Anecdote from a frustrated typer. There are no good word processors. MS office and Libre/open-whatever-they-call-it-now-office are bloated mess. I did a deep dive on this a few months ago, and there are 0 light/good options. There are a few that show up in google searches, but they are all disappointing in one way or another.
So, thoughts on a non-AI lightweight word processor.
What features would you expect from a good word processor? What features should it leave out, i.e. features make MS Office / OpenOffice / LibreOffice a bloated mess?
It is absolutely crazy to me that this is criteria. Office 2003 checked those boxes in that era. This was a solved thing that somehow warrants further deliberation now. I believe it is The Great Moore's Law Compensator.
Revise is that, actually. It's a free, lightweight, fast word processor at its core. It also has real-time collaboration, also free. You don't need to use the AI features.
It even supports code blocks, LaTeX, and Mermaid diagrams.
Also, the passive spelling/grammar checking in the editor is powered by LLMs and completely free. It will catch mistakes that other word processors won't, such as malapropisms.
Ty; will check it out. That wasn't one of the one I looked at.
Edit: Ah I see, from the OP. Unfortunately, I think Subscription-based, web-app, and vibe-coded would individually be deal breakers. Combined indicates it's not the sort of tool I seek.
I've built an agent loop that has a self-review step, and it's pretty good at catching mistakes. It's able to scan the document in chunks and use tools to surgically change small parts.
I started building this 10 months ago, largely using agentic coding tools. I've stayed very involved in the code base and architecture, and have never moved faster in my life as a dev.
The word processor engine and rendering layer are all built from scratch - the only 3rd party library I used was the excellent Y.js for the CRDT stack.
I do a decent amount of writing on my blog and for work so I was thinking, "why doesn't this product appeal to me?"
I think I'm hesitant to spent yet another monthly subscription on something. I get decent mileage just copying and pasting sections into Claude so it's hard to justify another $8 a month on another tool.
I also do a decent amount of my editing in raw markdown files and apply styling almost as a post-process. Part of the problem is that I'm always pasting documents into corporate portals (Confluence, Wiki's, Google Docs) and they don't always copy formatting in the way I'd expect. So I just write raw text and format it after paste.
Thanks for the feedback. The pitch with Revise is it's a fully integrated agent inside a word processor. The "copy and paste between ChatGPT and docs" is the workflow I set out to improve on a la PG's "find something people are doing and figure out a way to do it that doesn't suck." I think you'd find it's a much better user experience, especially when you're iterating a lot on something.
I get that subscriptions turn some people off, and I'm open to other ideas of how to make a project like this financially sustainable. I don't want to do ads :)
Can this be integrated inside of something like Google Docs or Microsoft Word? Or is that more of an aspiration at this point? The vibe I got from the landing page was that it's a standalone app.
Not without having control over those products and their source code, which is why I built an alternative. From my testing, the Revise agent is more capable than Gemini+Docs and Copilot are right now.
Why don't you use your local open source llm, without the interaction of big models?
I mean, more work, but you don't need to pay your cut to them. Just asking.
So, thoughts on a non-AI lightweight word processor.
Actually the speed is a problem when you have hundreds of pages with track changes and comments.
Maybe you should check Wordperfect or WordStar ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbiWord
It even supports code blocks, LaTeX, and Mermaid diagrams.
Also, the passive spelling/grammar checking in the editor is powered by LLMs and completely free. It will catch mistakes that other word processors won't, such as malapropisms.
Edit: Ah I see, from the OP. Unfortunately, I think Subscription-based, web-app, and vibe-coded would individually be deal breakers. Combined indicates it's not the sort of tool I seek.
The word processor engine and rendering layer are all built from scratch - the only 3rd party library I used was the excellent Y.js for the CRDT stack.
Would love some feedback!
I do a decent amount of writing on my blog and for work so I was thinking, "why doesn't this product appeal to me?"
I think I'm hesitant to spent yet another monthly subscription on something. I get decent mileage just copying and pasting sections into Claude so it's hard to justify another $8 a month on another tool.
I also do a decent amount of my editing in raw markdown files and apply styling almost as a post-process. Part of the problem is that I'm always pasting documents into corporate portals (Confluence, Wiki's, Google Docs) and they don't always copy formatting in the way I'd expect. So I just write raw text and format it after paste.
I get that subscriptions turn some people off, and I'm open to other ideas of how to make a project like this financially sustainable. I don't want to do ads :)
Why don't you use your local open source llm, without the interaction of big models? I mean, more work, but you don't need to pay your cut to them. Just asking.