#Excell3.0 or ProWrite3.2
39 messages in this thread
Ok, can anyone please tell what is better: ProWrite 3.2 or Excellence! 3.0
I just bought the PW3.2 and so far the Spell checker and thesaurus suck. Is
ex Excellence! any better?
Are you using a hard drive or diskettes? While I'm biased, both program's
spell checkers and thesauruses (sp?) are a lot saner on a hard drive…
Our (excellence!)'s 3.0's thesaurus new stuff includes Synonyms,
Comparable, Related, Contrasting, and Antonyms of a given word, it supplies
definitions and part of speech (like verb, nown, adverb) for multiple
definitions. You can click on any of the words that show up in the
thesaurus window, and scroll through it if there are too many for the
window. To stretch any thesaurus, ask for synonyms for the word "set",
which has more definitions than any word in the english language.
Andrew, I long ago stopped using E! for most things because FC blew it out
of the water print quality wise and ease of use. FC may be slow (but still
faster then E!), but you get a lot for your patience. The upgrade notice I
coaxed out of MSS doesn't say much about what it actually does that means
anything; in simple terms, why would I want to spend another $35 on MSS
software?
Ron
So, you want advertisement? hoopla?
Nah, better just use facts. Okay, print quality is the same, I'd recommend
a postscript printer if ya can get one, for it is with one of these that
you'll get the best results. An interpreter might also work, (we're trying
to work with Saxon to straighten ou some kinks between E! and their
interpreter)…
As for ease of use, here there is improvement. All requesters are
completely keyboard accessible, using tabs and arrow keys to move back and
forth, space bar and return to select, there are bold, italic, underline
buttons on the ruler as well as a font and size buttons, the look is
improved to 2.04 "3-D" look…
The thesaurus is better, the grammar checker customizable, speaking added,
auto save, etc.
But this is all stuff in the upgrade note… Hmm would a screen shot file
help?
Let us know ASAP about the E!/Saxonscript compatibility fix. I was just
about to order Saxonscript when I read your post about problems.
Oops, I hope I didn't cost them anything. There does appear to be a
problem, and we just swapped stuff to see if either of us can figure out
the easiest thing to do about it. The problem has to do with fonts. Let me
just add that our postscript output works with every postscript printer
we've ever run across, and files that contain no postscript fonts work fine
with the interpreter….
Andrew,
Does e!3.0 still treat pictures as characters, or can you now run columns
of text next to graphics?
Yes.
The only way to run coloumns next to graphics is to use multiple coloumns
(as in from page setup)
How does the thesaurus stack up against your "Baby!"? I've got that program
and it does come in handy to have a dictionary/thesaurus eternally handy…
Brian
– via Whap!
The thesaurus is identical. Syn, Cmp, Rel, Con, and Ant, are all there. The
dictionary is not identical, it doesn't have definitions, as it is just a
spelling dictionary. But the thesaurus has definitions, which are usually
more detailed than those found in Baby's dictionary. It just doesn't have
as many entries as the dictionary.
As always, you can still have Baby! open up on excellence!'s screen….
But the thesaurus in excellence! is a bit more handy, as you can have it
grab and replace words from it… and you can grab stuff from it with
ARexx…
Andrew,
Is it true that Baby! isn't available for sale anymore? It seemed like a
nice little package.
Yes, it's true.
Why not?
I wasn't here (@MSS) when that decision was made, but apparently some polls
and tester responses indicated it wouldn't be worthwhile to market it.
We've gotten use out of most of the code in E!3.0, so it wasn't a total
waste. I personally still use it here all the time. And AmigaWorld went and
listed it amongst their list of best apps in their "other" section, but in
a list and didn't explain what it was.
I think the biggest problem the program had was its name and the manual.
The manual was pink with blue lettering.
Funny, I don't remember the colors in the manual… Of course, I don't
_read_ manuals for amiga programs :^)
The name was a little ("_LITTLE_?!?") oddball, I only bought on the
recommendation of a dealer. I do still use it — to check spelling and the
like online, and because it's thesaurus is much better than anything in
either of the two WP's I use — Final Copy (Gawd, is the output pretty!)
and Prowrite.
Brian
– via Whap!
