Hi Catherine, TextEdit does let you print results, and you can open Word documents that are sent to you in this program. However, while it is easy to use, and actually more powerful than you might initially think, it has some shortcomings if you are looking for a word processing program to write research papers with footnotes, for example. James Austin has done periodic reviews of what's available in this regard. There are other good accessible word processors -- a free program called Bean is one of them -- which also fall short in this regard, although they have several nice features.
If you're talking about the most full-featured word-processors you probably want to consider either Pages, which is Apple's iWork counterpart to Microsoft Word, or Nisus Writer Pro, which is a third party program that was recently revamped to version 2, and now is in a 2.1 release. Both these programs can be separately purchased from the Mac App Store (Pages for $19.99 and Nisus Writer Pro for $79.99). There are several people on list who can give you a more detailed evaluation of these products, and Nisus Writer Pro, in particular, has many enthusiastic users in its new incarnation. I'll point you to an post I wrote back in June in reply to Lynne's query about whether the new version was worth getting: • Re: Nisus Writer Pro; Query http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/2011-June/013619.html That post summarizes an extensive review of the product in TidBITS, and excerpts key bits. The bottom line was that the writer considered it to be an overall superior experience to using either Microsoft Word or Pages for word processing, but he also made some very detailed comments about topics like degree of compatibility with Word documents handed back and forth between the two programs (mixed experience: both pluses and minuses.) Anne is probably the most expert user of Pages on this list. The current version is Pages '09, and is overdue for an upgrade. My guess is that this has been running late because it is being written to take advantage of the changes that have been made in both Mac OS X and iOS on devices like the iPad. This is true for the entire iWork suite (with counterparts to Excel, Word, and Powerpoint in Numbers, Pages, and Keynote). But this is certainly another viable alternative. One of the shortcomings of the Mac App store is that it does not support trial downloads -- developers can offer free lite versions of applications, but they cannot offer a free application that later requires you to pay an extra amount to keep it functional. So if you want to use a trial download, you have to visit the developer's web site directly. You can download a 15-day free trial version of Nisus Writer Pro from: http://www.nisus.com/pro/ Apple used to have a trial download page for the iWork suite at: http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/ I don't know whether that still works. Now all the apps are separately purchasable at the Mac App Store. There was also a discussion about Nisus Writer Pro vs. Pages on this list in July. You can read through the thread at the secondary Mail Archive pages for this list: • Nisus Writer Pro 2.0 Versus Pages; [Revisited] http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00117.html To read down the thread, use the access key shortcut Control+n to navigate to the next post in the thread and Control+p to go to the previous post in the thread. These access key shortcuts work for all browsers on different platforms if you substitute the appropriate access key (e.g., for Internet Explorer use Alt+n and Alt+p; for Firefox I think it is Alt+Shift+n and Alt+Shift+p). Since we have a new Mac VoiceOver user who is sighted, I should mention that if you started Safari without VoiceOver running, then the access key combination is Control+Option+n for next and Control+Option+p for previous. But if you started Safari with VoiceOver running it is just Control+n and Control+p. There is one other interesting new app for writing called Scrivener. Rather than being focused on the generation of output, it's set up for the use of people who write a lot, and want to easily access intermediate tools like outlines and lists of ideas. Scrivener is also available from the Mac App Store ($44.99) and is accessible with VoiceOver. They also have a 30-free trial download of their product, but they are also running a NaNoWriMo trial special. This abbreviation stands for "National Novel Writing Month", which runs for the month of November. So they started a special trial download that would run through till December 7, regardless of when it was downloaded, and announced this at the end of October. At this point, you would be better off getting the regular trial download of Scrivener for the 30-day expiration, but there's another offer that is described on the web page of the Scrivener NaNoWriMo trial page at: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo.php If you purchase Scrivener directly from the developer's web page, you can enter a coupon code of "NANOWRIMO" (without the quotation marks) to receive a 20% discount on the $44.99 price. Also, if you actually become a winner in the National Novel Writing Month competition, you are eligible for a 50% discount on Scrivener. You can also read a review of Scrivener by a VoiceOver user at Austin Seraphin's blog: http://behindthecurtain.us/2011/09/07/scrivener/ As a final comment, for people who write technical papers with math and equations, there is a word processing solution with LaTeX that is completely accessible through an application called TeXShop, which is freeware. It's very powerful, and has excellent multilingual support, but a steep learning curve, so it won't be a solution for most people unless they use it a lot. (When I tell you that TeX was originally designed to get around the high price of mathematics books due to the costs associated with typesetting equations you may understand -- TeX can be used to produce publication quality books, and is used by some publishers, as well as being a standard for advanced papers in some scientific and technical fields.) While some people, like James Austin, find it worthwhile to learn for writing large numbers of (non-mathematical) papers at university, that's not the norm. HTH. Catherine, apologies for the late reply, but I lost the email that you sent me directly yesterday when I was trying to respond, so thanks for writing back on list. Cheers, Esther On Nov 9, 2011, at 06:08, Catherine Golding wrote: > Is Text Editor a complete word processing program from which I can print? > Do I need to buy IWorks or another document program? > > > > Catherine Golding > > Olympia, Washington > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
