Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!udel!mmdf From: gaspar@stl-08sima.army.mil (Al Gaspar) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Word processors? Message-ID: <4110@nigel.udel.EDU> Date: 15 Nov 89 02:56:28 GMT Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU Lines: 70 I currently own an Amiga 500 with an extra disk drive and Commodore's expansion to 1 MB. My printer is a Panasonic 1091i. I have a need for a general purpose word processor. I currently own excellence! from Micro-Systems Software and am disappointed. Here are the features that I want: + Ability to produce standard letters, novels, or whatever in NLQ on my printer. + Ability to produce output in various fonts (graphics mode) for forms, greeting cards, or whatever. (I don't know if this is messed up by excellence! or my printer. What happens however is I'll be doing multiple iterations of '=' to draw lines (as an example) and every N iterations the top line of the '=' will disappear. This happens on the horizontal portions of various characters in excellence's normal (graphic) mode). + Automatic page numbering, footnoting, headers, footers, etc. Handling of header changes within a document, widows and orphans, etc. + Ability to output to an ascii file for transfer to the non-Amiga world. + Single, double, or (optionally) triple space in NLQ while performing the above automatic operations. (This is another place where excellence! blows it. It can't seem to double space and do automatic footnoting. + A user interface that is simple to use. All important functions should be accessible from the keyboard. (Excellence's user interface, especially for line spacing, tabs, and margins, is kind of bizarre). + Some reasonable speed. I am a slow typist (< 30wpm, probably), and I still beat out excellence! sometimes. + Spelling checker. (Grammar checker and thesaurus would be optional) + WYSIWYG (some reasonable facsimile, anyway). + Some halfway decent documentation with an index that was at least checked over by someone after the program generated it. I know, dream on... + I'm probably forgetting something, but those should be the important ones. At the moment I am looking at ProWrite 2.5 and WordPerfect. I'm a little confused about ProWrite. They offer a trade-in for $75, but a number of the software mail-order houses offer 2.5 for that or less with no trade-in. New Horizons doesn't seem to be doing anyone any favors... The only discount I know of for WordPerfect is $99 for students (if it is still in effect). Does anyone have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions? I like my Amiga and I would like to have a word processor that lived up to the machine. Thanks-- Al -- Al Gaspar (used to be ) USAMC SIMA, ATTN: AMXSI-TTC, Box 1578, St. Louis, MO 63188-1578 COMMERCIAL: (314) 263-5646 AUTOVON: 693-5646 uunet.uu.net!stl-08sima.army.mil!gaspar