Open Thread: What Word Processor or Text Editor Do You Use?
Just like our habits changed radically from the typewriter era to the desktop publishing era, so are they changing as we move from the desktop onto the web.
Where we used to write memos and newsletters tarted up with the fanciest fonts we could find, now we send quick emails, edit wikis, or post to blogs. We write more lightly formatted works for electronic publication and fewer heavily formatted works for print. Although many workers will still find full-featured word processors or desktop publishers necessary for producing (for example) massive software specs or book-length manuscripts, it’s increasingly feasible to rely on something other than Microsoft Word.
When he switched from Windows to Mac, InformationWeek’s Mitch Wagner found that NeoOffice was an acceptable substitute for Microsoft Office in his own work. Now he uses NeoOffice’s word processor for manuscripts intended for print and a cheap text editor for producing his web content.
RedMonk analyst Steve O’Grady suggested in February that the office suite market has peaked; if so, this has serious consequences for the competitiveness of desktop word processors relative to online document editors like Google and Zoho’s offerings. Though much discussion of whether these web-based applications could unseat Microsoft Office focuses on what features they provide, the more important issue may be how our writing and publishing behavior is changing.
The content we produce as web workers is increasingly:
- Shorter in length — think email
- Provisional and subject to change — think wikis
- Not intended for print — think blog posts
- Text-based, with formatting eliminated or stored separately — think HTML + CSS
And for that, we don’t need MS Word.
What text editor and/or word processor do you use and why? What such tools do you foresee as being most important in the future?
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
For anything I care about, I try to use markup, and so do it in a plain old text editor – TextMate being my current poison. For stuff I don’t care about, Google Docs. And occasional use of Keynote for when I have to (grumble) put some slides together.
Unsurprisingly, I agree :)
Text editors at the moment are Scribes (Linux) for anything relatively extensive and Google Docs for anything I need to collaborate on with my colleagues.
For a text editor I just use Notepad++, since I’ve gotten tired of being picky about what I use and just settled for Notepad++. For a word processor I used to use Google Docs. But since I’ve found out I sucked at writing proper English, I went back to MS Office…
In the end, I would love a web-based editor that could function like Notepad++ and MS Office, where every save could be written to my web server (like with using VI). Man that’s going to take a while :
It doesn’t matter what I use. I work on a team of folks all over the country, and despite my best efforts to try and convince them of the error of their ways, they insist on emailing Word files back and forth. I need to use Word because they do. I’ve tried other applications (on and offline) and whether it be headers/footers that aren’t in the right place, comment/review corrections not appearing correctly, or even fonts out of whack, it just doesn’t work. For now at least, I’ve decided it’s not worth the hassle to find a new tool. It’s more about getting the job done with minimal pain over the process. Fighting about the content is hard enough. ;-)
That said, if I know the document is just for me and I won’t be sharing it, Bare Bones’ Text Wrangler is my editor of choice.
When I wrote my 2 books, I used MS Word – but the whole time, I was wishing that I could use something, anything else. But, that’s where the publisher’s macros and standard formatting worked.
For my own fiddling, I use TextEdit on OS X, which includes a surprisingly useful amount of word processor capability. Lately, I’ve been playing with Journler a bit, which wraps the native OS X text editor in TextEdit with a slew of useful organizational tools and enhancements.
For blogging, I often write straight in a textarea in WordPress, though lately I’ve started opening up the OPML Editor again.
At work, we use Twiki to sling live documentation around. Coincidentally, I used to use it on my site too, but since switched to Trac.
But, overall, I tend to find MS Word one of my least favorite places to live when trying to write.
My favorite text editor is textedit that comes with mac. i use it for reasons other than what you outline.
It forces me to think in proper grammer and it also forces me to spell everything correctly. When I was using Microsoft Word, i kept using its autocorrect features as a crutch and my writing suffered as a result of that.
I tried BBedit and TextMate – bit of an overkill for me personally.
I’m with Judi for anything beyond a quick burst of text. I was using BBEdit, but now have TextWrangler. For short or simple bits of text, I sometimes use TextEdit or even Stickies. But TextWrangler is nice because it will strip out extraneous formatting pasted in, leaving me with highly desirable plain text (and I show invisibles so I know exactly what kinds of white space characters are in there).
