# Can you recommend a WYSIWYG word processor program for FreeBSD that is Microsoft Word compatable?



## neilms (Nov 13, 2019)

There used to be OpenOffice but that seems to have been upgraded now and the FreeBSD port is still 'in development'. Can anyone recommend another WYSIWYG Word Processor that can open and save Word files?


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## Phishfry (Nov 13, 2019)

editors/libreoffice's writer has been good for me. It is a spin off from OpenOffice which became unfavorable.
If that is too much bloat for you than editors/abiword works with older format Word documents.





						Microsoft Word documents - AbiWiki
					






					www.abisource.com
				



I am embarrassed for abisource.com which is the projects website.
They are using older TLS 1.0 which is not very secure at all.


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## ghostdawg (Nov 15, 2019)

There are a few Linux distro such as Fedora 30, I did it,  that will let you install LO Writer only. Maybe it can be done with ports for FreeBSD. Just a thought!  Hopefully the maintainer will look into doing it if not much trouble.


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## unitrunker (Nov 15, 2019)

neilms said:


> There used to be OpenOffice but that seems to have been upgraded now and the FreeBSD port is still 'in development'.


OpenOffice still works for me.





						FreshPorts -- editors/openoffice-4: Integrated wordprocessor/dbase/spreadsheet/drawing/chart/browser
					

Apache OpenOffice is an Open Source, community-developed, multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites...




					www.freshports.org
				



Don't confuse that with the development version:





						FreshPorts -- editors/openoffice-devel: Integrated wordprocessor/dbase/spreadsheet/drawing/chart/browser (developer version)
					

Apache OpenOffice is an Open Source, community-developed, multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites...




					www.freshports.org


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## rigoletto@ (Nov 15, 2019)

ghostdawg said:


> There are a few Linux distro such as Fedora 30, I did it,  that will let you install LO Writer only. Maybe it can be done with ports for FreeBSD. Just a thought!  Hopefully the maintainer will look into doing it if not much trouble.



IDK about Fedora but Arch Linux used to do that but don't do anymore. I never tried to build LO manually (and I don't use it) but I assume this is very labor intensive to maintain, then unlikely to be available in ports in this way.


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## Birdy (Nov 15, 2019)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_word_processors#Import_or_open_capabilities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_word_processors#Export_or_save_capabilities


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## meine (Nov 15, 2019)

neilms said:


> Can anyone recommend another WYSIWYG Word Processor that can open and save Word files?



editors/libreoffice Writer does a good job.

Since Word files can be cluttered with a lot of invisible code, there is never a full guarantee that you get what you intended or made. This is especially true for layout-rich documents. To make things work just make documents with a basic layout.

You could also consider my preferred CLI solution: make a document in your editor of choice in simple markdown, and then convert it to docx with textproc/hs-pandoc.


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