raday@thunder.UUCP (raday) (05/14/86)
MacAuthor: A product and company review by Alan Day May 13,1986 Firstly, an apology for the first upload. It was indeed my first! I think that I've straightened out my format problem so I'll try again. As a mathematician, I am extremely interested in a good WYSIWYG word processor that can handle subscripts, sub-subscripts, formulae, etc. with some ease. Roughly a year ago I heard about MacAuthor by Icon Technology Ltd. and thought that it might do the job. I sent for information, both by mail and by a personal friend who was in England that summer, and true to their letter of 21 Aug 85, I received a 1.03 b-test version along with a packet of documentation in September. After remitting $316.00Can for the privilege. Great!! My unbounded joy ended upon attempting to use this product. The standard Cut/Copy/Paste was not implemented. The program could not open or save work as TEXT files. In fact the list of "not yet implemented" features included Edit Album, Insert Title, Insert Date, Insert Page #, Open Album, Make a frame, and Align to Grid. The"Dear b-tester" letter ended with the following: *************************************************************************** Warning Don't forget that this is still a pre-release version and although we have made some effort to remove bugs there will still be problems that we would like to hear from you about. Don't yet rely on MacAuthor for serious work. *************************************************************************** Now the reader of this might ask what was l to do with this b-test? I cer- tainly asked myself that question. My answer was to use it for correspond- ence since I definitely did not want a 25 page research paper to vanish into thin air. I then diligently prepared a non-graphic letterhead Stationary Pad with the letterhead extending 7 1/2 inches across the page (with 1/2" margins). I had to write Icon anyway to tell them that their Read Me file had not printed properly. I had never seen a System Bomb ID = -1028 before and had no idea how I had caused it at first. With a bit of experimenting, I found out that it was caused by horizontal scrolling out of the view window. My paragraphs you see had 1" margins so when the text had to scroll off the page, MacAuthor lit the fuse. Oh well, a minor inconvenience, I'll just try to forget about word wrap and save very often. Then if I forget to manually scroll the page, I'll only lose a sentence or two. Hah! The Bomb forces you to quit the program and your previously saved file becomes completely unopenable (unless you want to see more bombs whose numbers at this time escape me). Since I am a computer neophyte and had never done b-testing before I was rather unhappy with what my money had bought. I studiously watched the word wrap and eventually produced a letter to Icon that ended with: "I trust that my contribution to your working capital will help keep you afloat until the full product is available. The possibilities of more investment from my University and the users' group here have faded until a workable b-test or final product becomes available." I did mention in this letter of 30 Sep 85, that their product had some potential - the 7 levels of sub- and superscripts as well as the overstrike capability worked fine. The ability to set up your own Style options with command key equivalents also seemed nice until I asked for Symbol, Bold, and Underline together. I had set up a command key for each of the above and wanted them all to- gether. It seems that these were not toggles though since I could get only one of these at a time. To get all three, I would have to set up a new menu bar entry. Thus for the 8 toggles in the MacWrite Style menu, I would need 2power8 = 256(!) entries in my menu bar in order to capture all possibilities. Scrollable menus do not exist on a 512 Mac. Actually the above was the suggestion (2power3 entries) from Icon when they replied on 7 Oct 85. I quote two paragraphs: Our approach to b-testing has been a little unusual in that we have been more concerned with the users reaction to the concepts of MacAuthor - which caused us to introduce multi-level superscripts, word count and a redesigned style editor. As a result we have concentrated on the features side and left bug removal until all these were in place. ...... Thanks again for your letter. Please feel free to ask for the return of your $316.00Can, although you may like to defer judge- ment until you see Version 1.04. I deferred, and received in due course Version 1.04. The great change was that now one could paste (not open) TEXT files into a MacAuthor document. Okay, I can still play with it, bring in an old research paper as TEXT, and reformat it with all the standard mathematical paraphenalia. After pasting, I started searching for my old subscripted i's and j's to change them back. As the search started to scroll vertically off the page I received my first System Bomb ID = 39 (or was the first one 49?). Again I was forced to quit and again my document went into limbo. But you ask what about all the other features added to 1.04 that were not in 1.03? The answer is 0.00! At the new year, an article appeared in MACazine extolling the virtues of this great new word processing program. It lauded the frames for graphics, the 698 page documents, and other wondrous things that I had not seen. Since the great Version 1.04 that I had received contained none of these goodies, and since Icon had had my money since September 1985, I was not amused. On 23 Jan 86, I wrote a letter to Icon suggesting that they should provide me with a working copy of MacAuthor, a copy that obviously this reviewer possessed. Furthermore, I suggested that, if I did not receive same soon, I would do my damnest to expose their misrepresentation of the product. Now that indeed produced a response! I quote from their letter of 9 Feb 86: The version of MacAuthor used by Jim Mangles for his article was the same version that you have received although he did look at the test software that was written for the Album. We too thought the article was a bit over the top - I have written to all those who have enquired about MacAuthor as a result of it with a copy of a paper written by Keith and myself which sets out just what the product can do. ..... ..... I was surprised to learn that you had paid us over five months ago and have written to our bank for a Canadian dollar cheque to refund you, as clearly you are not happy with the deal you got. We will however continue to support you, as we value your comments. Re my money: I was also surprised since he mentioned the $316.00Can in his 7 Oct 85 letter. I have as of 13 May 86 not received any such cheque. Re MacAuthor: The aforementioned enclosed paper (produced with Version 1.05 by the diagram on page 6) states that the program will become available "During the second half of February (1986!)". If "support" is supposed to mean "get", I have not yet received it either. I am sending this diatribe to all Macintosh magazines, all BBS's and all MUG's that I know about. If my attitude towards this company is naive and stupid, please let me know. If you can provide information on MacAuthor that is complimentary, please let me know. I am willing to collate all replies and post these to anywhere I am able. Alan Day 120 Academy Dr. Thunder Bay Ontario Canada P7B 5J2 uucp: watmath!thunder!raday CIS: 76505,13