Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!eos!labrea!agate!ucbvax!POLYA.STANFORD.EDU!LIPA
From: LIPA@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU (William J. Lipa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Claris MacWrite 5.0
Message-ID: <576911329.0.LIPA@Polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 13 Apr 88 04:08:49 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 38

I have been using the new MacWrite ever since I got the upgrade last week,
and I have to say that there are many frustrating things about it compared
to Apple's MacWrite 4.6.

Although the spell checker provides much-needed power, it is poorly
integrated into MacWrite as a whole. When you check your document, a truly
amazing display of windows resizing, text selecting, and things opening
and closing unfolds before you. While not inconvenient in itself, the
changing display is annoying and an indication of a poorly designed product.
Additionally, the spell checking window is a modal dialog even though it
appears to be a modeless dialog. The modality is frustrating, especially
since windows with similar functions (ie the find window) are modeless.

MacWrite still can die with a system error when you move the insertion
point with the left and right arrows and then select undo.

Many of the keyboard equivalents have been changed, especially in the Style
menu. This again is a violation of the User Interface Guidelines. I find it
annoying to not have a keyboard equivalent for superscript and subscript as
I used to.

The program puts up a dialog with your name and organization at the start.
I don't mind this in itself; what really gets me is that there seems to be
a DELAY so that you can read this window. I don't need extra delays in my
life; Claris shouldn't give them to me. Why don't they just put up the
licence window while they do the initialization? Initialization certainly
takes long enough.

MacWrite is more than twice as large even without the dictionary files. I
can't believe the code for the spell checker is 100K, and I can't see any
other major enhancements.

Still has the left margin of one inch, etc., etc...

Oh well, I still like it better than Word, but not much.

Bill Lipa
lipa%polya@forsythe.stanford.edu
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