Report Writing Program

Fabrizio

Hey,
Aint sure if im posting this in the write section but just wondering if anyone knows a program i could get that would help me in producing reports for college, something more advanced than say Word but is easy to use. Professional appreance. Another program im looking for is one that would help me to create posters and the likes....say a more advanced Microsoft Publisher...........any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Jammer

what are u trying to do that word doesnt do?

Fabrizio

Well just something that has better templates and is flashier! i have never heard of nay other ones apart from Word and was just wondering if there is any out there that others use that i might work better with.?
Thxs

Jammer

i havent heard of many others, just lotus notes? never used it. word is pretty advanced tho...it can do alot of stuff that the average joe isnt aware of!

OfflerCrocGod

LaTeX

secret_squirrel

If neither Word or Publisher are doing the trick you are getting into serious desktop publishing territory. Sure you are using them to their full potential - you can make some pretty good looking reports in word with a bit off effort.

I assume you are talking about 'wordy' reports rather than numerical type reports btw?

Bear in mind that all these could cost serious money but consider :

Corel Draw
QuarkXpress
Serif Page Plus (used to be a good budget dtp package)
Adobe Acrobat writer.

Edit : Offler are you nuts? unless there is a nice GUI-ised version of LaTex I wouldnt suggest anyone who isnt highly familiar with a unice or 3 to touch it with barge pool. My room mate almost failed his dissertation at college coz he spent more time messing around with LaTex than he actually did in writing the dissertation.

eggshapedfred

i love latex. so much tweaking fun.

on the DTP side, theres Scribus. Its linux based and is fairly new (meaning it may crash) but its free so it could be worth a shot.

maybe try doing a google search for Word report templates and see what comes up. maybe someone already "invented" a cool looking template that you can "borrow"...

OfflerCrocGod

He never asked for something easy

leeroybrown

You don't derine what kind of reports you are doing. Are you just looking for something for writing up ordinary written reports? What kinds of features are you looking for?

While I'm not a fan or Word it can be gotten to produce very high quality output in the right hands. You seem to be looking for a 'silver bullet' solution that will instantly make your reports look better and different when this generally requires work. A professional appearance is gained from ability to use the tools to achieve the effect...

As for Publisher replacements, quite a few have been suggested.