Word processor?

You could try out WordPerfect 3.5e, it's free, but no longer available through Corel, so you have to google for it. I think it will read ClarisWorks documents, but I really don't remember, obviously it doesn't contain a spreadsheet, database and drawing modules.

Wordperfect 3.5e is definitely a nice word processor. But it is kind of large (by pre-OS X standards), and I'm not sure if it reads Clarisworks files. In addition, in my experience, it's not the most stable app. It crashes periodically.

If you're looking for something lightweight and quick, with decent features, consider Nisus Writer. Nisus Writer 4.1.6 was released as freeware after being a commercial product for years. IIRC, Nisus provided it for download, along with a publicly posted serial number. There's also Nisus Compact, which (as the name indicates) is smaller than Nisus Writer, with fewer features, and has been free since its inception. Nisus has always provided great support for additional languages, and they had non-contiguous text-selection capability years before anyone else.

Try MacUpdate's or VersionTracker's Classic Mac OS sections, or try googling for them; they're probably around somewhere.

Finally, FYI one relatively easy way to make any word processing document readable by any other word processor is to open it in its native program (i.e. Clarisworks) and then save in RTF (Rich Text Format). This preserves all the formatting (unless you've got complex tables and such), and can be read by MS Word, WordPerfect, Nisus Writer, OS X TextEdit, and any Windows (and probably any GUI-based Linux) word processor. But of course if you have hundreds of CW documents, it can be a pain opening and doing a "Save As" for each one.

Oh-- one more thing. I don't remember if it's still true with 8.6, but I know OS 8.1 includes the ability to install a free version of MacLinkPlus, which does lots of great file conversions. If you've got your 8.6 installer disk handy - or an 8.1 installer - you can check on that.

Matt