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From: iho@cac.washington.edu (Il Oh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Atari Wordprocessors Continued
Message-ID: <9708@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 22 Oct 90 19:16:14 GMT
References: <1990Oct19.215647.5331@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1990Oct20.015633.13937@ecst.csuchico.edu> <51155@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <655@tron.UUCP>
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Reply-To: iho@akbar.UUCP (Il Oh)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 42

In article <655@tron.UUCP> shipley@tron.bwi.wec.com.UMD.EDU (Bill Shipley) writes:
>I think that version 5.1 of WordPerfect (which runs very well under PC-Speed
>on the ST) is very nearly an ideal solution. It offers very nice mouse
>support - you can use the mouse for nearly everything but text entry - but

It might be "very nice mouse support" by WordPerfect's standards, but not
by anyone else's.  Sure you can put the cursor where you want by clicking
on the place, but I reserve the aforementioned description for the likes
of MS Word (either the Mac or the Windows version) which is so much more
advanced in the mouse support department that they aren't even the same
league.  Note this is not a criticism of WP 5.1 as a word processor (in
fact, I prefer it to MS Word) but a criticism of their "mouse support".

>retains keyboard oriented commands for those who prefer them. Version 4.1
>for the ST has the same options, but unfortunately is not as powerful as
>5.1. It does not offer WYSIWYG, except in screen preview, but this makes for
>much faster display speed.

Version 4.1 (as well as 4.2, for that matter) has suffers from more serious
deficiencies than not being WYSIWYG. (WP 5.1 isn't WYSIWYG, either.  You
just have a "preview" option)  Its support of fonts is _severely_ limited.
The advance from 4.1 to 4.2 was minor in my book, but from 4.2 to 5.0 was
a monumental leap, mostly because 5.0 was the first version of WP to
_really_ support fonts.

It's fine and dandy to have a word processor that can spell check (WP has
the best I've seen.  It looks for words that "sound alike" rather than
spelled alike) and has a thesaurus built-in, but you should be able to
print out documents that are acceptable in today's business world.
Courier font documents are _not_ acceptable by today's standards.  The
microcomputer revolution didn't improve productivity, it just raised
the level of quality expected in business documents.  In fact,
productivity is now lower because we have management people fiddling
around with their documents to fix "just one more thing".



--
  "Gosh!  You've really got          |    Il Hwan Oh
     some nice toys in here."        |    University of Washington, Tacoma
         -- Roy Batty, Bladerunner   |    iho@cac.washington.edu
                                     |