Re: #3 in Guardian Tech today, bare metal editors over Microsoft Word

[Kari Eveli lexitec@xxxxxxxx]

Daniel and Carl,

I have a long relationship with Word beginning with version 2.0 (my
first computer program bought back in 1986). In my mind, the true Word
is still DOS Word up to version 5.0. It had those curious mnemonics
"TL" for "Transfer Load" and "TS" for "Transfer Save", and
many others. It was a very good program for an absolute computer novice,
and way ahead of many others back then as to font management and printer
support.


When I adopted Windows 3.0 and 3.1x, I did not switch to Winword. I
continued to use DOS Word and NB 3.0 which I discovered somewhat later
in DOS boxes under Win 3.1. My work has involved publishing and
translation. For publishing my first books, I even used DOS Word. Later
I used NB and DOS Word to edit Ventura text files. As a translator, I do
get WinWord assignments and must handle them. Sometimes they are a pain
in the neck when formatting changes must be done. I used Win 3.1 Quark
for a long time for making official translations of documents and legal
acts, but nowadays I enjoy using Xara Designer Pro (a British integrated
software program for graphics, publishing and web design) for complex
translation work (I can take a form with graphics as background, mask
the parts with text to translate, and put the translations on the
foreground layer).


For bare-metal writing, I am now using mostly EditPad Pro, I use it even
for doing Xy3 formatted texts for my dictionary text databases (I have
EditPad macros for Xy modes). Yes, I am Xywriting on a different
program. (That is nothing very new to me as I used to edit NB files with
DOS Word saving them without formatting).


As I said, I do use MS WinWord (I have 2010 and 2013 installed) when I
need full compatibility, but for opening Word files and copying their
content for editing in EditPad I use Textmaker (my DOC(X) default to
Textmaker), which is a German Word clone, part of SoftMaker Office. It
is more nimble, very compatible and available on many platforms (Win,
Mac and Linux).


Best regards,

Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@xxxxxxxx

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