#wordperfect from CLI
21 messages in this thread
Jon,
Yeah, that statement about Intuition requesters not being flexible enough
kind of knocked me for a loop, too. It appears the folks at WP Corp. have a
poor grasp of what's what in AmigaVille…and I'll bet the farm that this lack
of understanding is at the heart of most of the bugs. I've seen a number of
requesters more powerful than WP's, and all of them do things by the book.
Heck, you can even do a half-decent requester in Basic. 8^) These folks
oughtta ring up Charlie Heath or Ben Blish sometime and have a nice long chat.
You know, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if WP were written on an MSDOS 68K
cross-assembler and then ported over to the Amiga just prior to Beta testing.
Some Beta testing, too. I can't believe so many bugs slipped thru.
Still, I agree with you that WP will be a good one once they iron out the
wrinkles. Let's hope the program gets a little more "intuitive" as well.
David K.
I have put my two cents in with them, as have dozens of people here on the
forum. They may feel that the effort required to go back through their 100k +
lines of source and rewrite things to use the Intuition requesters is too great
to justify. Let's hope not.
Have you ever experienced an extra "garbage" sprite appearing within WP? I
just did last night, and I told them about it today when I called about the
update. They've got a great help line -I found out that you have to make
printer F the DOS Text Printer if you want to print to a file with formatting
(like columns) while stripping out all the WP codes. That's what they say,
anyway. Haven't tried it yet. I was interested because I like to upload
articles for my publisher in formatted form. In Scribble! it's trivial. I
guess it's the price of power.
Jon,
I've also conversed with Lynn–I think she's been quite receptive
to our suggestions. Yes, it would be a lot of work to "Intuitionize"
the program. Frankly, I'll settle for an accurate imitation as long
as they squash all the bugs. If WP Corp. feels their routines are
superior to the Intuition equivalents…then that's their prerogative,
I guess. But if they decide in the future to upgrade Amiga Word-
Perfect to the rumored MSDOS Version 5.0 (which will supposedly have
enhmnced grpahics/desktop-publishing capabilities), then they might
find Intuition very useful indeed.
I guess the moral of the story is that there is far more to
programming the Amiga than learning the opcodes of its processor and
the syntax of its kernal calls.
I've never seen the garbage sprite you mention. Is this sprite
immobile, or does it do Leo Schwab tricks? 8^) I haven't had any
problems recently with WP now that I know what things to avoid (like
adding words to the main dictionary). I plan to call tomorrow
regarding the update. I discovered the Printer F thing on my own
after a bit of trial and error. It works. I've even used it to
"print to disk" messages which I later uploaded here. Perry would
appreciate the right justification.
David K.
If I'd thought about it a while I'd probably have figured out that the DOS Text
Printer was needed. The garbage sprite appeared about 2/3's of the way down
and 1/3 of the way across the screen. It would move a few pixels in response
to mouse pointer movement up and down, and was only visible when the mouse
pointer was in the upper half of the screen. Made me suspicious that it was a
screwed-up Vsprite.
Jon,
Try moving your screen to the right and down using Preferences, and see if
that clears up the "garbage sprite".
Regards, Larry.
I know about the bugs (?) in the hardware that cause problems with sprites
depending on the location of the screen. In this case the mouse pointer was
just fine and there shouldn't have been another sprite at all. It was composed
of random dots and colors. Thanks for the advice, though. In an unrelated
vein, can you believe that CBM has put together a software bundle which
includes WordPerfect, Superbase and several other expensive packages and is
selling it for $200?! It's nice to see them do something positive for a
change. Actually, it's nice to see them do _anything_!
Jon,
It is nice to see them doing things. I appear to be one of the minority here
in my feeling that the new management will "do right by us", and that they just
haven't had time to do it up until now. I would imagine that their priority
would have been "in-house" sweeping, followed by the sorts of things that we
can see from the outside.
As can be seen from a message here, the A2000 has indeed arrived, and I fully
expect to see the single report turn into a trickle and a flood within the next
2 weeks. The user group promotion is great, and we can expect to see
advertising _very_ soon now.
Regards, Larry.
I was told last night on another network (by Lynn from WordPerfect Corp.) that
the A500 is doing pretty well, especially in Europe. Let's hope things go well
at Christmas.
That's like being told by a Goodyear dealer that Chevettes are doing wel6in
Borneo. I fail to make the connection as to why/how Lynn would what CBM's
sales are in Europe or anywhere else.
My understanding is that you can redirect the output from any printer
definition into a file. One of my customers has setup a special printer driver
that inserts simple made up commands. They print to a file and download the
output to a UNIX machine where it becomes an online help manual. They have a
series of utilities that understand the made up formating commands. Works real
nice.
I quickly figured out that printing to a file also sends all that printer's
control codes. Makes sense that you could insert terminal control codes or
your own, as you describe.
Am I understanding this correctly? Is there a way to print to a file by
redefining PRT: (or some such thing) or is "printing to a file" a *feature* of
WordPerfect? If it involves standard AmigaDOS commands, how is it done? Sounds
like there might be a way for me to produce a good printout using a LaserJet,
even though I don't have an LJ attached to my Amiga. I'd just print to a file,
then take the file to a system that does. Can this be done?
