This paper provides a short comparison and overview of six word processor programs which run on Unix, specifically FreeBSD: AbiWord, Applix Words, FrameMaker, KWord, StarWriter, and WordPerfect. The goal is to save time for others looking for a word processor by guiding them to the most likely looking products first.
Since I recently returned to graduate school, I need a word processor capable of doing the short papers assigned in graduate course work. A few years ago, this would have meant a return to a commercial operating system - possibly one not based on Unix. Fortunately, those who used to believe that the only large projects open source could produce were programming tools have been proven wrong. And those who incorrectly believed that there were no desk top publishing packages available for Unix (Unix actually had them about the same time the Mac did, in programs such as FrameMaker and Interleaf) are still wrong. Enough word processing applications are available for FreeBSD to meet any need. I even left out the text formatters which are available, most notably Tex/LaTeX and Lout. Those who want high quality output but don't require a WYSIWYG component may want to examine those as well.
The six applications seem to divide into halves: half are open source (AbiWord, KWord and StarWriter), the other half commercial. Half are FreeBSD native (AbiWord, Applix Words and KWord), the other half run under the Linux emulation. Half are embedded in an office suite (Applix Words, KWord and StarWriter), the other half are stand-alone, though all but one have the other components of an office suite at least planned, if not available.
Note that these are not comprehensive reviews. They are short notes designed to give users a feel for what the programs can do. One reason for that is that software is changing. Two of the applications are still prerelease betas of unfinished products (AbiWord and KWord); as such they are missing features planned for the first release. Newer versions of all the others are available, but they were not readily available at the time I needed a word processor. In particular:
All six products do - and have - the things I expect from a word processor. You type and text appears, and it's wrapped at the end of a line. Hitting newline produces a new paragraph. You can select regions of text, and cut and paste them. All the products have buttons to change the character format to bold or italic - or back. The buttons work on the region if it's selected, or the next character entered if not. There were tools to change the character or paragraph style in the document frame, and the ability to change what those styles meant. All claim to have online help of some kind or another and all have spelling checkers. Mac users might be a little disappointed, as most of them did not have drag and drop, but the basic word processing functionality is there.
Because of that, I'm going to talk about what was different about each of these tools, most notably their shortcomings. Never forget that a newer version may not have any particular shortcoming, so if something looks acceptable to you except for one thing, you might give the latest version a look.
The reviews are presented in alphabetical order; therefore, no special significance should be placed on where in the list a review appears.
AbiWord is the word processing component of a planned open source office suite, but no other parts exist. It is available in the FreeBSD ports tree as editors/AbiWord, or from the AbiSuite site. It is built from source on FreeBSD, and runs as a native FreeBSD binary. As previously mentioned, only betas of the first release are available. This means that many features aren't completed yet. In particular, the page layout abilities of version 0.7.10 (in the ports tree as of this writing) aren't up to doing formal papers. However, it's perfectly acceptable for doing informal letters, short business letters, resumes and cover letters, and I've used it for months for such things. The lack of page layout abilities meant I needed something else for writing papers, though.
This is a small, lightweight application good for short letters and the like. It's still missing features needed for writing research papers.
Applix Words is the word processing component of the Applixware Office suite, a commercial package that can be purchased from The FreeBSD Mall, among other places. As far as I know, no demo version is available. It does, however, run as a native FreeBSD binary. The word processor package cannot be separated from the office suite; I normally start the suite, then click on the word processor icon to get to the word processor. It provides a good, workmanlike quality word processor. It's not as complete as FrameMaker, and not quite as polished as Word Perfect.
If you need an office suite, and interoperability with the Microsoft Monopoly isn't a critical feature, this is probably the tool for you. It's not as featureful as StarOffice, but it's not as large, and is more likely to be comfortable on your X/Unix desktop.
In November, 2000 Adobe announced they had no plans to market FrameMaker for Linux. When the beta expired you would no longer be able to run FrameMaker on Linux or FreeBSD.
FrameMaker is a stand-alone desktop publishing package. What is currently available from Adobe is a time-limited beta for Linux. For FreeBSD, you'll need to apply a patch to bin/.wrapper to get it to run under the Linux emulator. It is not part of an office suite, but is targeted at professional writers working in groups on documentation sets. It provides a simple-to-use interface for basic word processor functionality, while at the same time providing access to features that the target customer needs that most users don't. I've used it on several Unix platforms in the past, and it has never failed to provide me with everything I needed for the task at hand.
If you want the most powerful desktop publishing system you can get, this is it. It's probably overkill for most people, but once you get used it, other word processors seem a bit simplistic.
KWord is part of the KOffice suite, which is the Open Source KDE Office Suite. It is available in the FreeBSD ports tree as part of editors/koffice, or from the KOffice web site. It appears that KWord can be installed without the rest of KOffice, but that is not the way it is packaged in the ports. It runs on FreeBSD as a native application. As previously indicated, it has not yet reached the point of being a full release, but it is closer to release than AbiWord is. The online Help system did not work; possibly because I was not running it in a KDE desktop. It also wasn't up to the style guide I had to follow.
If you want more than AbiWord offers, or want a small Open Source office suite, this package could be just the thing for you.
StarWriter is part of the StarOffice Suite. This is an Open Source office suite, but the port to FreeBSD has not yet been completed. The FreeBSD ports file in editors/staroffice52 runs the Linux binary under the emulator. It's a large package - but also the most complete of the bunch. It reads documents from popular proprietary systems better than the other packages I looked at can read them. It's also the only package that includes the ability to insert records from a citation database stored in the suite's data application.
However, StarWriter was the single most painful package to use. It should be marked Does not play well with others on the box. It opens a window. brings up it's own desktop in that window, and all its applications windows are managed by StarOffice in that window. The results felt very much like having an MS-Windows desktop in a window - right down to the task bar and Start button! It's incredibly annoying to find that my standard mouse actions don't work on a window that's obscuring my view of what I'm working on. By turning off all the internal windows but the one I was working on and making that window full screen in the main StarOffice window, I found it to be bearable - just.
If you need a high end office suite with good interoperability with Microsoft products and don't mind working in a Windows-like environment, this could do the trick for you. On the other hand, buying a second machine with MS Office preinstalled and accessing that via VNC would probably provide a similar environment, and use fewer resources on your computer.
WordPerfect is a commercial Linux product that has been made available on FreeBSD via the editors/wordperfect port. It has been around as a word processor for quite a while. Even though current incarnations are bundled as part of an office suite, it's still the most usable word processor I looked at. It was the only application that offered grammar checking, if you want that. The grammar checking can even be done in real time, just like the spell checking. The port installs the demo; this is both time and feature limited; you'll need to buy the commercial version if you want to continue using it on a regular basis, or want the full feature set.
If all you want is a good, flexible word processor, this is probably the one to use.
I know, some of you want to know what I chose. I'm not sure why - I'm not you, and my needs aren't your needs. However, I would purchase FrameMaker if it were available. Applixware Office is the second choice. Having it supported on my platform of choice (and supporting a commercial vendor on that platform) along with the ability to read FrameMaker files gives it just enough of an edge to make up for the lack of polish compared to WordPefect. You can read my review of Applixware Office if you're interested. Since StarOffice is free, I'm probably not going to delete that until I run out of space, just so I can deal with the odd MS document that shows up in my email.
Any comments, fixes, or requests should be sent to me. In particular, if you know where reviews of other word processors or text formatting packages for FreeBSD are available, I would like to link to those as well.