If we all used the same software and operating systems, file compatibility
and portability would not be an issue. There was a time when one could
confidently send a file in Microsoft’s Word format(s) .doc, and know that the
recipient would be able to open and view it. Microsoft WAS word processors, in
those days. While Microsoft Word is still far and away the most widely used word
processor, there are now other players whose formats have to be taken into
account. Star Office, Open Office, Word Perfect and others have the ability to
read MS Word documents and to save in that format. However, what does one do if
they have no idea what software the recipient of a document has installed? If
I’m using Star Office and saving it it’s native format while my recipient has
Microsoft Word installed, but not Star Office or Open Office, they cannot read
the document I send electronically, leaving me the option of printing it out and
mailing it or finding a format in which they can read it.
There are options available which ensure documents sent electronically can be
read (and most often printed, too). MS and several other firms have readers
available for free which enable a recipient to access the information contained
in those documents. In addition, there are special formats which can be used,
such as Adobe’s .pdf (Portable Document Format) to ensure that information is
accessible to any recipient. We’re going to discuss this and office software in
general today and revisit the topic in weeks to come. As always; we’ll
concentrate on free or exceptionally cost-effective solutions.
There are three formats for text documents that almost everyone can access now,
from virtually any machine; be it a PC, a Mac or a *nix system. These are plain
text (.txt) Rich Text Format (.rtf) and the afore-mentioned Portable Document
Format (.pdf). Each has it’s drawbacks and strengths and each has it’s place in
your arsenal of tools.
The first is plain text, which usually bears the file extension .txt. Plain text
is just that; plain. It contains only the most minimal formatting and it’s
appearance suffers as a result. It will convey information just fine, though,
and is often the preferred method in mediums such as email. Plain text
formatting will not encompass seamless inclusions such as graphics in the manner
a word processor does, which is it’s primary limitation. Plain text will not
also easily accommodate such things as mathematical formulae, with subscripts
and superscripts. These have to be displayed in a less elegant manner than they
normally are. Plain text also has the advantage of being the most compact
format, meaning that it’s file sizes are minimal.
I am unaware of any default operating system installation which does not include
an application to read, write and edit plain text. In Windows, it’s Notepad, and
this application is automatically associated with files bearing the .txt
extension unless you install another application and tell Windows to do
otherwise. While Notepad has it’s limitations, it is a fully functional text
editor. It does not handle files larger than 32 kilobytes (which is really a
large text file unless you are programming or writing a comprehensive report)
and it does not display some text files generated on *nix machines with the line
breaks where they were originally put. Should you want or need it; most word
processors offer you the option of saving in plain text, too.
Macs and *nix machines contain a variety of text editors, depending on the OS
version. So you’re covered, there.
On my own Windows systems; I use either an older text editor called Notespad or
the newer and more capable Edit Pad Lite. Both are available free, display all
plain text files well (whether generated on Windows or *nix machines) have no
file size limitations and allow a number of files to be open in the application
at once, with the user switching between them using a tabbed interface. I’ll
post urls below. There are lots of others, so feel free to try a bunch of them
until you find one you really like.
Rich text format is plain text marked up in the same manner HTML is. The markup
tags tell the application how to display the document. (In fact; all word and
document processors work like this; controlling display and printing with tags
the user does not ordinarily see or interact with and .rtf files are nearly
identical to HTML ones.) Windows installations have Wordpad installed, which is
a fairly functional word processor utilizing the Rich Text Format (.rtf) as it’s
native file type. Almost all installations of an operating system have an
application capable of reading and writing to .rtf files.
I use Rich Text Format a lot, precisely because I know everyone can read and
write to it. For this reason, I prefer it over any other word processor format
when sending to a recipient whose software and/or machine type is unknown to me.
Nearly any word processor application can open .rtf files and almost all can
save in that format, as well. I have found that some literary magazines, web
sites and book editors demand .rtf files, though not many. Rich Text Format is
also the easiest way for us to hand off typeset text files from our varying
machines to another. It allows the Linux machines to hand formatted text to the
Windows machines, and vice versa. We choose this method because some of our
machines do not have enough free disk space to allow installation of a “real”
word processor or suite of office applications. One alternative to our scheme
would be to install Open Office, Star Office or Word Perfect across the LAN. All
of those talk between the various platforms perfectly. A more esoteric
alternative would be to run Microsoft Office across the LAN, with the Linux
boxes using CodeWeaver’s Crossover Office emulator.
