Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!rutgers!gatech!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!agate!saturn!ucscb.UCSC.EDU!lupin3
From: lupin3@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (-=/ Larry Hastings /=-)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Borland's Sprint
Summary: general review, from one who was a beta tester
Keywords: cheap, powerful, way cool
Message-ID: <4280@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 27 Jul 88 06:55:30 GMT
References: <3580@sfsup.UUCP> <11640@steinmetz.ge.com>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: lupin3@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (-=/ Larry Hastings /=-)
Organization: MetaWare, Incorporated
Lines: 73

+-In article <11640@steinmetz.ge.com>,
|	davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) wrote:-
+----------
|   If [Sprint]'s the one which was MINCE/Scribble and then called Final Word,
| it's a goodie. I heard that Borland bought the rights. Is it using
| script (ie millions of things like @begin(big))? If so that's the one.
+----------
| 	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
+----------
	Yep, that's the one.  I was a Sprint beta-tester, and was (before that)
a Final Word user.  I have always been very impressed by Final Word, and now
that it's become a whole new product AGAIN it's even better.  Very robust
(Final Word II proclaimed itself to be "the world's first uncrashable software")
and very MS-DOS compatible (Final Word would run on anything that ran DOS--
used only BIOS calls).  It's a speed demon, and works really really well with
PostScript printers.  Its only shortcoming is that it has 3 different languages:
the formatting language ( @Begin(Numbered)/@End(Numbered), @B(Bold text), etc.
goes on and on), the macro language (which is both infix and postfix, depending
(apparently) on what the programmer felt like it should be), and the screen/
printer driver customiziation language (which 99% of everyone who uses Sprint
will luckily never have to use, owing to the plethora of pre-defined printer
and screen drivers it comes with).  But (like anything else) you get adept at
the formatter language quickly, and you probably won't start writing macros
until you're done learning the formatter anyways.
	A few caveats--
		Final Word users:  Sprint _isn't_ really all _that_ compatible
			with Final Word.  But, you can get the conversion macro
			suite (written by yours truly) which should turn out
			nice neat 100% Sprint-compatible documents.  This should
			be available now somewhere in the Borland area on
			CompuServe (I dunno; I don't use it; Borland is putting
			it there).
		PC-MOS users:  I discovered that Final Word didn't work with
			PC-MOS a while ago, and The Software Link basically
			looked at the problem (I sent them the exact details
			of the problem) and decided that Final Word users didn't
			make enough of a constituency to warrant making a patch
			to PC-MOS.  The problem (actually a feature) of Final
			Word was inherited by Sprint; so perhaps they will see
			fit to patch PC-MOS after all.  (Mail me for more
			detailed information; if there's enough interest I'll
			post.)
		PC-NFS users:  I recently discovered (to my continued pain
			and suffering) that you can't print directly to PRN
			and have PC-NFS correctly redirect it to a remote
			printer attached to one of your servers.  For some
			reason, PC-NFS loses the first chunk of the text
			(always a multiple of 256 bytes).  I am talking to
			Sun tech. support about this, and we are trying to
			figure out some fix (I already have a work-around;
			formatting, directing the output to a file, and then
			printing the file works; I now have a pretty hacked-up
			workaround batch file).  But until then, it's gonna be
			painful.

	Other than those few warnings, I would not hesitate in recommending
Sprint to pretty much anyone.  Sure, it isn't as pretty as Word or WordPerfect,
but it's real cheap and REAL powerful and REALLY REALLY configurable.  (In
fact, a friend in Borland tech. support and I are trading macros back and forth,
and will eventually collaborate in the ULTIMATE user interface... stay tuned!)
	Enjoy,

--
 /|\ /|\   .. .  .   .    .     .      .       .        .         .          . 
| |\| |\|  .. .  .   .    .     .      .       .        .         .          .
|/|\|/|\|/||   _  _ _   _ |_| _  _ |_ -__  _  _ARPA: lupin3@ucscb.ucsc.EDU      
  | |/| |/|L_ (_\( ( (_/  | |(_\_) (_ || )(_)_)UUCP: *!ucbvax!ucscc!ucscb!lupin3
   \|/ \|/ larry      /   hastings        _/   BITNET: lupin3@ucscb@ucscc.BITNET
MetaWare Inc.  Durable Software, Constructed Automatically     "Not much fun in
Disclaimer:[MetaWare, UCSC]->opinion != lhastings->opinion      Stalingrad, no."

P.S. look in the Advanced User's Guide, in the Index, under Files... I reported
	that typo plenty early, and yet they didn't include it in the manual
	corrections listing on-line.