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Linux Word Processing
Table of Contents
1. Linux Development Projects for Free Word Processors
2. DTP - Desktop Publishing
3. Proprietary Word Processors for Linux
4. Running "Foreign" Word Processors on Linux via Emulation
5. An Opinionated Discussion About Word Processors
6. An Alternative Approach: Text Editor/Presentation
Language
7. How to Use Inelegant Systems Intelligently
8. Crossreferences  

This document discusses the document processing software

that is available under Linux. Word processing software has
been a matter of great interest for those that wish to see
Linux more widely adopted for use in business.

There is a fairly sizable assortment of free software packages

for this purpose. Unfortunately, they are not generally
considered to be terribly "credible" particularly they do not
generally read or write the data formats used by Microsoft
Word, which is widely considered the "industry standard."
Furthermore, many projects to build "free word processors"
tend to get started, but, unfortunately, few ever reach any
degree of completion.

There are, in contrast, a number of proprietary software

packages that do a reasonable job of "understanding" various
proprietary word processor formats.

This document also includes an opinionated discussion about

word processing. I feel that the actual thing that people wish
to do (doing stuff with documents) is not generally well
understood and that peoples' expectations and use of word
processing software is hence impeded.

Linux Development
Projects for Free Word
Processors
Here is a list of various projects that have been trying to build
word processors. The list is ordered based on what I perceive
to be the level of "stability and continuing development" of
the package. If it is stable and/or under active development,
it will be near the top of the list.

Defunct projects are listed at the end. I will continue to

include information on defunct projects even though web
presences may have disappear to demonstrate how prone
this area has been to failure.

Despite being inactive, I consider EZ. worth using as it is

stable, well-designed, and fairly easy to use. And it uses
(underneath) a text-based markup system.

The experimental packages are certainly not stable, and all

too often lock users into using "proprietary" data formats. As
a result, I'm rather dubious of their use.

It would be pretty neat if a Linux Software Foundation/Linux

Development Project put some serious effort into one or
another of these; I rather suspect that all decent word
processing software that is ever produced will continue the
current trend and come from proprietary vendors.

Most of these packages are also listed at the Scientific

Applications for Linux SAL- Office Software - Word Processing
and Publishing page, Linux Applications and Utilities Page,
with the somewhat unfortunate resulting duplication of effort.

AbiSource - AbiWord
AbiWord

This is a Gtk-based Word Processor/Publisher system, being

"open source" developed, formerly under the "AbiSource
License," but now under the GPL...

... [Abisource has] released AbiWord AbiWord is available

on both Linux and Windows, so everybody can share files. We
have support for WYSWYIG printing on both systems. We also
support line spacing, paragraph spacing, widow/orphan
control, multi-column documents, find/replace, and infinite
undo/redo. Of course, we have everything you would expect
such as selections, font control, and cut/copy/paste.
AbiWord looks to become the GNOME Project word
processor. It is starting to shape up quite well. By using GTk,
it gets any configurability that come from GTK Themes such
as GTKstep.

Its capabilities are a bit primitive in comparison with Word,

but it is quite suitable if you are writing letters and reports
that do not require great sophistication.

KWord
KWord - KDE Office Word Processor

KWord is the "official" word processor of the KDE Project.

OpenOffice.org
Originally based on the source code of StarOffice , the
OpenOffice.org "office suite" includes a word processing
module that can read and write documents in some of the
"industry non-standard formats" that people get quite
interested in.

 I have written translation code in Common Lisp that

transforms the XML -based data format into DocBook
form. Apparently there is to be an integrated "module"
for this purpose in version 1.1...
 ooextras - OpenOffice.org Extras

This includes artwork, templates for pre-printed labels,

templates for slide presentations, and other sample
files for users to download, use, and even contribute
to.

 oOoMacros

Macros and other goodies for OpenOffice.org

Flwriter
Flwriter - a word processor based on FLTK
Ted
Ted, an easy Linux Rich Text Processor

EZ
CMU Andrew Project - AUIS

The Andrew Project, a joint venture project in user interface

design between IBM and Carnegie Mellon University, along
with various other participants, includes a "document editor"
called EZ that can be used for various purposes including
word processing. Its claims to fame include that documents
can be safely sent thru email and that documents can
combine text,pictures, and in fact spreadsheet data, and the
user interface changes dynamically to reflect the operations
that are meaningful for whatever kind of document
component you're working with.

Unfortunately, it's not particularly compatible with non-

Andrew software, and I think it unlikely that this will change.

Status: It's been released in roughly current form for several

years; substantial enhancements do not seem likely as this
was a piece of joint research work between CMU and IBM on
user interfaces, and the designers have moved on to other
work. Version 8 is available in source code form, and may
soon become readily available for Linux. That appears to be
the final edition of the package unless someone decides to
fund continuing support.

