Word Processor Advice

[irishmike]

Hello All:

Now that I am running my A1200 with OS 3.9 and a bunch of patches ;-) -- I am ready to find a good Word Processing Program.  After all, the Amiga gave me the perfect excuse to dig up my old HP Laserjet IIP and since I am using a good Laser Printer again, it would be nice to have a good word processor on my Miggie.  I downloaded the demo of Amigawriter and was not impressed.  Also I heard that there is a version of Papyrus Office for 68k but can't seem to locate a downloadable file.

What is a good WP program that is easy to use and powerful enough to compete with (and in fact, should be able to read in) MS Word.

Thanks,

Mike

[Hyperspeed]

Wordworth 7 and Pagestream 4!

Good stuff!

[Tenacious]

Final Copy and the various versions of Final Writer have served well.  They provide excellent printer output.  I think they will read in Word doc files (don't use this much).  I actually prefer the earlier versions of Final Writer.  FW97 grew too fluffy for my use and required more system resources.  Final Copy is usable on a modest A500.

[irishmike]

Thanks for the good advice, please provide links if possible to demos or are they on AMINET or just abandonware?

Thanks,

Mike

[Gojirax]

Did you try AmigaWriter 1 or 2?

I bought AmigaWriter 2 recently, but I'm still waiting for a functional Amiga to run it on.

Soon though, but from what I've read about it I think it will work nicely. (Hmmm, I hadn't thought about it, but I have a Laserjet 4p sitting in my garage rotting away! I should pull that out too)

What do some of the rest of you think of Amiga Writer? (I used to have and use Final Writer '97 and liked it quite well back in the day.)

Final Copy was very nice as well.

[irishmike]

Tried Amigawriter 2.  It may be that I just don't understand it well or it suffers from things being off the screen, but I couldn't just open it to a new document and start typing :-)


But still would like info on trying others as well.

[Amiduffer]

Pagestream and FinalWriter97 make a good combination if you have at least above 68030 and a decent amount of RAM. The desktop publishing aspect of FW97 isn't that great, but it's usable.

Any of the earlier versions of FW will work for you very well if you're looking for quality output. I think it reads and saves in MSWord format. Softwood has stopped supporting the Amiga platform though. So you might want to think about WordWorth, if it's still being supported.

[Matt_H]

No word processor on the Amiga is still supported. Except maybe Papayrus Office. It and AmigaWriter are probably the only ones you can still buy first-hand.

That being said, Wordworth7 and FinalWriter97 both suit my needs for basic documents. I've never tried to use them for anything terribly complicated, so I don't know how well they work in that respect.

As for Microsoft Word support, forget it. If you find anything that supports it, it'll probably be compatible with Word 97 at best. You can shuffle simple files back and forth in RTF format, though.

A more complicated solution is to use Antiword. It can convert Word docs to plain text (formatting not preserved), so you can do a one-way import. I think it can also convert to PostScript and PDF, but the 68K port may be too old to support those features.

Actually, I think the newest version of PageStream can edit PDFs. It might even be able to import Word docs directly, but it could be considered overkill for word processing. Check their webpage.

[Jiffy]

No Amiga wordprocessors are up to date, but there are several of them mentioned here which do a very decent job for standard wordprocessing. I use Wordworth 7 every now and then, which I find very nice to use. None of the wordprocessors on the Amiga can stand up to MS Word 97 or later, though, and you can forget any decent support of loading files in MS Word-format.

On the other hand, I used a C64 with Vizawrite & Tasword back in the days. All Amiga wordprocessors mentioned here just trample the 64 versions I used. Everything is relative...

[Piru]

@irishmike

abandonware

There is no such thing as abandonware.

Warez in our definition is illegal software up to and including "abandonware". The exception is if the person is KNOWN to have the legal right to distribute said software. This is not debatable.

amiga.org Posting Guidelines

[motorollin]

Matt_H wrote:
No word processor on the Amiga is still supported.

PageStream is. You can still buy it. It also has versions for Windows and Mac so you can use it on those platforms for compatibility. Alright it's a DTP package, but it would serve well as a Word Processor too.

--
moto

[Linchpin]

Aye.. Pagestream was the one i used to work with.

Never got on with Wordsworth.. bogged my a1200 down quite a bit.

[motorollin]

Does anyone remember Kindwords? It seemed to have exactly the same interface as Wordsworth, except one was red and the other was blue. It was weird...

--
moto

[Noster]

Hi,

as many others, I use FinalWriter for simple tasks like writing letters or creating the texts for my eBay auctions (it has an HTML export). I have used FinalCopy the years before -- also good enough for simple letters.
AmigaWriter has some nice features (the only word processor that allows to chose between different printers if used with OS 3.5+) but in my oppinion it is not so easy to use as FinalXXXXX.

For complex documents as my diploma work I use(d) PasTex. This LaTex-implementation can be found in Aminet and produces professional results (if you don't need WYSIWYG).

Noster

[mr_a500]

Does anyone remember Kindwords? It seemed to have exactly the same interface as Wordsworth, except one was red and the other was blue. It was weird...

I bought Kindwords in 1995 because it was advertised as a great wordprocessor (no screenshots to show otherwise). It turned out to be a piece of crap - even worse than Scribble. If it did have the same interface as Wordsworth, it must have been Wordsworth 1.0 (or 0.1) because it looks nothing like the later Wordsworth. Of all the "super-old" Amiga wordprocessors, Pen Pal was by far the best. Pen Pal later became FinalWriter.

So the best Amiga wordprocessors are FinalWriter 97 and Wordworth 7. For DTP, Pagestream is best. I tried them all and these are the only three worth using.

People might have had luck with AmigaWriter, but I found it extremely slow and buggy (both AmigaWriter 1 & 2).