
Ask HN: Something that is to Word like what Sketch is to Photoshop? - butimnotarapper
I find Word (and Pages) cumbersome to use. Is there something that is to Word like what Sketch is to Photoshop? Sketch is so to-the-point and simple still powerful. I&#x27;d like a &quot;word processor&quot; that is like Sketch in those regards.<p>Maybe I should use InDesign? I used InDesign in a graphics design class I took because I as a software engineer wanted to get a better understanding of graphical design. From my experience at that time InDesign didn&#x27;t have much support for layouting a large mass of text across multiple pages. It felt more like a tool used to manually lay out a number of boxes with text inside them inbetween graphical features and images.<p>I don&#x27;t think I want LaTex; I don&#x27;t want to have to learn an entire language before I can layout two pages with some images and text.
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based2
Document automation:
[https://www.hotdocs.com/products](https://www.hotdocs.com/products)
[https://www.activedocs.com/](https://www.activedocs.com/)

[https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/writer/](https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/writer/)
[https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates/](https://extensions.libreoffice.org/templates/)

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eberkund
I am after the same thing, I use markdown + pandoc for myself but I think
there is a real market for a simplified word processor like you're describing
that can use complex templates. Think of like a business where they want
people to use a standard format (font, heading, margins). It's all too easy to
fuck those things up in word just by misclicking something when all you want
to do is write and use a standard template.

