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From: frg@jfcl.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Looking for Word Processor (Word Perfect not quite there)
Message-ID: <406@jfcl.dec.com>
Date: 11 Nov 88 18:19:04 GMT
Reply-To: frg@jfcl.UUCP (Fred R. Goldstein)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 51

I am looking for a good word processing program for the ST.  It
must be reasonably easy for a non-technical person to use it, and
it has to support the usual features:
	Text attributes (underscore, italics, bold)
	Footnotes 
	Automatic pagination with manual hard-page override
	Adjustable page numbering (for long documents)
	Mixed single and double spacing within documents
	Support for Draft and NLQ modes of printing
	WYSIWYG or at least no Runoff-style coding

I don't know whether or not 1ST_Word Plus does it all:  THe 1ST_WORD
V1.06 that came with my 1040STf two years ago had lots of bugs, didn't
know from footnotes, and screwed up double spacing (but at least had
it, unlike 1.03).

Now I found one program which SEEMED to have it all.  Word Perfect For
the Atari ST, V4.1.  This is a very impressive package, with LOTS of
slick features.  Sadly, the implementation is not up to the quality
of WordPerfect's PC products.

The nastiest part of WP-Atari is that it has an undocument file size
limit in the 60k range.  If the file gets much longer, it might not
save, and it pretends to, so it loses your work!  They're working on
it, maybe, but recommend only doing small files.  Great.  It once
even deleted my original pre-session file:  If it weren't for DLII,
we'd have been serious goners (doing a thesis-class paper).  THANKS,
SIMON, FOR SAVING OUR LIVES!  (Simon Poole is the Peter Norton of
the ST world, and for free no less!)

Besides that, the overall implementation on the Atari is sloppy.
It occasionally goes nuts and gets stuck in a 1%-speed mode with
block stuck on; if you can save/exit you're okay after restarting.
The printer table for the April 15 version (which they mailed me
in Sept. from the factory) is wrong for the Panasonic 1080i, and
fixed in the 8/1 edition which they sent me last week, but the
font table which was good is now wrong, and I failed trying to make a
working printer file using elements of each... Weird.)  And the
spell check did a nasty 10-bomb on me once, using the new (8/1)
version.  The tech support guys asked me to figure out the pattern
of why it happens.  Great.

I suppose the AtariST market is too small for WordPerfect Corp.
to devote the effort to needed to support it right.  So I'm
thinking of trying yet another word proc. program.  They do at least
answer the phone (if you wait long enough); they just don't seem to
understand the ST well enough to make it play.  Sad -- we're so close
yet so far away.  Any suggestions?
--
These views are strictly the author's, and don't represent those of
DEC, NaC, CIA, FBI, KGB, AT&T, MCI, SOS, CBS, JFK or anyone else.