More word processors

The title url is NisusWriterExpress. I’m testing it currently and it doesn’t seem that bad. Mariner Write, from yesterday’s post, doesn’t want to import either Word or AppleWorks, despite claims by the company that it can do both. It also doesn’t seem to be interacting with MacLinkPlus at all.

What I would like to find is a grammar checker. None of the word processors I see around has one. That includes the program I currently use. Now, I have read and read and read about the fact that grammar checkers are “useless,” but it seems to me that a grammar checker that underlines potential mistakes has a purpose. Namely, the I love Paris in the the spring error.

9 out of ten times, when formatted in a certain way, I won’t see what’s wrong with that sentance. It doesn’t matter how often or long I proofread. And, trust me, I have tried everything, even text to speech, to attempt to find errors like that. The best thing is Word’s green underlines. (As Text to Speech takes longer and feels clunky.)

So why, you ask, don’t I just buy Word? To me, Word is an example of everything that is wrong with word processing apps. Yes, it has a few nice features, but for the most part it suffers from code bloat. The current version of Word takes about 40 megs just to open up. That’s half the size of my first hard drive. While computers have gone leaps and bounds since my old 16mhz Mac Performa, it strikes me that Word Processing has not changed all that much since 19. (Tons since 1983, though.) Why does a function that used to take 4 megs of ram have to take 40? Part of it is additional functions that people really don’t use or don’t use in most tasks. The other part is lazy programmers who take resources that they don’t need to be using. There are ways to create clean, smooth, simple code that doesn’t use more than it needs to. It takes a little bit of work, though.

I’m willing to give up some of my resources to additional function, but not 10 times my resources when I’m not using ten times the function. Granted, Nisus Writer is something of a hog in and of itself. One day I will find the perfect WP program.

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