Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!ginosko!uunet!cs.dal.ca!silvert
From: silvert@cs.dal.ca (Bill Silvert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: PD Word Processors
Summary: Good software may be expensive
Message-ID: <1989Oct10.125136.19140@cs.dal.ca>
Date: 10 Oct 89 12:51:36 GMT
References: <3968@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Sender: silvert@cs.dal.ca.UUCP (Bill Silvert)
Reply-To: bill@biomel.UUCP
Organization: Habitat Ecology Div., Bedford Inst. of Oceanography
Lines: 27

In article <3968@blake.acs.washington.edu> themod@blake.acs.washington.edu (Chris Hinton) writes:
>
>  Hello you netters, I need some help.  I need a good PD Word Processor.  I 
>have (gak!) 1st Word, but I hate it with a passion.  I also think spending 
>$100+ for any program is just plain stupid.  Any suggestions?

Why stupid?  Good software takes time to write, and a decent commercial
product can easily be worth more than $100.

ST users are lucky -- the machine is easy to program, and lots of
hackers like it, so we get super freeware in areas like communications.
For text, you have lots of variants on emacs.

But if you want the kind of applications software that people don't
write for the fun of it, like dBASE and Lotus clones or desktop
publishing packages, you have to pay a fair price.  Fortunately this is
usually a lot less than the MS-DOS or Mac versions.

The attitude that paying for software is stupid is probably one of the
reasons that there is little commercial support for the ST.


-- 
Bill Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division.
Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 4A2
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