Jarte -- Free Word Processor

Word processor programs have become monsters in recent years with so may features that writing a simple letter or report can be hard due to feature bloat. The basic features one needs for everyday writing tasks are lost in menus and toolbars among all the features that most people do not use (or even understand) but are loved by marketing people who need "New Features!!!" to convince people to spend money buying the latest and greatest upgrade (that few people really need).

Jarte is a free word processor without the bloat. It looks nice, although much different from what you may be used to, and handles everyday writing tasks without getting the way. It is built around the same engine WordPad uses, just with an expanded feature set. WordPad is a toy for emergency use, but Jarte is a usable word processor with just enough feature to get everyday word processing tasks done.

Here is a list of Jarte's features from the Jarte web site. It's a fairly long list, but as you can see, Jarte's features are those used in everyday writing without the "what the heck is they and why would anyone need it" features that bloat Word, Wordperfect, and even OpenOffice.

General Features

• Fully compatible with Windows Vista
• Tabbed interface to provide easy access to open documents
• Opens all Word documents, including the new Word 2007 documents
• Fast start up
• Compact screen size
• Optional "Clickless Operation" feature greatly reduces clicking
• Can be run directly from a pluggable USB flash drive
• High quality spell checker with custom user dictionary
• Included spelling dictionaries: English (American, British, & Canadian), Spanish, French, German, and Dutch
• Link to, or import, your existing custom Word spelling dictionaries
• Support for templates
• Export to HTML or PDF
• Single click bookmarking and bookmark navigation
• Send documents via e-mail
• Full drag and drop file support
• Instant access to recently opened documents and folders
• Instant access to documents and folders designated as favorites
• Adjustable document zoom
• Detailed Help documentation

Editing Functions

• Insert pictures, hyperlinks, tables, page breaks, equations and other embeddable objects
• Quick Clips option provides easy copy, cut and paste capability using the mouse scroll wheel button
• Standard clipboard functions plus a Paste Plain function which strips HTML and RTF formatting from clipboard text before pasting
• Multi-level undo and redo functions
• Sorting

Font Formatting

• Bold, italic, underline, strikeout, subscript, and superscript font styles
• Choice of text colors
• Text highlight tool with choice of colors
• Font typeface selection box which displays each font choice in its own typeface
• Choose your own default font
• Quick access to your personally chosen favorite fonts and to recently used fonts
• Format brush tool quickly applies font styling to text

Paragraph Formatting

• Left, right, centered, and justified text alignment
• Paragraph indentation including first line and hanging indent styles
• Bulleted and numbered list styles
• Single, one and a half, and double line spacing
• Optional paragraph spacing before and after paragraphs
• User settable tab stops
• Format brush tool quickly applies formatting to paragraphs

Printing

• Print preview
• User definable page margins
• Reverse page order option and odd or even pages only options (useful for double sided printing) in addition to the standard print options
• Visual designer allows complete control of both headers and footers:
• Define any combination of left side, right side, and center headers and footers
• Headers and footers may contain any combination of page numbering, file date, current date (in choice of date formats), file name, and user definable text
• User control of the font typeface, font size, font style, and font color used for headers and footers
• User control of the positioning of the header and footer lines
• Optional suppression of the header and/or footer on the first page

Tools

• Clip List allows you display and reuse the 25 most recent clipboard clips
• Screen capture tool for copying images from the screen
• Special Characters Keyboard allows single click insertion of any character including the extended characters not shown on your keyboard
• Reference Bar provides instant word lookup to online dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia
• The Reference Bar also automatically integrates with the WordWeb dictionary and thesaurus if it is installed
• Document word count tool
• Search for files on your computer with direct access to the system file search tool

Jarte is a small download, so if you need a nice, nimble word processor without all the feature bloat, give it a try.

Operating System: Windows 98-XP, Vista
Price: Free
Version: 3.0
Web Site: http://www.jarte.com/

Tags: Jarte, Word Processor, Freeware, Windows