#WordPerfect- The Best???
42 messages in this thread
Dom,
I went to look at a 500 that was for sale yesterday and we got onto the
topic of wordprocessors. The vendor swore by Final copy because of it's
advanced font support and printing speed. But from what I know, FC
suffers from the same restrictions as PW: no multiple column definitions,
no foot/endnotes, etc. With PW I discovered another problem (at least in
3.1) that you can only have one page type per document. That means you
can't have a letter and envelope in the same document. It's small things
like that which take the joy out an otherwise powerful program.
I suppose the big problem with the Amiga market is that you have three
types of people. There are those who use it only for games and low end
apps. Those who only use it for video. And the rest who believe it is a
good productivity platform. Unfortunatly, the third group is small and
doesn't necessarially have a lot of $$$ so they buy emulators and support
other platforms. (Just so I'm not labelled a hypocrite, yes, I too have a
BB.) And as C= directs the Amiga into more vertical markets such as video
& multimedia the consumer userbase will possibly deminish even further.
BTW, what sort of printer do you have. We just got a HP 500C and I'm a
little miffed that there are 5 built in scalable CG fonts that I can't
access, even when using ProPage that uses disk based CG fonts.
Yo, Andrew
Andrew,
Yes, I was also checking out Amiga word processors, and it's sad to say
that WordPerfect still has by far the most features of any text word
processor on the Amiga, and the latest version was released 1-1/2 years
ago. I was looking at a comparison chart in AmigaWorld and only Excellence
also supported automatic table of contents and index generation, footnotes
(but not endnotes), and built-in macros. Now Excellence has also been
discontinued. The chart also showed that ProWrite was the slowest word
processor out there and I am concerned with speed. It looks like I'm going
to stick with WordPerefect for now.
I have an HP DeskJet 500 printer. I did read the manual when I got it,
but I remember that it was tricky to access the built-in fonts. What
printer driver are you using for your printer?
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Now where did you here that Excellence! has been discontinued????????? That is
not rumblings on MSS bbs.
Richard: *What* rumblings on the MSS BBS? For that matter, what BBS? A
number of us have been unable to connect with it anymore! How recently
have you been on line and what number are you dialing? The Excellence!
rumor needs to be quashed hard if MSS is alive and doing business.
Richard,
I was the one who gave Dom that tidbit of news (or rumour, as it may be).
There was a posting that mentioned it here. I called to confirm and the
line was disconnected. Sounds like it's discontinued, I'd say. Have you
heard otherwise?
Andrew
Toronto, Ontario
Richard,
Someone here mentioned that Excellence wasn't being supported anymore.
Do you have info to the contrary?
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
2.5, not 1.5 years ago. And there were only bug updates and very minor
feature updates (ability to load 4.2 files, improved file requester) since
the initial release.
Dale,
Did I say 1.5 years? Sorry, I meant 2.5 years. The last update was in
January 1991. I had it since 1988 and there was never a major upgrade for
it. That's what wories me. To date, it still has more text features than
any other Amiga word processor.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Wordworth is now the most powerful, actively marketed Amiga WP going, and
it's an English import! Too bad Excellence went down. I would expect,
however, to see ProWrite and especially Final Copy adding more high-end
features now that the market has shaken out a bit. Also, seems to me that
ProPage isn't far from being an all-purpose WP/DTP program, what with its
genie system. It can already serve as a database and do mail merges with
envelopes, etc., but it's just slower at many things; on a higher-end
platform it's speedy enough, especially if you compose and edit in the
Article Editor. Pagestream is approaching similar power. DTP programs on
faster Amigas may end up serving as "omni" business software.
Ron,
The WP I was trying to remember was an English import. At first I
thought it was Wordworth, but then I heard that WW was the English version
of KindWords, which isn't very powerful. The English program I had heard
about had built-in macros without ARexx. Does WW have that?
