Openoffice writer

While searching for an answer to something concerning OpenOffice just now, I discovered they do a program called Writer.

Up till now I've just been using the standard WP from their office pack, as I din't even know this Writer existed.

Any OO Writer users out there, and it worth making the swap?

 

Pretty sure OO Writer is the word processor part of the normal OpenOffice suite.

LibreOffice is better, IMO.

 

Ooh. I did wonder that, but the screenshots I pulled up looked a lot different to the WP from their suite.

 

Hmmm...don't know. If you look here, it lists "writer" as among the components of the Office suite:

http://www.openoffice.org/product/index.html

I know that when you run it in Linux, "writer" is part of the name of the program if you want to launch it from the terminal. I'm not sure if there is a separate "Writer" product or not.

LibreOffice has recently gone to version 5, and it's worth a look if you've never tried it. It's a fork of OpenOffice from when it looked like, at one point, OO was going to languish without support.

 

Great. Looks from that like I'm already using Writer. It's a bit confusing as when you open OO, the WP option is named simply 'Text Document'.

 

Writer is the Word processing component
Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and Base are the components of the Office suite, and they use "Text document" so you know you're not opening the presentation software or spreadsheet.

Phooey on Openoffce, though. Go with Libreoffice. It's more actively developed, and as Steerpike just said, version 5 just came out.

 

Does LO have a real-time word-count that you can have displayed at the foot of the document. I had to download an OO add on that provides this option, but it works like a charm. It actualy counts the words as you type, instead of you having to hit a refresh button to get the new word-count, like in MS Word.

 

@OurJud LO has a real time word count and character count displayed at the bottom of the screen, by default.

 

Well I'll be. Never noticed that. It sure does.

 

I'm tempted now, but also reluctant as I've just formatted all my chapters in OO.

I'll probably download it and have a play - see if it offers anything OO doesn't.

 

It's a fork of OO and had a lot of the original OO developers. Uses the same file format and it all should look the same. In other words, you shouldn't have to reformat your chapters.

 

Downloading now.

 

It will be familiar in use to OO in large part. Slightly different look. I think it is just ahead in the development curve a bit because development on OO slowed to a near halt at one point, which is partly why LO was launched as I recall.

 

I've just downloaded it from cnet, but it's not looking good. It took about 5 minutes just to download the file, but now my PC is struggling to do anything.

What's an .msi file? I'm used to good old .exe

 

.msi is a newer Microsoft file installer. I'd have downloaded it straight from LO, though, not Cnet. Here, I think:

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/?type=win-x86_64&version=5.0&lang=en-US

 

Tried that one too - same result.

Not sure what's going on but my PC does not like LO one little bit. It was freezing up and all sorts! Never had any trouble downloading other programs, so I'll stick with OO rather than take any risks.

Shame, as I would have liked to try it.

 

What version of Windows do you run?

 

XP

 

Hmm. Never tried version 5 on XP. Maybe they don't play well. I agree, stick with what works.

 

Just looked and saw the 64 bit version won't run on XP. Maybe none of them will.

 

I seriously need to upgrade, but have neither the funds nor the desire.

 

Switch to Linux

 

There really are very few reasons not to switch.

Which Libreoffice did you download? 64 or 32? What's your computer?

Here is the 32 bit download.

 

Dunno, to both.

Thanks, but I'll plod on with OO. It does what I need.

 

I use OO for all my writing.

Very simplistic and easy to use, no complaints on my end.