Today, it is simply impossible to imagine working with documents of any direction and level of complexity without the use of computer-based information processing tools. The era of typewriters is a thing of the past. In most cases, if you do not take specific information or calculations, you need to process the texts. Consider the most popular and common free programs for working with documents of certain types. We will specifically focus on the test files.
Document Tools: An Overview
As you know, for the most part, users of computer systems based on Windows prefer to work with the standard MS Office application package, which presents programs for almost all occasions.
However, at present, you can find a lot of alternative developments, which also provide programs for working with documents of any type, which in terms of functionality are not inferior to the MS Office package, and in some cases even surpass it.
In any package, regardless of the developer, applications are presented that allow you to create, view and edit text files, spreadsheets, databases, as well as process graphic objects or even multimedia.
Microsoft Office Suite
First, let's look at the well-known office suite from Microsoft. It is considered universal, since the programs for processing documents used in business are presented here most widely.
It is not surprising that many developers did not reinvent the wheel and simply copied most of the applications, including their analogues in their own packages. MS Office itself contains several main applications, among which Word, Excel and Access are most often used.
Speaking specifically about text documents, Word is the progenitor of the DOC / DOCX format, which today is supported by almost all third-party packages. However, the developers of this software product also did not stand aside and over time they introduced in their editor the ability to work with formats that differ from the standard, which other developers use by default.
After all, if you look, for example, at the possibility of opening or saving a text document, here you can even find support for PDF files. But more on that later.
Actually, Office itself can be downloaded and installed completely free of charge, the only thing required is the product activation key. This does not stop anyone, because you can produce it using a small utility called KMS Activator. Other free packages do not have such a mandatory activation or registration requirement.
Alternative developments
At the dawn of the development of office programs, MS Office occupied a leading position, since its creators were able to include programs for working with documents of completely different types in a single set, which made it possible to create an all-in-one standard tool for working with them, as they say now ".
Nevertheless, it was impossible to maintain leadership for too long, as quite serious competitors appeared on the market. At first, it became the Lotus Pro package, and a little later there was another serious development called Open Office. By the way, many experts call this package not only Microsoft's direct competitor, but also draw the attention of users to the fact that it has some additional tools that the standard MS Office does not have.
Simple text editors
But dwell on text files, which today are the most common in the workflow. To view and edit text information, the simplest, as it seems to many, applications can be used, such as Notepad, which is part of the standard Windows suite. Yes, indeed, in Notepad you can work exclusively with text, similar to how it was in Norton Commander for DOS-systems. Here, everything is almost the same, only Notepad has a graphical shell. It goes without saying that we can’t talk about any formatting of the text, design or insertion of additional objects.
But few people know that it is Notepad and programs for working with text-type documents, similar to it, that support the syntax of most programming languages ​​known today, so programmers and application developers prefer to work with just such editors.
Standard programs for working with Word documents
Now a few words about the Word text editor and its analogues. Consider an example when a user has a “clean” system on his computer. If anyone does not know, the office suite is not included in the original Windows suite, it must be installed separately. Therefore, many do not even realize that the system has a free program for working with Word documents (it is “sewn” into the system).
This is a WordPad (Viewer) application. You can open and view Word files in it, but there are no special features for editing a document. Inconvenient, of course, but better than nothing.
However, in the absence of Word, you can open such a text file in another way. This will help Adobe Reader, Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. Any such program for working with text documents containing graphics allows you to open files of almost any text format or import their contents. Editing options vary depending on the type of application, but even if there is no such tool, you can view the files anyway.
Conclusion
Of course, to consider all office-type applications is simply impossible. However, even regarding Word documents or text files, it can be noted that working with them can be quite simple. If there’s absolutely nothing at hand, you can view these types of files even using the most common web browsers, not to mention saving them with the ability to edit them in “cloud” services. By the way, many of them make it possible to simultaneously make changes that are automatically displayed for all users who are currently connected to a remote editor on the server.