Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!inria!mirsa!colas
From: colas@mirsa.inria.fr (Colas NAHABOO)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: To emulate or not to emulate?
Message-ID: <179@mirsa.inria.fr>
Date: 29 May 89 09:08:39 GMT
References: <18849@cup.portal.com>
Organization: Koala Project -- BULL/INRIA
Lines: 43

From article <18849@cup.portal.com>, by Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik):
> The ST
> has lots of software that matches or outdoes Mac and IBM software.
> Calamus and LDW Power take care of the desktop publishing and 
> database aspect (need I mention Superbase and DynaCadd ?)

No, I must disagree with you:
- Calamus is non-intuitive and most Mac packages are as powerful
- LDW Power is a slow emulation of an outdated version of lotus 1-2-3
  (far from excel power...)
- I worked with superbase: Its langage is bugged to the max, and its user
  interface is cumbersome, less efficient than the "appleworks" integrated
  software I was using on my apple II

In fact, most of the flaws of the St software (I am not speaking of games,
with dungeon master and populous being pure jewels) stems from OS flaws,
namely:

- awkward event handling (I used easy-draw for all the drawings in my thesis,
  but the handling of mouse clicks is slow and imprecise due to GEM)

- no text manager. Either for input (no way to cut-paste & edit text
  resources) or for output (bad/no support for fonts...)

The advantages of the ST lies in fact in these deficiencies, in that they
motivated truly outstanding PD utilities or ports of Unix software to it.
(Uniterm, UW, gulam, Tex & LaTex, emacs clones...)

For instance, to do my overhead slides, I just go on a Mac, but to generate
postscript drawings for my thesis I used my ST because I had the source of
the PD gem->ps "mfps" converter and could more easily transfer files from/to
unix with the ST. And we were able to make our lab not to by any more
terminals, but only STs, with the existence of such packages as Peter
Collinson's Term program, uniterm, gulam, microemacs, gulam, Tex and LaTeX...

Just my 2 cents worth...

Colas NAHABOO       BULL Research FRANCE -- Koala Project 
                    (GWM X11 Window Manager)
    Internet:       colas@mirsa.inria.fr
Surface Mail:       Colas NAHABOO, INRIA - Sophia Antipolis, 
                    2004, route des Lucioles, 06565 Valbonne Cedex -- FRANCE
 Voice phone:       (33) 93.65.77.71, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66, Telex: 97 00 50 F