Word Processing Software: SoftMaker TextMaker

SoftMaker's TextMaker is actually part of a whole office suite. The 2006 version can be downloaded for free, but you do have to give them some personal information, including your email address.

I see TextMaker as more of a word processing/desktop publishing hibrid, because if you use their file format, you can easily place pictures in the text as well as apply some text art and other nice extras (although you can save and work with .rtf files in the program, when I tried to do add pictures into a .rtf, things slowed down considerably whereas the native file format kept buzzing along).

I have used TextMaker for one 20 page booklet and am working on a longer document.

By the way, after I downloaded the free version, they sent me a deal on an upgrade to the new version.

If you are wondering why you haven't heard of the program before, it is probably because it is from Germany -- but everything in the versions linked to above is in English. The company also often offers free fonts, and sells CDs with thousands of fonts (for those that need 12,000 choices!).

Word Processing Software: Atlantis

I've been trying out various office/basic publishing software recently. (I have not been paid to review any of the software -- in fact, I've purchased the software myself unless it was free.)

I really, really like the Atlantis Word Processor. I've already used it for dozens of shorter (40 pages and under) booklets and documents. You can try it for free yourself for 30 days -- or you can even get it totally for free through some new deal that didn't exist when I purchased it.

The program has been very stable for me; works both on my Vista computer and on other earlier machines; and the staff has been very nice about answering emails promptly when I can't figure out things (also, posting on the forum on their website produces quick answers).

It also can handle hundreds of endnotes in one document, and files converted from WordPerfect to .rtf files using AbiWord come over to Atlantis fairly well (still need a lot of reformatting, but not horrible).

The one downside is that it doesn't seem to handle insertion of illustrations too well.