WordGrinder

Somebody at the forums asked if there was a decent terminal-based word processor in the vein of OpenOffice.org. I thought it was a strange request, seeing as how word processors nowadays focus on formatting: if you put it in a terminal, doesn't it stand to reason that you lose the formatting?  The only answers that came to mind were text editors like pico, nano, and joe, and these don't really fit the bill.

As it turns out, there is a text-based word processor, and it's name is WordGrinder. Granted, it doesn't do any formatting, but it's as close as you can possibly get to a terminal-based word processor.

A couple of caveats: WordGrinder saves in its own format, not in plaintext, so be careful to export it first before reading it in another word processor. Also, WordGrinder's key combinations are simplistic and a tad counter-intuitive: you really just have the Escape key to call up menus, and Ctrl-C if you want to cancel any prompts.

Final verdict: an interesting project if you're stuck in terminal mode, but you're probably better off with Pyroom.