#Word Processor Opinions?
41 messages in this thread
Hi,
I'm an olde time WordPerfect user, and I would REALLY like to upgrade
to a more up-to-date word processor. I already own ProPage and
PageStream, so I'm not looking for a DTP program. What I'm looking for is
a very functional, user friendly program that works quickly. It should be
able to print using my dot-matrix printer's resident fonts quickly, but
still be able to run on a postscript printer if I purchase one. ARexx is
probably in all available programs, but I want a large flexible
dictionary/thesaurus. I particularly don't want something that's so
pretty that it takes a LONG time to refresh the screen after doing
anything on the page. Headers, footers, index, automatic date and paging
is required. I would prefer something that uses amiga fonts, rather than
yet another proprietary font technology, but I'm flexible on this. I'm
sure that a lot of people have strong opinions about their favorite word
processor! I would appreciate facts more than emotions, but would like to
hear about both.
I realize that THE word processor for the UNIX_Priests/HyperHackers and
Power Users is AmigaTex. I'm looking for something a little more user
friendly <g>. I would prefer a program, that won't require having the
documentation in my lap at all times.
I would appreciate any comments on this matter, and thank you all in
advance for your help and advice!!
// I'm gonna wait for
\X/ the A5000! <G> -RSL-
Roy,
I'd like to find a new WP too, one of my desires is one with more flexible
print features, like print odd/even pages, collate, print reverse. If you
find one that has features like these besides ones you mentioned let me
know too.
thanks,
cj
Chris,
ProWrite 3.3 has all of the print features you mentioned–print odd/even
pages, collate, and print reverse.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
Chris,
I guess we just aren't going to find a hidden WP 5.1 clone for the
Amiga, but I'll just have to settle for something a little more flexible
and user friendly than good olde WP 4.1!
// I'm gonna wait for
\X/ the A5000! <G> -RSL-
Only nerds with a lot of time on their hands like TeX. 🙂
Better watch out! Ben's gonna have his wife operate on ya without
anesthetic if you make too many derogatory comments about AmigaTeX <g>!
// I'm gonna wait for
\X/ the A5000! <G> -RSL-
Roy,
Well, since I'm with New Horizons, obviously I'm going to recommend our
product, ProWrite.
ProWrite has won several awards, including AmigaWorld's and recently
Amazing Computing's reader's choice awards, for its power and ease of use.
It has everything you mentioned in your needs (other than index
generation), and is fast–both with typing speed and screen refresh.
Unlike FinalCopy, which uses a proprietary font system, ProWrite uses the
Amiga's built-in font technology, so you have a very wide range of both
bitmap and outline fonts you can use–and fonts are available from a wide
variety of sources (including public domain). This also means that when
Commodore enhances their font system in any way, ProWrite will
automatically take advantage of the changes.
While ProWrite has a detailed user's manual, most people find themselves
never needing to refer to it–the program is that intuitive. Of course, to
learn about the more powerful features, such as AREXX, and ProWrite's mouse
and keyboard shortcuts, you would need to check out the manual.
And speaking of AREXX, ProWrite's AREXX implementation is much more
comprehensive and extensive than _any_ other Amiga word processor. You
have virtually complete control over ProWrite through AREXX. While this
may not seem important to many, it is very easy to learn how to use
ProWrite's AREXX system to do many things otherwise not possible. And the
sample macros we include with ProWrite are a great way to learn how to use
it.
We've just released version 3.3 of ProWrite, which adds many new features.
And future upgrades are planned (ProWrite has been out since 1987, and has
had four major and three minor upgrades over the years). We even post
patches for bug fixes right here on CompuServe. ProWrite is one of the
best supported products on the Amiga–unlike some of our competitors,
[continued in the reply]
[continued]
we don't abandon products and replace them with new incompatible ones.
Anyway, if you have any questions about ProWrite, drop by our vendor
support forum (section 5 of the AmigaVendor forum) and someone from our
tech support dept. will be happy to answer any questions you have.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
James,
Have you added any of the really necessary power things to ProWrite –
footnotes, endnotes, Table of Contents, and Indexing? There are many
things I like about ProWrite, but my version is pretty old and I'd like to
upgrade if you have added these things. Without them, I still have to use
WordPerfect for much of my writing, no matter HOW old it gets.
