sigurd%vax1%vax1%cc.delaware@udel-relay.arpa (03/10/84)
From: ANDERSEN <sigurd%vax1%vax1%cc.delaware@udel-relay.arpa> At the University of Delaware we recently evaluated many word processing programs for use by Humanities faculty, many of whom knew nothing about computers, and many of whom wanted all sorts of fancy features - footnotes, foreign language capabilities, etc. Word Perfect and MicroSoft Word were two of the top contenders. We ended up choosing Word Perfect for a number of reasons. The screen is not cluttered with commands, margins etc. Interaction is rapid. Included with the program are mail merge and simple integrated spread sheet capabilities, along with a relatively decent speller program. Twenty plus printers are supported in the standard version, and it's not too hard to add new ones, with all features supported. One of its biggest advantages is that support from Satellite Software International is superb, especially when compared to that from MicroSoft, who are almost impossible to reach. I found Word to be a bit slow, especially on a floppy-based system. Perhaps on an XT or with ramdisk that would improve. It is a new product, and as with any new product, still has some rough edges. I found its display on the color/graphics screen to be fascinating in that it showed italics and other special fonts, but found the 8x8 character matrix woefully inadequate for long-term use. It can also work with a monochrome display, but doesn't have as many fancy features. I did not work with the mouse, so can't really give you an opinion of how well that is integrated with the program, or how well it works. Microsoft's support is, in my opinion, quite poor. The documentation said that output to a laser page printer is possible, but there were no details about the internals that would probably be necessary in order to make use of that or other fancy output devices. That, also, could change in the future. One of the other top contenders was Final Word from Mark of the Unicorn, which was rejected by the Humanities members of the committee because of the two-step nature of editing, then formatting. People who had worked with a mainframe version of Scribe found its identical subset of commands quite valuable and easy to use. One negative to Final Word is that is a bit difficult at first to get used to the way it handles files and backing them up for you (done automatically every so often). It's hard to lose text accidentally, but it's also hard to get rid of all copies of unwanted text until you figure out how to do that. We looked at Volkswriter Deluxe. I found it to have too many non-obvious control key sequences for my taste. It is fairly powerful, but not as strong as those mentioned above. Multimate did not have some of the features that the Humanities people considered necessary. Otherwise, it would have been a contender in our evaluation. Sigurd Andersen Academic Computing Svcs. University of Delaware
peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (03/16/84)
Evaluating Microsoft Word without the mouse is missing the point of the product somewhat. It is very much a mouse-based editor. I bought my copy last November (Version 1.0). I've been hearing about a new version and have seen ads for new mouse software (which supports Multiplan and other products) so I phoned Microsoft in Seattle for details. They were very helpful, indicating that a new version will be available in about two weeks (i.e. beginning of April). It will also allow one to create new printer descriptions, by editing simple text files and running them through a conversion program. In summary, I'd recommend the product, but it will be quite a bit nicer when they have the standard "advanced" features, such as a spelling checker, table of contents and index generators, and numbering of sections. Better documentation would be nice and a graphics inclusion ability would be great (a la MacPaint/MacWrite). p. rowley, U. Toronto