Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!NADC.ARPA!cdj
From: cdj@NADC.ARPA (C. Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: A warm and fuzzy ATARI story...
Message-ID: <8803281727.AA16898@NADC.ARPA>
Date: 28 Mar 88 17:27:55 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 45

For those who desparately seek a GOOD report about ATARI:

I, too received the documentation from ATARI (I'm a registered, although
not currently active, ATARI developer).  The package included SALAD, as
someone (I'm sorry, I didn't catch the name...) mentioned, describing
the Line-A calls, and including EXAMPLES.  The previous Line-A docs were
evidently written by someone who had been out smoking bananas (all lower
case, no punctuation...).  SALAD was evidently produced on a laser 
printer and looked so professional, it brought a tear to my eye.

Also included were what seemed to be the Figures for my GEM
documentation (!), which were missing from day one.  These, too
were printed on a laser printer.

The Mega specs look very interesting, but unfortunately I don't 
even know who my nearest Mega dealer is (my regular ST dealer didn't
make it, sigh.)

Lastly, the new newsletter for developers (I believe it was called
ATARI Forum) was generated on the ATARI laser printer from I believe
it said EasyDraw (I didn't see MS Word mentioned, but I might have 
missed it.  I did see EasyDraw mentioned...).  All of this stuff
looked very professional.

This offering by ATARI reveals a glimmer of professional support for
their developers.  That word, 'professional' keeps popping up,
but if you'd witnessed some of the docs in the developer's kit, 
you too would notice a large improvement.

I publicly thank those at ATARI who put time and effort into these 
documents, and hope that this is an indication of other things
to come.   If the quality shown in these documents could be applied
to all of ATARI's offerings (including hardware, software, docs, and
support) then I believe that good things will happen for the ST and
all of ATARI's products.

*** A slight pause as I get off my soapbox ***

Christopher D. Johnson
Penn State University/
Naval Air Development Center

cdj@nadc.arpa <== Active from now until end of May

cdj@psuecl.bitnet <== Active from June until tuition money runs out ;-)