Word processor woes. Alternatives?

[Mr. Picklesworth]

In attempting to carry out a completely simple task, I have come to the new realization that every popular word processor is broken for me. Not sure if it's a temporary thing to do with the position of the stars, the way I am using them or one of those rather unlikely "surrounded by frickin` idiots" situations, but it's certainly unpleasant.
Basically, I decided to redo my resume with some up to date information and better formatting. I tried OpenOffice but then remembered my eyes will fall out if I use the thing for too long thanks to its nonsensical choice of user interface toolkit. More fairly, I like OpenOffice for its huge range of features, but am not convinced by the MS Office feel. Really convoluted madness there.

Started off with a new document in Abiword, where most of the document was based around a table. Went fairly well. Some early warning signs when I was having trouble selecting some paragraphs in the document to change their font style, instead needing to select them individually rather than by bulk. I was having a heck of a time getting these settings to stick.
Next was a table inside a table for the sake of easily dividing a column into two. (Turns out AbiWord actually does pretty nicely with tables and I could have split the cell cleanly with Add Column). That table was nudged down by a line break above it that, no matter what I tried, would not leave. Decided to delete that table. Did so, then saved, then exited to see if restarting the program made a difference. It did: The document no longer opens, with AbiWord telling me that the document is invalid! Backup file is also broken. Joy!

Odd discovery: OpenOffice, which is known to bring back the dead, imports all kinds of proprietary reverse-engineered formats, but not abiword format. There is undoubtedly a plugin out there, but it was rather surprising to me.

These various glitches are not an uncommon experience for me with any word processors. I always encounter problems with inexplicable line breaks and fonts that do not stick. (Unselectable paragraphs are a new one). AbiWord has actually worked great for me before since it is nicely integrated with the desktop, quick and generally quite tidy in design. A shame that it started acting up here.
I had the same experience to follow with Google Documents and OpenOffice when I tried redoing the document from scratch again. (Thankfully I had run a test print a while ago).

It was at this point that I realized: I Hate Word Processors.

Is there anything else out there that has sort of sneaked under the radar for not using the same horrendous content + formatting collision we see in modern word processors? I'm willing to bet that is what causes these problems for me. I have heard a little about TeX and it sounds like the sort of design that would do me well... Can you tell me more about it? Perhaps a nice editor for that stuff?

Better yet, do I just type wrong or something, in a way that offends word processors?

By the way, I will be doing the Google and whatnot (okay, enough computer-illiterate-speak); just posting here to get opinions and thoughts that a search engine can't manage :)

[LaRoza]

It seems to be a format problem you have. Using something simpler like .rtf (Rich Text Format) may simplify things for you, they all support that.

LaTeX may be a bit much, but here it is: http://www.latex-project.org/

(Also, once I get a document like a resume in a condition I like, I save it as pdf so I can use it anywhere)

[Methuselah]

There is stuff like Kile, Lyx and Winefish that are frontends to Latex.
Kile seems popular. I've always been interested in LateX but have little need to produce those kind of documents so I never invested the time to learn it.

[rbanavara]

You really seem to be frustrated with word processors. But every word processor will have its own merits & drawbacks. that said, how abot html format and later converting to some other format. I beleive there is something called screem html editor. Also you can try scribus (this is a publishing software not sure if you can create resume)

[mrgnash]

:lolflag: Mr Picklesworth, brother, I always felt exactly the same way about word processors -- MS Word, OpenOffice, Abiword... all of them. Their fiddly, counter-intuitive ways used to drive me insane, such that I often did not bother to format my essays to the exacting standards of my discipline at university. Instead, I quite happily accepted the reduction in marks, because it meant that I had saved myself a world of frustration.

But then, I found out about LaTeX, and everything changed. Suddenly I was able to produce beautiful documents without screwing around for hours on end with tabbed spaces, margins, page breaks, table layouts, etc. etc. etc. Admittedly, I wasn't quite game enough to jump in the deep-end at first, and so I began by using Lyx. But while Lyx is still leagues ahead of any of the standard word-processors in my opinion, I still ran into the occasional frustration that required resorting to manual coding in order to resolve. Eventually, I decided to ditch Lyx altogether, and go commando style, armed with nothing but Gedit and its trusty LaTeX plugin.

Now I won't lie and tell you that there isn't a learning-curve involved. Document creation in LaTeX works on radically different principles than those common to word processors -- which is an advantage in the long-term, but can be a little bit daunting in the short-term. In that way, LaTeX is a lot like Linux itself; you'll have to learn a lot of new things, which means consulting lots of documentation and engaging in some trial-and-error experiments, but ultimately it really pays off.

By way of example, you can view my resume here (http://www.sendspace.com/file/0eqhyl)

[OffHand]

pen and paper :lolflag:

[mips]

My needs a re simple so I use KWord from KOfficeMOD