Word Processor Survey
27 messages in this thread
:::Microsoft Write … seems to be OK. Don't have any complaints, but
don't see anything that really blows me away either.
Have you looked at other Mac WP's? MS-Write pretty much failed in the Mac
market (rare for a Microsoft product), and is very out-dated now (it still
uses the much-maligned Microsoft Word version 3 interface). It's only
saving grace is that it's got a reasonably large feature set for an
inexpensive ($125 list) wp. ===Scott
Scott:
For $125, I would expect a wordprocessor to have a decent set of features.
The thing is, I don't want to spend twice that for a MAC program when I can
do full DTP with what I already have on the Amiga. I just wanted a decent
MAC wordprocessing program so I could use MAC files. This one imported the
major MAC formats, was reasonably priced (for MAC software) so I got it.
?|^] Ray Lewis
Yeah, MS-Write is a reasonable choice for features-per dollar (on the Mac
$125 is, unfortunately, a low-priced word processor – in fact, their are no
major wp's for less). I just wouldn't want someone to judge "how good the
Mac is" or "what the Mac's strengths are" by that program. On the low end
MacWrite II and Write Now are more elegant, on the high end FullWrite,
Nisus, and Word 4 better show what the Mac is capable of (although each has
its shortcomings).
I guess I'm sorta reacting as you might if someone came to you and said
"yeah, I tried word processing on an Amiga, it was ok but nothing terrific,
so I'm content with GEOS on my C-64" and you found out that they were using
the old Textcraft or something. Or if someone were to base their ideas
about telecommunications on an experience with Prodigy.
The Amiga certainly out-shines the Mac in multimedia (video and
presentation) and color graphic applications at anywhere near the price,
and in some ways regardless of price, but I still find it weaker in most
other non-game areas. If there are particular Amiga programs you think I
should look at that might convince me otherwise, I'm open to suggestions.
I'm curious, what other Mac programs have you tried? Have you found any
that really impressed you? ===Scott
Scott,
Is Superbase Professional available for the Mac? It's a full featured
database for the Amiga & IBM. Also we have WordPerfect for a professional
wordprocessor. For a spreadsheet we have several although we could use a
new full-featured one. The desktop publishing programs for the Amiga are
superb and improving all the time.
———————————————————-Don
I'm not saying that there's nothing usable, or even quite good, on the
Amiga, just that there's nothing in quite the same league.
I'm sure Superbase Professional is good (and no, it's not available on the
Mac). But is it comparable to 4th Dimension, Double Helix, or Omnis 5 on
the Mac? Since it sounds like neither of us has tried both Superbase Pro
_and_ one of the Mac high-end db's, we can't speak with authority – perhaps
there is someone else here who can chime in with a good comparison. Other
good Mac databases include Foxbase Mac, FileMaker, and Panorama, although
they're generaly a step-down in cost and functionality (either not
multi-user, or not fully relational, or not suited for creating a
stand-alone environment – i.e. something someone could operate without
knowing anything about (or even realizing they were essentially using) the
database program itself, etc.).
Similarly, I believe that the Amiga WordPerfect is at least a generation
behind it's MS-DOS and Mac counterparts – and the Mac version has generally
been considered the weakest of the "high-end" wp's on the Mac (although
their first major update on the Mac, scheduled for later this year, sounds
like it could be a winner).
And I don't think that Amiga DTP is yet comparable to the Mac, even the
Mac's low-end (defined as "under $500 list" <g>) like Ready-Set-Go or
Publish-It, much less XPress 2 (3 next month) or PageMaker 4, or the very
high-end specialized DTP apps.
Again, all of this is from using the Mac programs but only reading about
the Amiga equivalents. If anyone here has used the top programs in both
environments, I'd like to hear your thoughts.