Sounds nice… Have you done response-speed comparisons with E! 2.0? I
_think_ it was E! 2.0 that turned me off way back in `88 with it's slow
response to my typing — or was that 1.something? This was on a stock 1MB
A500, so this _might_ have had something to do with it….
I might just get it anyway, after all — I already have both of your
remaining competitors, and I want to see which generates the best (and
fastest) FAX output with my SupraFaxModem….
Brian
Well, the 1.x versions were the ones that had the big rap on speed, with
2.0, the biggest improvement was speed. I type somewhere around 70-80 wpm,
and have no problems with it, I cannot outtype it on the 2500 I use and
can't remember outttyping it on my 500 either….
Well, It _was_ a vintage copy of E!, that I had…
I have an idea for the next E! upgrade — fix the font rendering engine!
More jaggies than Prowrite when using outline fonts. I'm not even going to
tell you what Final copy shoots out…
Brian
– via Whap!
Yes, we know what it looks like… and know that most people want that, so
until somebody releases $300 postscript printer….
Most people want blocky outputs at SCREEN resolution using CG outline fonts
on their 24-pin printers that do 360×180 dpi… NOT! While I don't expect a
printout that is as pretty as Final Copy puts out, a _SMOOTH_ option would
go a long way. Even Prowrite is better at printing. (Their high quality
mode uses a double size font and scales it down to prettify the printing.)
Brian
– via Whap!
Why not expect output as good as Final Copy (at 360X360)! Don't get me
wrong, Iv'e used excellence! since day 1. I like its power and ease of use
over any other word processor and ANY platform (PC, MAC, and others…)
Though its only usable with printer fonts.
Smoothing is not what you want, true rendering of the outline font at ANY
resolution is! It's possible, after all Final Copy DOES do this, (with no
special printer drivers, just AmigaDOS, I might add)!
For power I use excellence!, for "pretty", I use Final Copy.
I really wish excellence! could match Final Copys' output, then I wouldn't
need more than one word processor!
IMO, of course.
Bob Comer – via Whap!
Well, let's keep in mind that FC introduces yet another font format to us
-NimbusQ. Maybe they decided that it was easier to write a rendering engine
for that format than for CG fonts…
I also wish that E!, FC, and PW would agree on which (Ctrl, Alt, Shift) key
is used to mark text, skip between paragraphs, etc. It's a real monster
moving between Final Copy and ProWrite. If I went out and got Excellence!,
I'd be _really_ confused.
I too wish E! matched FC's output — then I'd ditch Prowrite and FC and get
one Wordprocessor with (almost) all the features I want. (more versatile
column handling would be nice…)
Brian
– via Whap!
Eugene, "Suck" is such a subjective term that I can't give you a relative
comparison. However, having used excellence! since 1.0, I can say that I
have never had any gripes about the spell checker or Thesaurus. I
particularly like the grammar checker (if only for the entertainment
value). My previuos gripes have been with speed shich have been addressed.
I'm not real fond of the way they require you to set up a 15 pitch page to
use their post script fonts, but they provide a way to use adobe and
ProPage fonts that really makes this a non-issue. The thing I don't like
is that a standard letter sheet protrait line cannot be seen in its
entirety on a line at 15 pitch. You must be a 10 pitch or less, otherwise
you get into horizontal scrolling as well as vertical scrolling.
This is n ot a problem with Adobe or PPage fonts since scale and pitch
values allow viewing the entire line. However, the font looks rather small
and is tough to read late at nite when your eyes are half open…
wmc
>>"I particularly like the grammar checker (if only for the entertainment
value)."<<
You're right!
rofl
Michael
….from the north coast
Well, I tried to get the grammar checker modified slightly. It complains
about split infinitives in the form of to xxx be, but not to xxx go, which
of course is the most famous split infinitive, that of To Boldly Go Where
No Man/One has gone before… But seeing as most everyone here likes Star
Trek it was voted to not correct Captain Kirk…
If ya want, you can try editing the Phrase.Txt file which the grammar
checker uses. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out, if you want to
use it primarily for entertainment value.
Possible fun things to try:
when To xxx Go encountered, say "Think Twice Before Splitting an
Infinitive, unless
you are aboard the Enterprise"
make slang grammar checkers: when You all encountered, say proper form
"y'all" when "Elvis" encountered, suggest replacing it with "The King"
etc, etc, etc.
