6 Free Tools For Creating Top-Notch Documents

by Sam Dean - Jul. 03, 2008Comments (0)

I use a ton of software applications, but a major portion of the time I spend using a computer goes to writing, and creating documents. There are many good open source tools for everything from word processing, to desktop publishing, to booklet creation, to weaving words and graphics together. In this post, I'll cover six free applications--five of them open source and one freeware app--that can help you create eye-catching documents.

Scribus is an open source desktop publishing platform available for Windows, Mac OS/X and Linux. It's useful for PDF creation, and has most professional publishing features found in proprietary products such as InDesign. Linux.com has a nice step-by-step tutorial up on how to create booklets with Scribus. Lisa Hoover also covered some of the best features in Scribus here.

AbiWord is my favorite open source word processor. I recently wrote a review of the new version which offers the ability to open files on remote shares, much more flexibility with import and export filters, and improvements to the clipboard and drag-and-drop functions.

IrfanView isn't an open source application, but it is free, and is one of the most popular image editing and graphics applications. For incorporating screenshots, cropped photos and images and more in your documents, this is worth getting. It's currently Windows-only, though.

GimpGimp is a very powerful open source graphics application, and, just as Photoshop can, it can produce very slick looking logos and graphical effects that you can use in brochures, booklets and documents. Here is a good post from Tech Republic on creating snazzy logos in Gimp. You may also want to look into free fonts.

Many people use the applications in the OpenOffice.org software suite for creating good-looking documents. You can find tutorials on how to make your documents look good here.

Open Clip Art Library is a project that houses an archive of clip art that anyone can freely use. It houses more than 10,000 images.


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