A simple word processor for GNOME?

Applications
1

Hello,

I have been thinking about this for a while, but thought about it again today: there is one very important piece of software missing in GNOME, and it’s a word processing app.

Sure, there are other FLOSS apps for word processing, including LibreOffice and OnlyOffice.

But those are:
— Not well integrated in the nicely designed GNOME desktop, not feeling like a GNOME app, not following the GNOME human interface guidelines whatsoever.
— Complicated. They have so many options and buttons and panels. They are competing with Word and other text processors that are for professional use (i.e. writing and formatting text as a main activity).

Other OSs do have a built-in simple word processing apps: macOS has TextEdit, and Windows has WordPad, though they are both terribly outdated and could use some love from Apple and Microsoft. KDE has Calligra Words but I’m not familiar with it.

What we therefore miss on GNOME is a simple word processing app. Something for everyday/everyone’s usage. For pupils and students to write their homework in, for people to write administrative and love letters in, for kids to write stories and make books in, for parents to make birthday invitations in, for amateur poets and artists to make fanzines in.

If I do a parallel with another kind of app, we need the app in between Text Editor (or Apostrophe) and LibreOffice which would be what Gthumb is to Image Viewer and GIMP.

Something simple, that enables you to typeset text on pages and format it, insert some images and tables, print or export to PDF, open and save ODTs and DOCXs, but without all the advanced features and complexity that people expect from Word or LibreOffice.

I think this need is often covered by Google Docs. And as much as I despise Google as a company, I do think Docs is a very good reference of a word processor that managed to balance just the right amount of features with a simple interface.

There is of course a word processing app in the GNOME world, and it’s Abiword. But it’s interface look very outdated now, both in general and in regards to the current HIG, and it might not be as simple as it could be.

I know that a text processor is not the simplest app, especially — I imagine — the typesetting and layout engine as well as the opening of many file formats. But maybe a lot can be reused from Abiword and/or LibreOffice? The whole page rendering and file handling could be for instance taken from Abiword and a whole new Adwaita UI designed from scratch and built around it in GTK4? I have no idea, I’m not a developer.

Simply wanted to share that I believe we’re really missing this in the GNOME desktop and, that if enough people are in, it might happen some day – but the conversation has to start somewhere :slight_smile:

So, what are your thoughts about a possible “GNOME Write”?

(p.s. And some day, it could be joined by simple spreadsheet and presentation apps – but I do think word processing is much more useful to many more people on a daily basis, so should be focused on first. But imagine: a whole GNOME Office with modern Adwaita-style apps! Actually I don’t want to call it Office haha, because the whole point would be that those are much simpler apps than an usual office suite!)

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I think this need is often covered by Google Docs. And as much as I despise Google as a company, I do think Docs is a very good reference of a word processor that managed to balance just the right amount of features with a simple interface.

if you’re setting up a computer for yourself or someone, you can switch LibreOffice’s icon theme to Breeze and set “One-row panel” in “User interface” inside the View menu. this looks much better and almost like google! it would be very nice to have this set up by default (perhaps chosen in a dialog on startup such as in Blender?)

For pupils and students to write their homework in, for people to write administrative and love letters in, for kids to write stories and make books in, for parents to make birthday invitations in, for amateur poets and artists to make fanzines in.

this wouldn’t be simple at all!
some of these use cases are more graphic (are you looking for a simple paged vector editor such as Rnote?)
some are can be just done with just printing from Text Editor
for some the fixed layout nature of MSWord-style word processors would be inappropriate

i’d love to see a gnomed rich text editor, but what this post is describing this seems to me like one of those all-in-one-apps that are not really good at anything

(i’m sorry if this post comes off as rude, i don’t mean it, sorry)

3

Yes, maybe some of these examples were a little ambitious, but the text processor I’m describing is at least:

– A rich text editor
– With a wysiwyg page view
– With the ability to insert images and tables
– Following Adwaita/GNOME-HIG

No current piece of software that I know of fits this, and I’m convinced it is an important lack in the GNOME desktop that would be super useful to fill :slight_smile:

But thanks for the LibreOffice tip and for the mention of Rnote, they’re relevant even if not exactly this!

4

GNOME is a volunteer-driven project. This means that people who volunteer get to work on what they want. The downside is that you don’t get to ask other people to work on what you want, but the upside is that you don’t need to ask for permission for working on something.

If you want a “simple” word processor for GNOME then you should start working on one. If you have design questions, feel free to drop by in the GNOME Design channel on Matrix; if you have development questions then you can join the Newcomers channel on Matrix.

5

Hello,

Sorry if this sounded like a request, I’m familiar with projects like this and I wasn’t expecting at all anyone to start doing it just because I posted an idea, that was absolutely not my intention.

Unfortunately, just a regular user here, I’m not a developer at all so I won’t be able to do it myself.

But since I had some thoughts about this, I thought a discussion forum was a fitting place to share and maybe chat about it? It would have been silly not to share at all, but I might not be in the right place for discussing early app ideas? Because for sure if it’s not shared or chatted about at all, there is no way it can even happen. While if the idea is out there, a conversation about it might, maybe, lead to a few people interested to start a project to give it a try. And this project is definitely not a one-person project, so I would not even be able to start working on it on my own even if I knew how to make an app :slight_smile:

In general, as a non-dev, I can only contribute with ideas and suggestions, but I would love to participate in some non-technical way to the desktop and apps I have been using every day for a long time.

As for the “simple” in the title, it refers to its simplicity for users compared to fully-featured word processors such as LibreOffice or Word. I’m aware it is rather a complex project otherwise :slight_smile:

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