Alt Software for Writers

[Vanceone]

Might I suggest Papyrus Autor for authors as well?

They've been around a long, long time -- back in the OS 9 days, I think. https://papyrus.de/en/

Pricy but looks like a pretty great option for authors.

Of course, there's always the free LaTex stuff, but that's as far away from WYSIWYG as possible.

[MacSailor]

Might I suggest Papyrus Autor for authors as well?

They've been around a long, long time -- back in the OS 9 days, I think. https://papyrus.de/en/

Pricy but looks like a pretty great option for authors.

Of course, there's always the free LaTex stuff, but that's as far away from WYSIWYG as possible.

I had forgotten about Papyrus since I haven't seen it around for years. It seems to be a very huge update from previous versions. A little bit too expensive for me though. I'll probably stick with a combination of Mellel/NWP and Affinity Publisher (if I ever manage to finish the writings on the books I have started years ago).

[xiamenese]

Of course, there's always the free LaTex stuff, but that's as far away from WYSIWYG as possible.

For those who are not wedded to WYSIWYG and are interested in procedural formatting, but—like me—find even the thought of LaTeX too daunting, have a look at https://typst.app/home/. I've been trying it out using the web app for some time now. The web app is very responsive. I am pleased with how I'm getting on and plan to move over to set it up locally—probably through Scrivener!—sometime soon. The community is very helpful, though in general they are more science/mathematics/engineering orientated.


Mark

[Vanceone]

If you want to dabble in LaTex, there's Lyx as well... a sort of Word Processor front end to LaTex or ConText or LuaText.

My only reason I've not adopted it already is that LaTex is pretty lacking when it comes to law related stuff, which is my field. Except German law, but I'm in the US.

As far as I know, though, LaTex is the only "modern" Mac program that can do Parallel Columns (versus newspaper columns). The old WordPerfect for Mac from Classic could do it too, and still can in the emulation stuff.