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<blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 5064193" data-attributes="member: 447">Well, without having used it I can't actually recommend it, but AbiWord is a free word processor that appears to be getting fairly good reviews.<a href="http://abisource.com/" target="_blank">AbiWord</a>I don't know what you mean by &quot;non-tethered&quot; with regard to boxed text (or a box of text). There are generally two ways to achieve boxed text: (1) by formatting one or more paragraphs in-line or (2) by making an actual text box &quot;graphic.&quot; Option (1) is by far the easiest to control, because the paragraph sits in your text stream and the software doesn't have to do anything with it but remember that it looks different.* Depending on your software and your preference, you might find a one-cell table, a paragraph fill, or a paragraph stroke meets your needs.* When laying out War of the Burning Sky adventures in expensive, sophisticated page-layout software (Adobe InDesign), I have never yet bothered with (additional) &quot;floating&quot; text boxes of any kind to render &quot;boxed text&quot;... the &quot;boxed text&quot; is part of the text stream. (I use four Paragraph Styles to do this: one to begin, one to end, one in the middle, and one to stand alone. This doesn't literally result in a box, but of course I think it looks dandy in any event.) I find the result sufficiently pleasing to the eye and very easy to manage during production. So I definitely recommend the &quot;in the stream&quot; method as the way to go on this, especially if you just need &quot;read-aloud&quot; style boxes.Option (2) is somewhat more flexible, because the box can be moved around the page and, depending on your software, will &quot;bump&quot; text out of the way and cause it to &quot;flow&quot; around the box. However, Word is notorious for &quot;losing&quot; graphics (here including text boxes) off the page and/or allowing them to &quot;slip&quot; around on the page, partly because the graphic remains &quot;anchored&quot; to a paragraph on the page (in the text stream) even though it occupies a different &quot;layer.&quot;** I don't know how OpenOffice handles the same thing, but I can't imagine it's a huge improvement.** This behavior and its implications are an important reason I'm very dismissive of Word as a layout tool. Though it can be wrestled into submission, I still feel the effort is seldom worth it. Any &quot;advanced&quot; layout is best handled with a tool that's better suited to the task than a word processor, IMO. Page-layout software like InDesign handles pretty much everything as a floating box, with one major difference: in general, the boxes are not &quot;anchored&quot; to anything on the page, but rather to a discrete location *on* the page. Text streams &quot;through&quot; the boxes to create the layout. This is how I handle sidebars in InDesign -- I create new boxes for them, removing them from the text stream. But InDesign handles this much better than a word processor does. HTH.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Marius Delphus, post: 5064193, member: 447"] Well, without having used it I can't actually recommend it, but AbiWord is a free word processor that appears to be getting fairly good reviews. [URL="http://abisource.com/"]AbiWord[/URL] I don't know what you mean by "non-tethered" with regard to boxed text (or a box of text). There are generally two ways to achieve boxed text: (1) by formatting one or more paragraphs in-line or (2) by making an actual text box "graphic." Option (1) is by far the easiest to control, because the paragraph sits in your text stream and the software doesn't have to do anything with it but remember that it looks different.* Depending on your software and your preference, you might find a one-cell table, a paragraph fill, or a paragraph stroke meets your needs. [SIZE=1]* When laying out War of the Burning Sky adventures in expensive, sophisticated page-layout software (Adobe InDesign), I have never yet bothered with (additional) "floating" text boxes of any kind to render "boxed text"... the "boxed text" is part of the text stream. (I use four Paragraph Styles to do this: one to begin, one to end, one in the middle, and one to stand alone. This doesn't literally result in a box, but of course I think it looks dandy in any event.) I find the result sufficiently pleasing to the eye and very easy to manage during production. So I definitely recommend the "in the stream" method as the way to go on this, especially if you just need "read-aloud" style boxes.[/SIZE] Option (2) is somewhat more flexible, because the box can be moved around the page and, depending on your software, will "bump" text out of the way and cause it to "flow" around the box. However, Word is notorious for "losing" graphics (here including text boxes) off the page and/or allowing them to "slip" around on the page, partly because the graphic remains "anchored" to a paragraph on the page (in the text stream) even though it occupies a different "layer."** I don't know how OpenOffice handles the same thing, but I can't imagine it's a huge improvement. [SIZE=1]** This behavior and its implications are an important reason I'm very dismissive of Word as a layout tool. Though it can be wrestled into submission, I still feel the effort is seldom worth it. Any "advanced" layout is best handled with a tool that's better suited to the task than a word processor, IMO. Page-layout software like InDesign handles pretty much everything as a floating box, with one major difference: in general, the boxes are not "anchored" to anything on the page, but rather to a discrete location *on* the page. Text streams "through" the boxes to create the layout. This is how I handle sidebars in InDesign -- I create new boxes for them, removing them from the text stream. But InDesign handles this much better than a word processor does. [/SIZE] HTH. [/QUOTE]

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