# Learn me about alternative word processing programs (Mac) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 20, 2006, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454 "2006-06-20T17:44:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2006, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/1 "2006-06-20T17:44:07Z")
I really really want to emancipate myself from MS Word as it infuriates me daily (bloated, does a thousand things that I don’t need or want it to do, wiggy, etc). I know there are things like LaTex and Appleworks out there, but the rub: I have been using Endnote for several years and I think there’s some unholy alliance arranged where Endnote will never be fully compatible with anything else. What I need is a word processor and citations set up to run in OS X. Is there anything out there for citation that works as smoothly (Har! but in theory) as Word and Endnote? Anyone else found any nice solutions? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/2 "2006-06-20T18:20:51Z")
I don’t know much about Mac software, but i can tell you that one reason i haven’t made the full switch to OpenOffice on my Windows box is that the “Cite While You Write” feature of Endnote is only compatible with Word. It sucks, because i’d love to be able to make the complete switch to OO, but right now that’s not an option. I do have OO on my computer, and use it for some stuff, but not for my scholarly work. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2006, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/3 "2006-06-20T21:34:29Z")
You might try [NeoOffice](http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/). It’s a variant of OpenOffice ported to the Mac. It’s free, and has a number of features not found in OpenOffice. I don’t know if it’ll have what you’re looking for, but I like it loads better than Word for Mac. ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2006, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/4 "2006-06-20T22:04:21Z")
Have you looked at Apple’s own [Pages](http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/) which is part of the iWork package? Keynote, a PowerPoint competitor, the other half of the iWork package, is quite well done. ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/5 "2006-06-20T22:07:53Z")
I also used [Mellel](http://www.redlers.com/mellel.html) for a while. Not bad. ---
**Author:** ![bluetrust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@bluetrust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluetrust)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/6 "2006-06-21T04:17:27Z")
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan] You might try [NeoOffice](http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/). It’s a variant of OpenOffice ported to the Mac. It’s free, and has a number of features not found in OpenOffice. I don’t know if it’ll have what you’re looking for, but I like it loads better than Word for Mac. [/QUOTE] It may be worth noting that NeoOffice looks better than OpenOffice, but doesn’t work on newer Intel-based Macs. There are community-builds of OpenOffice that do work on these Macs, but I had a really bad experience last month where the Excel clone wasn’t sorting columns containing strings correctly. The mistake was caught by one of my customers. It was embarassing. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/7 "2006-06-21T05:18:44Z")
[QUOTE=bluetrust] It may be worth noting that NeoOffice looks better than OpenOffice, but doesn’t work on newer Intel-based Macs. There are community-builds of OpenOffice that do work on these Macs, but I had a really bad experience last month where the Excel clone wasn’t sorting columns containing strings correctly. The mistake was caught by one of my customers. It was embarassing. [/QUOTE] They are working on porting it to Intel Macs, however (it’s in alpha statis at the moment), so it’ll eventually work on those. (Really shouldn’t be that hard, since there’s OpenOffice for Linux platforms, and Mac’s are 'nix based, and there’s Linux programs which can run just fine on Macs. Of course, I’m not a programmer, so who knows?) ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2006, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/8 "2006-06-21T05:51:19Z")
I have Pages at home and am happy with it. I don’t produce very complex documents though. Pages has nice page layout features. > **[Pages - Official Apple Support](https://support.apple.com/pages)** > > Get help creating letters, flyers, or essays, add images or charts, or continue editing your document from any Apple device with these Pages resources. Before Pages came out, I used Nisus Writer Express ( [http://www.nisus.com/Express/](http://www.nisus.com/Express/) ) which has many nice features like a super-powerful search and replace function and non-contiguous selection. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/9 "2006-06-22T02:50:06Z")
According to the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbiWord) on it, [Abiword](http://www.abiword.org/) has claimed to support Endnotes for a while now. I don’t know much about it though, as I only used it for a short time about a year ago before using [OpenOffice](http://www.openoffice.org/). ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/10 "2006-06-22T03:55:51Z")
Ah, in my absence I have grabbed demo copies of Mellel and Bookends, which seem to work well together. Mellel is supposed to have great language support and is supposed to be stable with huge documents, and the Bookends seems to be working well and they work together almost as smoothly as the cite-while-you-write Word-Endnote setup, without the constant crashing (I am of the opinion that Endnote is getting worse and buggier with each new version. . .). I’m so trained in the others that there’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s coming along fast. My only concern is the trouble with translating between the various programs (old MS Word files and endnote libraries and back and forth) but RTF seems to be a good lingua franca. The stuff I do needs much more complex this and that than Pages can do-- looks like Nissus is the next possibility. Does Open Office deal well with some biblio program? Thanks for the ideas-- I’ll report in with my findings. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/11 "2006-06-22T03:59:40Z")
[QUOTE=Nanoda] According to the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbiWord) on it, [Abiword](http://www.abiword.org/) has claimed to support Endnotes for a while now. [/QUOTE] Actually, what it says is that AbiWord includes “support for Tables, Footnotes and Endnotes.” That’s quite different from supporting [EndNote](http://www.endnote.com/), which is a bibliographic and citation software used by scholars and others engaged in formal or academic writing. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2006, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/learn-me-about-alternative-word-processing-programs-mac/361454/12 "2006-06-22T04:01:55Z")
Ah, Mhendo, I see you mention that the CWWY business doesn’t work with OO. . . also it looks like Abiword supports “endnotes” but not Endnote ™. Alas. I’ll give this setup a shot and see if it’s worth investing in.