info-atari@ucbvax.UUCP (12/14/85)
Thanks to all who contributed information. A compendium of the full text of responses is available on request. Attached is a brief summary of the recommendations. My apologies to those uninterested in the info. SpeedScript 3.0 Public Domain (free) package that is better than most commercial (expensive) ones. Distributed free with... OMNIVIEW 80-column software modification by David Young. Letter Perfect - LKJ Enterprises, St. Louis. A+ ratings except that it takes some effort to learn and uses a nonstandard DOS format on the disk, "a disadvantage" as Consumer Reports would say. Translation program, LP DOS to Atari DOS, available from vendor. Action! Contains a very nice built-in editor and is itself a useful high-level language. Paper Clip By Batteries Included. Has two-window capability. Mentioned favorably by several both on and off this net. Bit-3 Hardware 80-col mod for Atari (someone confirm?) Does this give prettier results than the software ones? Atariwriter Atari's own WP. OK but "very limited" e.g. 3-page limit. Bank Street Writer - Broderbund Software, Inc. Good for beginners (easy to learn) but cumbersome to use for heavy editing because of menu format. Well-written manual, capabilities for manually chaining files to page-number large documents etc. Austin-Franklin 80-col conversion source mentioned by David Young; no further information. Letter Wizard Easy to use WP system, 40 col only, 3 pages maximum length! Homeword Super-Text - aconversion of very good Apple system which didn't retain all the good stuff from Apple implementation. Wordman Merely mentioned by David Young. MEDIT + FORMS Atari program editor and formatter. David Young says he has used this as a Word Processor (powerful but slow). I am beginning to conclude that one can indeed do serious word processing with an Atari 800XL. SpeedScript, Paper Clip and Letter Perfect all seem to be good choices, with various pros and cons. 80-column display capability seems likely to be useful to check formatting, but one might want to operate in 40-column mode (would you believe 38?) for ease of reading. Thanks again for all the help. -John Sangster, jhs at mitre-bedford