—Betty
I think they have an endnote ARexx macro included….
from another biased perch I'll add that excellence! has footnotes,
TOC generation, Indexing…. and an Arexx macro that converts footnotes
to endnotes.
I'll have another look at Excellence. I looked when it first came out –
probably several versions ago – and didn't care for it at all. But new
versions can make ALL the difference.
—Betty
Betty,
Saw your chat with Andrew Apold about Excellence!
One word of warning with Excellence! Betty….It might not affect you but
it has a funny way of defining the margins around your page. For example,
on my Citizen GSX-140 24 pin colour printer I have the restriction of not
being able to print within 0.25 inches from the top of page and about the
same for the bottom of the page. Currently to get a 1 inch margin at top
and bottom of page I have to set my top margin to 0.61 inches and my
bottom margin at 1 inch…but then I have to set my page size to .40
inches shorter than what it should be. The moral of the story is that
this is a very fiddly method of setting something that should be
relatively easy. ProWrite 3.2 for example is as simple as entering 1 inch
and you GET 1 INCH. ProWrite and Flow by New Horizons are both excellent
programs. Only thing I wish ProWrite had was auto index and table of
contents. New Horizons keep saying they'll post rudimentary arexx scripts
for this but I simply refuse to learn AREXX and I want a proper function
for these features. I absolutely hate AREXX, I can't and won't program
and feel that developers are taking the easy way out when it comes to
making the user (who might not want to spend ages learning AREXX) finish
the program off to a level where it will do what they want.
Anyway Betty that is my opinion anyway. Also you will get nicer output
from ProWrite in high quality mode than you will with Excellence! (Bitmap
and Compugraphic fonts)
Regards,
Andy.
I know that ProWrite is an excellent word processor – but I cannot use it
for the very reason you point out. I need the ability to create automatic
indexes and tables of contents, and I also want footnotes and endnotes.
I'll probably just keep on making do with WordPerfect until somebody gets
an Amiga word processor that has all the things I need. (I do have
ProWrite, and several others – but they do not have these facilities that
I really want and need.)
Thanks for the input. I do appreciate it.
—Betty
Ol' iron horses (eg; WordPerfect) may not be pretty sitting next to sleak
sportsters, but when they laid down that iron, they made it solid (even if
it is clunky, nowadays).
I too hope that the current wordprocessing "stars" will evolve some time
soon, such that automatic generation of index entries, et cetera, will be
a "given". Maybe we can start a petition and send it to the various
wordprocessing vendors?
Real World:southern Illinois, USA Internet:ca0008 at siucvmb.siu.edu
I doubt that it will come to pass, Jim. I've been asking for years, as
have many others, but it never happens. More pretty graphics (which is
very nice) but not much functionality for people who need more than a very
casual WP.
—Betty
I must admit it's sortofa group thing. If no one else does it, you don't have
to either….
exit
Betty…
How do automatic indexes and TOC's work? Actually, what does it do for you
in a typical document? It's sounds like magic 🙂
Have you looked at the docs for AP? Word Perfect created the table of
contents and the index for that. It's not all automatic. I have to mark
the text I want in the table of contents and in the index, but once it is
marked, adding or deleting text as I edit is automatically cared for when
I finish and tell WP to create the TOC and Index when it prints. Mark the
text once, and it is marked from then on, unless you deliberately remove
the markings.
—Betty
The way we do it (in excellence!) is first, we provide two menu options,
mark index entry and mark TOC entry. (They have keyboard shortcuts, aslo)
Whenever you highlight something and select one of these, it places a TOC
or index marker at the start and end of the highlighted text.
When you select generate TOC, it searches for a marker, takes the text until
the next marker, and adds a character tab with dots (….) and then adds
the page number. Character tabs repeat a character until a tab stop, giving
you an effect like
INTRODUCTION………..1
PREVIEW…………….2
etc.
When finished, all this is placed in the paste buffer, and you can paste it
into your document.
With generate Index, it is pretty much the same, except that it also searches
the entire document for other occurences of the text in question, and adds
these page numbers also. If page numbers are consecutive, it specifies a range.
Then, it alphabetizes all entries and eliminates duplicates, and puts all this
in the paste buffer.