I'm not looking to start at RWar – I concede that the Amiga has many
advantages over the Mac in some areas, but it seems to lag behind in most
"traditional" applications. ===Scott
Scott:
The Amiga doesn't lag behind, it's the software developers that are lagging
behind! There's NO excuse for the Amiga WP to be version behind, and in
fact, it *SHOULD* be in the same rev as the Mac & PC stuff. As for DTP, I
think IMHO Professional Page, or PageStream are both good competetors in
the DTP market compared to PC or Mac apps. From what I've heard, Superbase
also has an MS-DOS version that the government uses, that's at least as
powerfull as it's Amiga counterpart.
On the whole, my personal opinion is that the software companies are afraid
of the Amiga!
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
I'm sorry if I implied that the problem was an inherent Amiga deficiency –
I agree completely – the hardware capability is there, the developers have
not made the best use of it. Perhaps there are shortcomings in the
programming environments themselves relative to those available for the
Mac?
I don't doubt that Professional Page and PageStream are capable products. I
am skeptical that they are comparable to XPress, PageMaker, or even
Publish-It on the Mac – has anyone here used both the Mac and Amiga DTP
products (current versions of both)? ===Scott
Scott:
I've been told by some people that are beta testing a newer version of
PageStream that there are plans for PC & Mac versions of PageStream, and
they will (in their words, not mine) blow away ALL the other packages
currently out there, so does that tell you anything? I myself have been
doing a little bit more with PageStream than I had in the past, and the
program seems to really be nice, and if all the things work as well as they
sound in the manual (I'n not to sure they will) then it well might be a
better program than Professional Page. (although I'm still much more
comfortable with Pro Page at this time!)
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Scott, I've used PageMaker 3.01 on our MACII cx (5meg ram 16mhz '030 – 90
meg storage) and Pagestream 1.8 and ProPage on our Amiga 30001 (gvp 33mhz
'030 4 meg 32bit ram 4meg 16bit ram – 1meg chip ram 300 meg storage). Being
able to use TIFF graphics is nice in pagemaker, I like the control you have
with them, the ability to control the grayscale of an image is nice.
Pagemaker or the MAC also ate a 60 page document of an only-copy file of
my partner's (she's still learning what backup means 'of course not anymore
HA!' which we had to recreate in 33 hours – ouch!) It stung me with it's
ability to shutdow via a menu and wrote trash to her open pagemaker
publication. The Amiga has never done that to any of my files yet. Of
course there is a nasty box hiding bug in ProPage 1.3 and I've seen quarks
in PageScream with my menus not working if I should multi-task other
programs while pagestream is loading from disk. You can't (in 3.01
Pagemaker) turn text on its side or angle it like it Pagestream and of
course ProPage won't do that either. I do like using TypeAlign (Adobe) on
the MAC to put text into arcs circles angles and pasting it into Pagemaker.
And I like the easy way you can size a graphic in it. Of course you can do
that with Pagestream, and ProPage does it too, but you have to size it
using a requester (dialog box) and changing the x and y numbers. I like
being able to use the Appletalk network on the MAC when outputing to our
Varityper, but I can now use appletalk with my Amiga but the software is
still young and the MAC beats the Amiga in sending files on the localtalk
port. Of course using the centronics port with Ami is blazingly fast as
long as I'm not using FASTROM, BURST OR CACHE WHILE BLAZING ALONG at 33MHZ.
And we all know that the MAC FX is not a true 40 mhz machine but really a
20mhz machine with a 40mhz processor and that the Amiga 3000 is a true
25mhz machine with a 25mhz processor and the ability to use an 68040
accelerator card with no more trouble than lifting the hood and plugging in
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the board. I'm not sure if the MACfx can do that as inexpensively but we do
know that the fx's architecture is not 40mhz. So I like using certain
programs because of their uniqueness and abilities, whether on an Amiga or
a MAC but I do notice that when the MAC is loading a program or printing a
file I'm not able to do anything else with it but stare at it, so instead
of staring at it (and I'm using multi-finder now too) I go over to my amiga
and run four or five programs, download upload CIS files, work on other DTP
projects, play music or work on graphics and play music and download and
the MAC is still outputing to the Varityper and the Amiga is waiting for it
to finish but it's busy do other things and I'm not waiting either I'm busy
doing other things too.
chris AT&G
Thanks for the insights.
