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From: augustss@chalmers.UUCP (Lennart Augustsson)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: MacAuthor Review (long)
Message-ID: <609@chalmers.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Jun-86 21:46:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: chalmers.609
Posted: Wed Jun 25 21:46:15 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jun-86 09:43:09 EDT
References: <694@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: augustss@chalmers.UUCP (Lennart Augustsson)
Organization: Dept. of CS, Chalmers, Sweden
Lines: 50

Some more points and comments on MacAuthor:
In article <694@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU> korn@pavepaws.UUCP (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) writes:
>  1)  You cannot change font from within a paragraph.
You can change font by defining your own "highlight" style (under the Text
menu), and you can give this command a command character so you don't have
to pull down a menu to change the font as you have to in MacWrite.

>  3)  All paragraphs below the one you are currently editing disappear from the 
>screen, and only re-appear during the above-mentioned pause, during which the 
>words are recounted.  This one is a biggie!  
Agreed!! This is really annoying.

>  4)  I get the impression that one can do with headings what MacAuthor allows 
>you to do with Paragraphs; ie.: set up "heading scripts".  I don't know for sure
>b/c I refuse to look it up in the manual (you should *never* need a manual with 
>a non-database macintosh program), and I can't figure out how to invoke it (if 
>it does indeed exist).
You can.

>  5)  The mac-like interface isn't as mac-like as it could be.  For instance, I
>should have an I-beam whenever I'm over the text of the document; there is no 
>"about MacAuthor" option under the Apple menu, ...
There is an About MacAuthor when there are no windows, but it doesn't give
much information.
>
>  6)  Because of all the many things that it's doing (keeping track of the page 
>length, number of words, etc. etc.), editing is just a tad slow.
Sometimes, e.g. when moving the cursor, MacAuthor is unbelievably slow.

>
>And, of course, the bugs:
>
>  3)  MacAuthor is copy protected.  Version 5.2 of CopyIIMac (the latest, 
>as of this review) won't copy it.  
But not unbreakable.

Further bugs..
  The watch cursor is sometimes lost and replaced by some random pattern
(probably due to some handle dereferencing).

Summary:  
Of the wordprocessors/layout systems I have tested on the Mac (MacWrite,
Word, PageMaker, and MacPublisher) I like MacAuthor the best.  The low
speed is its biggest drawback.
-- 
Any resemblance of the opinions above to real opinions, living or dead,
is purely coincidential.
	Lennart Augustsson
UUCP:		{seismo,philabs,decvax}!mcvax!enea!chalmers!augustss
ARPA,CSnet:	augustss@chalmers.csnet