Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Old Software (Was: SONIX) Message-ID: <1834@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> Date: Tue, 5-May-87 15:27:22 EDT Article-I.D.: cbmvax.1834 Posted: Tue May 5 15:27:22 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 7-May-87 05:26:37 EDT References: <2990@well.UUCP> Distribution: world Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 66 [ Single-tasking? Just say no! ] in article <2990@well.UUCP>, ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) says: > FLAME_ON > > The lack of decent music software for the Amiga is inexcusable. I > have here a program for my poor old 2MHz 8080-based SOL-20 that does > three-voice music, and is more powerful than many currently available music > programs for nearly all machines. .... > Now, I will grant you that the music "source" code looks like > transmission line noise to the uninitiated obsever, and that the sound > quality is not wonderful (what do you want from the INTE buss line?). But > the point is, my music program is *TEN YEARS OLD*, and still beats the > stuffing out of many other so-called "professional" music systems, feature > for feature. What's more, this ten-year-old program will run in **4K OF > MEMORY!!** > So. Am I living in the dark ages? Am I expecting too much? Should > I go beat my head against a wall? Or should I translate this program to the > Amiga myself? > FLAME_OFF > ________ ___ Leo L. Schwab > \ /___--__ The Guy in The Cape > ___ ___ /\ ---##\ ihnp4!ptsfa!well!ewhac So you've noticed it too. I don't mean music specifically, but software in general. There seems to be some kind of trend in making software certainly easier (for the novice, at least) to use, but at the same time, very much less powerful than software that's existed for many, many years. About the only exception I've seen to this is painting/animation software, and that's probably because I haven't previously owned a computer that supported much in the way of painting programs (though a few C64 owners claim that even DPAINT II is missing a few of their favorite features. Maybe), and there hasn't been much software, at least at the PC level, for animation up until recently. Let's take another area, Word Processing, for example. I've used markup style languages on a mainframe and several minis, and any one of these word processing languages (Scribe on a DEC-20, nroff on various PDP-11 and VAXen) does so much more for me than the current crop of WYSIWYG word processors. I used Scribe for several large papers, way back from '79 through '83 (college). It would structure my document at various levels automatically; create table of contents and indexes, automatically; various types of nested lists, automatically; footnotes at the bottom of a page, automatically; handle imbedded greek or mathematical symbols, fully justified; provide automatic generation of bibliographies, in various standard formats, coupled to the footnotes, automatically; etc. And it supported multiple fonts and even imbedded graphics if your printer did. Most of the word processing programs I've used recently give you WYSIWYG fonts and (in a few cases) imbedded graphics. But no automatic generation of contents, headings, indexes, or bibliographies. No automatic structured lists. No document structure, or multiple-file tree structured documents. All the tabbing that you've got to play around with to replace the good features of the markup language is usually hand set, and absolute to a character position on the page. And the list goes on and on. Maybe I've been using the wrong software, but it sure seems like today's could learn alot from some of yesterday's. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh "The A2000 Guy" BIX : hazy "These are the days of miracle and wonder" -P. Simon