Linux software for creating text documents

The Linux operating system is known for it's large amount of user-software. In contrast to the Windows and Apple world, the average program is available for free. That means, after clicking the download button in the App-repository no extra costs are charged. The disadvantage of Open Source software is, that the amount of users is low, and most programs are not documented very well. But this can be changed. In this blog post, some text programs are presented to the normal user.

- Lyx

- LaTeX

- Geany

- pandoc

- LibreOffice writer

All of these programs are allowing to enter text with a keyboard. The difference is, that pandoc, Geany and LaTeX programs are markup oriented, while the other tools on the list have powerful graphical features. The lyx programs stands somewhere in the middle and it's the most powerful tool of them.

The lyx programs is able to render images in the text, provides an outline on the left side and can manage external literature references provided by bibtex.

The other programs on the list are also supporting the creation of text documents. The libreoffice writer programs comes very close to the Microsoft Word program. It's a typical WYSIWYG application which can import and export most of the text formats like RTF, PDF, plain text, MS-Word and so on. The disadvantage of LibreOffice writer is, that it can be used for complex layouts. If someone likes to format a complete book he will click into lots of menus. Only occasional users who are using a Desktop PC as a replacement as a classical typewriter will benefit from the program.

The geany program isn't a classical wordprocessor, but it's mainly a programming ide which can open text files as well. It's strength is, that many tabs can be opened at the same time, and that powerful regular expression for search and replace actions are allowed. What the user has to do before he can type in normal text is to activate the “line wrapping” option. This will transform the program into a normal texteditor. The strength of the Geany software is, that it provides only the minimal functionality. In contrast to Lyx or LibreOffice writer it's a small program which allows the user to create only textfiles but nothing more.

The ability of geany to print out textdocuments or create nice formatted pdf papers is low. It can be realized with external tools like pandoc or the user gets only a basic layout. If the idea is to create text documents with a minimalist approach, the Geany software is a here to stay.

At the end, I'd like to provide some information about classical UNIX text processing tools like emacs, VIM, ed or other tools. They are no longer relevant. Emacs was developed for text only terminal computers in the 1980s. With the advent of modern GUI systems like Gnome, emacs has lost all the fans. It was a great tool in the past, but nowadays there is no advantage over other programs like Geany, Eclipse or the atom texteditor. In the windows world the Notepad++ texteditor has become the standard for editing longer textdocuments. The software can be installed in Linux as well, but compared to Geany there is no advantage.

The good news is, that the amount of texteditors for Linux is very large. If the user isn't satisfied with the described programs he can choose from hundreds of programs the perfect tool. Nearly all WIndows text programs have a Linux port and many other Open Source text programs were written in the past.