home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
- From: mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
- Subject: REVIEW: QuickWrite version 1.1
- Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications
- Date: 20 May 1993 02:11:08 GMT
- Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
- Lines: 255
- Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <1tepbs$n9c@menudo.uh.edu>
- Reply-To: mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer)
- NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
- Keywords: word processor, commercial
-
-
- PRODUCT NAME
-
- QuickWrite version 1.1
-
-
- BRIEF DESCRIPTION
-
- QuickWrite is an entry-level word processor. It uses the Preferences
- printer as an output device, limiting itself to the capabilities of that
- output device.
-
-
- COMPANY INFORMATION
-
- Name: New Horizons Software
- Address: 206 Wild Basin Road, Suite 109
- Austin, TX 78747
- USA
- Telephone: (512) 328-6650
-
-
- LIST PRICE
-
- $75.00 (US). Street price should be around $50.
-
-
- SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
-
- HARDWARE
-
- While a printer isn't required, the program has little use
- without it; one is "recommended". Other than that, you need
- an Amiga with 512K of ram. A second disk drive is
- recommended. The software should work fine with all CPUs and
- graphics chip sets.
-
- SOFTWARE
-
- You must be running at least AmigaDOS 1.2, and it works fine
- with AmigaDOS through 3.0.
-
-
- COPY PROTECTION
-
- None. Installs on a hard disk. The provided program disk is
- bootable as a Workbench disk.
-
-
- MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
-
- I used QuickWrite regularly on an Amiga 3000 with 2 meg of Chip RAM
- and 8 or 16 meg of Fast RAM, running various versions of AmigaDOS.
-
-
- REVIEW
-
- If you have a printer that does acceptable character printing with
- multiple type styles and lousy graphics -- or even no graphics -- you have
- only a limited number of options to take advantage of that printer. If you
- have some graphics, you can use a DTP package, and get results that are
- probably unacceptable. You can use an editor that lets you insert binary
- text, and put in the Preferences (or your printers) control codes to switch
- type styles by hand. This requires estimating formatting, and can make using
- other tools difficult. Finally, you can use QuickWrite.
-
- QuickWrite ("QW") is a "word processor" in the original sense of the
- phrase. It does not have desktop publishing functionality, multiple font
- support, nor even proportional font support. What it provides is convenient
- access to many of the character features of the Preferences printer. For
- people who have a printer that has a number of such features, but doesn't
- have the graphics support required for a true DTP package (this describes
- pretty much any dot-matrix printer), QuickWrite is an excellent investment.
-
- You can start QW from either the CLI or the WorkBench, and it can
- run on either the Workbench screen or a custom screen of the user's
- choosing. After being started, QW opens a window that will be familiar to
- the users of most Amiga DTP or word processing packages. Inside the standard
- Intuition window borders you find a ruler with movable triangles that
- control text wrapping, a tool bar for setting various options, and a couple
- of scroll bars and arrows for moving around the document.
-
- The ruler gadgets control the left margin for the first line of a
- paragraph, the left margin for the other lines in a paragraph, and the right
- margin. You also click on the ruler gadget to set tab stops.
-
- The tool bar has controls for setting the tab type (left, centered,
- right or decimal-aligned), paragraph justification (left, center, right or
- fully justified), line spacing (single or double), and optionally setting
- paragraph spacing to include a line before or after each paragraph, or both.
-
- In addition, double-clicking on the ruler makes the tool bar vanish
- or appear, and clicking on the tool bar outside the gadgets causes it to
- vanish.
-
- In addition, there are three gadgets to the left of the horizontal
- scroll bar at the bottom of the window. Two are arrows that scroll through
- the document page by page. The third is a text button displaying the current
- page. Selecting it brings up the "Go To Page" requester.
-
- The Project menu is much as one would expect from an Amiga word
- processing package, with commands to Save project, Save As, Open projects,
- create a New project, Page Setup, Printing with and without a Merge, and
- saving settings. The entries that open file requesters open either a custom
- requester that may include extra buttons, or under 2.0 or later, an ASL
- requester that won't have the extra buttons. A handy shortcut in the Print
- options is Print One, which prints a single copy of the current document
- using the current page setup.
-
- The Edit menu has the usual set of options ones expects in an Amiga
- editor -- Cut, Copy, Paste and Erase. After that comes a submenu allowing a
- selection to be changed to UPPER, lower or Mixed case. Another submenu
- allows the insertion of non-text items of various kinds -- the Date or Time,
- a Page Break or Page Number, or a non-breaking Space. The Date or Time can
- be either the current date or time, or the date or time when you print the
- document. You control the format of these items with the requester brought
- up by the next entry. There is also an entry for selecting all text in the
- document, and entries that bring up requesters for editing preferences and
- screen colors.
-
- The Search menu is fairly standard -- Find, Find Next, Change, Goto
- Page, and a useful entry that takes you back to the current selection or
- entry point. The Format menu provides an alternative access to the
- paragraph options available from the tool bar, the ability to set text style
- (Plain, Underline, Bold, and combinations) and color.
