#Best Word Processor 2011 Mac OS X That#

The First Cut is the DeepestBest Quality. Kevin is a native Memphian, a killer musician and a great writer. Longtime reader may remember that Kevin is the guy I bought this domain name from. OBS is great for recording and.EditorвЂ™s Note: This guest post was written by friend Kevin Lipe, after a discussion over beer and pizza about writing on the Mac, and how it has changed over the years.

We had a Performa 578 running System 7.5.5, and ClarisWorks was all I had. We guarantee file security and privacy.The first word processor I ever used seriously for any amount of time was ClarisWorks 2.1. Our WORD converter is free and works on any web browser. In most cases, you can fine-tune conversion parameters using Advanced Settings (optional).

The first Word version, Word 1.0, was released in.When Apple killed its Claris subsidiary, ClarisWorks was rebranded as AppleWorks and a new version was released. I even tried to wrap my head around Publishers, which were a weird feature I still donвЂ™t understand.Both programmers worked on Xerox Bravo, the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processor. I knew how to do everything ClarisWorks could do. I was a writer, the worldвЂ™s youngest important author.

It mostly stays out of the way, except itвЂ™s so limited in its capabilities as to be an exercise in masochism.There were contemporaries to AppleWorks, though. The whole thing feels weird in a way that ClarisWorks didnвЂ™t, because it doesnвЂ™t fit with either user interface because itвЂ™s trying to fit with both. Laptops looked like toilet seats (God bless вЂem) and fonts in AppleWorks looked like garbage. But if you look at it, actually look at the way the words look on the page, everything is вЂњoff.вЂќ ItвЂ™s a time warp to that weird period in Mac history where our computers were weird bright colors and ran two operating systems at the same time (usually 9.2.2 and Jaguar, although 8.5 was still floating around).

It doesnвЂ™t have a full screen mode, it doesnвЂ™t let you generate charts from an attached Excel spreadsheet, it doesnвЂ™t let you export a webpage, it doesnвЂ™t have thirty-seven different newsletter templates, it doesnвЂ™t make coffee, it doesnвЂ™t offer next-day shipping on purchases over $100, it doesnвЂ™t, well, it doesnвЂ™t get in your way.IвЂ™ve written an entire novel (seriously!) in this program, and itвЂ™s a beautiful experience. No multimedia here, no fine-grained control over typeface features (if only because there werenвЂ™t any fine-grained typeface features), no nothing that didnвЂ™t need to be there.Pretty much the only thing you can use this program to do is type words. It was the culmination of six years of Mac Word versions (version 1 and 3 there was no Word 2 for Mac because it skipped version numbers to match up with the DOS version), a minimalist interface with just enough window chrome to let you align text, pick a font, space your linesвЂ”do the simple things you need to do when composing a document. The One True (Microsoft) WordAccording to this Wired piece, Microsoft Word 5.1 came out in October of 1991. This is the first point at which word processors started mirroring the increasing complexity and distraction of computing environments in general, and the point at which I started having trouble using them for writing. It was at this point that вЂњstandard word processorsвЂќ stopped being minimal and work-oriented and started pandering to mothers making sixth-grade-class newsletters.

Their default formatting settings on new documents are horrendous (especially on the Office 2007 or later versions), or they have weird file formats (or RTF, which is such a vague standard as to barely be interoperable between programs, resulting in crazy formatting weirdness even when using different programs to edit the same files).Clippy gets a lot of criticism, but Clippy was a symptom, not a problem. Off the Rails on the Crazy TrainIвЂ™ve tried almost every word processor in existence, and compared to Word 5, and even to the old ClarisWorks (also known as MacWrite II or MacWrite Pro), most of them are terrible.Most modern apps are cluttered, theyвЂ™re fiddly, and theyвЂ™re trying to tell me what to do before I even start typing. ThereвЂ™s a reason for that. 2 The program is responsive, and it stays out of your way, forcing you to think about what youвЂ™re typing rather than how it looks, or what format youвЂ™re going to save it in, or whether or not it will work on multiple platforms (it probably wonвЂ™t, unless that platform is a Mac) вЂ” you just write your words.

The author of Scrivener really only knows one way to write a book: the way he writes a book. These toolsвЂ”вЂњwriting environmentsвЂќ or whatever else you want to call themвЂ”have an inherent problem: theyвЂ™re designed around the writing workflows and processes of the people who wrote them. We have a lot of tools, like Scrivener and Ulysses and WriteRoom and others IвЂ™m sure IвЂ™m forgetting, designed to make writing long pieces easier, and designed to do exactly what Word 5.1 does: get out of the writerвЂ™s way, and let them worry about making the clackety sound with their keyboards instead of fiddling with application settings because theyвЂ™re scared to write. Distraction-Free WritingFigure 4: OmmWriter Tries Not To Harsh Your MellowThe Mac is at a weird place right now. They started trying to helpвЂ”and helping a writer while he or she is writing is impossible. Writing a novel in a word processor now is filled with fiddlingвЂ”getting the font right, getting the header right, getting everything in manuscript format, getting everything just so so you feel comfortable enough to worry about the writing and not the computer.

Best Word Processor 2011 Mac OS X That

People have been saying for years that Word 5.1 needs to be ported to Mac OS X that having that program running on current hardware would be the ideal solution to all of these problems with writing tools.The truth is, thereвЂ™s a solution now thatвЂ™s most of the way there: Markdown and a good text editor. Slouching Toward Gruber, or, A New HopeThereвЂ™s a way out of this loop of bouncing between cluttered word processors and process-centric writing tools, a way to avoid having cater to ClippyвЂ™s every whim while not having to hide your own work from yourself in order to concentrate. These things are getting so ridiculous that the best way I can prove it to you is to point you at Merlin MannвЂ™s parody thereof. If youвЂ™re going to show me a sentence at a time, I canвЂ™t possibly work with a 100,000 word manuscript. ItвЂ™s ridiculous, really, and the further these programs go in that direction, the less useful they really are for dealing with novel-length material. IвЂ™ve bought all of them, and they all almost get there, but I still end up wishing things worked differently than they did, that they needed less fiddling to operate the way I want them to.ItвЂ™s telling that many of these programs bill themselves as вЂњdistraction free,вЂќ some of them going to absolutely ridiculous lengths to try to keep the user from being able to get sidetracked while drafting text.

ItвЂ™s formatted, but if youвЂ™re reading the raw text, itвЂ™s not obscured the way a raw HTML file is. The types of formatting you donвЂ™t need arenвЂ™t even available to you when writing Markdown in a text editor, so you never have to deal with them.Markdown will never be unreadable by a program, because itвЂ™s just ASCII text. I bring up Gruber because he invented Markdown, which lets you do basic formatting of text without really having to sweat much else. You start typing, and thatвЂ™s all you have to do.

No one will ever rewrite it on OS X the way you and all your friends (and I, deep down) wish it would be. It canвЂ™t even be run on a current Mac the only even halfway modern Macs that will run it are the few PowerPC machines left still running Tiger (which, I assume, are mostly within school districts and homes with people over forty). All from a text file and an editor with a minimal interface.Word 5.1 will never come back. With MultiMarkdown the options get even crazier: render your text file as a LaTeX document, or straight to PDF, or any number of other things.

YouвЂ™ll miss Word 5, sure, but you wonвЂ™t miss having to make sure your TCP stack extension is loaded.Trust me: John Gruber will save us allвЂ”has already saved us all. Once you realize this and you let go of your System 7 nostalgia, you will realize this. ThatвЂ™s all.It should do exactly what Word 5.1 did best: get out of the way.

Best Free Word Processor For Mac 2011