raday@thunder.UUCP (raday) (05/07/86)
MacAuthorA product and company reviewbyAlan DayMay 6,1986As 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:WarningDon'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 certainly asked myself that question. My answer was to use it for correspondence 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 together. 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 judgement 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 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 6 May 86 not received any 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 Day120 Academy Dr.Thunder Bay OntarioCanada P7B 5E1uucp: watmath!thunder!radayCIS: 76505,13
raday@thunder.UUCP (raday) (05/07/86)
MacAuthor: A product and company reviewbyAlan DayMay 7,1986Firstly, an apology for the first upload. It was indeed my first!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 workas 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:***************************************************************************WarningDon'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 aboutword 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 wordwrap 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 overstrikecapability 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 menubar 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 theyreplied 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 6 May 86 not received any such cheque. Re MacAuthor: The aforementioned enclosed paper (produced with Version 1.05by 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 Day120 Academy Dr.Thunder Bay OntarioCanada P7B 5E1uucp: watmath!thunder!radayCIS: 76505,13
sakw@cvaxa.UUCP (Sak Wathanasin) (05/13/86)
> article posted by Alan Day <282@thunder.UUCP> in net.sources.mac
I can confirm Alan Day's report that "beta-test" versions up to and including
1.05 were totally useless for work. What Icon Technology should have made
clear was that they weren't so much beta- as alpha- versions, and I don't
think that they should have charged for it at that time (or at least they
could have heavily discounted it in return for feedback). I only
received what I considered to be beta-test versions (ie useable with some
bugs) in April 86. The product was finally shipped at the beginning of May 86.
I feel that it's been worth the wait, though I'm unhappy about the
way Icon Technology led me to believe that it was "almost ready" a year ago.
Here is a quick list of the features of and problems with the product that I
received on the 9th May (marked Version 1.00) - the list is not exhaustive.
Price: 200 pounds sterling (list)
From: Icon Technology Ltd
9 Jarrom Street
Leicester LE2 7DH
UK
+44 533 556268
What it is:
A cross between a wp and a page-layout program. It is not in the same
class as PageMaker for the latter job, but it is good enough for
multi-column layouts for conference papers and the like.
Features:
Style-sheets with style-editor so that you can define your own para,
heading and text styles (fonts and sizes) and (optionally) bind
them to a cmd-key.
You can save a document's format as a "stationery pad".
Regular expression patterns in searches.
"Frames" (text or graphics) can be placed anywhere on the page (similar
to Ready-Set-Go). Frames can either be fixed on the page or
attached to paragraphs and float with them. You can have frames
within frames. Text frames can (optionally) generate continuation
frames automatically when you fill them up.
Graphics and text side by side is possible (using frames).
When pasting in graphics, you have a choice of scaling or clipping to
fit. If you select the latter, the clipped portions aren't lost -
you include them by expanding the frame at any time (even after
closing and re-opening the document).
Headers and footers appear on screen. A nice touch is that it picks up
the date and time format from the INTL resources (offers you short
or long form).
7 levels of sub-/super-scripting.
You have control of kerning for special effects eg a "T" that overhangs
the next character.
You can overtype, and thus, build up symbols such as "hat y" (y with a
circumflex above it).
You can control the line spacing (in points).
Offers background printing if you have enough memory (see below).
Designed to work with Switcher (and hopefully Servant).
Supports Mac+ font mgr with fractional spacing.
They claim it works with HFS (? - still waiting for my Plus u/g :-( )
Can open up to 4 documents.
Problems:
Copy-protected (key disk) - they say they will review this if many
people complain. I don't have enough RAM to run MacA with
other applications (in Switcher), so pasting in stuff from
elsewhere is extremely painful. However, it does allow you to
install up to 3 copies on a hard-disk, and you can deinstall it
(bumps up the no of installations again) if you need to remove
it from the HD.
Still buggy - I've had problems laying out B5 (notepaper size)
on the LW (but this may be the LW driver/prep file);
header/footer displays sometimes get screwed up; mouse
freeze-ups occasionally. If it bombs (latest version is now
pretty stable), it gives you a chance to save the document.
Big - Switcher partition is 325K (!), and you need at least 256K free
before it offers you background printing.
Can't read MacW or WORD files directly - you have to save as TEXT
first, then read it into MacA. Clipboard is supported of
course. Nice touch is when you read in a TEXT file, you select
a "stationery pad" so that the file is reformated as it is read
in.
Editing one of the styles will cause the ENTIRE document to be
reformated. This can take a while, so it's best to plan ahead
and define all your styles before entering any text.
Screen refresh is somewhat slow. To speed things up, it
doesn't re-format the paragraph until there is a pause in the
typing.
You can't have more than 1 header or footer in a document. However, it
has the notion of "title pages" which can be used to change the
format of the page number (say to Roman numerals for preface
material). Also you can attach a prefix or suffix to the page
no, so you can achieve the effect of changing chapter/section
nos in the header/footer.
No auto footnote numbering (footnotes are done by making a frame at the
bottom of the page).
No mail merge.
It cries out for a macro facility like the the one in MEdit.
Comments:
I like it a lot - enough to put up with all the bombs in earlier
versions. It also has a lot of scope for add-on packages e.g.
because it differentiates between headings and paragraphs, I think
it should be possible (maybe even simple) to write a Table of
Contents generator.
It's still fragile though, so my advice is try before you buy, and
see if you are prepared to put up with the bugs for what it gives you.
They seem to be responsive to complaints and bug reports (at least
from me).
Alan Day points out that you would need to define 2**5 entries per
font in the "Text Style" menu if you wanted to get at all possible
combinations of type styles. I don't think that this is a problem in
practice for 2 reasons. First, you wouldn't want to change styles
all over the place. Second, each heading or paragraph type has its
own default text style, so that you don't need to access the "text
styles" menu all that much. In case it's not clear, you can for
example define "Chapter headings" to be bold, 14-pt Times Roman,
centred etc, "section headings" to be italic 12-pt etc, so that each
time you start a chapter or a section, the right font,size and style
is selected for you. (In MacW you'd have to access the
font, style, and size menus several times to do the same thing.)
Disclaimer:
I have been beta-testing the product for them, and I get to keep a
copy in return, but I do not get any money from the sales
of this product.
--
Sak Wathanasin, U of Sussex, Cognitive Studies, Falmer, Sussex BN1 9QN, UK
uucp: ...mcvax!ukc!cvaxa!sakw
arpa: sakw%cvaxa.sussex.ac.uk@ucl.cs.ac.uk
janet: sakw@uk.ac.sussex.cvaxaraday@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
jmm@cad.UUCP (05/16/86)
Has anyone seen this in the United States yet? James
gijs@ark.UUCP (Gijs Mos) (05/18/86)
I tried MacAuthor 1.0. It failed 5 times while working on the first page.
Three regular bombs and two "unexplained errors". The program will be
fun to use.. when the bugs are gone.
--
Gijs Mos
EUNET: gijs@vu44 ({seismo,philabs,decvax}!mcvax!vu44!gijs)
BITNET: u00131@hasara5
MAIL: Gijs Mos
Vrije Universiteit
Biologisch Lab.
De Boelelaan 1087
1081 HV Amsterdam
PHONE: +31 20 5485705