffice.org (commonly known as OpenOffice).

Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity.

Worth noting that LibreOffice is a complete office suite, not just a word processor - think of it as a replacement for Microsoft Orifice... In addition to the word processor, you also get a spreadsheet, drawing, presentation, database, etc...

All for nothing more than the time it takes to download it... Plus you get access to the source code, like other Free / Libre software... (It also works on Linux, Mac and that Window thing, so more widely supported) It's my primary office function software.

WheelyCurious

I sincerely think it's always better to use open-source alternatives to most software we use if they're available

Andalusian (imported) wrote: Tue Apr 25, 2023 2:27 pm I sincerely think it's always better to use open-source alternatives to most software we use if they're available

This approach is not always optimal.

After all, your pen pal should have similar software.

Or, for example, you may have a problem with fonts when printing non-standard text on the printer, or you may even have to look for a new driver ...

Valery_V (imported) wrote: Tue Apr 25, 2023 5:18 pm This approach is not always optimal.

After all, your pen pal should have similar software.

Or, for example, you may have a problem with fonts when printing non-standard text on the printer, or you may even have to look for a new driver ...

LibreOffice has LOTS of fonts, including substitutes for all the standard Microsoft Office fonts, plus TrueType, and many others. Printer drivers are also not an issue if the printer works with the computer its plugged into, as drivers are an operating system issue not the individual program's responsibility.... There are a few poorly designed printers that were originally designed to only work w/ Windows, (and many ended up non functional when new versions of Windows came out) but many have had reverse engineered drivers developed by the free software folks...

One of the advantages of Libre software is that if you have the source it is normally a fairly straightforward process to do a port and recompile to run on almost any hardware... GNU/Linux is noted for being able to run on anything from a wristwatch to mainframes and super-computers...

WheelyCurious

WheelyCurious wrote: Tue Apr 25, 2023 8:03 pm LibreOffice has LOTS of fonts, including substitutes for all the standard Microsoft Office fonts, plus TrueType, and many others. Printer drivers are also not an issue if the printer works with the computer its plugged into, as drivers are an operating system issue not the individual program's responsibility.... There are a few poorly designed printers that were originally designed to only work w/ Windows, (and many ended up non functional when new versions of Windows came out) but many have had reverse engineered drivers developed by the free software folks...

One of the advantages of Libre software is that if you have the source it is normally a fairly straightforward process to do a port and recompile to run on almost any hardware... GNU/Linux is noted for being able to run on anything from a wristwatch to mainframes and super-computers...

WheelyCurious

Thank you very much for the information!

I hope that in this case everything will be easier, although some time ago I had to face similar difficulties ...

I've never had a problem with fonts. If the font in the document is missing, the program just substitutes another one.

Paolo wrote: Wed Apr 26, 2023 6:21 am I've never had a problem with fonts. If the font in the document is missing, the program just substitutes another one.

Also if fonts are a concern, exporting to PDF is a certain guarantee that you WILL keep the fonts, as PDF is actually more a graphics format than a text format... When you export to PDF, you actually generate a 'picture' of the document, including all the fonts as graphic elements... IF the original was a text document it associates the font character with the graphic element making it possible to select an area as text (which does not necessarily include the font information) to past into a different document. OTOH if the original was a picture (i.e. a scanned document) then you won't be able to select an area as text, just as graphics... (but you can run it through OCR software to hopefully get the text out)

The only issue I've ever had w/ PDF's is when going between US and DIN paper sizes (i.e. US 'letter' and A4) in which case you can run into needing to scale the PDF to fit on the page which will still look funny...

WheelyCurious

Valery_V (imported) wrote: Tue Apr 25, 2023 5:18 pm This approach is not always optimal.

After all, your pen pal should have similar software.

Or, for example, you may have a problem with fonts when printing non-standard text on the printer, or you may even have to look for a new driver ...

Some of these problems can be avoided and solved easily by for example converting to PDF, but what I meant was exactly that. Available not only as just downloadable but also as usable.

Still, I stand by my point. And I'm using Firefox