#Word Processor Survey #2
27 messages in this thread
Thanks for all the responses. Please keep them coming. They're very much
appreciated and very helpful. I'm interested in the responses re UEdit and
wonder if anyone has tested out the UEdit MS/DOS compatability and whether
or not it's posted anywhere on CIS? I'm also REALLY interested in all the
WordPerfect users. One program I have not seen mentioned at all is
ProText. That doesn't seem to have many fans, although it has a directly
compatible MS/DOS counterpart. I've used it and find it difficult, but one
of the main concerns on this forum seems to be compatability – at least
among the WP users, and the program does have that. Are the WP users really
a die-hard bunch? Why? I'm getting a lot more feedback re ProWrite than
previously. That's also soething I'd like to hear more about. THANK YOU
(again) to all of you who are taking the time to respond…..Nancy
Nancy,
My WP choice flips between ProWrite (currently version 3.1) and
Excellence (currently version 2.01). After battling with WordPerfect's
lack of speed, its cumbersome interface, lack of decent wysiwig, and
tendency to bomb, lack of printer driver support for HP PaintJet and
DeskJet printers, I deleted it from the hard drive and have never missed
it. For all my quick editing requirements I use CygnusEd 2.0. UEdit is an
excellent editor, but I found it difficult to configure, however it is
extremely powerful and can be configured to look like almost any editor you
want. It's also one of the few shareware programs to really hit in the
Amiga market. It has decent user support.
I am considering purchasing the lastest version of Excellence (V2). It's
supposed to have many new features and is considerably faster. Is this
true? The marketing liturature looks great, but you never know…
John
John,
Well, I am quite pleased with the improvements they've made. It
does appear faster when editing deep in a large file, although it's
difficult to tell whether it's faster than ProWrite. At least I don't have
to wait on it, which was the real speed problem with version 1.0. I wish
it had the macro support of AREXX, but that isn't a serious detraction
because it does have the glossary support for internal macros and the
glossary language is rich. Yes, I like it. It is what WordPerfect should
have been. It can generate indexes and tables of contents, has a good
dictionary and thesaurus. It fully supports the Amiga clipboard and is
well integrated with printers through Amiga print drivers. I guess I have
little to say negatively about it, and it lives up to its advertising. I
wish it did more, but no Amiga word processor does what the big Mac word
processors do, so that isn't a valid critique for comparing Amiga word
processors. That's my opinion, John. I don't know what you want to find
in a word processor that would make you satisfied, but if Excellence's
features are what you want, and if you want to know if the features are
truly there and the program is truly functional, then you won't be
disappointed.
Steve
Steve,
Thanks very much for your reply. You have answered my questions. I
have one more question however, because it was not clear in the marketing
blurb whether Excellence did this. Does it support footnotes? Someone
told me that the first version didn't, although I would thing version 2
most certainly would…
John
I have both Excellence! and ProWrite. MSS calles it a picture Wordprocesor
and it simply is not. Yes, it will read a Picture and print it in NLQ just
like ProWrite and PenPal but a picture in E! is treated like a HUGE
character not as a seperate entity. To get an idea of what I am talking
about change one character in a document to some font with a size of say 30
or better, just one character now and you will get the picture.
Editing and formatting wise, ProWrite and E! are about equal. Other than
that E! has things ProWrite simply doesn't and they work well. So if you
do not need pictures in your wordprocessor get E!.
I left a couple of msgs for nacy on this subject…check 'em out.
Mike D.
John,
Yes, it has a footnote insert feature which will use a slightly
smaller point size if available. I haven't had occasion to use it, so I
can't tell you whether it does an auto numbering like Word or WP.
Steve,
One more question…If I have an all text document and which to use
different internal printer fonts, the marketing blurb does say that they
are supported. Is this so? Hopefully, I do not have to dump my document
in graphics mode to get the different fonts my Panasonic KPX-1124 printer
has…
John
John,
All the graphic word processors on the Amiga support multiple fonts
in the documents, but will require you to use graphic mode for printing
unless the fonts are available in the printer. The new version has a means
for utilizing printer-resident fonts, but I haven't used it, so I can't
tell you how useful it is or if it works well. You might want to talk to
the MSS people about that for further clarification. However, if you only
want to change the point size to that supported by your printer, withough
actually changing the typeface, then you can do that. For example, if your
printer has a courier font with 5, 10, 12, and 17 point sizes, then you can
use those without requiring a graphic print.
Ok, Ok! I'll answer your survey. 🙂
My wordprocessor of choice is WordPerfect. It can't do graphics, and it
takes a while to learn, but it's so much more powerful in many features
that it wins hands down for my needs. (It also executes in a much smaller
memory segment.)
For graphics and text combined, or when I need to use Amiga fonts to do
something, I generally go to PenPal. The graphics output from PenPal is
significantly better than ProWrite, though ProWrite is the faster printing
wordprocessor. Both of these programs have drawbacks which cause them not
to be selected as my general duty wordprocessor. (eg. ProWrite still won't
do mailing labels, and PenPal doesn't always track the page size on
printout.)
