Does a simple word processing program still exist?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I wrote this Young Adult novel, for my daughter, about 15 years ago now. At that time, I used a PC and wrote it with Word. Then I got a Mac and used Pages to rewrite it. Now I still have a Mac and Word for Mac (and also Pages). But every time I try to use either of them for, really, almost anything at all, it is so infuriating I give up.

I’d like to refurbish this novel and at least get a few copies printed and bound, possibly e-publish it in some form, but there is this problem.

Which is, the older I get, the less energy I have for relearning software which worked perfectly well a few years ago but they “upgraded” it to the point of it being entirely new and so burdened with complications that it is totally unusable for the simple things I want to do with it. You know, “is this the tab setting? – whoops! I turned the page orange! plus it’s merged with my bank account!”

You can tell I purely hate this universal trend, very especially the helplessness part, but that is a rant for a different section of the board. Here, I just want to know if there is such a thing as a simple word processing program any more.

Pages: no longer simple at all.
Word: unbelievably fucked.

I also have Text Edit, that’s way TOO simple.

I need a program that will paginate, set margins and tabs, make headers, find and replace words, and set fonts and type sizes. THAT IS ALL. Maybe add some editing notes in a different color. But I can do without that.

I do not want to have to search through hundreds and hundreds of drop down menu choices of things I never will ever use, trying to find one or two very simple commands, which I then will never be able to find again.

Just Olden Tyme word processing that just … processes words. For a book, that is just words, in sentences. Nothing more.

Help? Or must I try to find an IBM Selectric somewhere?

3

Google docs, for one. “Programs” are so 2010.

Wordpad still exists on Windows. You can try LibreOffice.

4

I like Apache OpenOffice. It’s more complicated than you want, but the complications mostly stay out of the way unless you go looking for them.

5

I can offer you the full boxed set of WordPerfect 6.0 with manuals, templates etc.

You got a 5 1/4 floppy disk drive to load it?
Needs DOS 3.0
386 processor
VGA graphics
7MB disk space

Can ship on Monday, if you can cover the postage.

6

WordPad, and as best I can tell TextEdit (I don’t use a Mac) aren’t page-based editors, and don’t support headers/footers, page numbers, etc. It sounds like that’s a requirement.

Seconding Google Docs. It’s pretty simple, just the basics, but does support page-based features like page numbers.

7

Selectric, schmelectric! Get yourself a good old fashioned Underwood, get a new ribbon off of “Electronic-Bay Dot Com”, and go to town.

While I agree that Word and Pages both have enormous bloat in the effort to make them replacements for desktop publishing packages, you should be able to use them for your application without needing to access any of that functionality. or having to “search through hundreds and hundreds of drop down menu choices”. I use Word on a daily basis and while I complain constantly, most of my issues are with its inconsistent application of styles, difficulty in keeping references from breaking, issues with anchoring of figures and tables, et cetera. If you are just using it as a word processor, it is fine if using far more memory than any non-animated graphics display should.

Excel on the other hand…

Stranger

8

I use an excellent writing package called Scrivener:

It’s minimalist, is designed for writers, and available on almost every platform. It can use dropbox for remote synchronization so you can be writing on your PC or Mac, then pick up your iPad and keep writing and your docs stay in sync.

There’s a free trial available at the link.

9

You very funny.

10

This seems very promising. Thank you.

11

If you try it, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it.

12

I still use a version of Word from 2002. Surprisingly, I haven’t had any problems using the resulting files. Frequently, I convert them to PDF. But I dread the day I’m no longer able to get away with this for some reason.

100% with the OP’s feelings - I am fed up with with this phenomenon that I see as a combination of bloat, planned obsolescence and “improving” things to the point where they no longer work.

My personal solutions are to avoid automatic updates on most devices / software when possible, and hang on to legacy equipment. This has never caused me to experience security issues, so spare me the lecture. “Old is gold” - I use an older laptop (I have two, actually), a phone from several years back that I don’t update and guess what… it all. Fucking. Works. I have control of my tech, and it serves me instead of the other way around.

George RR Martin supposedly uses a decades-old word processing system. Good for him, I may do the same and I hope the OP finds something that works too.

13

Want to go really WYSIWYG I can offer an Amiga 500 with Pagestream … I might even be able to pop an older PC with a copy of Win 3.11 and original Word. I woul dhave to see if we got rid of it or not. I also have several older [ok at least 1 is ancient] laptops, not sure what is on the one I can see across the room right now. Might be something elder at Mom’s house as well, not sure if we got rid of Dad’s old desktop from 2000ish or what programs it might have on it.

Of course, all the elder offerings probably won’t play well with anything except an ancient printer, and what kids of storage offerings are available.

14

Consider Nisus Writer:

It’s a full-featured word processor for the Mac but it saves in RTF format so you can open the results in any word processor without having to convert or do a “save as”.

15

Yeah, I would have thought it would have been easier to use Word and just ignore all the features you don’t want to mess with, rather than find a new, simpler word processing program

16

I assumed George RR Martin waited for the universe to scream his next chapter from the aching void and then transcribed it onto clay tablets.

Stranger

17

Absolutely not. Word probably has commands that will tell your espresso maker to brew you a double with frothy cream while your document repaginates sideways for booklet printing. But you can spend a week looking for some command that ought to be front and center, like “take what I enter as literal text and don’t try to guess whether I want bullet-point dots or numbered entries dammit”.

There’s way too much featurebloat and the behavior of Word is counterintuitive and breaks existing standards as a hobby. For example, I had a document open but the window hidden (Mac) and wished to bring it back onscreen. You can’t access the relevant menu command to do so without first creating a new blank document opening an irrelevant other document. Before figuring out that workaround, I was measuring whether I’d made enough changes to the invisible hidden inaccessible document to matter and should just force-quit Word. That’s not a good interface.

18

That worked, while I was still writing regularly. Then I stopped for maybe five years. While I was out, they moved every single feature I use somewhere else. Now it’s like parachuting into the jungle.

19

I guess I have not had that problem unless there are pre-defined styles in the document, in which case just select everything and change the style to None, or start out using a blank template. I agree with the criticism about feature bloat, and more to the point that many features are implemented very poorly, but for the type of writing the o.p. is describing I just don’t have those issues. And believe me, I am no defender of Office or Microsoft, and would avoid using it if at all possible.

That is a legitimate criticism; for some reason Microsoft likes to make big changes in the UI between versions, even going so far as to change icons and move functions onto totally different menus. They also break macro functionality and a bunch of other things that make you want to shred user manuals with your teeth, except all of their documentation is now just links to videos on the Microsoft website that take an indeterminate amount of time to load regardless of the speed of your internet connection. But all of the basic functionality you need should be easy to access, and if weird things start happening you can turn on codes and just delete all of the irritating and unnecessary formatting that it interjects. Not that you should have to do this, or that you shouldn’t look for a more streamlined option (the aforementioned Google Docs works fine if you don’t mind the fact that you are sharing everything you write with the Google algorithms) but with a little work can make Word do what you need without a bunch of extra effort on your part.

Stranger

20

Not as funny as you might think; a bit of an exaggeration but not totally ridiculous. Go to ebay & you can find all sorts of older versions of programs that don’t have all the latest bloat bells & whistles, maybe even the same version you originally wrote it in.

21

They may say that Microsoft Word 5.1 was the last good version, or whatever, which would probably work fine but if the publisher insists that electronic submissions be in Word format and you use WordPerfect instead, you have the added burden of converting it.