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Wordworth is totally different beat to Kindwords. Wordworth and FC 2 are
the 2 biggest "windows" type wprocessors in the UK for the Amiga. Protext
is by far the most powerful Dos type wp and is used by nearly everyone who
knows whats what. At the moment Protext doesn't handly WYSIWYG or scalable
fonts on screen etc, but unless you absolutely really need this then
protext is arguably by far the most powerful Wp available today in the
UK.
If anyone wants more info the address for Protext is
Arnor Ltd
611, Lincoln Road,
Peterborough PE1 3HA
'phone 0733 68909
or email
mtilley@cix.compulink.co.uk
Mark is de boss and a very clued up chap indeed.
Pete
Pete,
Thanks for the Protext info. I'll definitely look into it.
One last thing. Does Protext allow you to load and edit files while
printing? Thanks.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Yes. It has its own print buffer. There's a delay while it fills the
buffer (in ram), of course, but after that you can get on with your work
while the doc is printing. One thing to remember, though, is not to quit
Protext while it is still printing because by quitting Protext you are
also quitting the print job (i.e. losing the contents of the print
buffer).
Jeff Walker – Just Amiga Monthly.
Thanks, Jeff. I'm having ProText info sent to me.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom,
A bit more local to you…
Michtron Inc — ProText dealer
3201 Drummond Plaza
Newark, DE 19711
302 454 7946
FAX 302 454 1403
Chris
Chris,
Great. Thanks for the local ProText contact info.
I just called them and they're sending me more info. It costs about
$100 and you can order it directly from Michtron. They take credit cards.
Thanks for helping me out.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
It's the other way around. Kindwords 3 is a complete rewrite of the old
Kindwords, based on the original version of Wordworth. It's more powerful
than older Kindwords and looks very much like Wordworth. I think the
British WP you're thinking of is Kindwords 3 or, more likely, Wordworth 2.
Ron,
Thanks, but I found out the name of the British WP I was thinking of.
It's called ProText.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
I guess you've never heard of Protext. More features than you can shake a
stick at.
Jeff Walker – Just Amiga Monthly.
Jeff,
(Shaking stick-8-)) Who makes Protext? Is it an English import? Does it
have built-in macros without using ARexx?
Thanks.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Yup Protext has built in macros without Arexx and also
Multiple proportinal fonts, mixed fonts of different sizes on lines,
proportional formatting whilst editing, side margins, headers and footers
independent of main text, automatically formatted footnotes, newspaper
style column printing, huge range of printer drivers built in, multiple
file editing up to 36 files open at one, split screen editing, can have
boxex drawn on screen etc, allows binary file import e.g. graphics,
umpteen different accents on characters, index and contents generation
automatically, smelling cheekers, anagrams, thesaurus, foreign language
dictionaries, mail merge and built in programming language and all the
usual like find and replace, on screen help, word count and more than I
can be bothered to type in.
See my previous message for postal address and email address.
Pete
… and Protext also has an incredibly powerful "stored command" language,
like the "dot" commands in wordstar, which enable you to do some very
powerful mail merging indeed. I've seen databases and invoicing systems
written in Protext stored commands. Floating point maths and all. Slow,
sure, but it's a word processor not a C compiler.
Jeff Walker – Just Amiga Monthly.
DOM:
I'm using a PD driver called "HPDeskJet_500C". Word(almost)Perfect has a
few HP drivers which work fine but there aren't scalable fonts. There is
a MSWindows font disk included but it's on an HD disk so I can't read it.
GoldDisk says that I may be able to use the fonts if I can transport them
but that is only in theory.
Did the chart show that PW was the slowest? I thought it was opposite.
As I mentioned before, I hope some other company picks up e! , improves
and remarkets it. There is always the chance that WP Corps will change
their minds if the AGA line sells well. After all, their reason for
dropping it was the lack of harddrives and faster processors. It's
unlikely however.
Yo till next time,
Andrew
Toronto, Ontario
Andrew,
Yes, the chart showed PW as the slowest for search and replace
functions. That's what they used as their speed barometer. Someone said
Excellence was still being supported. Someone else also mentioned Protext.
