Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!wuarchive!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Still no Ami businessware.
Message-ID: <19530@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 5 Mar 91 17:19:09 GMT
References: <39850@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 47

In article <39850@cup.portal.com> Lee_Robert_Willis@cup.portal.com writes:

>ProfessionalDraw is overkill.  It gives me more power than I can use at the 
>expense of simplicity and speed.  

I recommend making sure you use Version 2 of ProDraw.  It's much faster than
the original in many areas, especially text.  This kind of program is really
designed for doing illustrations and things, not simple box and line figures.
I have used it extensively in my Zorro III bus documentation, and I'm pretty
satisfied with the way it handles technical drawing.  I haven't used it for 
any more free-flowing stuff.  Of course, I also have a fast system.

>My letter to Gold Disk will suggest creating a scaled-down version 
>('ProfDraw Jr.', or 'AmateurDraw', or some such), which would be a drawing 
>package more like MacDraw or GEMDraw for the PC.

You might just ring a bell with that approach.  Gold Disk does still support 
PageSetter, which at this point amounts to a scaled down version of ProPage.
You might also check out ProVector, which is another vector drawing (as 
opposed to CAD) program out for the Amiga, and the first to support the IFF
structured drawing form, DR2D.  I haven't tried it myself yet, but it looks
very nice and I would be willing to switch over if I like it that much better.

However, complaining about a tool being too powerful is rarely a valid point
when you claim to come from a business prespective.  A business will rarely
make such complaints, and if the tool runs too slow, they'll buy a faster
system.  Witness the success of Ventura Publisher and AutoCAD on the PC.  Both
are slow as snails and full of features.  But a business will pay for a fast
'386 or '486 in order to use them productively.  You would want something less
on your C= Colt at home.  Now, both of these are more mature products than 
ProDraw, so they have pretty much eliminated "slowness for no good reason",
something Gold Disk could spend just a little more time on.

As for real document processing, while I have done a nearly 100 page document
in ProPage, I did it there mainly because of the graphics I needed.  For any
mainly textual work, especially something on the order of 500-1000 pages, no
wordprocessor of any kind is going to compare to TeX.  It's not WYSIWYG (though
the Amiga previewer might make you forget much of this), but it was designed
for typesetting large documents and is inherently faster to work with than
any WYSIWYG wordprocessor, or even partially markup wordprocessors like 
WordPerfect on the Amiga.

>Lee
-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
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	"What works for me might work for you"	-Jimmy Buffett