Although OpenOffice.org Writer and AbiWord top the list of open source software for those who write for work or fun, they are not the be-all-and-end-all of writing tools. In fact, there are quite a few other nifty applications that can help you to collect ideas, manage notes, edit documents, and even improve your writing.

Despite its name, http://tiddlywiki.com/TiddlyWiki is not a conventional wiki. The entire application consists of just one HTML file, which includes CSS and JavaScript codes, and everything you enter in the wiki is stored inside this file as well. TiddlyWiki also does away with separate pages, and instead it uses so-called tiddlers. Each tiddler is a text fragment that is stored in the wiki file, and you can show and hide it. You can also add new tiddlers, delete and modify existing ones, and shuffle them as you see it fit. This makes TiddlyWiki a rather useful tool for managing your text fragments (or using a more fashionable word – microcontent) in a non-linear manner.

OpenOffice.org contains a bibliography database, but the lack of advanced features makes it better suited for simple references than sophisticated bibliographies. For a serious bibliography tool that works with Writer, consider Bibus. Since Bibus is a database-driven application that supports both SQLite (the default) and MySQL, it includes features typical for this type of software, such as a multi-user environment, user privileges (read-only or read/write), powerful search capabilities, and the ability to store live SQL queries. Since all data are stored in a single database file, you can maintain an unlimited number of separate bibliography references and switch between them easily. The feature list doesn’t stop there, though. Bibus also allows users to create hierarchically organized references, and define custom keys. The application supports other bibliographical file formats, and can import and export bibliographies in PubMed, RIS, BibTeX, and EndNote/Refer (import only) formats. However, Bibus’ most intriguing feature is its integration with Writer. Using Bibus, you can insert citations on the fly from your bibliography database into the currently opened document, leaving the job of updating the bibliography section to Bibus itself. More importantly, Bibus allows you to format the bibliography and bibliography entries the way you want.

If you fancy mind maps, then you might want to tryFreeMind. It has all the tools you’d expect from a decent mind application – and then some. FreeMind supports node folding, fast one-click navigation, the ability to link to local documents and web pages, and drag-and-drop. You can export mind maps as HTML pages, graphics (SVG, PNG, JPG formats are supported), PDF documents, and even publish them on the web using the FreeMind Flash Browser. More importantly, you can convert outlines created in OpenOffice.org Writer into mind maps and the other way around.

What is WikidPad? Well, that’s a tough one. The author calls it an “IDE for thoughts”, and while it’s a pretty good description, it just doesn’t really do WikidPad justice. Basically, WikidPad is what you want it to be: a notebook, an address book, a to-do manager, and a desktop wiki. No matter what you call it, this is one of the most ingenious and extremely useful tools for anyone looking for an easy and effective way to organize snippets of data and knowledge. As the name suggests, WikidPad borrows its fundamental idea from wiki: any word can be turned into a wiki word, and each wiki word acts as a link to a separate page. This allows users to seamlessly create new pages as well as navigate through the entire wiki in a non-linear manner. However, since WikidPad is a desktop application, it offers a few additional features that take the wiki idea to a whole new level, including ScratchPad (a sort of clipboard inside your wiki), Insertions (special attributes that specify dynamic content in a wiki page), the ability to organize pages by user-defined tags, and much more.

Text editors and word processors are good for, well, writing and editing text. However, they are not really up to snuff when it comes to taking notes, annotating documents, and just plain doodling. For this purpose you need a dedicated software like Jarnal, a unique application that can make your writing and note taking more efficient. Besides the usual tools like Pen and Text, Jarnal also features a handwriting recognition engine that can convert your notes into text. Using this feature can be a bit of hit or miss, and it only supports block letters, but it is an impressive feat nonetheless. Although Jarnal is first and foremost a note-taking application, it’s by no means a one-trick pony. In fact, Jarnal includes a couple of rather nifty features, which turn it into a versatile tool. One such handy feature is Jarnal’s ability to add links to any object on the page. Jarnal can act both as a server and a client, which makes it a simple yet effective collaboration tool. This is all impressive stuff, but Jarnal’s real killer feature is its ability to annotate PDF documents, which makes it an indispensable tool for anyone working with PDFs.

WordNet is, without a doubt, an essential language reference tool available on any platform. Although WordNet looks deceptively simple, in contains language data based on more than two decades of linguistic research. This article helps you to get started with this amazing language software. When you work with WordNet, you have to keep in mind that this is not a traditional dictionary; in its developers’ own words, WordNet ”…is an online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets”. In other words, since all entries in WordNet are organized into synonym sets (synsets) and they contain definitions and examples, WordNet can be used both as a thesaurus and a more or less conventional dictionary.

Developed by yours truly, Writer's Tools is an all-around tool designed to help OpenOffice.org users to perform a wide range of tasks. It makes easier to backup documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, and keep tabs on document statistics.

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