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From: jbn35564@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (J.B. Nicholson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: NeXT-bashing party & Stay Away from Gold Disk
Message-ID: <1991Mar17.183107.23876@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 17 Mar 91 18:31:07 GMT
References: <oo2Gzzh11@cs.psu.edu> <1991Mar17.031448.26855@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <27E3053E.1145@orion.oac.uci.edu> <1991Mar17.092200.18019@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
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In <1991Mar17.092200.18019@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> cs326ag@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Loren J. Rittle) writes:
>This comment about `no productivity software' is utter BS of the first 
>degree.  CED/ISpell/AmigaTeX tied together with ARexx makes for
>one hell of a `productive environment' for writing proposals or research
>papers.

The learning curve required to make any kind of use of TeX (all by itself
is too steep for those that just want to be able to get something like
Microsoft Word going, type their paper, and be done with it.  Also, a lot
of users don't need the kind of power that TeX provides.  Mere footnotes,
foreign characters, boldface, italics, etc. are enough for a lot of
people's needs (like mine).  However when you look at what tools on the
Amiga can fill that need, WordPerfect is the only one that can do all of
that in one somewhat intuitive product.  However WordPerfect has so many
failings that it's really not even worth your time unless you're desperate
to get your paper done on an Amiga.

Also, to make decent use of ARexx, one must learn ARexx.  This also takes
valuable time.  Therefore, using a product like Microsoft Word really helps
to get the job done and learn what is necessary to get the job done.

I'm not against learning the aforementioned products, but in most cases
even to get the kind of output and functionality that you can get with a
single package (like Word), you need to spend too much time learning and
not enough time doing.

>Gold Disk has been very against (1)
>adding UNDO and ARexx support to their product(s).  I won't buy another
>one till they reverse this trend and I suggest you do the same.
>IMHO, programs without an ARexx interface (a complete one, not a
>lame on, as in AmigaVision), should be upgraded now! As the end
>user gains a lot of POWER for so little work (on the part of the
>developer).
>(1) they have said this on BIX (over the last summer).

I totally agree with you not to buy Gold Disk products.  Also, their Prof.
Page can't do something that I thought was a given: save the program config.
to disk.  Once you get PPage set up the way you like it, you can't save that
setup to s:ppage-config (for example).  Just another reason to stay clear
of Gold Disk.
>
>Loren J. Rittle

Jeff
--
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| "If you hear an onion ring - answer it."                    J.B. Nicholson |
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| jeffo@uiuc.edu (Internet)              These opinions are mine, that's all.|
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