My wife is a writer, which today means she uses a word processing program. It's a sophisticated, powerful program—OpenOffice.org Writer—but occasionally it won't do something that she wants it to do.

Python is an open-source, object-oriented programming language. According to Python.org, its simple, easy-to-learn syntax emphasizes readability and therefore reduces the cost of program maintenance.

If you're paying for software features you're not even using, consider scripting them.

It’s easy to automate the creation of Word documents with Quarto, a free, open-source technical publishing system that works with R, Python, and other programming languages. There are several ways to ...