David Masterson
You can do that, all you have to do is define the printer and specify the
destination as a file instead of "prt:". Or you can use the "Change Print
Options" menu selection with the print control requester to change the
destination (temporarily) to a file.
David:
As to 'assembling on an MSDOS 68K cross-assembler,' that would be quite
a trick. Anything short of a Sun Workstation (or VAX if the software is
available) would take a year to create an Amy program. The libraries alone
would not fit on anything less than an AT. Just from some of the comments hear
about WP, it is easy to conclude that they did not hire a veteran Amy
programmer. Most of these guys that we talk with here have spent many weeks
trying to understand our system. It is not an easy task. I would suspect that
it would be even harder to take an MSDOS programmer (even if he is very good)
and make an Amy programmer out of him than it would be to take the same
programmer and make him an RSX-11 programmer. This system has lots of 'got
ya's' and demands far greater attention to system requirements than MSDOS.
As to Cheath, Ben, Perry and many others…….your are most certainly
right! It is all too easy for a successful programing group to think that
they can easily take on a 'new' OS. The beta testing has me curious too. I
wonder if the program is (or appears) solid when run on a 'plain' 512K Amy that
is not busy and is not running clocks, CSh, PopCLI or the like? Of course then
again, maybe we should be thankful that WP did not get one of us to beta test
for them, since if they knew how far they were from the mark they might have
scrapped the whole project!
73,
bill
I wouldn't say that "assembling on an MSDOS 68K cross-assembler … would take
a year to create an Amy program". Did you know that all of MSS's programs for
the Amiga were written on an AT and cross compiled to 68k? (Maybe that
explains why MSS's stuff seems to be unimaginative and 'dull' looking).
Many Amiga programs started life on an AT. I just think that sensible
programmers who are REALLY interested in the Amiga would prefer to get the
software/hardware tools needed and do native development.
Steve:
Or at least use a VAX! …and no I did not know but then an AT would
probably only take 3 months! <grin>
73,
bill
Bill,
There were several "major" programs first written on a cross assembler
and an AT (and even an XT) due to the fact that the original Lattice not only
had a few bugs, but was a _dog_ as to speed. It was actualy faster to do it on
the AT.
2nd and 3rd versions of those programs have been re-written (and/or
debugged) using the Amiga all the way, now that the tools have "matured", but
in the beginning, the original tools were rather slow.
Don
Don:
Must have nearly 'killed' them to have to use such a machine if their
foresight could imagine what capabilities the native environment would have. As
to Lattice……well I can easily see the problem. If I am going to attempt
any 'C' work on the Amy then I suspose that I will have to buy another compiler
and it likely won't be Lattice. It strikes me as immoral to sell a product
that won't work and then charge 'full freight' to upgrade after failing to
provide any support.
73,
bill
Bill,
It's my understanding that the latest version of Lattice is vastly
improved over the original version. Reportedly, it's a very workable system
now, and advertisements for their latest upgrade (4.0 I believe) show it to be
even better.
Don
Bill,
Well, I was trying to be sarcastic when I made that remark to
Jon about the MSDOS 68K cross-assembler. Hehe, guess I'm not too
good at sarcasm. (Actually, tho, I do recall a fellow on here last
month who was planning to code some music-related stuff on a
cross-assembler. His planned software wasn't Amiga-specific,
however, which makes a difference.) My point, tho perhaps poorly
made, was that WordPerfect Corp. appears to have done some things
(beta testing, for instance) bass-ackwards. This shouldn't have
happened with a company of WP Corp.'s caliber.
But I really am awfully glad that there IS an Amiga WordPerfect
in the first place. It's far and away the most powerful word-
processor Amy's got. Lynn has been helpful and receptive, and the
phone support is terrific. I expect the update will fix many of
the$bugs, and that further updates will get the rest of 'em.
As for running WP on a 512K Amy, that's exactly wjat I'm having
to do while my StarBoard2 is out for repairs. I'll tell ya, going
back to 512K after six months of 2.5M bliss is a gear-jamming
experience. I don't like it one bit! Still, a lobotomized Amy is
better than no Amy at all. I've been very gentle with WP since
discovering its various idiocyncrasies, so I haven't had any
problems running it in 512K. The program is pretty stable if you
know what to avoid. Also, I've been running it from its own boot-
disk, which does nothing except assign T: to ram:, so as to
conserve the maximum possible amount of memory. I do insist on
using interlace, tho, which eats an extra 32K of my meager supply.
You're quite right about Amiga programming. Programmers
accustomed to mono-tasking OSes have to readjust their thinking and
change their methods. Programmers accustomed to doing everything
themselves have to (well, ought to) learn to use system resources.
It's one thing, in my case, to learn 68K assembler–that's actually
pretty easy. It's quite another thing to learn all the ins and
outs of the Amiga's OS. (Not to even mentaon the fact that nearly
everything is doc'd in C. Grrr.) Hopefully, WP's programmers will
learn from their Amiga experience and get things right the first
time on the Mac and ST. Learn the OS, _then_ write the program.
David K.
David:
We both learned something from your 'sarcasm!' Where are you going?
73,
bill