Neither the TOC or Indexes are automatically updated, you have to regenerate them
if you change your document around.
There's other stuff that could be done, but this seems to work well. Things it does'nt
do are check footnotes for text, or headers/footers, which you wouldn't really
want since they are on every page.
We even had one person who wanted us to automatically index every word of a document
and then have a dictionary of "common words" like the, it, and, for, etc. that
we would automatically remove….
sheez..
anyways, when using them, keep in mind that…. you can use phrases for either
indexes or TOC, but avoid leading or trailing spaces for index entries or else
(well, more than one leading or trailing) you may miss an instance…
Also, if you're going to mark a phrase or word as both an index entry and a
TOC entry, mark it as an index entry first. That way you get every instance.
Since the TOC marker is a character (albeit non-printable), marking it as a
TOC entry first would only index other instances where it was also marked as
a TOC entry.
If in doubt, select show markers, and see where the markers are.
You're still the only person that's had problems with margins that
we've had contact with… We spent days with rulers making sure everything
was within 1/64" of an inch on all printers we could get in here, and I agree
that you should set 1 inch and get 1 inch…
Andrew,
Right lets get one thing straight from the start!
I'm a little bit angry with you. You wanna know why:
1. I believe I have given you a valid problem that I am experiencing
with Excellence! and my Citizen Printer.
2. So far all you have told me is that other people are using this
this printer and none of them have this problem. Are you insinuating
that I am stupid?
3. I have an acquaintance who is a Authorized repairer for Citizen
Printers and he owns a GSX-140 Plus printer which is basically
identical to mine. He is also experiencing the problem. He is also
a pretty cluey guy when it comes to the Amiga, having developed some
fairly beastly Amiga hardware here in Australia. He knows what he is
talking about. He was the one that showed me how to "TRICK"
excellence! into thinking it is printing at 1 inch top of page.
I do not believe as yet that you have given me sufficient advice on how to
solve this problem. You stated in your Compuserve Mail message yesterday
that you agree with me that if I select 1 inch top margin, that excellence
should give me 1 inch….All I can say to that is "GET A GSX-140 AND PROVE
ME WRONG" It just doesn't work.
Now maybe this is the printer and maybe it is something that could be
solved by changing a setting that I have not as yet thought of. The
printer is available in the US as I have seen it advertised in your
magazines so why not either try to get a sample machine from CITIZEN U.S.
or ask one of your users that have reported no problems with using
excellence and their CITIZEN GSX-140.
Regards,
Andy Blazer.
Betty:
Let me know what you think of e!3. The latest incarnation is really pretty
slick, IMHO.
I'll have a look next time I go to Dallas.
—Betty
Dallas…. is that Amazing computing store chain still in business.. (I'm not
sure if I got the name right), but they set up a shop in San Antonio when
I lived there, but they weren't doing to well… SA also had a really old
Amiga store named Computer experience that had been there for ages but was
drifting back to MSDos somewhat when I left…
But I remember that Amiga owners would drive up from Mexico just to go there…
The Amazing store in Dallas closed a year or two ago, but Sonia King, who
owned it, joined forces with Lee Kaplan at Metropolitan, and they have a
very strong Amiga store that is doing great.
I believe there is still at least one Amiga dealer in Austin, but I cannot
recall the name. I have a friend in Austin who is active in a user group
down there, and people from that store participate in his group.
—Betty
Sure, please do. If you'd like a brochure or something just give me an
address.
If the version you saw was version 1, the speed has been increased
dramatically. I can't outtype it, (I go about 70-75 wpm), and the
appearance has been completely changed with this latest version…
Get the CG Font rendering smoothed out, and you'll have a real winner. CG
Fonts that print at SCREEN resolution are not acceptable.
Other than this, you have all but one of the features I have on my "wish
list," and that is that changing the number of columns should NOT affect
the entire document.
// Brian — Cruising on AutoPilot…..
\X/
Okay, I've got them marked down.
James,
I would like to point out right from the beginning that I love ProWrite.