I have a copy of Scribble! on one of my disks somewhere, but I haven't
looked at it for several years. It just did not meet my needs when I got
it, and was replaced within a week of obtaining it. I also had a copy of
Excellence!, but it demanded so much memory, was so slow, and caused so
many GURUs that I don't even have it any more.
Bill, K3OZM
Nancy –
Regarding compatibility with an MS-DOS counterpart – it is not just the
existence of an MS-DOS counterpart, it's whether or not that counterpart
gets much use. Where I work, WordPerfect is the defacto standard. Special
macros have been prepared for it that haven't been prepared for other
wordprocessors, etc. (thesis formats, etc.). While my preferred MS-DOS
wordprocessor is Microsoft Word, there are certain applications for which I
have to use WordPerfect. It is useful to have a version of WordPerfect for
the Amiga, even though that version is not as up to date as the MS-DOS
version.
Jeff Schweiger
Chowdy Nancy,
The word processor I use is still Scribble!, though I use the Platinum
Edition found in the Works! package. I do most of my editing for online
viewing and need something that will convert a file quickly to pure ASCII.
Scribble's print to disk does this for me in short order. I can to Amiga
word processing from the CPM word and used to use Word*, so I also
appreciate the ability to use the old Word* shortcut commands. Control g
and control y come to my mind a lot faster than Shift Delete and Delete and
I don't have to reach off the main keyboard to hit them.
If I need fancy output, I can always take the files to Excellence! or
ProWrite.
I sometimes use CED Pro for quick edits of scripts that I have in RAM: A
task that needs doing when I'm uploading files to CIS using Whap! Since it
doesn't support GIF format uploads, I have to go in and edit the upload
script to change the BINARY upload to GIF upload. If I have a series of
files that I'm downloading and the program hangs up mid-process, I also
edit the script to remove the files I've already recieved. This allows me
to continue downloading without having to redo the script from scratch.
Because Whap! uses CIS B Plus, I can often recover the download and have it
pick up in middle of a partially recieved file. This saved me about a half
hour of download time yesterday when I got a lock-up half way through a
200K file.
Don't know if it matters, but I also have Word Perfect, Becker Text Amiga,
TxEd and VizaWrite Desktop here, though I don't use it. For DTP, I have
everything I've ever heard of: Excellence 2.0, PageStream, ProPage,
PageSetter (original version with LaserScript,) CityDesk 2.0, Shakespeare,
Publisher 1000 and PenPal.
Chow, Cherp!
Nancy,
I have UE MS-DOS version, but up until very recently have not had reason
to use it. Now, my PC is 'down' <sigh> (maybe God is trying to tell me I'm
not supposed to be really working on it <hopeful grin>). At any rate,
another member of our club is using UE on both his PC (MS-DOS) at work, and
regular UE at home. He reported (at a recent meeting) 'no significant
problems'. I can maybe get him to put together a better review if you need
it, but his business is starting to have him travel a lot.
Victor A. Wagner, Jr.
Cygnus Ed is currently incompatible with 2.0, which is amazing. I
would've thought that ASDG would've been more together than to leave it
incompatible for so long, but I also leave open the possibility that I
believe that there is another company which actually writes CygnusEd.
— Ethan
Ethan,
The only problems I've noticed so far with CEDPro and 2.0 is that the
prop gadget can get (visually) messed up. Otherwise, it works fine for me.
-sja
Well, my problem with CED under 2.0 was that it would guru the second I
started it! And ASDG confirmed this! I guess I'll call back.
— Ethan
Whatever — I use it under 2.01 for several hours a day.
Wait, wait, don't just say whatever! One possibility is that I am still
using 1.0. But 2.0 came out long before WB2.0, so I didn't think that would
make the difference. Do you know if this is it?
— Ethan
Ethan,
I don't know — I use CEDPro Release 2 and 2.01 (kick 143). It works
fine for me 'cept the prop gadget occassionally becomes partially obscured
(until you move the prop gadget up and down). I haven't played with
changing fonts, that might break, but I like Topaz. In all the normal
functions that I use CEDPro works just fine for me.
Nancy,
I use WordPerfect as well– at work on a PC as 5.0 and on my Amiga at home.
But I'm willing to look at other packages. In fact, it would be great if I
could find a WordProcessor that had:
* WYSIWYG display for standard printer fonts.
* A full Macro language with editor. Preferably, powerful enough to set up
custom menus like WordPerfect 5.x, or like Borland does with their DBase
Paradox.
* A built in Mail-merge/DataBase that would allow me to pick a single
address out of several for a form-letter without resorting to seperate
files for each (which is how I manage with WP-Amiga).
* The ability to add straight-lines and rules. I don't care about more
graphics in a WordProcessor, I'll use PageStream if I need graphic-images
incorporated with text.
* It must have keystrokes for all it's commands (like WP). I don't want to
have to keep going to the mouse.