For coding (and other “plain text” work) I use Editplus, and have for a long time now (probably since around 2000 or 2001). I’ve tried many other editors but I’ve always come back to Editplus. For console work I use vi.
I tried many word processors including Google docs, Open Office, AbiWord, NeoOffice (on my iBook) but I always come back to Word. This is one place Microsoft has gotten it “right” – where they can say “it just works”.
I keep TextMate open all the time. I’ve tried a dozen (or more) “notebook” apps for shorter pieces of writing, but my favorite is opening a whole folder of textfiles in TextMate’s drawer. That’s just brilliant.
I’ll use Google Docs for certain things, especially for low-priority but high-portability stuff, or for things where a template would be nice. Of course, gdocs doesn’t have any templates, but I fake it just fine and don’t really lose any time/flow/focus.
Finally, I do write longer stuff — much, much longer. For that, Mellel rocks the pants off of everything. For academics and other scholars of hard core factual prose, Mellel is Life. I suppose I could have used MS Word — I own a copy after all — but I hate the bloat, the unresponsive keys, and the get-in-your-way interface. I hate to be a Word basher (I was once heavily invested in the Word way of things), but it simply takes more effort for me to get my writing done in Word than in a text editor or a specialized (read: unbloated) word processor.
The majority of my text editing is related to programming or web design. On Windows, there is nothing better than Notepad++.
Now I’m on Ubuntu Linux, gedit is working perfectly fine for me.
I use NoteTab Light. I has what I need, and it’s FREE, unlike Editplus!!!
For longer documents at work, I use Word and I have to agree with Kevin, that it just works. For small notes and tutorial style docs I use under Windows Context and on my Mac almost all the time gVim or Emacs. These editors just work, once you got familar with them.
For academic publishing in LaTex I tend to use Texniccenter under Windows and Emacs on my Mac.
I find myself using less and less rich editors nowadays and usually write everything in TextMate first, then convert it to Word, etc. if needed. Most of what I write ends up in a wiki so I tend to use mediawiki markup per default. I use Google Docs when easy collaborative editing and sharing is prioritized over richer formatting and control of page layout.
google docs for collaborative editing
tomboy for brainstorming and todos
xhtml in my blog(s) for – well – blogging
OpenOffice.org for “work” documents I have to share with coworkers
xemacs for “work work”
I agree with quite a few others here. I use TextMate for most of my text work. Including using Markdown with TextMate for HTML, blog posting, etc. Google Docs I use for when I need some simple formatting and making docs available to myself from anywhere. I do revert to Pages when I need anything fancy.
Textmate when I’m working on the Mac, Notepad++ when I’m trapped on my windows box at work. And along with all of the collaboration-heavy MSOrifice users, I’m stuck dealing with Word docs in Word and the obligatory spreadsheets in Excel.
Now, if Textmate handled .doc and .xls files (especially with track-changes, etc, etc.), I’d be in Heaven :-D
For word processing, I use a combination of Zoho Writer and NeoOffice (on my Mac) and OpenOffice (on my Windows box). I also use a Zoho Sheet – NeoOffice/Open Office combo. I find myself relying on Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet a lot more. For most of what I do with spread sheets and documents, they work just fine.
For text editing — as in code — I’m currently in love with Coda from Panic, but I also use jEdit and Aptana on occasion.
Actually, now that Firefox has spell check in text boxes, I can do almost all of my writing online with no need for a desktop editor.
Hmm, how do you convert a Textmate file to Word? Does saving the document with the extension .doc suffice?
I use Neo for office-type documents (things that I will distribute as PDF, or Microsoft-originated files that I must edit and return).
BBEdit and TextWrangler (depending on which machine I am sitting at; I like BareBones’ TextWrangler better for most things, but BBEdit maximizes the window with an Option-click on the green button). All my HTML editting is done ‘raw’; not because I’m a purist, but I’m resistant to change — so I never really learned how to use GoLive or Dreamweaver (both of which I have, still in the shrink-wrap).
As pointed out in the article, much more of my work has migrated to web apps and my Blackberry (I even post updates to online databases and enter work orders from it).