Don't judge PageMaker harshly on the corrupt file – that's a rare
occurrence and can just as easily happen on _any_ platform, PageMaker's
pretty robust.
Hmmm, I don't know if they've put text rotation into PageMaker 4, you might
still have to do it via TypeAlign or a Draw program and import (or
cut-and-paste) it (not literally, of course).
I agree about some of Ami's hardware advantages. Mac _does_print in the
background, and for the most part it's pretty transparent, but every now
and then the foreground application falls into quicksand for a little bit,
I don't know why. Especially since it only happens sometimes.
And, yup, floppy disk access, or even extensive hard disk access, will
definitely pause the system.
Still, the waits should not be anything like you describe (long enough
printing/disk waits to run 4 or 5 Ami programs, etc.) – maybe that's a
Varityper-specific limitation? Maybe it doesn't background print to the VT?
Which brings up a question I've always had about Ami – I know it
multi-tasks. I know it can continue to process while accessing disks. So
howcum on 90% of the games, it'll load a nice graphic and play music for a
while, but then when resuming the disk access necessary to load the rest of
the game, the music stops? The load wouldn't seem so long if it could keep
you entertained.
Do you intend to upgrade your PageMaker from 3 to 4?
Interesting that you've used a coupla different Amiga DTP programs. Are you
considering looking at other Mac programs as well? Quark XPress (high-end,
$795 list) and Publish-It (low-end, $395 list) can both do lots of stuff
well beyond PageMaker 3's capabilities. ===Scott
I have many games that continue music play and often times animation during
loading. There are many that do not as well.
Multitasking is the pleasure of being able to do it, when you want it to.
Where as in single tasking, you have no choice. Sorta like a religion.
-mark=
Scott,
Still, the waits should not be anything like you describe (long enough
printing/disk waits to run 4 or 5 Ami programs, etc.) – maybe that's a
Varityper-specific limitation? Maybe it doesn't background print to the VT?
Well, when we we're printing sixty to hundred page publications, the only
thing I could do with our MAC was drape it with a flag. (grin) Actually the
Varityper has more ram and disk storage (12MEG 91 MEG for RIP 80 meg for
fonts) than our MAC 5Mg ram 90 meg storage) , our Amiga is a bit less on
RAM but more on storage (9meg 256meg storage). I'll have to check on the
background printing being turned ON. BTW even if one program is loading on
an Amiga, other programs can still access the drives, and load
simultaneously. If you've got several hard disks, and programs on different
drives, there isn't much disk 'thrashing' and everything will load. BTW I
don't think it was PageMaker's fault that the disk was trashed on shut-down
but that of the MAC OS. And I haven't had any Amiga program trash my files
on shutdown, unless I shut it down while it was accessing a disk, which I
don't do!
chris AT&G
:::BTW I don't think it was PageMaker's fault that the disk was trashed on
shut-down but that of the MAC OS. And I haven't had any Amiga program trash
my files on shutdown, unless I shut it down while it was accessing a disk,
which I don't do
I don't think that there's anything inherent in the Mac OS that makes it
easier to trash a file, I think you just "hit a glitch" of the type that
can occassionally happen on any system. Files get trashed. That's why you
need backups. Thankfully, it's a rare occurrence these days.
If you shut the Mac off while in the middle of a program, nothing should be
trashed. The problems that _do_ most typically occur from such an
"improper" shutdown (i.e. turn off the power while in a program) are
a) any changes you made to any open file since the last time you saved will
have been lost (same as on an Amiga or any other system); and
b) the Mac, "knowing" that it was not properly shut down, will, upon next
boot, take an extra long time to boot, as it goes through additional file
verification procedures.