I feel it could be improved in the following ways though:
ABSOLUTE MUST HAVE:
1. Automatic Indexing: (Preferably not just an AREXX macro)
2. Automatic Table of Contents: ( Ditto )
3. Another great feature to have would be complete control over different
printers so that you could print in NLQ proportional pitch mode. Word
Perfect for the PC does this and the print quality and appearance of the
text is great. I realize that every printer has a different proportional
font size and that you would have to support many different printers. I
just think that if WordPerfect can do it on the PC why can't Prowrite on
the Amiga. I would be very interested in a response on this question.
Just a quick note about indexing and Table of contents:
I am in the Royal Australian Navy and am currently taking on quite a large
HOME> project in writing out my recently learned Man Management course.
I would like to do it through FLOW 3.0 and ProWrite 3.2.4. First of all I
found out that you cannot import a FLOW document into PWrite with the
label headings intact. Randy Brooks assures me you can do this in V3.1 of
Flow so I will be upgrading as soon as letter arrives from you. But, what
I would like to be able to do would be to have each paragraph numbered
with a label e.g. 301. Blah blah blah …. 301. a. Blah Blah blah
…What I would then like to do is import this into Prowrite and have it
automatically index marked topics and generate a table of Contents on
selected items and ALSO make it recognize the paragraph number e.g.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
—————–
301 Learning Prowrite………………………..1
301 a Using Prowrite…………………………..2
I hope this can be done in a future version of Prowrite. If this could be
done I think ProWrite would be THE AMIGA WORD PROCESSOR bar none.
I would just like to thank your company for your excellent amiga products:
<continued>
they are some of the best, bug free programs I have come across on the
Amiga. I have never had any major problems with ProWrite, Flow or QBack.
Well done and keep pumping out good amiga application programs.
What I would truly love to see your company develop is a program like Who
What When Where, which is a address/phone database and calender/reminder
program that lets you know about appointments and birthdays. I bet you
guys could do a great version of this.
Regards from Australia,
Andy Blazer.
One thing about Prowrite that drives me bats since I've started using Finl
Copy — the print quality. I hate letters with the "jaggies." Output from
Final Copy looks almost laser-printed. Prowrite's best output comes from
using double-size (or larger) fonts and then scaling it down at print
time. Not intuitive to me.
However, the people at softwood seem to never have thought that people
might want to use their printer's resident NLQ fonts.
In Prowrite 3.3 — can I ask Prowrite what file is open through ARexx? And
if so, will I get the _full_ file and path? The 3.2 manual doesn't list
any ways to GET information From ProWrite, though I can TELL it to do
things until the cows come home. BTW, Final Copy can't do this either —
to my annoyance.
// Brian — Cruising on AutoPilot…..
\X/
Brian,
The easiest way to get the best results with ProWrite's High quality
printing is to use the Amiga's outline fonts. You can also get jaggie-free
results using bit-map fonts (as you mention), but it requires installing
double-sized fonts that ProWrite can use at print time. With outline fonts
it is automatic.
Still, there are a vast number of free bit-map fonts out there, so if you
want the most variety and least expense in getting jaggie-free fonts (and
don't mind doing the extra step of installing larger sizes), the option of
using bit-map fonts is quite useful.
While ProWrite 3.3 does have a way of returning to you the document name,
and gives you a way to _set_ the document name and/or path, it don't
believe it provides a way to get both the name and path. If you drop by our
vendor support section in AmigaVendor and let them know what you are trying
to do, they may have a different solution for you.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
I guess I failed to mention that I WAS using outline fonts. Printed out to
a FAX file courtesy of GPFAX and compared the output. Font rendering for
printout needs work.
The only reason I would like to see the "Get full file name" (Dir and
Path) and "Save as FILE" is so that I can 1) find out is a file is a new
file (Name of "Untitled #something), and if so save it out under ARexx
control. The application in mind is a utility to monitor an UPS — on a
"Battery Low" condition, I want to close all running applications without
losing anything. To do this, I obviously need the programs to give my
utility (or an ARexx script) the information needed to save the file, and
to save the file without popping up a requester — which would not fit a
program that will be operating under rather severe time constraints.
// Brian — Cruising on AutoPilot…..
\X/
I appreciate your detailed response, and PW is certainly one of the
main contenders for my WP replacement. I guess that I will have to
rummage thu all my old magazines to find reviews of the WP's out there.