That might be the English program I was thinking of.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dominick,
Creating a document that is just 1000 copies of the word "the" and seeing how
long it takes to change them all to "and" is not a good speed barometer of a
word processor. ProWrite is optimized for speed of user input, interaction,
real-world usage, and is quite fast compared to the competition. In fact, its
typing speed is as fast, if not faster, than anything else out there for the
Amiga.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
P.S. ProText has quite a number of features, but is more like WordPerfect in
appearance–it is strictly character based and looks more like a DOS-type
product than an Amiga product.
James,
Thanks for the clarification. Any idea why AmigaWorld chose to use
search and replace as their speed barometer?
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom,
I think it wasn't so much AmigaWorld as it was the reviewer. Doing a
simple-minded search-and-replace test is easy to time, so the reviewer probably
thought it would be good to include it. Never mind that it is hardly
indicative of real-world performance.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
James,
On another topic, do you sell the Maxell 150-Meg and 250-Meg tapes?
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dominick,
While we do sell tape drives, we do not sell tapes. 150 and 250 meg tapes for
our tape drive should be available from any local computer store or office
supply store.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
James,
Thanks, but I already have 6 unopened Maxell 150-Meg tapes. I wanted to
trade them in for 250-Meg tapes. So far, I haven't found any stores that
carry them, but I'll keep looking.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
James: Curious to know what improvements are being contemplated for future
releases of ProWrite. I used to use WordPerfect for my work but faithfully
upgraded to each new version of PW because my daughter loved it. Then I bought
a postscript printer, and found that the output from Wordperfect was not
reliable (margins, indents etc. appeared on printout that were not on screen).
Sooo, now I use ProWrite all the time, but as with the theme of this thread, I
wished it had some of the more sophisticated features of WP. Regards Rick
Rick,
While I can say that we are working on the next version of ProWrite, I can't
yet say what the new features are going to be. I'll post info in our section
in AmigaVendor (section 5) as soon as I can.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
Dom,
Ya Protext. That's the ticket. However, I think it's a port of WordStar
or something and isn't all that current (I believe). It seems to offer
only a few advantages to WP except that it is still supported. For me,
the ideal system would combine the text based and graphically based
features that are required. If you need speed, work in text format, if
you want to see the visual layout, switch to graphical. It would all be
in one program so you wouldn't have to switch between different
applications.
Dreams, dreams
Andrew
Wordworth has a "fast" mode for word-bashers.
Jeff Walker – Just Amiga Monthly.
Andrew,
Well since your dream program doesn't yet exist, which word processor
are you leaning towards right now?
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom
Boy, I DO do alot of grumbling, don't I? I'd hate to be a programmer
after spending hundreds of hours and then have some know-it-all who comes
along and whines: "oh, it doesn't do this and I don't like how it does
that…" 8)
Well, is was born and bred on WP5.1 on PeeCee systems so basically I'd
like to see something that is a cross between WP and one of the Amiga
graphical wordprocessors. I was looking forward to v.5 of Amiga WP and
actually had an ongoing correspondance with WP Corps when they officially
dropped it (I take my WP seriously). If MSS was still in business then I
would probably go for e!. Otherwise I'm gonna upgrade PW.
How about you?
Andrew
Andrew,
Here's how it stands for me. If ProText is all it's cracked up to be,
then I'll get it. If not, I'll either decide between Final Copy II and
ProWrite or else just stick with WordPerfect for now.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom,
Ya, ProText looks good but it seems just to duplicate what we already have
with WP. I would be very interested to hear your comments if and when you
do get it.
Andrew
Andrew,
I'll have to check the info, but I believe it is more of a 2.0 Amiga
program than WP is. I'll let you know.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom,
After I posted you last I realized that I has one thing that WP is
missing: the support for graphics. Although I personally would prefer a
DTP type program for text & graphics for some people that isn't necessary.
Andrew
>Ya Protext. That's the ticket. However, I think it's a port of WordStar
Wordstar for the Amiga. Ooh, baby! Where and how much. Sometimes I just have
to power up my Osborne because I miss Wordstar.
-Jerry
Ya, good old WordStar with dot commands and every thing.
Andrew