I know that the Mac concept of a "Shut Down" command is foreign to many
people. It is really just a safety. An Amiga hard drive manual I read
scared me into realizing what a good feature the Mac's "Shut Down" is.
As you said, you should never shut off any system during any disk access.
Well, this manual said that it is not enough to simply wait for the drive
access light to go out before turning off the Amiga, because sometimes the
the light might simply be off temporarily (especially in a multi-tasking
system), and there may still be other information pending which needs to be
written before you can safely shut down. So they said, to be safe, an Amiga
owner should wait for 30 seconds after the last disk access before turning
off his computer. That puts the responsibility on the
[continued in the reply]
The reason Amiga WordPerfect is not up there with the PC is SALES. It just
hasnt been selling. A version that would have made 5.1 look sick might have
happened but poor sales killed it for now. The Amiga was going to be WP
Corp's platform of choice for new development but again no sales killed
that too.
Mike:
I hate to sound stupid, but how could no sales kill a product that hasn't
been developed?
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Thats easy Mike. It's suit thinking. The current product doesnt sell, so
why improve it and make it better when the current product isnt selling,
Nevermind the fact that the suit's rushed it out before all the bugs were
found and removed. Nevermind that because of that sales, which were setting
new records and recouped all development costs in the first 2 months died.
Just stop development by taking programmers away from amiga development.
Right now there is just one, YES ONE!!!, programmer doing anything for
Amiga at this time (thats updates and maybe new??).
Wait a second here!
I bought Amiga Wordperfect as did many. In fact, WordPerfect Corp. claimed
than in less than 2 months they had recouped their development costs!
Now I *have* been patient for a number of years, and only last year did
WordPerfect finally get the program in the 'stable' catagory! I put up
with unexplained guru's and printer drivers that did not work, but was
happy to because I "knew" that WordPerfect was behind me, and the machine.
Then came WordPerfect Library, a complete abortion from the word go, and it
*still* has not been debugged.
Yes, I want Amiga WordPerfect 5.x, but I will not stand for WordPerfect
claiming (or others) that the reason the Amiga was dropped was due to 'lack
of sales'. They had great sales, they simply did not fix the product,
further the product looked like a port of MS/DOS Wordperfect with mouse
support. Not exactly Amiga-like.
I use and like my WordPerfect, but I dare say that perhaps Pen Pal or
ProWrite 3.0 will be my next upgrade unless WordPerfect gets a "life"
-mark=
Yes they had great early sales and then it died probably due to the bugs.
Then they wanted to drop the amiga line except for product support. Now
we're back who knows where. The facts are as I stated. THERE IS ONLY ONE
PERSON WORKING ON AMIGA PRODUCT NOW. I wish there was more but there just
aint!!! Maybe this can change. Maybe a new amiga product from WP Corp will
appear. Maybe the 3000 will do it…maybe…maybe….maybe..I am not
holding my breath and I love the amiga.
Mike:
Personally what I'd like to see would be for some company (perhaps New
Horizons–My favorite Amiga word processor) to add in as many of the
features of WP, and support their file format (as a secondary format) and
then offer WP users a real cheap upgrade (say 25 or 50 dollars or so) and
then send all the copies of WP back to them with a nasty letter telling
them to stay out of the Amiga market unless they intend to fully support
it!
Now I realise this is never going to happen, but it sure would be nice if
it would! Would be sort of like a colective kick in the butt!
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
I like ProWrite pretty well, The support from New Horizons has been very
good i.e. low cost upgrades at a reasonable cost. Their support of Amiga
fonts, & Postscript is a plus. I was NEVER really interested in
WordPerfect… Too expensive, Non-Amiga, and too complicated. Besides I'm
not writing a book or anything heavy and WordPerfect would probably be
overkill for me.
