martin@gatech.UUCP (08/09/83)
This review applies to Easywriter II, by Basic Software Corp, of Vancouver.
I bought my PC about 2 weeks ago, for the express purpose of using it for
editing technical papers and the like. Upon unpacking this marvel, I set about
learning to use Easywriter. I have used it now for 2 weeks, about 3 hours
a day on average. For the record, I have probably used 20 different text
editors in my time, although I have not used a word processor before.
The basic mode of operation of ew (Easywriter) is that you enter text, and it
is automatically justified, etc, according to the settings at the place you
enter the text. To change the settings for margins, you edit a thing called
a ruler. The ruler lets you set the left margin, the tabs, and the right margin.
The right margin can be set to `ragged' (as made famous by CACM), justified,
or no-fill.
Once you set a ruler, it applies until you set another ruler.
Miscellaneous points include: the package does do spooling if you have 96K
of memory (I have).
Easywriter is 'page oriented'. This means that as you enter text, it will
ring your bell when the current page is full. You can then move on to the
next page, or you can just let the page overflow, then paginate it later.
If you paginate later, you can set the 'adjust' parameter, and all text will
be adjusted according to the rulers. Otherwise, it will not necessarily be
adjusted. You can adjust periodically (say, after inserting a few words, each
of which will be given a full line in the current sentence), by using an
adjust paragraph button. I use this a lot.
There is notion of the 'mode' you are in. Possible modes are page, paragraph,
character, word, block, and sentence. Things like `next', insert, underline,
and so on work with respect to the mode you are in. You must hit function
keys to change modes.
Enough preliminaries. Now for the review.
Easywriter is a pain to use. It works, sort of, but there are so many
amateurish characteristics, it drives you nuts. Not to mention the number of
keystrokes to do some things. Consider the following pet peeves:
* in word mode, a word seems to be from here to the next blank or end of line.
So if I want to underline the word comma, right back there in the sentence,
I put the cursor on the 'c', then hit 'alt underline', which underlines the
word comma and the ','. Now, I have to hit backspace and 'alt n' to set the
last character (the ',') back to normal. This is just as bad with delete
and so on.
* centered has an immediate effect, but it does not survive pagination. That
is, centered is not an attribute of a line. So if you want your centering
to stay centered, you center your line, put a no-fill ruler on that line, then put another ruler on the next line to return to whatever you were using.
* You cannot do a 'return to previous ruler', nor can you do temporary indents.
The number of keystrokes gets very high.
* You cannot do a 'need x', to mean that you need x lines on a single page.
* once when I opened a new document and closed it without putting any text
on it, the program blew.
* When you do a delete in block mode, you first position the first character
you want deleted, put the thing in block mode, and hit 'delete'. It asks
you to move to the last character you want deleted, then hit 'block' again.
So far so good. You hit block. Now it carefully, so you wont screw yourself,
asks you if you really want to delete that stuff. Hit return if you do.
It sure would help if they would show you what you are about to delete. Like
an underline or reverse video... ("are you sure that you want to do that thing
that you are not quite sure what it is...?)
* So you deleted the wrong stuff. Can you recover? Well, you can, but only
if you set the whole page (whatever logical unit that is) back to the way
it was when you started editing it. That is, when you last moved to this
page. You must undo all or nothing. This one's a real gotcha.
I could go on. Overall, its not too bad until you start changing your text.
Then it seems as though the authors had some good ideas, but they had never
actually used these features, and they didn't get beta testing from anyone
who had. I have spent some time (under 20 hours) using a Xerox Star, and
while this is many times faster, it is nowhere so easy to use. Many of the
operational paradigms are the same though.
Its nicer than vi or some of the edit-then-format systems I have used.
I have not used any other PC editors. The mere description of Wordstar put
me off that, so I got this. I would be interested in hearing other people's
experiences with other word processors. I would buy another one if I thought
it would be markedly better. But I suspect that this particular industry is
still in its infancy, and maybe it would be better to wait until someone
comes out with a wordprocessor that is well-tested, designed with the human
interface in mind, and makes good use of the 320K of memory I have.
Martin McKendry
at Georgia Tech. You can get the address from one of those verbose
people we have here.
--
Martin McKendry
CSNet: Martin @ GATech
Internet: Martin.GATech @ UDel-Relay
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