Because of my move to an always-online access-it-from-anywhere lifestyle, I grow continually frustrated with people who send email with Windows-style paths (\servernamesharenameetc.), because they don’t work on alternate platforms (including the Blackberry). And I’ve been on a campaign for years to get our staff to stop attaching MS Word documents when not necessary — opting instead for content to be left in the body of the email, where it can be seen from any device. This even though my handheld will read PDF and .DOC content; it’s just not as ‘usable’ as text or RTF, and I’m just ‘over it’ for the quite unnecessary extraneous formatting in most Microsoft Word documents.
EditPad rocks for me!
Scriverner (OSX) for writing.
Try DarkRoom or WriteRoom. These are the serious writer’s tools, as they eliminate all distractions. I also love opensource fav, AbiWord. Google Docs for stuff I want to access anywhere.
I use RoughDraft, a freeware word processor designed for writers. An aging computer forced me to look for a lighter alternative to MS Word. I haven’t reinstalled Word since a recent HD crash, but I expect I’ll have to at some point because the rest of the world is still dependent on it.
I generally use Microsoft Word for Mac (old habits die hard) or Zoho. I really like Zoho for being able to access from anywhere, but since I’ve got a laptop it’s generally not an issue anyway… and can actually be more of a hindrance since I’m not in a city and definitely don’t always have internet access.
I use
Slickedit for C++ and Python on Win,Mac,Ubuntu, Eclipse for Java, and wxPython programming,
Textmate on Mac for anything small and quick (and sometimes Python), the
Wing IDE for Python when I need to explore or debug, and
Emacs for terminal work. On Windows I use
Scite as my lightweight editor. I also highly recommend
jEdit with the jython editor macros… they’re a great platform to add your own editing commands.
i code in..
vim on the server, e on the pc, and textmate on the mac.
i collaborate with others through ..
basecamp, google docs, wordpress.
For processing words written by folks who don’t use text editors, I use neo.
Good old vi on our solaris servers (its the only editior available and its still the best) Vim everywhere else. Plus OpenOffice for those moments when you cant use *bold*
Code in Kwrite or Quanta + (Linux)
Write in Kwrite or Google Docs
Notes in Google Notebook
Communicate project docs via Google Docs
And yes, i don’t need MS at all
I user Programmers Notepad, it has a neat interface which changes depending on the file type you are editing at the moment. If I want a rich text type of document then Google Docs is my choice, I hardly ever use MS Words anymore
OpenOffice and regular ‘ole Notepad.
I have no trouble messing with Word users because OpenOffice Writer allows me to save as .doc. There are a a few things that annoy me about Writer, but nothing serious enough to make me go back to Word.
I use Notepad as I would a real notepad; to jot down lists, for personal documents, brainstorming, poetry, web-work etc. When I just need to get it out, I pop open Notepad and there I have it, a clean page. Ready for my thoughts.
Open Office for Print and Google docs for anything else
I use MS Word in my Windows XP machine and Openoffice in my Linux machine. Also, notepad to do a quick notes.
Notepad!
For blogging I use AbiWord. I made a template with black background and #FC0000 text. Viewing the pages in “Web Layout” with full screen enabled really boosts up my creativity.
Currently SciTE would be my simple code or markup editor.
Open Office on both laptops (Mac & PC). I use wordpad to edit files and notepad when I know it’s going to be a short piece. I only use them because I tend to write long posts both on my personal site and on The Terminal (my hyperlocal site) and I’ve lost too many entries when I’ve hit the “Publish” button. It’s more for the reliability factor because most of the units I’m using run quite slow for the software that’s on them.
I have Office on my PC and Mac, but I bought iWork for my Mac and use Pages instead of Word. Pages let you save in Word format so you can share with others.
I use WordPerfect. I have been using WordPerfect since their 4.2 version and that’s what I am used to. I have just set up a weblog for my handcrafted jewelry website and EBay says in order to get sales to set up a website and a weblog so people can get to know me and feel comfortable buying from me. It sounded good so I did it. In using the weblog I realize that the weblog is a great communication tool. It can be just about anything the author wants it to be. I think weblogs are the way of the future.
Wow, no TextPad fans yet? It’s a great text editor…
Otherwise I do all my writing in Gmail… It’s the best for easy distribution, it has auto save, plain text mode, etc
I use IDEs for most of my work coding (Visual Studio .Net, SQLServer Manager, and used Eclipse when I did Java), and whatever editor’s around for Ruby. I’m still looking for the “grail” text editor that lets me carve up my text easily. Most often, I want a chunk of “data” text, and a chunk of “code” text that chews on the data (to refactor or generate code, or to clean up data).
