Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: World's best word processor
Message-ID: <8686@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 12 Jun 89 15:47:57 GMT
References: <25325@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 40

In article <25325@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> marquis@qal.qal.berkeley.edu (Roger Marquis) writes:

>The default answer to the "Exit WP?" prompt is also a non-intuitive
>"N". Is there any logic behind this?

About 90% of the people in our office use their PC's almost exclusively
for word processing and rarely exit from WP.  Thus the default "N" is
the most likely choice for them.  I don't like it either, but it does
reflect some thought about the target market.

Now to mention some things that really bother me about WP:

(a) Tabs and left/center allignments are different things - it decides
    which to insert when you press the tab key depending on the setting
    that is coming up next.  You can't just change the tab setup to
    go from left alligned tabs to centered, decimal or right alligned.

(b) If you delete an allignment field from a tab setting, WP will delete
    all the allignment codes from the text below, scrunching all the
    text together.

(c) Like most embedded code formatters it doesn't know anything about
    the "parts" of a document.  With MS WORD, there are certain types
    of formatting that apply to particular parts of the text, and if
    you set one, it automatically knows enough to delete any other
    instances that might conflict.  Thus you can apply a style to a
    paragraph or group of paragraphs and any paragraph styles that were
    previously set are deleted.  WP makes you search the document to
    delete any codes that had been previously inserted.  This does give
    you more control, but is generally a pain.

(d) With WORD it is trivial to import a table from a lotus worksheet and
    print it in neat columns separated by vertical lines and surrounded
    by a box (if you happen to like the way WORD thinks it should look).
    With WP it is much more difficult because you have to do everything
    yourself (create .PRN file, read it, convert spaces to tabs, draw
    and position the box and lines with the graphics commands), but again
    you do have more control.

Les Mikesell