There are some very useful word processors out there for writers willing to look beyond Microsoft Word. In fact, some of them offer capabilities not found in Word and which may truly help a writer’s productivity. One such program is Rough Draft.
This is a FREE program, developed by Richard Salsbury from England. He’s not only a writer, but a computer specialist. Originally programmed by Richard in the mid-1990’s to facilitate his own writing, it soon became popular with the more savvy writers who scour the internet for such discoveries.
In 2005, Richard stopped further development of the software, with his version 3.0. Many software download sites have dropped the program, others offer older versions. While difficult to find, it is still available as a free download.
For a full review of this program’s capabilities, with illustrative screenshots and location of the download site, please read on.
Rough Draft is a simple, straight-forward word processor, but it is packed with capability. We will examine three areas: the main text entry area, the remarkable utilities offered in the right-side panel and some of the drop-down menus that offer additional services.
The main text entry panel operates in a manner familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft Word. Text can be easily formatted, with a usual wide choice of fonts and type size. Text can be aligned flush left, right or centered, justified, and indented. Numbered and bullet lists are a click away. Text and background colors can be readily changed. The “text” drop-down menu offers strick-thru, superscript and subscript. The paragraph menu offers single, 1.5 and double spacing. That’s all pretty standard for a word processor. Missing from this program, however, are such advanced facilities as tables, footnotes and graphics and picture insertion.
Outclassing Microsoft Word, however, is the capability of opening multiple text panes, which show up as tabs across the top [the screenshot shows four tabs, but there can be even more]. This is a truly powerful feature. Writers can develop notes in separate tabs. Fiction writers, for example, can allocate one tab to character notes, another to location notes, yet another to research notes. And all of them are only a click away.
Also, notice in the screenshot the NOTEPAD that is open in the right-side screen. This area can be utilzed in a variety of ways: an outline of the overall project or notes regarding items to follow up are two obvious examples.
There’s enough in the first screenshot to encourage me to use this software. But THERE’S MORE…
I personally have quite bad eyesight. I was amazed to discover that I can work with the text entry panel with a larger text size, appropriately “wrapped” so that I see it all without having to scroll across the screen, AND without actually changing the text size of the document itself. One simply clicks the “View” menu and chooses a “percentage” to view — for me 140-150 percent works perfectly. For the sight-impaired, this is a god-send. And even those with perfect eyesight may find the larger text size onscreen a feature that makes the writing easier and more convenient. This feature alone has made this a program that I call upon often.
Rough Draft offers the writer an opportunity to set up one’s own preferred “style,” setting up typeface/font-size selections of headlines, sub-heads, text, and so forth. In the right-side panel, one can select what is essentially a “file manager” view, putting the files on your hard drive only a click or two away. Depending on how you set up your C-Drive file structure, you can keep in view your on-going projects — and they are just a click away.
In the “Tools” drop-down menu, one can access dictionaries, spellcheck, word count, a calculator and other services. In the right-side panel, one can call up a symbols feature that makes is easy to add foreign-language accents and other symbols. Since I often deal with Spanish, this facility is very helpful to me. One can also set up “autowords” here, which is a very useful shortcut for those who call upon specialized words and foreign-language words often within a document.
Yet another feature are the FOUR CLIPBOARDS that can be called up on the right-side panel. Place here often-used text strings and templates that can then be inserted into a document with a single click.
As you can see, Rough Draft is a very powerful program. While it is not appropriate for every word processing project, it serves well as a primary tool for many writing assignments. I use it a lot, especially for shorter magazine and newspaper projects. When working on projects with foreign-language, accented words, it is a favorite.
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Becoming A Writer Seriously » Blog Archive » A Comprehensive Review of Word Processors
2 Jul 2007
[...] Missing in his coverage are the programs that I’ve personally been most attracted to: Rough Draft, Page Four, WriteItNow, WriteWay and yWriter. Nor does he touch the small “note takers” that can easily double as word processors for short works and articles. There are other specialized programs, such as Power Writer and Writer’s Blocks. I’ve already reviewed two of these programs; more reviews are forthcoming. I’ll also be reviewing Chapter by Chapter, a remarkable companion to Microsoft Word, which I’m beginning to think is unparalleled for authors writing big books requiring footnotes and/or graphics. [...]
Comment by
Ford
23 Feb 2008
It’s now cheap and easy to set up two or more screens, so I don’t understand why word processors don’t take advantage of this capability (e.g., showing outline view on one screen and text on the other).