I’ve tried EditPlus 2, which is nice, because you can send the buffer contents to a custom tool — great for eval’ing some Ruby code, without saving the file — but it organizes your custom tools strangely, and you can’t really configure keyboard shortcuts for them.
I’ve tried EmEditor, which is fair, but I can’t pass the buffer contents around. Also, it gives you scriptable macros by using the Windows Scripting Host. This seems to be a common thing in Windows editors, and I have to say I’m not a fan of it…the idea is great, but WSH is (I think) a miserable platform to work on top of.
TextPad is my old stand-by, even though I can’t pass buffer contents around…it’s the most familiar to me, and very stable.
I’m going to re-try Zeus at some point, and I keep checking on the progress of InType and E.
As far as features go, the critical ones for me are: 1. custom tools, and passing the buffer contents to them, 2. code templates (triggerable by keyword), 3. scriptable macro language (that’s not WSH).
For plain text (code, markup, stylesheets, data manipulation, log files, etc) I use EditPlus. It doesn’t matter it’s not free. It’s pretty inexpensive for the amount of benefit and the amount of time I spend on it. You carry the license wherever you go. On the mac, TextWrangler has been enough for now.
For rich word processing, Office 2007. It’s pointless trying to work with anything other than Office when the people you trying to work with only use that. Besides, I Office 2007 is very nice and I got mine with the MSDN subscription. When I’m on the mac, Open Office.
I also tried wikis, online work processors and spreadsheets, but I don’t know what happens, I think people are slow to adopt. Everybody seems afraid to collaborate, I continue to get those .doc attachments by email.
Notepad (must upgrade!) for simple things.
Opera for notes (and e-mail, web, RSS, etc.).
Zend Studio for coding.
Corel Ventura 10 for books & professional documents: output as PDF direct.
Fascinating thread for me, especially since I maintain a blog/website devoted to helping writers be more productive. I focus a lot of different software programs and am beginning to publish review/guides. Due to these interests, I now use a variety of programs:
Rough Draft — for feature articles
KeyNote — for gathering and organizing ideas/information for future articles
Writer’s Blocks for visual outlining, index card style
Nota Bene — for a big book with heavy research & bibliographic requirements
Word — for business-related documents
Word Press — for my blog [tho experimenting with several off-line blog editors]
Those are my favorites, but use quite a few others.
I use Google Docs as a quick solution to take notes during meetings where I have wireless access, but that’s just it–I don’t always have wireless access. Some innovation must take place with desktop publishing webware that enables functionality when offline.
I’ve also found that working with images is awkward with the online tools I’ve used (Zoho, Google Docs, WriteWith).
The next real demand in this space seems to be with blog publishing tools such as Windows Live Writer and Ecto.
Keep up the great work on your blog! Thanks, -Matt
We’ve standardized on SubEthaEdit – it lets everybody in the company to easily collaborate editing text and code. Especially useful for pair programming and keeping meeting minutes.
Google Docs, Thunderbird, WordPress, Gmail, OpenOffice, and Simple Machine Forums.
Now that Firefox and Thunderbird check my spelling, I hardly ever use anything else. Save when I receive a document, which I open with OpenOffice.org (how I hate those 20 seconds almost everyday!)
Next year, I expect to be using OpenGoo only
Hey, excellent post Anne!
PSPad for any coding, due to its built in FTP, and for anything text based I tend to use standard Notepad, does the job!
Alan
Hi all!
What do you think about this? When it happens?
I use pages for Documents with graphics or more elaborative formatting, textEdit for txt, rtf or whenever I don’t want to open a big-ass app, Smultron for code.
After doing battle with OpenOffice trying to get a bullet point in the right spot for 2 hours I switched to emacs and latex to get the job done. It only took me 20 minutes to port the document over. It just goes to show that you really don’t need wsywig.
When I tried to log on to ours dekstop, a box saying “there are not sufficient resources to load” my account with the default something-or-other came up. The box had a timer that was going to close the box, and then when it closed it would not log me on. I could not turn it on normally so I cut the power. When I turned it back on I logged on fine?
I read here Network Support but couldnt make sense?
I just wanted to hi! By the way, Excellent Forum!