Rick--
> My name is Rick Dearman and I'm doing a article about how Linux is a
> useful and/or better operating system for writers. I'm trying to get
> some information about the various software that people here use for
> writing.
>
> Some of the things I interested in are.
>
> Is there a screenplay writing software available for Linux?
I guess it depends on what you want help with -- there are LaTeX style
packages that could help with aspects of writing a screenplay, for instance.
What would you like a screenplay writing program to do?
> Which of the many word processors available do you use / recommend.
Actually, I don't recommend a word processor at all. Instead of a word
processor, I use text processing tools: use Emacs to edit the file, create
it with LaTeX markup, and then use dvips to print it out.
Advantages:
* Typeset output created by TeX/LaTeX is unsurpassed. No word processor can
come near the quality of this system. (I've been running this challenge on
comp.text.tex for some time; so far, TeX has all electronic systems beat.
MS-Word doesn't come close.)
* You can use all the GNU/Linux text tools on these files (like "wc -w
filename" to get the number of words in the file, or "diction filename" to
get a measure of readability for the file).
* The GNU/Linux text tools are more powerful than any word processor in the
world. For example, use "agrep -s FSF file" to display all lines in file
that contain a supersequence of the string FSF, such as "Free Software
Foundation""; another example is using Emacs to search the file for a
regular expression -- most word processors only search for simple text
strings.
* Since it's a text file, you can create it on any editor on any system.
* You can also use the LaTeX file on almost any other OS, including Windows
-- TeX is available for lots of OSes.
* The LaTeX format is not going to change any time soon -- my files won't be
unreadable in the year 2010 when I run the latest and greatest free OS.
> What do you think is the advantage of using Linux over Windows for your
> work?
See above. :)
I honestly don't believe that there is a better system for writing
available, anywhere. Writing is what I primarily use my computer for, and I
want to find the best system for both writing and producing quality output.
I've found it with GNU/Linux. There are some features I want to see on a
writing system that don't exist anywhere yet, but these features will
probably appear on GNU/Linux systems first.
