OpenOffice.org Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org software package. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word and Corel's WordPerfect, with some of their features.
As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Writer can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence, Writer is free software.
Features
Writer is capable of opening and saving documents in a number of formats, including the OASIS Open Document Format (its default format as of version 2.0), Microsoft Word's DOC, RTF and XHTML.
Writer provides a number of features not present in Word, including the ability to export to the PDF format natively. It also includes a word completion mechanism for predictive writing that is not available in MS Office as of June, 2008.
Criticism
Writer has been criticized for lacking a normal view editing mode, in which borders and spaces between pages are hidden in order to make extended editing more efficient[1]. This feature is commonly missed by Microsoft Word users.
Other users complain about the lack a "Reveal Codes" type screen where formatting information, such as boldface and italics' beginning and ending points are shown alongside text, a function that existed in WordPerfect 5.1 in the early 1990s. This is a feature missed by current and former WordPerfect users.
Though OpenOffice.org Writer has a spell checker, it lacks a stable grammar checker, unlike AbiWord, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and other word processors. Writer's mail merge functions, substantially rewritten in 2.0, are still less flexible and less stable than in other word processors. [2] Further, it offers no automated way to produce envelopes or labels. Writer does have an add-on grammar checker (in the language tools package), but it can be somewhat unstable and confusing to use. It cannot split windows either vertically or horizontally.
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