In /etc/profile and/or other profile files that set up

environment for users, add the following:

ANDREWDIR= /usr/local/andrew; export ANDREWDIR

PATH=${ ANDREWDIR}/bin:$ PATH export CLASSPATH=$
ANDREWDIR/lib/atk LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$
ANDREWDIR/lib/atk:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Lyx
LyX's home page

Lyx is a GUI'ed nearly-WYSIWYG system for creating LaTeX

documents. It isn't fully capable of reading and providing
visual presentation of arbitrary LaTeX documents; since
there's a really powerful macro system inside, that's a pretty
intractable problem.

Status: Released; works fairly well. Lyx GUI Independence

Status describes what parts of Lyx work with what GUI
toolkits; there seem to be fairly equal portions working with
GTK, Qt, and XForms .

SIAG Office - Pathetic Writer

Pathetic Writer is a system written using C and Scheme that
is part of the SIAG (Scheme in a Grid) Office system.

Status: Somewhat sporadic development; see NEWS .

Many Moribund Projects

 The e:doc Project gives the users of SGML-based text
systems the possibility to design their documents in a
nearly WYSIWYG environment.
 Maxwell

There once was a company that developed a Linux

word processor called Maxwell. They apparently
concluded that they were unlikely to make much
money selling Maxwell, and so wound up the
company, thus leaving the software "all dressed up
with nowhere to go."

One of the people that worked on Maxwell is now

making it freely available under the GPL at the
Maxwell WP Home Page.

Status: Latest news update: July 1998.

 SciTeXt

A "scientific" word processor. It uses TeX as the

rendering engine, Python as its macro language, Motif
as the GUI library, and imports/exports (in somewhat
limited fashion) RTF, HTML, ASCII, and even (probably
in very ugly fashion) Word6 files.

Status: Work to rearchitect SciTeXt in Java started in

 mid 1997. No "proof of concept" code is available thus
far. The project appears "dead," as does the URL.

The T1lib font management library for X has been

taken out of the former C version of SciTeXt, and
remains useful.

 The GNOME Word Processor (GWP) Project

recently began, based on the "Hungry Programmers"
software (formerly the XWord project).

Status: Apparently work is ongoing; I have not yet

seen a release of it...

 Link/Pub

This is a Qt-based Word Processor/Publisher system.

 Wazo

A shareware character mode package that runs on a

number of Intel-based Unix variants; it claims fame in
that it requires only 1 function key (along with the
various prompts/menus).

 PAPyRUS

YAMP (Yet Another Master's Project); a word processor

written in C++ with X11R6 and Motif. It uses TCL as a
"command interpreter." As the documentation is all in
French, I'm sure it handles French accents.

 Cicero

Written using C++ and Tk/TCL; this program

"supports LaTeX and linuxdocSGML."

Status: Various revisions have been released; it looks

like it's a "one man show"

LinuxDoc has been made platform independent as

SGMLTools and it is not clear that further updates are
going into Cicero.

 XWord
 Part of the Hungry project that sought to build a Motif
"clone" called Lesstif.

Status: Buggy versions are apparently available;

further development doesn't seem to have be taking
place since mid-1997. An announcement in 1998 has
indicated that the "Hungry" group plan to adopt the
Gtk Toolkit and have this join The GNOME Desktop
Project.

 Thot

A structured document editor system; this has been

enhanced into the Amaya web browser/editor. It can
output LaTeX and HTML.

Thot is not itself an editor, but rather a set of libraries

that can be used for building applications based on the
concept of structured active documents.

Assuming that the licensing restrictions are reasonably

conformant with other free software, one or another of
the other projects probably ought to make use of this
code as a rendering or editing engine.

Status: Released; works fairly well, and has some

commercial spinoffs; effort is probably mostly going
into the (free) Amaya spinoff now.

 Qist

A Tk/TCL-based application that uses GNU Emacs to

edit source, sgmls to parse/validate SGML, LaTeX or
groff for rendering, and then ghostview or an HTML
browser to display the results.

The web site appears to be gone; perhaps the

software too...

 Mocs for X

Modular Object-oriented Customizable word

processing System.

To be written in C++, using Lesstif/Motif, Pthreads,

Status: Has been "in planning stages" since 1996. The

 last IRC meeting recorded was in 1996. Probably
"dead." The web site appears to be gone.

 Developers web site - WP

This planned to use C++ as the development

environment, SGML as the underlying document
format, with DSSSL as the method of describing how
the information structure should be displayed.

Status: The web link has been "dead" for quite a long
time.

 Didot

A German program to be written in C++, intended to

be highly modular, providing a combination of word
processing and desktop publishing capabilities.

Status: Unable to locate any current information. The

URL is not valid... I believe that this project is "dead." 

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