Hi all,

Here is (in principle) a sensational freebee:

http://www.corel.com/products/macintosh/wpmac35/pack_freedownload.htm

It is Word Perfect version 3.5 for Macintosh. I recommend it
because I was pleased to have bought a couple of slightly earlier $100
licences (to version 3.1 and 3.0aFR of 1994).

I greatly admire the WP architecture. There are a slew of
primitives and one can come close to building one's dream
wordprocessor by use of an excellent macro facility with
both GUI and script programming interfaces.

WP is the best tool I know for technical typing involving
many fonts, styles, and particularly special sub and super
script sizes and levels. The fine and adjustable handling
of sub and super scripts may be unique. (??!)  You can
easily program highly tuned and high speed behavior onto a
single key.

Of course this appreciation is radically slanted to my own
needs.  There are tons of standard goodies. The
diction/syntax checker is (surprisingly) helpful.
Speed is always respectable and occasionally brilliant.

My stripped down installation is 10Mo. The 3.5 freebee is
*bigger*.

What to say about 3.5?  Donno really.  It seems much like
3.1. But for me it froze so often that I returned to 3.1.
My best guess is that if you are lucky enough to have an
environment in which it is stable then you will have
something that is in key respects superior to MSWord.

My bottom line is: don't plump for Word or any equally big
wordprocessor without first checking out the WP3.5 freebee.

Cheers

Larry S

PS. WP exports/imports to/from all WP and also MS RTF
exchange format.  Goto, without MacLink, does MarinerWrite 
at least export in some widespread format?

PPS. For me too, WriteNow has died and then come back to
life.  The obvious conclusion is that bugs do creep deep
into the Mac OS and then (sometimes) they get killed off
again.