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Fast Word Processor w RTF & Outlining
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Posted by Gary N
Aug 23, 2007 at 11:51 PM
I want a fast word processor that supports RTF and simple outlining formats. By fast, I mean quick to open, scroll through long documents, save, and close. By supporting simple outlining, I mean that it provides automatic formatting for multiple outline levels, not that it lets you nimbly juggle outline entries, as Notemap does.
MS Word is too slow.
The popular text editors—like EditPad, UltraEdit, and NoteTab—don’t support RTF and simple outlining.
I though there might be other text editors that I have overlooked, or perhaps simpler word processors, like Atlantis, that might do it, but I am not familiar with any of them. Any suggestions?
Gary
Posted by Chris Thompson
Aug 24, 2007 at 01:01 AM
Give OmniOutliner a try. The Pro version has a very good automatic styling and formatting system, and it can be used as a word processor, including printing as you’d expect from a word processor (i.e. without outlining gadgets, if you want). It can also export to MS Word and there are scripts that allow it to export to the LaTeX publishing system, if you’re an academic.
Posted by sracer
Aug 24, 2007 at 03:11 AM
Your request got me reminiscing about the good old DOS textmode days and an awesome outliner called PC-Outline. I did a quick google search for “folding editors” and found EControl. It is advertised as a syntax editor, but it supports outlining and the ability to expand/collapse outline entries. It doesn’t do RTF unfortunately. But it is blazingly fast… and free.
http://www.econtrol.ru/index.html
What’s nice about EControl is that you can define your own “lexer” (syntax/lexical analyzer). So if the default behavior for plain text files doesn’t work for you, you can customize it and configure EControl to behave they way that YOU want it to. You can easily define your own control codes/characters to change the way EControl works.
I’ve got a few projects on various burners, but time permitting I just might dig into creating my own outliner/organizer lexer/profile for it. It is amazingly quick.
Posted by Jack Crawford
Aug 24, 2007 at 03:23 AM
Search in these archives under “word processor”. There are a couple of threads that examine Word alternatives.
Jack
Posted by Tom Colvin
Aug 24, 2007 at 05:25 AM
KeyNote might work for you. It is more or less a two-pane outliner, outputting in RTF. As you get to know the program, you’ll discover various ways of using it. I use it all the time, occasionally opening as a single frame which works just like a RTF word processor. Sadly, KeyNote is no longer supported, but I find it capable of most tasks I assign to it. It’s free.
Tom