Notices

I'm looking for a *stable* word processor or text editor, preferably with the ability to open/save RTF so elementary formatting stays put (itals, bold etc). This is for my 770 running OS2006.

There have been quite a few discussions on the forums about this, but most are at least a year old. Open source development can move fast, so I want to solicit opinions as to the best right now. Bear in mind that I'm looking for an actual word processor or text editor, and NOT a program just to view Word documents.

I've tried a few so far.

Notes (built-in to OS2006)
I've heard people say this isn't stable but it seems OK to me. Appears to save in HTML format?

Abiword (2.4.7, straight from Abisource.org respository).
Seems to crash a lot, although packed with features. Can't find a way of outputting RTF. However, it does include an automatic save function, making crashes less devastating.

Leafpad
Seems simple and people like it a lot. However, no RTF support.

SciTE Text Editor
Really a programmer's editor, but works for ordinary text. Can work with RTF. Although it's a little slow on my 770, this seems like the best bet.

MaemoPadPlus
Tree arrangement is interesting for outlining, but not what I need. It also crashed when I played around with it.

Try also abiword 2.2.7 which in my experience is more stable. See http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3346 for the installation procedure. As far as I know (didn't try myself) it opens rtf. And, in order to start over with a new document and save it in rtf, according to http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70327 you shouldn't do file/new (it would save in native abw format), but instead you should open some rtf file, save it with another name, and change its contents. Same tricky proceedure for making a new word format document. In other words it will retain the original format.

Until we get a decent wp! I tried myself with scratchbox to compile the latest sources from abisource but this seems a task more complex than what my cortex can handle. Maybe kwrite under penguinbait's kde?

Thanks debernardis. I'll give it a try when I can grab a few minutes.

I'm in the same boat. I'd love something like Textmaker on my 770, and, like you, I've tried most of what's available and found them wanting. The internal notes app seems pretty good, but writes really nasty HTML that requires a bunch of fixing to get it to look pretty. Abiword crashes waaaaay too often to be trusted.

Maemopad's note/file structure is much too complicated for me. Basically, all I want to do is save RTFs to my memory card.

I finally just settled on Leafpad for plain text files.

Yes, but it uses only a very small subset of HTML. Despite the limitations, I find it very usable; in fact, I've come to like it a lot.

I agree about SciTE. I didn't get around to reinstalling it after an OS update but I mean to, one of these days.

I've been an editor for many years, and I can't imagine doing much real word processing on my (beloved) N800. Maybe someday when speech-to-text becomes practical on a handheld computer. Web page editing is possible, on a small scale.

How about someone hunt down Xywrite and make it into a Linux program? The older version, before it became Windows-compatible. Now you would be talking...

Perfectly practical with a bluetooth keyboard

I completely agree. Writing is one of the things for which the Internet Tablet (with its small screen) is most suited.

I meant to say in previous post that Notes seems to be quite good at importing HTML. I exported a couple of longish documents (16,000-18,000 words each) from Word and imported them into Notes without difficulty. The formatting of the original Word docs was straightforward: no tables, graphics or indexes but plenty of footnotes and crossreferences. On exporting from Word to HTML, the footnotes were converted to endnotes. I forgot to look at what happened to the crossrefs.

On importing the HTML to Notes, a lot of information (heading tags etc) was lost, so you can forget about roundtripping, but the imported doc was perfectly readable and editable in Notes and character formatting (italics and bold) was preserved.

Earlier versions of Word were notorious for producing a messy and impenetrable tangle of tags purporting to be HTML. I used Word 2007 and exported as "Web page, filtered", which gives a relatively tidy HTML file.

There is an older verrsion of abiworrd ported (2.2.7), which, along wiith the gconv-more modules imports word quite well, and an existing .doc will remain so after editing.

It is available from http://erinye.com/maemo mistral user. Note that ii will compile and run reasonably well under bora (n800)

Thanks, K.

Thanks guys.

I agree -- Abiword just crashes too much to be trusted, although I appreciate the effort that went into porting it across. But it has to be said that I've been following Abiword since the early days on Linux (pre v1) and it's always had problems. I want to love this program, but I can't. I even collared one of the developers at a Linux fair once and told him so.

I think I'll be using Notes for my word processing needs. I can't comment on whether word processing is possible, but I'm anticipating it will be. Most of all, I'm looking forward to going to a coffee shop with a word processor that will fit into my pocket.