* Allow me to set up a default directory.
* Style sheets.
* Master Documents like WP 5.x to handle really large stuff easily.
* FULL ARexx compatibility.
— Jane H. (Writing, it's easier read than done.)
I use MS-DOS WordPerfect extensively at work (5.1) and after over a year I
still don't really like it. I simply have made peace with it. It was
clearly designed with the intention of supporting template makers and
software course teachers. True, it can do most everything, but it does it
all clumsily, without elegance. The newfound mouse-support has all the
fluidity and grace of the program itself, which is to say, none. A pity it
has become the standard.
Randy,
I'm in complete agreement with your statements about PC WP. And it is still
probably the best PC word processor. Scary.
Malcolm
Randy, with WordPerfect: I work as a consultant in the Business school's
computer lab here at Columbia and the majority of questions are WordPerfect
related. I obviously don't know anything about you or your usage of WP, but
it seems to me that most people who use it don't ever learn the best ways
to use it. So many people use spaces rather than centering, tabs, indent,
flush-right to indent the lines.
The way it seems to me, having been forced to learn it in depth for the
job and having seen the way most of these people use it, to use WP
effectively there is a STEEP learning curve but once someone goes past it
things become easy. For example, the handling of graphics/equations/etc.
may seem ridiculously clumsy, but once you learn it it gives you absolutely
precise control. You can have it treat graphics boxes as characters,
paragraphs or as placed in an absolute location on the page. Switching
between them is easy.
One of the other very nice things about WordPerfect is that, with 5.1,
you can import Lotus spreadsheets directly, selecting a range, and it then
creates a WP Table complete with lines separating cells. There is a special
editing mode just for tables.
None of this is easy to learn at first, but I would NEVER go to
Microsoft Word on the Macs. It is just too cumbersome for me. Of course, I
am also a computer science major and it is my future to think the way the
computer thinks.
— Ethan
Nancy, I came in late (your msg scrolled off the board) but I guess your
looking to buy a WP. I've used three WP and one editor. They are
Scribble!, by MicroSystemsSoftware. Excellence!, by MSS also. ProWrite, by
New horizons. and finally DME, by matt dillon (freely ditributable).
Scribble! (Platinum) – If you choose it get Patinum Edition, period.
Scribble! is a non-WYSIWYG (They say otherwise) WP and uses DOT Commands
for all of its formatting. Dict. 100 thou, Thes. 470 thou. It has most all
the editing features you will ever need. It prints pictures, by use of DOT
commands specifying the XY-cordinate of the picture. Cut, Copy, Paste in
the usual Amiga fashion. Big plus is that it uses the ClipBoard. Big
minus, nobody else does. This program is part of The Works! by MSS, WP Data
Base, Telecom, Speadsheet plus some other stuff. Working with thois stuff
is like Amiga nostalga–the way it used to be, but it does work quite well.
Excellence! 2.xx – If it ain't 2.xx don't buy it, 1.xx was simply not
usable. Everything you want in a WP is here. Dict over 100thou theas. 1.4
MILLION, spell check while you type, grammar checker, table of contents
generator, index and glossary generator, virtual memory (file size is
limited by disc space), PostScriptTM output and more. Fully WYSIWYG and
simple to use. They say it is a picture WP IT IS NOT A PICTURE
WORDPROCESSOR. Excellence treats pictures like a great BIG CHARACTER.
Imagine putting a picture whrer this 'W' is and it being one-fourth the
size of the screen. moving it is like MOVING A CHARACTER. Text formatting
and printer controll is incredible. NOTE: the only way to print condensed
or wide is to print to a file and edit the file by using the Amiga ESC code
for printer control. Script/Macro language.
[ MORE ]
Are you serious? Are you saying that if I had a document that wanted to
change from normal text to condensed mode or wide mode that I would have to
figure out the escape sequence and edit a file? I must have misunderstood
you!!!
John
John,
What I ment was if you wanted a selection of text to be printed in
either
of the two, not the entire document. Excellence has no provision that
I
could find to do this. For example, I was creating a resume and I
wanted
it to print like this:
BOLD ON – Gelfand et al. – BOLD OFF COND ON – A Division of… – COND
OFF
Now, in ProWrite, you select the font CONDENSED for that selection of
text, print in NLQ and by golly your printer changes that small
selection to condensed, prints it, goes back to NLQ or what ever and
finishes.
Now in E! I could find no way to change a piece of selected text in my
document to condenced. I had to print it to a file (NLQ MODE) load up DME
with the file and find what I wanted to be condensed, and use the
printer.device ESC codes for turning cond. on and off around the text to be
printed as such. Then I used ADOS TYPE command to get the result. A nice
experience to say the least.
Mike D.
How about a vote for the worst Amiga WP? I vote Beckertext. My
brother-in-law has it, and its real strange. Leaves dots at the end of the
line, forces you to choose how many pages you want to type, and much
less…
And only $149.
..tony m…