Word Processing

OpenOffice is a free, Open Source alternative to MS Office with a Word compatible word processor, a complete Excel compatible spread sheet program and a Power Point like presentation software and drawing program and also allows to save to PDF file. In addition, it offers enhanced printing capabilities and options for direct connection with external email software as well as form-letter management to send letters to addresses in a database. Also included are Indexing functions, a layout manager, third-party import filters, HTML export capability and a context-sensitive html editor. OpenOffice also includes a variety of graphics tools and manipulation options as well as slideshow support and an option to create "portable" presentations. If you are looking for a free office suite, don t miss to take a look at this one - you ll be impressed!

Jarte is a text editor with a unique interface and many features. It uses the Windows built-in word processing engine at its core, but offers far more functionality then WordPad. This makes Jarte a great replacement for both the WordPad word processor and the NotePad text editor programs. Jarte opens rich text and plain text documents including DOC documents created with Microsoft Word. Some of the features include multi-document support, formatting tools, customizable background pattern and color schemes as well as clip functions, spell check, multi-level undo, USB drive installation and much more.

BK ReplaceEm is a sophisticated string-replacing utility. At its core, BK ReplaceEm is essentially a text search-and-replace program. However, unlike the search-replace functionality of a standard text editor, BK ReplaceEm is designed to operate on multiple files at once. The program does not limit you to one search-replace operation per file, but you can setup a list of operations to perform in a single run. You can also specify a backup file for each file processed just in case... Additional features include support for regular expressions, file filters and more. A very powerful and fast utility.

eTextReader enables you to read the plain text files provided by Project Gutenberg in a book-like manner. You can change the font type and size, choose a text and background color, set bookmarks, adjust margins, find words or phrases and more. The program can open the text files directly from the Project Gutenberg zip file, and also import RTF and HTML files. Other features include text editing, table of contents creation and more. Standalone program, no installation required.

AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for typing papers, letters, reports, memos and any other document. The program has an attractive, professional interface and all the features you need. In addition, it offers various plug-ins that can be added to further enhance the functionality. Currently available plug-ins include several imaging tools, encyclopedia, Babelfish translation, scripting support and various others. AbiWord comes with a built-in spell checker, auto-text macros, save as web page option and much more. A very nice and well established open-source alternative to commercial word processing programs.

InfoRapid Search & Replace is one of the most powerful search and replace utilities you can find. With it s built-in HTML filter, it s excellent for searching and previewing HTML documents (also in the cache of your internet browser)and supports many advanced search /replace techniques including regular expressions and phonetic searches. One of the nicest features is the fact that you can preview the search results with highlighted keywords as they were found, using a built-in mini browser.

tinySpell is a small spell checking program, that automatically spell checks a selected word that is copied to the clipboard. You can also set tinySpell to check your spelling on the fly while you are typing and alert you by sound whenever it detects a misspelled word. The program runs in the system tray and suggests correct spellings via mouse click menu or hotkey. Additional features include a private dictionary and an auto-replacement feature. Unique and compact, great for quick spell checking.

TextCrawler is a string search and replace tool that enables you to find and/or replace text and phrases across multiple files. The program supports simple keyword searches as well as advanced queries, using regular expressions. It also provides the option to extract the matching text to a separate window, from where you can copy it for other uses (e.g. to extract email address, URLs or similar patterns). A preview window allows you to view the found matches within their context, and you can choose to exclude certain files from the replace actions. Other features include an option to save RegEx strings in a custom library, subfolder scanning, automatic file backup and a built-in Regular Expression tester.

QJot is a small, rich text editor that can open and save .doc files. It offers most common editing functions, including text formatting, inserted images and objects, paragraph/line spacing, undo and more. It supports drag and drop, offers a recent documents list, word count and more. QJot also includes a spell checker, however it was not working properly during our review.

DID IT EVER HAPPEN TO you that you accidentally hit the caps lock button and then had to type everything again? This little tool will allows you to sound a warning sound whenever the caps lock button is hit and letters are being typed upper case. You can configure the length of the warning sound as well as some hotkey combinations to disable the function. You can also choose to have the caps lock button function as a TAB key, and thereby completely eliminate the risk of involuntary uppercase typing. You can also choose to ignore the warning and use the caps lock in it`s standard fashion.

FreeSpell is a command line interface spell checker that uses the well known, Open Source Aspell engine to check any selected text for spelling errors and offers suggestions to correct them. The program does not have a GUI, but uses a command line window to show any errors found as well as options to correct them. A spell check requires you to simply select (highlight) the text to be checked and then use a keyboard shortcut to launch the spell checker. The program works with any application, including Microsoft Outlook, Eudora or any other program. In addition, unlike most other spell checking tools, FreeSpell also works with selected text on a web page (not limited to form fields). If you can live without a pretty interface, and need top quality spell checking for free, give FreeSpell a try.

NodeSoft Search And Replace allows you to search several files or directories and replace a specified text within the files. You can filter the files to be processed based on their extension and optionally process subdirectories as well. The Extended Mode allows you to replace any text that is found between a user defined start tag and end tag (or text), for example, you could replace any text that is found between the ... tags of your HTML files.

Have you ever come across documents or websites and not known what language it is written in? The Lextek Language Identifier is capable of identifying not only what language it is written in but also its character encoding and what other languages are most similar. This will alleviate your wondering of what languages you are working with or looking at. An easy to use interface gives you the ability to quickly and easily identify the language of your documents. Simply paste the text in question into the Language Identifier`s text window and press the Identify Button. The language identifier will analyze the text you have provided and tell you which language matches and which other languages most closely match. We tested it with several languages and always received correct results.

GlobalSpellChecker extends the spell checking features of MS Word and allows you to use the Microsoft Spell Checker engine from any application, even if it normally does not support spell checking (e.g Notepad). To check a word, simply copy it to the clipboard and invoke GlobalSpellChecker from the QuickStart bar - it will provide you with immediate spelling corrections and suggestions (if any) for the selected word.

Angel Writer is a rich text editor that allows you to create formatted documents and save them in .RTF, .TXT or HTML format. It offers all the standard word processor features, including support for tables, images, font styles, web links and more.

A small and handy tool that lets you create quoted text for emails (or any other document). Simply copy the text to be quoted to the clipboard and QuoteRight will convert it by adding a special character (> by default) to the beginning of each line. The character count per line can be configured as well.

FrenchAssistant adds a small toolbar to your desktop that enables you to easily insert special French characters from a non-French keyboard layout. Just click the character on the toolbar and paste it into your text document. The program works with word processor, web forms, email programs and any other application that accepts text input.

GermanAssistant adds a small toolbar to your desktop that enables you to easily insert German umlauts from a non-German keyboard layout. Just click the umlaut on the toolbar and paste it into your text document. The program works with word processor, web forms, email programs and any other application that accepts text input.