Word Craft is a Word clone for Windows, Linux, and Mac!

FOSS Applications/Projects
1

While going through my email earlier today, I ran across an item named “I tried the free Microsoft Word clone on Linux” by Jack Wallen, a frequent Contributing Writer on ZDNet Tech Today, a newsletter I get.

Word Craft is a Microsoft Word clone created with the assistance of artificial intelligence that’s an alpha or pre-alpha release (Version 0.7.0 as I write this). Since I have no Word (DOCX) documents on hand because I haven’t used Microsoft Word in more than a decade and a half, I’ll have to see what it can do by creating some documents of my own, then check the result with Microsoft Word On-Line.

I have several reasons for my interest in Word Craft:

  1. Word Craft is open source
  2. Word Craft loads fast!
  3. Word Craft is the first word processor that has the potential to produce Word formatting correctly while running natively on the top three computing platforms of today
  4. Word Craft is an app of it’s own, so I’m not forced to install an entire Office Suit to have access to it, although other Office clones are available if you want/need them

Word Craft is installed using the Art Craft Launcher, which can be downloaded as a Flatpak, AppImage, Debian Package, RPM Package, or as a Tarball, all of which are built for the x86_64 architecture (Click the drop down menu at the right of the Download Launcher button on the website to choose the file format you prefer). If you use Arch or an Arch-based distribution, you can get Word Craft with yay -S wordcraft, but I trust the AppImage from the developer’s website more, and besides, the Art Craft launcher also acts as an update manager for any apps you install with it

I keep an AppImages directory in home to store the AppImages I choose to use, so I downloaded the Art Craft Launcher’s AppImage file and moved it to my AppImages directory, then made it executable, after which I could run the launcher and install Word Craft from the page of thirteen available applications.

I know that most who see this want nothing to do with Microsoft Office or Word, but having clones of many Microsoft Office apps that run natively on Windows, Linux, and Apple’s Mac just may be the missing part that allows many who are trapped with Windows and Office/Word to move on to the freedom of GNU/Linux by switching to the distribution they want. As GNU/Linux continues to evolve, and Microsoft continues to re-imagine Windows as an OS directed at power users, while appearing to be leaving regular users behind, I become increasingly confident that even at my age (late 70s), I’ll live to see the year of Linux, and be able to enjoy what it offers!

2

I am waiting for WindowsCraft.
Really , I think what you say is correct … decent Word clone will encourage Win users to use Linux.

3

From what I can seen
It just has the newer toolbar to make it look like word 365, which personally I hate prefer libreoffice tool bar.
Its nit yet in the repository for linuxmint so will wait and see if it arrives in that before installing
No big deal for me, but thanks for pointing it out

4

I’m seeing a plethora of these apps crop up recently… “reverse engineered” (clean room I guess?) apps to replace the functionality of paid apps - like the Adobe Suite…

There’s several AI created clones of Photoshop now for Linux (and Mac and Windows) - and there’s one that purports to be a replacement for Adobe’s “Creative Suite” (i.e. Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, DarkRoom).

The only good thing about them - less revenue for enshittified companies like Adobe with their bullshit subscription only model…

I know there are some things that alternatives to PS cannot do - e.g. GIMP… But I reckon the vast majority of casual image editing users could find EVERY feature they’d ever want in GIMP.

I do use GIMP sometimes - but that whole “Do you want to save that PNG as XCF?” thing annoys the crap out of me…

5

Actually you can grab the standalone .deb (Appimage, rpm, etc…) from the Gtihub site.

Probably ReactOS picked up by Echelon? :smiley:

All from the same developer(?).

In the other thread I mentioned the Photocraft, which really impressed me.
It’s awsome despite being in early alpha state.
I also tried Filmcraft, it may be usable for some, but not for me.
I won’t look into Office replacements until they don’t speak my native language, after all OnlyOffice is just too good at substituting MS Office.

6

I wonder what the lawyers will think of this.

7

The look&feel is not copyright protected, as well as the functions and way of working aren’t.
The original program and the implementations of the functions, with other words the lines of codes in the program are copyrighted. So the lawyers would have to proove that WordCraft (for example) contains program codes stolen from MS Word.
Maybe the “Word” designation will be necessary to change, say TextCraft or something like that, so that it resembles to MS Word less…
I see an entry to the gray zone with “reverse engineering”, as it’s unclear to me what it really means.

8

And the Perplexing part (to me) is that M$'s doing it to themselves. In light of events over the past few years, I can even imagine a world where M$ abandons Windows and pushes it’s software as GNU/Linux apps while its primary business is selling the web services it offers. :slight_smile:

9

KDE’s Kolourpaint meets most of my needs, but then again I prefer clean, simple graphics, even for icon images.

10

I suppose if you start with function,look, feel only, it is OK to recreate it with your own code
but
the grey area is if you use the binaries in any way… particularly if you reverse compile them.

The big recent change is that AI is now clever enough at coding to make the job of reinventing large apps feasable… soon it will be brainy enough to reinvent every piece of software in the world.
Programming will become a lost art and a vanishing profession, like many other technical activities.

11

I found that out after I posted this, but then again, since the ArtCraft launcher supposedly manages updates too, I’ll stick with my Appimage for it. :slight_smile:

12

My guess is that if Word Craft includes no proprietary code, there won’t be much they can do, especially considering that it’s released under an MIT license, so it’s being distributed at no cost.

13

No argument here. It’ll be interesting to see if the other shoe drops.