Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: WordPerfect dumps Amiga Message-ID: <6751@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 3 May 89 17:31:21 GMT References: <7987@killer.Dallas.TX.US> Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 55 in article <7987@killer.Dallas.TX.US>, elg@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Eric Green) says: > DO you see ANY software company daring to trod where WordPerfect feared to > go? I'm not sure just where WordPerfect did go. Certainly when it came out for the Amiga, about the only other games in town were Scribble 1.0, TextCraft, and possibly ProWrite 1.0. WordPerfect did really well, even though the program wasn't much better than the PC version. Of course, the PC version did very well, I've heard 40%-60% of the PC market or some outrageous figure, so I understand why WordPerfect arrived as it did. I have it myself. And it can, given enough effort on the part of the user, do most anything a mid-level wordprocessor might be expected to do. But most of those things are very tuff to get working. I myself spent the better part of a day, once, trying to get the footnotes on a document to come out properly in a slightly smaller font on a HP laserjet. No dice. No WYSIWYG. But for awhile, they were the ONLY acceptible alternative, since they could do pretty much what I wanted. Nowaday there are alternatives, and many of them fit better in the Amiga environment. Sure, graphic wordprocessors like Excellence and ProWrite 2.0 are somewhat slow, but WordPerfect was no speed demon itself. Both of these graphic wordprocessors now know how to use the printer's own font, ala WordPerfect, if that's what you want. And as of 1.3, if you instead want bitmapped fonts, the printer drivers work acceptably now with that, and give you integrated graphics as well. There are several new wordprocessors in the same vein I haven't played with yet, and if you go to Europe, you'll find about 5 you haven't likely seen yet in the German market. Also, all the top DTP packages nowadays have build-in wordprocessors. > Sounds like it's about time for me to buy TeX, eh? That may be the exact thing to do. I personally don't see that much room in the Amiga market for something like WordPerfect. I can find wordprocessors that are easier to use and true WYSIWYG, or go to Tek for a real document formatting language. The stuff I struggled to get WordPerfect to do I did 10 years ago in Scribe (another formatting language) without a hitch. I could do much of that in any real WYSIWYG wordprocessor for the Amiga. Don't take this as a blasting of WordPerfect; it's probably the best of that breed of wordprocessor, it's got an excellent manual, and it's backed by a good company. The Tek system for the Amiga is probably the best Tek for any machine, and you can do absolutely anything with it. It's designed for dealing with very large documents. It's not DTP, but it'll let you format equations and tables much easier than any DTP or wordprocessor I've ever come across. We'll probably be getting some in here real soon now. > | // Eric Lee Green P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509 | > | // ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg (318)989-9849 | > | // Join the Church of HAL, in worship of all computers with | > |\X/ three-character names (e.g. IBM and DEC). White lab coats optional. | -- Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession