Section 8.3. Other Word Processors

8.3. Other Word Processors

Although the word processors discussed so far are the most popular among Linux users, this book would not be fair to the rich environment in which Linux and free software thrive if it failed to mention some of the other alternatives.

Figure 8-44. The final chart

Anyware Office, by VistaSource, Inc.

Anyware Office is an office suite that is commercially made but inexpensive for Linux. It includes not only a word processor but also a spreadsheet, a drawing program, a mail program, and other smaller tools. In some respects, Anyware Office behaves differently from word processors such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, but once you get used to it, it can be quite useful and handy. Especially noteworthy is its support for importing and exporting FrameMaker documents. The development seems to have stopped somewhat, though, and it is uncertain what will become of this product.

AbiWord

You can find information about this word processor at http://www.abiword.org.

LyX

The LyX package (also available as KLyX with a more modern user interface) provides a decent WYSIWYG X user interface that works with window managers from standard Linux distributions and uses the LAT_EX and T_EX packages to format the text for printing. If you can live with the formatting limits of the package (most of us can), you may find that LyX/KLyX is an excellent solution. LyX/KLyX does not know how to display some of the powerful formatting features that T_EX provides, so if you are a power T_EX user, this isn't for you. LyX/KLyX isn't part of most Linux distributions; to try it, you will have to get it from a Linux archive.