I'm going to save your message so that I can re-read it after reviewing my
magazines. As an aside, I assume that it can print directly to a
postscript printer, using the printer's built in fonts, and also able to
print to a dot matrix printer using the printer's own font, rather than
doing a far slower bitmapped dump to the printer?
// I'm gonna wait for
\X/ the A5000! <G> -RSL-
Roy,
ProWrite has several modes of printing:
PostScript – for printing to a PostScript printer
High quality – for high resolution graphics output to dot-matrix printers.
Normal quality – for screen resolution graphics output (which is faster)
NLQ or Draft – for using your printer's fonts
ProWrite has quite a bit of support for NLQ and Draft fonts, more so than
any other Amiga graphics-based word processor.
James Bayless
New Horizons Software, Inc.
Roy,
Here in Britain I use a WP called Protext. It is fast, has a dictionary /
thesaurus, headers, footers, automatic date / day of week / time, index,
table of contents, odd / even page printing.
Also, I wrote an import module for PageStream so you can type your text in
Protext, print it out fast to proofread it, then import it into PgS with no
bother.
On the down side, it is now a rather old program, and it is not American,
though I believe it is on sale in the states. It doesn't use any fancy
fonts, but it does alow you to exploit your printer's capabilities to the
full. And it has automatic spell check as you type – which is fast enough
even on a floppy-based system as the commonest words are stored in a
RAM-based dictionary.
Protext used to have a reputation for being unfriendly, but the latest
version is actually quite good. It is very flexible. I've got mine set up
to handle Russian and English together! I don't have a Russian dictionary
though 🙁
You want to know how I _feel_ about Protext? I wouldn't change it for the
world. (But bribe me with cash enough to buy an '040 accelerator, flicker
fixer, multi-sync monitor, high speed modem and three weeks' holiday in
Portugal, and I would gladly try something different. 😉
Regards,
Shraddhan – via Whap! from Hertfordshire in the UK
Shraddan,
Thanks for the reply. I'm really looking for a current program from a
stable company that will be upgrading the product, and preferably
something that is produced in the U.S. (so that it's easy to write and
call them if I have to). I appreciate that people can get attached to a
WP, after all that's probably why it's taken this long to give up on
WordPerfect!
// I'm gonna wait for
\X/ the A5000! <G> -RSL-
If you're primarily interested in writing utilities, get Excellence! 3.0.
Best Amiga WP in that category. Huge spellchecker, thesaurus and built-in
grammar checker. It also handles footnoting, indexing, table of contents
generation and AREXX. It has a nice NLQ printing mode that's in between
draft and bitmap graphics. It seamlessly prints using your printer's built
in fonts at high speed, and will still let you handle graphics. Plus it
uses Postscript, and exports to ProPage 3.0. It offers timed saves,
vocalization of text, foreign language dictionary support, and keystroke
equivalents to all important commands. A real writer's word processor. If
graphics are more of interest to you, or scriptwriting, then ProWrite
offers several advantages. Excellence! imports IFFs but doesn't manipulate
them quite as well as ProWrite.
Ron,
Thanks for reply. Graphics isn't important to me, since I can always
use PageStream (or ProPage) fro those. What I need is a fast and powerful
word processor. I have ProperGrammar and I would like something that
seamlessly runs it, a thesaurus and a spell checker. I get the feeling
that if I wait enough time I will find Excellence!, ProWrite, and Final
Copy proponents! I'm sure that they each have their pluses and minuses.
BTW, for you lurkers out there, anyone want to comment about Final
Copy????
// I'm gonna wait for
\X/ the A5000! <G> -RSL-
Also, the print quality is just as blocky as it used to be.
E!3 is the out and out features war winner, it's just too bad that the
output quality isn't what it could be. CG fonts actually looked _worse_ to
me than some of the bitmapped fonts when they were printed to my 24-pin
printer.
I admit most of my bad feelings toward E! are because I spent $200 in 1987
for what appears to have been version 1 or 2. It was the slowest word
processor I had ever used. Given that I did a great deal of Word
Processing work on an Atari 800XL, this is saying a lot. I _ran_ to get
ProWrite.
If I could get E!'s features (plus better column support) and Final Copy's
output quality, and a more friendly ARexx implementation — I'd be a happy
camper.
// Brian — Cruising on AutoPilot…..
\X/