Scott:
The main reason I got the AMAX was to have compatibility with the editor of
Fast Folk Musical Magazine. He creates the written portion of each issue
on a MAC (it is a 12 inch lp with a dozen new songs, plus a printed b&w
magazine with articles, the lyrics to the songs and bios on the
writer/performers). I have the mailing lists etc. on my Amiga. Eventually
we hope to have a real office (right now it's in my basement) and we wanted
to check out a way to have a single computer which would handle all the
various software we might use. It looks like an Amiga with AMAX and a
bridge will do the trick, taking up the least amount of room (space costs a
lot here in NYC) and the least total expense.
So, my use of the AMAX is pretty rudimentary. Since MAC software is so
expensive, I haven't bought much.
Also, since my primary interests are graphics, animation, sound, music, and
"multimedia", the Amiga is perfect for me. I especially like the ability
to multitask and do interprocess control and communication. I do a lot
with simple PD and shareware utilities multitasked, use AREXX some, scripit
more (since most PD/shareware stuff doen't have a native AREXX port). I've
been playing around with CanDo quite a bit recently (which does support
AREXX), and have done some very interesting things with The_Director. BTW,
you might want to take a look at AniMagic, if you are into interesting
wipes and disolves, and The Art Department. These two combined have
created some very impressive anims which I have then integrated into longer
presentations with TheDirector. TAD allows you to very easily match up
palettes between graphics, and does an incredible job converting hi-res
graphics into lo-res ones. For example, I did my company logo using a
granite color font in DeluxePaint III in hi-res interlaced. Using this in
its original form in Animagic created slow anims. Using TAD, I converted it
into a lo-res interlaced graphic, and it sill looked great! (No apparent
jaggies, etc.) In lo-res, Animagic created a very smooth,
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very fast animated transition (I peeled another graphic off of the logo,
just like on TV!)
Anyway, my "normal" computing needs only require simple data basdes, simple
spread sheets, and moderately powerful word processiing. I have all that
on Amy. In addition, I have ProPage, ProDraw, etc. for DTP, and they do
everything I need in that area, both to PostScript at work, and my 9 pin at
home. I have MIDI, with all the bells an whistles I need, as well, and
make a lot of use of the 4 voice synth built into the Amiga for both music
and sound effects in real time.
I'm sure if I went out and spent $6-$10K on a MAC system, I could beat the
Amiga in some of these areas, but I really can't thik of a compelling
reason to do that. 🙂
?|^] Ray Lewis
Hey, Ray, check your telecomm program – you sent these msgs to yourself!
Anyway, thanks for all the interesting info. Please tell me more (e-mail if
you think that's more appropriate) about Fast Folk Musical Magazine – it
sounds like something I'd be very interested in.
I agree that from your description of your work, the Amiga is just right.
However, if you _did_ want to "beat the Amiga in some of these
["traditional" application] areas" you would not have to spend "$6k-$10k on
a MAC system" – you could just look at some other software under AMAX (that
is, if you've got a hard drive AMAX set-up – to my mind, non HD Mac
emulation is virtually no Mac emulation, since you can't effectively make
use of the Mac's best strengths on a floppy-based system – although even a
floppy Mac is better than an <ugh> MS-DOS machine). But if you're happy
with whatchyagot, great!
Some months ago, I sent you a bunch of disks with Mac stuff for you to see
and try (sorry if some of that stuff was sound-oriented – that was before I
found out that AMAX didn't support sound), and I think you forgot that you
were going to send me a bunch of Amiga stuff in return! Some of the stuff
you describe that you've been doing sounds intriguing. Maybe you could send
me some of that? When we first spoke, I was interested in utilities and
stuff, but I've downloaded lots of that in the mean time. What I'd really
like are good demonstrations that really show off the Amiga's capabilities,
whether animation, multi-media presentation, whatever. That stuff is all
too big and expensive to download, especially when you don't know which
ones are really good! Thanks, ===Scott
Scott:
I thought I was using the "comment" button on Whap! correctly, but I guess
I wasn't.
Yeah, I promosed to send you some stuff, and blew it. Sorry. I have put
together some interesting things. How much ram do you have? Do you have
the 1 meg Angus? (The most interesting things I've done have been at work,
and were created on a 5 meg machine with a hard disk and a 1 meg Agnus.