-
- The Document menu controls some of what you see and edit. You can
- use it to edit the header and footer of the current document, or to show the
- header and footer in the Document window. The Layout entry brings up a
- requester that allows you to specify the margins, for all pages or for the
- title page. This menu also holds the entry for manipulating the spelling
- checker and gathering the usual document statistics: counts of various
- things, average lengths of words and sentences, and a readability level.
-
- The View menu holds, for some reason, the About entry. It also
- allows you toggle the entire Ruler into and out of existence, and control
- what units of measurement it uses. You can also enable or disable the
- showing of page guides and "invisible" characters. Enabling this last
- option causes whitespace characters to have unique non-character glyphs
- displayed for each type of whitespace: a feature I found very useful and
- miss in other word processing packages. At the bottom there is a selection
- list of all open documents, allowing you to choose the active one from that
- list. Since there is a limit of 10 open documents, this menu will always
- fit on the screen.
-
- Finally, there is the Macro menu, used for invoking REXX macros.
- There are spaces for 10 macros, a requester that allows you to select ones
- that are not on the menu, and an entry for customizing the entries. It's as
- flexible as most Amiga programs, and more so than some.
-
- QW takes better advantage of 2.0 features than other programs do.
- For instance, it opens a public screen, making it easy to start other
- applications on that screen. KeyShow is a favorite of mine for accessing
- characters via the ALT key. Heavy WorkBench users may find the Application
- Icon even more useful, as it lets you open projects by dropping their icons
- onto it.
-
- The user interface is largely Amiga User Interface Style Guide
- compliant. Not completely -- some menu entries are in strange places, and
- some shortcuts are rather odd. For the most part, I found the interface
- comfortable and easy to use. The one problem is that redrawing the windows
- -- especially on an 8-color screen -- was slow even on an A3000. Turning on
- the ruler and tool bar made it awful. The rest of the program seems
- reasonably snappy, though.
-
- As a word processor, QuickWrite does what it claims to do. It
- lets you format documents using a set of constant-width type styles as
- supported by the Preferences printer driver. It doesn't let you mix
- type sizes -- going from condensed to elite, for instance -- in a
- single document. It is an entry-level package. It gives you WYSIWYG
- control of text, but you have to set it all yourself. You can't define
- a text style, nor change attributes of all text of one "style" with a
- single command. As such, it's perfectly adequate for letters or short
- papers, but I'd hate to try doing anything very long with it. It's
- probably perfect for undergraduate use, but people doing a thesis or
- dissertation will want something more powerful.
-
- If you decide you've outgrown this package, you can buy an
- inexpensive upgrade to New Horizon's ProWrite DTP package.
-
-
- DOCUMENTATION
-
- QuickWrite comes with a softbound, 76-page User's Manual. It also
- includes a 12-page pamphlet covering the differences between 1.0 and 1.1.
- The documentation is for beginners and follows the process of creating and
- printing a document, with the more esoteric features (ARexx, AmigaDOS 2.0
- features) left for last. It includes an acceptable index, and appendices
- cover error messages and trouble shooting. It's adequate, which is better
- than much of the documentation one sees.
-
-
- LIKES AND DISLIKES
-
- The ability to put meaningful names in the Rexx Macro menu is nice.
- It would be nicer if that text weren't the name of the macro you're
- running. Date and time stamps that are the time of printing are very nice;
- other packages should include this feature. The time spent redrawing a
- window -- even for an activation -- is inordinately long. Support for
- changing between the Preferences fonts in a single document would be nice,
- but I can understand that this is a non-trivial undertaking. Adding more
- real DTP functionality -- style sheets, etc. -- would also be nice, but is
- also probably beyond the scope of this product.
-
-
- COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS
-
- As far as I can tell, there really aren't any similar products
- available. There are some "text editors" that include part of this
- functionality, and at least one module of a modular DTP package might be
- considered similar. Entry level DTP packages such as FinalCopy are
- sometimes billed as word processors, but they include more functionality,
- and require a better printer. What QuickWrite reminds me of more than
- anything else is the word processors -- WordStar, Magic Wand, etc. -- that
- were available a decade ago. There is now a GUI, and it really is WYSIWYG,
- but it provides much the same functionality.
-
-
- BUGS
-
- While I found no bugs, I had a number of problems with third-party
- printer drivers. QuickWrite expects a lot from a printer driver; many
- printer drivers don't deliver. SuperDJC2, a PD Brother HR printer driver,
- and the GPFax printer driver all failed in one way or another.
-
- Also, the product doesn't work with SoftWood's Proper Grammar,
- neither I nor II.
-
-
- VENDOR SUPPORT
-
- In chasing down the problems with the printer driver, I talked with
- the tech support group. They were knowledgeable, courteous, and provided
- quick and accurate responses to my questions.
-
-
- CONCLUSIONS
-
- I'd say the product is excellent for what it is intended to do. It
- isn't a DTP package; it's a small word processor for use with character
- printers. I'd recommend it without qualms to anyone looking for a program
- for doing short documents on a printer with poor or non-existent graphics
- capabilities.
-
-
- COPYRIGHT NOTICE
-
- Copyright 1993 Mike W. Meyer. All rights reserved.
-
- ---
-
- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
- Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu
- Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu
- Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu
-