Andrew,
I hate to pop in mid-thread, but what grammer checker are you referring
to? I'd love to have one, but they usually don't have a 'grammer checker'
section in the mail order ads. Thanks a bunch.
-Sean
Why, the one built into excellence!…
Well I guess I'll just have to check it out then. Thanks for the info.
-Sean
Andrew,
Also, is excellence! 3.0 available in the UK? If so, who's the distributor?
Thanks!
Yes, it is, and there is a UK version.
The distributor is:
HB Marketing 753-6860000
Unit 3, Poyle 14
Newlands Dr, Colnbrook Slough, Berks England SL3 ODX
Fax: 753-680343
Thanks for the informatin. I am a big fan of excellence myself. I love the
speed of the spelchecker and thesarus. Only one thing thugh, though, in the
previous versions of excellce the scrolling of the text was terrible, does
the 3.0 have the same problem? And I noticed that ProWrite's f formating of
the document is much faster than my excellence2.0 So did excell enc3.0 make
any changes?
choices
[A
On my '030, excellence! 3.0 looks as smooth as a normal text editor the way
I use it. e.g I do the entire document in topaz then go back and reformat
to whatever font/pitch (usually Ptimes 12 at 15 pitch) for final output.
wmc
Well… we sped it some, but added stuff too… It seems to run the same
on '68020's, which seems to be fine. But the addition of bookmarks should
make jumping around easier, and there is now dynamic scrolling with the
scroll bar, should you so desire (hold down ALT to get dynamic
scrolling)…
Ok, just went and bought the excellence3.0. Great!!! Love it. Especialy
the spell checker and the thesaurus. Spellings are already given to you
when the excellence! finds the mispelled word. Thesaurus has one problem
though, the letters in the defenitions are hard to read. Everything looks
fine. When I try try to print the Picture in my document I get the grey
background on my printer, ( I chenged the background collor in excell to
white but its is still printed as grey.) Any ideas? Oh, and lets say you
have an IFF pic in the document, if I try to write something along the
side of the pic. it either comes on the bottom or on the top. Looks like
this:
………text……… |
|
|
| picture
………text………….| Everything else is excellent!!! Nice job at
MSS. See you
Okay, first, are you printing in NLQ, Graphic, or Postscript? (if draft,
treat as NLQ)
The thesaurus uses a font named TMSRMN 12 if found, otherwise it uses
topaz. Under Amigados 2.0, the backround around the text will by yellow in
the thesaurus. It is grey under 1.3 (under 1.3, more colors are tied to
other colors. Text gadgets' background color and scroll bars both grab the
same color. It was a matter of having nicer text or a non-intuitive scroll
bar (it would've been reverse of what you expected).
The TMSRMN font is used in interlaced or non-interlaced, though it looks a
bit better in interlaced. If you want to see it with topaz, delete that
font. (it is installed normally when you use HDINSTALL). If you didn't get
that font somehow on your system, then add it and compare to what you had
with topaz.
And lastly, the picture is treated like a character. Therefore text on the
same line will be along the bottom line of the picture. Text before it will
be above.
Thanks, I have that font (TMSRMN) on my HD. I will delete it and see how
the Topaz looks. I tried my Excell in interlaced mode and TMSRMN fonts
looked much better in interlace, but I don't have a flicker fixer, so I
guess you can imagine what it is like to be in interlace like that. About
printing, I print in Graphics mode and backround is always grey. I do h
It looks like your message got cut off. We tried several different fonts
with the thesaurus, at one point we were going to use Helv, but Helv 8
(which is what the non-interlaced) (mode would use) is a "bold" font, which
means it is already bold, and should not be bolded again, and we very much
wanted to used bold in the definitions. (use, not used)… We coulda
expanded it (since we made the font), but then it didn't look as good
overall in normal.
Well, I am using plain topaz for thesaurus (deleted the tmsr what ever) I
am satisfyed with the topaz, it looks good so I gues now excellence! is rea
realy a piece of art (he he) But still if there is something graphical I
have have to do (something majore, where I have to use ham pic) I use
ProWrite.
Topaz is okay, but I personally dodge monospace fonts wherever possible.
My favorite font? For screen displays it's gotta be Helv 13 at interlaced
or productivity mode. Anyone out there want to start a favorite font poll?