I'm not usre if they'll run on a 512 K system, tho I could try them on my
machine at home to see.)
I don't have a hard disk on the AMAX. I think there's only one available.
But, since I have 5 megs, I set up a 2 meg environment, a 3 meg "ram" disk
that AMAX thinks is a superfast HD, and use it for applications. I just
use the floppy disk for data.
Re Fast Folk — we are an all volunteer group which attempts to put out 8
to 10 issues a year. Time and cash flow determine how many we actually get
out. While we're called a "Folk" publication, we're really more a
songwriter publication with a heavy acoustic bent (tho not exclusively).
As I noted, each issue has a dozen songs on a quality LP, with a B&W
printed magazine which has articles of interest to the folk/songwriter
community, lyrics to all the songs on that issue, and bios on the
writers/performers. We have a steady complement of folks who are known
(provided, of course, they'll record for free, since we pay no royalties
until we sell over 2K issues, and we have yet to ever sell that many of any
one issue). Artists who were well known before they appeared on Fast Folk
include Richie Havens, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Peter Yarrow, Dave
Van Ronk, Eric Anderson, Josh White, Jr., John Hammond, Jr. and Nanci
Griffith.
Folks who were not at all well known when they first appeared on Fast Folk
include Suzanne Vega, Lyle Lovett, Michelle Shocked, Tracy Chapman,
Christine Lavin, and Shawn Colvin (who is just now getting a national rep).
Folks who I expect will be nationally known in a year or so include Cliff
Eberhardt, John
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Gorka, Pierce Pettis, David Massengill and Josh Joffen. In addition, there
are a bunch of really great writer/performers who are mainly known
regionally like Rod MacDonald, Jack Hardy, Frank Tedeso, Tom Intondi and a
wonderful group called Left Field. Then there are folks who you wold know
if you were heavily into song writing like Steve Gillette and Baskin and
Batteau.
All in all, not any money in it, but a lot of fun, and some great music.
We have about 700-800 subscribers all over the world, and also send out
about 100 copies to press and radio stations. Our Fifth Anniversary Issue
last year was a Billboard pick even! (double album set) Not bad for a
volunteer non-profit organization. We also do two week-end shows each year
at the Bottom Line in the Village, usually in February, and sell out most
of the time.
A ten issue subscription is $65. (I guess it's OK to say that, since we're
non-profit.) Address is: Fast Folk Musical Magazine, Box 938m Village
Station, New York, NY 10014.
?|^] Ray Lewis
The system I'm using right now has 2.5 megs – 512k internal and 2 megs in
the GVP Impact (it's also a hard drive), my "underneath" slot is empty.
I do not have the 1 meg Agnus, but I have access to a 3000 I could view
those things are (and I'll be able to tell you if they _run_ on the 3000
<g)).
3 meg RAM disk for Amax – well, certainly a lot better than trying to run
everything from floppies! Have you used Multifinder at all? Or are you
strictly one-app-at-a-time when doing your Mac stuff? Too bad you can't run
the Mac and Amiga environments simultaneously. I understand the limit is in
how the 68000 is being addressed by AMAX – seems to me it would be
worthwhile for the AMAX people to offer a higher-end version with its own
68000 to alleviate that, hmmm? As you can probably tell, I'm no engineer
<g>…
I would like to send you some material which may be suitable for Fast Folk.
My group is primarily "progressive rock" – sorta 70's updated – and
although there is a good deal of folk influence in parts, I'm guessing most
of it would be too "heavy" for you. But we do have some gentler pieces that
might be a nice match. Would I send that to the same Box 938m address? Do
you have an upcoming deadline?
Have you considered pressing a CD? I've done that, it's no longer much more
expensive than LP's. It seems like lots of people's turntables are
gathering dust these days. You also get a lot more playing time to work
with, if that's ever an issue for you. ===Scott