[Posted and mailed]
Quote:> I am a complete Linux newby and would like some advice on word
> processors for Redhat Linux 5.1.
> My girlfriend is a student and would like to switch to Linux (she
> loves the Penguin) but she can only do so if the files saved under
> linux can be editted under DOS-WP5 or Windows-Word as well.
> Maybe Word Perfect 7 for Linux is capable of this but $180 is quite a
> lot of money while there seems to be so much beatifull software
> available for free.
If your girlfriend is a student, she's almost certainly eligible for the
~US$40 student pricing, unless the pricing scheme changes outside the US.
For interoperability with "DOS-WP5 or Windows-Word," that's the best
choice in Linux -- indeed, the *ONLY* choice if formatting is complex (in
my experience, no file format filter is adequate with complex formatting,
though they're often OK for simple documents).
Quote:> How about KLyX? It looks great from the screenshots.
I've no experience with the KDE-enabled version, but regular LyX is
certainly a nice program *IF* you're willing to un-learn certain habits
promoted by traditional word processors (or if you never learned these
habits to begin with). File format compatibility with the Windows world
is also nil, except to the extent that you can create a TeX file from LyX
and process it with some TeX variant in Windows -- but as LyX won't read
raw TeX (yet), it can't go the other way.
I'd consider StarOffice above LyX for interoperability, in fact, simply
because StarOffice is available for Windows. If the goal is to be able to
work on a document on, say, your own Linux box or PCs in a common
university computer center, though, this probably won't cut it. I hate to
sound repetitive, but for that sort of goal, the only good choice is
WordPerfect.
--
Rod Smith
http://www.users.fast.net/~rodsmith
NOTE: Remove the digit and following word from my address to mail me
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