Best Word Processor for El Capitan

AppleWorks support ended with OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8. You can open pure AppleWorks v6 word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files in iWork '09 applications. The free LibreOffice will also open ClarisWorks v5, and AppleWorks v6 documents in varying degrees, with the same criterion as for the iWork '09 application suite — that the documents are not a conglomeration of data from different AppleWorks applications.

If you do not already have Pages v5.6 through v5.6.2 on El Capitan (10.11.6), then your are stuck with the iWork '09 applications, or LibreOffice. Apple does not provide access to full installers of past applications. I don't believe that there are any additional, currently maintained third-party applications that can open AppleWorks files now.

The retail iWork '09 DVD is available from Amazon and Ebay resellers. Apple still has the iWork 9.3 Updater for download that brings all of these applications to their last revision. Pages '09 v4.3 is a dead application once Mojave (10.14.1) is installed.

If you are not migrating AppleWorks documents, and you do not have the iWork '09 suite — then its time to sit down and make a list of must have word processing features, and then look at Nisus Writer Pro, or Mellel as examples of fully featured, bet the business on functionality applications. If you are regularly exchanging Word documents with Windows and other Mac users, then you will want MS Word in Office 2016 for Mac for its native document handling capabilities.

Chances are the biggest issue with Pages is that it is different. We all get comfortable with the way a specific app does something and when we have to change, it is very annoying.

As Terence Devlin says, if you want the kitchen sink of word processors, then Microsoft Word. LibreOffice will give you many of the "Word" features if you do not want to pay Microsoft for Word.

But if you do have some specific Pages questions, there is a Pages for Mac forum

<Pages for Mac>

Or since Terence Devlin asked, you could detail here and perhaps gets answers from this thread.

Lucky for me, I write everything as a text file and use Vim as my editor (yes I'm stuck on pre-historic times).

Well then, Word it is, or Mellel or NisusWriter as alternatives.

One you move away from Pages, the interoperability document standard is Word .docx, and you will need to export your Pages documents to that format. LibreOffice can also open the iWork '09 document formats, and some more recent versions — as read-only content, but probably will fail miserably with more complex documents.

my issue was more with the limitations of Pages

What limitations do you find? That tells us whether to suggest the big tools ike Word or NisusWriter or Mellel, or lighter apps like Bean.