CompuServe Thread

Here are my comments, Donald. I do like some things, but feel that TC has some serious deficiencies. I realize that Textcraft (TC) is an entry level word processor, but there are some serious limitations even for a "kiddie" program. 1. Why does it insist on setting the left margin at 5 and, frequently, even move itself after being set to zero? If you were working on a piece of paper, no problem, the paper is more than 80 columns wide. BUT, the screen under TC is only 75 columns wide. WHY waste 5 columns for white space. The printer output portion of the program can put in the margins a la Word Star??? 2. This is an extension of item 1 – even if you use (A)miga R to change the margins, they still get reset to the default values when starting a new document. 3. Cutting sections of text is a by gosh and by golly thing. Frequently, pressing the mouse button will have no effect. Then all of a sudden, away we go! The same is true when using the camera, style brush or any other tool. 4. Paging through text is like sucking an elephant through a straw. I take that back, sucking an elephant through a straw is faster. Either using the 3 or 9 on the keypad or by holding down the mouse with the pointer held at the top or bottom of the text yields very slow movement when just starting out in an existing document. 5. When opening a document, why does the pointer go to the end of the document? If I want to read the thing, I prefer starting at the beginning and reading toward the end, not the reverse. If I want to edit the thing, I still want to start at the beginning to see what was said. 6. If trying to page through the document by putting the pointer at the bottom of the page and holding the button on the mouse (much, much faster than striking the "3" or "9" on the keypad), the document sometimes stops at the point where the button is released. At other times, it stops than advances the text one half screen. Whatever it is going to do should be consistent. 7. If I cold booted on another disk, when loading TC from CLI a requester appears asking for the disk from which the system was booted. By double clicking on it, it goes away and all is well. Why waste my time by asking for something it doesn't need?? 8. Not being able to read from anything but the root directory means that anything saved (to be later avail. from within TC) must be saved in the root dir. Can you picture having 100-200 letters and various documents intermixed on the same window and trying to find the one that you want? Gawd, what a mess!!! 9. Why is there not even a simple block read/write function?? I tried to save what amounted to less than two pages from over 45 pages that were downloaded from CIS and had to 'cut' away the other 40+ pages. Since cutting more than 20-30 lines at a time GREATLY slows down the rate of cutting, this meant cutting less than one page, releasing the mouse, repeating the operation over and over and over and over and….. 10. The program tells me what page I'm on and I can get a relative position for the column, but it sure would be nice to know both the column number and the line number. 11. TC should allow me to pass ECS codes, via embedded commands, through to my printer so that I can take advantage of its abilities. 12. Why oh why am I stuck with that awful white background (and black letters)? This isn't a piece of paper, its a CRT! The resolution makes it look like a piece of white paper that has fine black horizontal lines drawn all over it, stuck out in the sun. How about letting me change the colors to something of my choice!? Talking about choice, how about letting me get rid of the ruler so that I can get 3-4 more line of text on the screen? 13. Maybe you can save some code by getting rid of those "forms" and putting the code in for block read/write. 14. I do like the character resolution. In fact that is why I use TC for reading DLs from CIS as opposed to typing the output. But really, the black on white is rough. 15. IT is S L O W!! 4 minutes to load a 48 page document!?!? 16. (A)miga F should be reworked or a "repeat last command" added. If I want to locate several areas that have a key word nearby, if I search for the key word, then click in the typing area, to activate the KB, the search requester should not automatically go away. If it stayed put, I could make my change, go back to the requester and click on 'Find Next' and proceed through the document. 17. When the document icons are generated, why not have them refer to Textcraft:textcraft rather than sys:textcraft. That way they would load, or ask for the proper disk, when clicked on even if the system wasn't cold started from the TC disk. 18. Just curious, why when "running" TC from CLI, i.e. "Run textcraft" does everything go fine, but upon exiting TC do I get a "Failed, return code xxx" message? It hasn't failed, it ran fine. 19. There needs to be embedded markers that can be returned to from anywhere in the text. Try using TC to write code, or even a letter, moving forward or backward 30 lines to check a referrence and than getting back to where you left off. Sure, it can be done, but it would be a lot faster and easier with markers. Other entry level WP packs support this, eg. Select by SIS. 20. When saving a document, any entry in the file name box on the requester blanks everything that was in the box. In some instances that's a nice feature, but if all you wanted to do was re-direct the file to another disk, now you need to retype the entire filename. How about sensing where the cursor is. If the cursor is at the end of all typing, clear the box, if it anywhere else in the requester box, allow the next text to be inserted without clearing the old entry? 21. Finally, as in I'm tired of writing, not as in that's all I have to say — The Amiga is a fine, color oriented machine. Why not enable the insertion of colored text on-screen and the printing of that color. I know that I haven't had much good to say about TC. I guess I could say that it is the best word processer available for the Amy. But we both know that it is the only one avail. It is kind 'a nice little package, but it does have some serious problems/bugs. I've only touched on some of them. Others have probably mentioned different ones. One thing I do want to point out (for anyone reading this msg) is that the problems associated with speed are not as noticeable when working on small documents. (However, when editing this short note, I had more than a few problems trying to get the scissors to activate.) The problems related to cutting get worse the longer the section being cut. The paging problem is more pronounced the larger the document. Even the problem with the tools not working properly seem to be more in evidence on longer documents. Oh, the bird _is_ cute. Richard Medved The remark about the bird wasn't meant as a "shot". I really do get a kick out of watching him flap his wings. Hope this came across, its been a long time since I've last tried to upload to a forum from a file. Although I think TC has been underrated, I have had virtually all the same thoughts about it which you mentioned. The biggest difference is that I have not worked on it with long files–I am still trying to geet my Radio Shack printers to work with the Amiga, and wishing I could afford an Amiga-supported printer. For now, I print anything out on my Coco only. I was especially pleased you mentioned that dumb margin problem firrst. I absolutely do not understand how they let that one get by. It does seem just sloppy to me. I have never tried to run TC from the CLI, and I find your story about the return code error very interesting, and I should think they would consider that a serious bug. Much of the rest I think about as possible upgrades, like color choice, repeat commands, etc., but if it is that slow on large files, that would seem a pretty much terminal drawback even for an entry-level processor for the Amiga. I like the black on white, but that's just personal taste. I find it a very pleasing screen (except for the margins) and I think the templates could be expanded rather than done away with, but speed and the capability for handling large files is a must, and I guess I never really believed TC could handle that part. Overall, I'm just glad I drew you out with your critique. Such things help clarify the eventual goals for making the Amiga a really professional writing tool. Certainly, TC is a long, long way from being the instrument for that job, and for 99 bucks it should have tried a bit harder, but I meant that there were many things to praise in the looks, feel, ease of use, help files, etc. My mother sat down to it with not a word from me, and typed a letter on it, and if computer-phobes don't have a problem with it, I like it a lot! Still, your critique points out the things I would definitely agree with in a seriously critical moment. Just one thing I wish you'd mentioned, and that's the ability to work with images as well as text, but I suppose that's really for different programs with different aims, and I just would like to see some programs in that vein.