In addition, for much of what I do, there is no need for a fully-equipped word
processor. This may be true for you, too. I often do “quick and dirty” jobs
where I generate a small amount of text which needs only limited formatting (for
whatever reason) and then printing. Wordpad used to be my favored application
for this because it opened quickly and had all the features I needed. However,
Wordpad is not the most robust application around. It occasionally locks or
crashes, which always seems to result in lost data. It’s rather obvious that
Microsoft stopped development on Wordpad a long time ago and merely includes it
in an OS installation because they have it and it will serve until someone
installs a “real” word processor.
For a while, I fastened on early versions of AbiWord as a solution. It has the
capability to open and save files in .rtf. The 1.x versions for Widows weren’t
any more robust and stable than Wordpad, though, and were not a viable solution
for that reason. However, the AbiWord team has kept at it’s development and they
are now at version 2.0.3, which I’ve been using for just over a week now (on
Windows and Debian GNU/Linux) with no problems at all. It hasn’t crashed or hung
once! Printing from AbiWord is also trouble-free on all of our machines. (I used
the Windows binary for that installation and built the Linux version from source
code.)
In my compact Linux installations, where disk space is at a premium, my Rich
Text Format word processor of choice is Ted. It’s a very small application which
the user must build from source code. However, it is stable, prints well and,
while lacking a large feature list, does everything I ask of it. The full
installation of Ted takes up only one megabyte on disk, which is attractive to
me on some machines.
The last document format we are going to talk about it Adobe’s Portable Document
Format, which uses the .pdf file extension. Readers for documents transmitted in
.pdf format are available for nearly every conceivable platform at no charge. In
addition, many applications (such as Open Office) write to them natively. All
the readers I am aware of allow printing of these documents.
This is because, at some time in the past, Adobe wanted .pdf files to be
universally accepted. In order to have .pdf become a standard, they had to open
it up so that they were not the only purveyors of software capable of generating
and reading these files. Because of this, there are many applications that do
this. Some are freeware and many are low-priced; all made possible by liberal
licensing terms from Adobe for the basic protocol.
Adobe’s own application for generating these files is Acrobat and it is fairly
expensive. (List price for Acrobat 6.0 is $449 USD.) Of course, they’re not just
selling the ability to create .pdfs. Rather, it’s an entire suite of
collaboration applications and (I suspect) worth it if you need those features.
However, I must say I’ve found it somewhat problematic and sluggish in my many
associations with it.
Pdfs are rather large files, compared to the text they contain. The markup,
version, revision and other information contained in them swells the size to a
noticeable degree, sometimes doubling it. This becomes less of an issue as time
goes by and more and more people get broadband access, but at one time it was a
real drawback. (To me on my dialup connection, it still is.)
Pdfs can be locked; meaning the recipient cannot modify the files. The various
consultant reports I generate for pay are always sent in .pdf format for just
this reason.
This keeps intentional or inadvertent tampering out of the picture and is an
important feature for me because of this. The document thus always says exactly
what I created it to say.
The two applications I use regularly to create .pdf files are listed below. PDF
995 has proven a robust Windows app and worked with no serious problems for me
and several others for a couple years now.
Open Office is a rapidly maturing office suite, containing not only a word
processor, but presentation software, a spreadsheet application and more. They
are at version 1.1 and still developing at a rapid pace. Open Office is based on
and a derivative of Sun Microsystem’s Star Office. It’s word processor, called
“Writer”, is robust and now more often than not my choice for handling very
large documents (hundreds of pages) as it seems more stable at this than any
other app for Windows. While not as full-featured as Microsoft Office or the
WordPerfect Office suite, it is a good choice, and available free of charge.
(They do ask you to register it so they get some idea of how many are using it.)
I find it offers functionality on the level of MS Office 97, or so, with
increased stability on many machines. Writer can convert any document it has
open to a .pdf with a single mouse click.
Notespad;
http://www.newbie.net/NotesPad/
Edit Pad Lite;
http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html
Please note that there are versions of Edit Pad which the publishers charge for
and which contain more capabilities than the freeware version. You might want to
give these a good, close look to see if they suit you.
AbiWord;
http://www.abisource.com
AbiWord is open source and free.
PDF 995;
http://www.pdf995.com/
The basic PDF 995 package creates .pdf files and is free, though it displays an
ad screen at each use. The publishers also sell more capable versions which can
edit .pdfs and much more. The prices are reasonable and, in my experience, the
software is reliable. I might add that on the one occasion at which I sought
support from this outfit, they responded promptly and effectively.
Open Office;
http://www.openoffice.org
A fairly complete and functional office suite in which the word processor writes
natively to it’s own format, but can write to others, such as the Microsoft Word
.doc format. It also can write to a .pdf with a simple mouse click.
© 2004 Jack Imsdahl
© 2002 - 2004 by On Computers and the Videotex Services
Coalition.