Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uwmcsd1!lakesys!mikes
From: mikes@lakesys.UUCP (Mike Shawaluk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Word Processors
Message-ID: <557@lakesys.UUCP>
Date: 17 Apr 89 18:28:09 GMT
References: <8904162118.AA00937@terra.oscs.montana.edu> <1142@apss.apss.ab.ca>
Reply-To: mikes@lakesys.UUCP (Mike Shawaluk)
Organization: Lake Systems - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Lines: 45

In article <1142@apss.apss.ab.ca> nmm@apss.ab.ca (Neil McCulloch) writes:
>In article <8904162118.AA00937@terra.oscs.montana.edu>, iphwk@TERRA.OSCS.MONTANA.EDU (Bill Kinnersley) writes:
>> [In "Word Processors", Mic Mac said:]
>> Alan, could you explain further what you mean when you say that
>> WordPerfect is not Amigaized?  
>
>It really isn't. Just take a look at their file requester. Want to change
>a directory? Want to retrieve a file? ugh!

At the risk of starting another "let's flame WordPerfect to a crisp" party, I
think the point about Amiga WordPerfect not being "Amigatized" is a relative
thing.  To the best of my knowledge, the Amiga was the first "port" of WP to
an environment other than the PC (with the exception of maybe the VAX
version, and the fact that WP originally was ported FROM a Data General
system TO the PC 'way back in the dark ages).  From one who first learned WP
on a PC at work (and who still uses it more on that platform than he does at
home on his Amiga), it is pretty obvious (at least to me) that WordPerfect
Corp. *intentionally* didn't fully 'Amigatize' the program, as they wanted to
maintain as much commonality between the Amiga version and the IBM version.
To that point, it is virtually keystroke compatible with the PC version, if
you choose to do things via the keyboard (i.e., F7, N, Y will get you out
of either program without saving your work).  Now, I'm not saying that I am
personally in favor of this underlying "goal" of the Amiga version, but I
guess I defend WP's right to this decision, as they are still (to the best of
my knowledge) the only major word processing program on a reasonably wide
range of platforms, and the ONLY one who includes the Amiga!  They obviously
feel that one salable feature of a program is that versions which run on
different platforms should be similar enough in operation to be able to be
used by people who are fluent on more than one kind of computer, and one way
to do that is to make them key-compatible and menu-compatible, which they
have done to date (at least on the Amiga and PC, which are the only two
flavors I've personally used).  Unfortunately, this makes the pull-down menu
equivalents a bit non-standard, as compared to the "standard" Amiga program
(the ones that have "Open", "Save", "Save As...", etc.).  It will be
interesting to see what Amiga WP 6.0 looks like, as it is my bet that it will
NOT look much like any of the versions of WP that we've seen to date, but
will probably have a definite OS/2 PM or MS-Windows-type interface (which is
close enough to the Amiga to keep me happy...)



-- 
   - Mike Shawaluk 
       (mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com  OR  ...!uunet!marque!lakesys!mikes)
    "Where were you on the night of August 12?"