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From: korn@pavepaws.berkeley.edu (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: MacAuthor Review  UPDATE
Message-ID: <768@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Tue, 1-Jul-86 04:52:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.768
Posted: Tue Jul  1 04:52:56 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Jul-86 04:56:35 EDT
Sender: news@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: korn@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 64

I've received several letters correcting a few things I said in my
review.  Specifically one letter from Keith Lander, who wrote
MacAuthor.  His letter is enclosed below.

  Dear Peter,
  I hope you will find this response to your MacAuthor review to be of some
  help. The numbering follows the numbering for your "not so nice features".
   
  1)   You can change font from within a paragraph by using "highlight"
  styles which you can define in the Text menu via the Style Editor.
  These enable you to combine attributes into a single unit (eg. Font,
  type size, type style, sub/superscripted etc).
   
  2) We are adding footnotes in a release due later this year.
   
  3) We have addressed this problem in v1.2 which will shortly be released.
  Text no longer vanishes below the insertion point, and editing operations
  are very much faster.
   
  4) Yes you can set up heading styles.
   
  5) The About MacAuthor command appears when no documents are open.
  It was relagated to this status because I don't think a command to
  show the credits is much use.  About document is much more use.
  Your point about the method of setting tabs has been noted.
  That said, it would be a shame if the Mac user interface guidelines
  were treated as dogma by all developers.
   
  6) Done in v1.2.
   
  Re the bugs.
   
  1) The disc containing the staionery pad you open must not be
  write-protected because MA creates a file on it.
   
  2) MA needs a printing manager in order to find out details of
  the paper sizes available.  MacDraw is the same I think.
   
  3) Why do you want to copy it.  If you send in your registration
  card we'll send you a backup.
   
  General:  Version 1.1 has been sent free to all registered users.
  V1.2 will soon be sent (free).  A spelling checker and hyphenator
  is in the works, as are converters for write/word files.  It can
  already read Tank files.
   
  Regards, Keith Lander, Icon Technology, England.


And now my comments:  Icon Technology, and specifically Keith Lander, are
nice folks, and are quite responsive (this is a good bunch of folks).
I very much look forward to version 1.2, which sounds like it will be
a considerable improvement to a very good program.  

However, I strenuously disagree with Mr. Lander when it comes to
copy protection.  Given that Icon Technology is a responsive company,
it would be in the interest of those who feel as I do let them know.
You can send your comments to Keith c/o myself (see e-mail address below),
and I'll see that he gets them.

-----
Peter Korn				"Fred Astair?  Ginger Rogers did
korn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU		 everything he did, backwards
{dual,decvax,sdcsvax}!ucbvax!korn	 and in high heels!"