Two console word processors

I haven’t had a chance to try either of these yet, mostly because I have two more projects I’m juggling right now, but first break I get, I want to try both Enpi and WordGrinder. Both — particularly WordGrinder — look interesting as console-based word processors.

Personally I think that would be great just to keep on hand for the odd word processor file that I download, and don’t need to work with beyond opening and reading (like, for example, configuration instructions or something like that). Occasionally nano comes in handy, but nano is not truly a word processor, and to me doesn’t feel like one.

And of course, I go back all the way to Easyscript for the C64, so I can appreciate a text-driven, code-based word processor for being slightly easier to use at times. I’m sure if you were born after 1980 the idea of a console-based word processor is about as appealing as square wheels. But trust me: Sometimes the applications we take for granted now are comparatively obfuscated by our lust for superficialities.

Okay, that was way too many syllables. Back to the topic at hand: I don’t see packages for either program in Ubuntu or Arch, which means if you want to experiment you might have to do a little dirty work on your own. If you get either of them to work and you can offer a screenshot in action (yes, I know both home pages have screenshots, but hey, everybody loves screenshots!) I will thank you, for one.

4 Responses to “Two console word processors”


  1. 1 tamihania March 23, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    Hi - and thank you for reminder about the programs. FYI - there in a PKGBUILD of WordGrinder on Arch forum - here’s the link:
    http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=44386
    I did not try it yet - but I plan to do it ASAP.

    Have a nice and sunny day,

    tami :)

  2. 2 Karthik March 23, 2008 at 7:17 pm

    I haven’t tried Wordgrinder yet; the website mentions that it’s not stable and having to remove packages I’ve compiled is a real pain!

    I did have a go at Enpi:

    (Enpi is just a wrapper script for TeX. The preview of the dvi it generated is GhostView, the images have me editing the file with vi, and running Enpi, respectively.)

  3. 3 Karthik March 23, 2008 at 8:05 pm

    Oops- the thumbnails didn’t show up. Everyone _does_ love screenshots, here they are:

    http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs225&d=08120&f=enpi1638.png

    http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs125&d=08120&f=enpi2374.png

  4. 4 K.Mandla March 24, 2008 at 7:54 am

    Thanks everybody. I hadn’t seen that thread with the PKGBUILD in it, I’m going to try that right now.

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