Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!xanth!mcnc!rti!sas!cole
From: cole@sas.UUCP (Tom Cole)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: WingZ
Keywords: spreadsheet, presentation manager, hypertext, slow
Message-ID: <1011@sas.UUCP>
Date: 27 Apr 89 13:33:41 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.,Cary NC,25712
Lines: 89

> Recently I received my long-awaited copy of the 'test flight' of WingZ.
> WingZ is a product of Informix. It is a spreadsheet, enhanced with
> a HyperTalk like programming language and nice graphics. Because of
> the capabilities to visualize information in a spectacular way, it is
> also called a 'presentation spreadsheet'. 
> 

I purchased a copy of WingZ about a month ago myself, and have been
very happy with it.  See below.

> In their ads they stressed things like impressive graphics, high speed
>  calculations etc. Well, the demo contained a 3D graph, a grid in the 
> shape of a hat (well, it actually looked like something else, but I
> do not want to be called sexist). Anyhow, it took about 2 minutes to
> generate the 3D 'hat'. Speedy graphics??? 
> 

I am running on a Mac II with 5mb of memory, and no drawing takes more
than about 20 seconds.  I am running it in a multifinder partition of
1500k.  It may be that you are affected by memory shortages or cpu
speed.  What is your configuration?

It should also be noted that WingZ comes wtith two versions, one compiled
for 68000-based machines like Plus and SE, and one optimized for 68020
and floating coprocessor.  I have tried the 68000-based version and it
was *significantly* slower, for lots of obvious reasons.

> When it was finally finished, I wanted to see the result on paper, so
> I chose 'page setup' to see what was inthere. They support 2 resolutions,
> 72 dpi and 144 dpi (on an imagewriter,that is... if you choose 144 dpi
> the picture will be enlarged and printed spread out over 8 pages...).
> I chose 72dpi and clicked 'OK'.
> THE STUPID THING STARTED REDRAWING THE GRAPH!!!!

Well, I have to agree here that WingZ is a bit zealous in redrawing things,
which can be especially annoying on a scroll.  I am willing to wait for
redrawing after the end of a scroll, it looks like they update the window
during the clickloop, or whatever happens when a scroll occurs.

> (Would it be a stupid idea to BitCopy the area where the dialogue box
> will apear into an array, then display the dialogue box, remove it when
> done and BitCopy the array back to the window? Would have saved me
> another 2 minutes)
> 
> The calculation speed wasn't very impressive either. Must be the way
> they index cells... sparse matrices... revolutionary... yeah, but
> slow! 
> 


Well, see above comments about sepeed.  I have had absolutely no complaint
about recalculation time, and I have built some moderately sized spreadsheets.

> I have to sign off now, the pizza's I ordered just arrived :-))
> But I would like to hear from other Mac users about their experiences
> with WingZ. Is there anybody outthere who does have a copy of it 
> and who would like to share experiences with me and others who
> are interested??
> 
> M. Waucomont
> 

As an addendum, I bought WingZ instead of Excell for the graphs and the
scripting language.  A review (I can't remember where) described the
WingZ scripting language as "similar to Pascal".  It is much more like
Hypercarde's HyperTalk than anything else, and seems pretty powerful.
It compiles into pseudo code, and is fairly nimble.  It needs (some)
debugging tools.

I hope that in the future, graphics becomes more programmable, allowing
us to create custom graphics from spreadsheet data.  Currently, one
can choose from a palette of about 20 pre-defined graph types.  Then,
one uses drawing, dragging, and clicking to annotate or enhance the
actual representation of the data.  Powerful enough for most needs,
I suppose.  I just like the feeling of lots of unused power under the
hood :-).

In summary, I like it.  It may be true that it needs a 68020/68030 and
an FPU to make it really shine, I have little experience in a 68000
world with it.  However, it was a good value, does the job, and was
reasonably priced through MacConnection.

Disclaimer:  I am nothing more than a satisfied user of WingZ and
             MacConnection customer.  These are my opinions, and
             may not even be worth what you paid for them....

Tom Cole
SAS Institute
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