It *is* possible if you know how and are very careful (split the text in chapters, safe and backup often etc.), but OpenOffice.org is better for that - besides any TeX, of course. ;-)
I like the idea of OO, but I have to say I have always found strange behaviour in OO. I switched to latex (and then very probably to context) because on Macosx in the version I tried of OO I wrote italics, I printed italics, but I didn't see on the screen italics. So, if I have to use a non-wysysyg, oh well, I use TeX. As a word processor AbiWord is interesting.
Another important thing: *only* MS-Word can read your Word-document, and of course only the right version (M$ won't guarantee, that Word-2005 prints out your document the same way as Word-2000).
That's not true since about Word 98; and there are a lot of other word processors that can import MSW-Docs (e.g. OOo again).
I do not agree. Microsoft always changes in some unpredictable and bad-documented way their file format. I've *always* found enormous difficulties in opening with other word processors M$ files, even when they should be rtf. It is simply not possible, if you want to retain the exact document information. So, I switched to latex... Question: One of the main feature I appreciated in latex was a very simple but effective latex2rtf converter. It is very useful if you have simple document to be shared with other non-tex people, especially during preliminary work on a project. You write the context (with structure: section, subsection, etc,), share it, modify it, and finally control the typographic stuff in details. Is anything similar for context? Best -a- Andrea Valle Laboratorio multimediale "G. Quazza" Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione Università degli Studi di Torino andrea.valle@unito.it