Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!chow
From: chow@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: FullWrite
Message-ID: <3478@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 88 17:29:25 GMT
References: <4146@pucc.Princeton.EDU> <1408@uhccux.UUCP> <2626@fluke.COM> <7899@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> <2666@fluke.COM> <943@usfvax2.UUCP> <679@elxsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 53


What are the differences between the gamma version of FullWrite and the
MacWorld demo version?  I've been playing with the demo version for about
three days now, and although it looks really nice, there are a few problems:

1.  Speed...somehow the program feels sluggish.  Going from page 1 to page 5
	of a 10-page document formated with multiple columns brings up a
	little box that says "Updating document", and I don't get to page 5
	for another few seconds.  Note that this is on a Mac II with 2Meg
	and an XP60 with or without Multifinder (also w/ 256K disk cach).  I
	shudder to think about how long it would take on a stock Mac Plus.
	Scrolling also seems slow compared to Word 3.01...switching screen
	depth from 8-bit to 1-bit does not speed up scrolling noticiably.

2.  Stability.  So far I managed to crash the demo version a few times, and 
	I noticed one bug.  The crashes might not have been FullWrite's 
	fault, one of them appears to be connected with the SF Scroll
	INIT.  The other crash occured when I closed Appointment Diary when
	I was running under Multifinder.  I've had other instances of 
	Appointment Diary crashing things, so its probably not Fullwrite's
	fault in this instance.

3.  Bugs  The bug I observed involved conversion of a MS-Word 3.01 document.
	To convert the 3.01 document, I saved it as a MS-Word 1.05 format
	file.  This particular paper wasn't too long nor too complicated
	(the 3.01 file's formating involved a few footnotes and 2-column
	layout).  What had happened was that the converted document appeared
	in Fullwrite with only 1 column.  On the second page, I decided to
	start a new chapter, and put that chapter in multiple columns.
	Well, it didn't work, going from 1->2 columns resulted in the text
	running off the right right margin.  Selected more columns resulted
	in more and more text spilling off the right margin!

	Another instance of strange behavior occured when I tried cutting
	text of the previously mentioned MS-Word 3.01 document and then
	pasting the result into FullWrite.  The resulting text in FullWrite
	littered with  strange characters ( i.e., square boxes for no such
	character in this font) throughout the text, appearing often in the 
	middle of a word (e.g. vers[]ion, where [] is a box).

All I can say at this point is that although the demo version looks pretty
nice, I sure hope the gamma and final version of FullWrite is a bit more
polished than this.  Comments from people who actually have the gamma is
appreciated.

Christopher Chow
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