Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!fluke!moriarty
From: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Is Fullwrite dead?  Well, it's been coughin' up blood all year...
Keywords: Ashton-Tate FullWrite lousy support
Message-ID: <12900@fluke.COM>
Date: 30 Nov 89 22:20:17 GMT
References: <3612@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu> <2938@sparky.UUCP> <7073@portia.Stanford.EDU> <30464@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
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Reply-To: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Organization: The John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
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In article <30464@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> kitchel@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Sid Kitchel) writes:
>carter@portia.Stanford.EDU (Thomas J. Carter) writes:
>
>>Does anyone have ANY idea when Fullwrite v2.0 will show its face?
>>Are we looking at 6 months or more than a year?  If someone knows
>>anything factual, please post it.  If it's just a rumor then it's
>>probably better to send me mail.
>
>	I recently saw a presentation by Ashton-Tate's sales force. We
>were told to expect FWP 2.0 in the coming Spring. Luckily, FWP has
>never been late for a delivery -- so we can COUNT on this prediction!!

We're talking implied :-) here, I think.  I've had FWP since it's release,
and brother, that thing made the B-1 Bomber look like an on-time project...

I'd like to know when 2.0 is supposed to be out, too.  I've seen two
Ashton-Tate presentations in the last two years, and each promised a 2.0
relase within eight months of the lecture.  All we've gotten since then is
1.1, whose major goal seems to be selling A-T foreign language dictionaries.
Frankly, I've had all the vague promises from Ashton-Late that I can
stomach, and after reading Stephen Levy's article in MacWorld on the state
of A-T's now-defunct Macintosh division, I find myself with an acute lack of
confidence in Ashton-Tate, and a word processor which takes seconds to
backspace over characters, and still has to catch up to me when I'm typing
on long documents -- and this with a Mac SE/30!

I still use FWP over Word 4.0; I like the interface better than anything
I've seen before Framemaker 2.0 arrived for the Sun workstations last week.
(NICE job, Frame!  Talk about listening to your users...)  But after all the
time I've spent waiting for "just-around-the-corner" updates, all the time I
spent writing up bug/problem lists to A-T (once, at their request) which
apparently disappeared into a black hole, all the reports of half-assed
cutbacks in the Macintosh division at A-T, and all the marketting promises
I've been told over and over and over again... I've had it.  Some of you can
probably remember me championing FullWrite in this group over the last
couple of years.  I *still* think it's a hell of a program -- the design,
with the exception of some graphics placement problems, is one of the best
I've ever seen -- but the performance is atrocious, and I don't feel
comfortable investing time and effort into a program whose company support
is so minimal.  I've got documents I'll need to open in the future, and I'd
like to have a reasonable shot at the chance of the word processor that
created them still existing then.

Enough is enough.  I figure that if FWP 2.0 hasn't arrived by March, then
it's time to convert all my FWP files to MacWrite 4.5, try out Nisus (hey, I
use GNU Emacs -- how hard can it be?), or, at worst, bite the bullet and
re-learn Word 4.0.  (Maybe Frame 2.0 for the Mac will be out, though I'd
wonder how well it works without System 7.0's virtual memory.)  If it isn't
out by then, time to switch the tri-corder off and pronounce, "It's dead,
Jim."

                           "But Alex, I don't want to
                            be rich for the same
                            reason as other men."
                                                     "Not for the cars, the
                                                      houses, the women?"
                           "Oh, I guess it is the
                            same reason."

                                        Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET:     moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP:  {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft, hplsla, uiucuxc}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO:        You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>