Overview:
RoughDraft is a freeware word processor. Although suitable for general use, it has features specifically designed for writers of novels, short stories, articles, poetry, plays and screenplays. It's designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use.
Some of RoughDraft's highlights are:
- Comprehensive text and paragraph formatting options.
- Importing of files in Word 6.0, Word 97 and HTML formats.
- Side panel - making common operations quicker and more convenient.
- Up to 100 files open at the same time.
- Spellchecking (in British or American English) of the whole text or of individual words, plus a custom dictionary so you can add your own words.
- Dictionary and thesaurus facility (provided by Anthony Lewis' WordWeb program, which has to be installed separately - it's not required to run RoughDraft, but strongly recommended).
- Automatic insertion of user-defined words - for character names or commonly used words.
- Four extra clipboards for inserting longer phrases or paragraphs.
- Special modes for screenplay writers and playwrights which make formatting easy.
- Instant backup to a floppy disk - a very convenient way to make sure you don't lose your work.
- Saves files in the popular Rich Text Format (RTF), meaning they can be opened in just about any other word processor.
- Can create HTML files of your work for publishing on the web.
- Can automatically generate cover pages for manuscript submissions with word and page counts.
- Font styles for quicker formatting.
- Shortcut keys for just about everything.
- Comprehensive help system.
- It's free!
RoughDraft is not designed to compete with major commercial word processors. If you need features such as tables, graphics, indexes, outline numbering, cross-references or footnotes, you'll have to look elsewhere. If you want a no-nonsense writing tool, RoughDraft should (I hope) give you what you need.