ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) (08/28/86)
<<<Come & get it>>> Does anyone out there have any opinions on some of the amiga spreadsheets on the market. I just bought Maxiplan and wish I had not! Did they write this thing in Lattice or Manx? I realize that 1/2meg is not enough for the amiga but running out of memory when you only have 20 columns and 4 rows is ridiculous! Furthermore, I *HATE* to wait for the pointer to move when I "mouse around the sheet" (does that make sense?) can this symptom be remidied with more megabytes? It's really annoying since you always "miss" the cell you want to select. Maybe I'm being unfair but I expect better performance than what I've seen. In terms of features, Maxiplan seems great but it performs like a dog! Any Comments? Ed Chaban Plexus Computers Inc. Voice: (408) 943-2226 Net: sun!plx!mts!ed I disclaim everything
cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) (08/29/86)
> > Does anyone out there have any opinions on some of the amiga > spreadsheets on the market. I just bought Maxiplan and wish > I had not! Did they write this thing in Lattice or Manx? > > I realize that 1/2meg is not enough for the amiga but running > out of memory when you only have 20 columns and 4 rows is > ridiculous! Furthermore, I *HATE* to wait for the pointer to > move when I "mouse around the sheet" (does that make sense?) > can this symptom be remidied with more megabytes? It's really > annoying since you always "miss" the cell you want to select. > > Maybe I'm being unfair but I expect better performance than > what I've seen. In terms of features, Maxiplan seems great > but it performs like a dog! > > Any Comments? > > Ed Chaban Some comments : MaxiPlan and VIP professional both soak up the memory. Probably because they were written in C, Lotus 1A on the PC was written in assembler. Unfortunately this is a pretty good reason why the PC software is as fast and memory efficient as it is, first you only have 640K period, second you either have to access it in 64K chunks or write your own memory management routines because for the longest time no high level language could manage that feat. Now on the Amiga you have this nice flat address space and it is easy to write simple code for it unfortunately that code is often bloated as a result. So until someone writes a spread sheet in assembler I doubt it will live up to the potential of the machine. Additional comment, I have the Alegra 512K board (yeah!) and MaxiPlan runs fine with it, can't say I like their color scheme though. You can save memory by selecting the menu item "limitied colors" or some such rather than the extended colors. Since this reduces the number of bitplanes used it makes text rendering much faster. One thing I wished for in 1.2 but now looks like 1.3 or a custom library ioss "FastText" no kerning, no proportional spacing , no fancies, just damn fast. Of course Charlies Heath's TxED is awfully fast so it must be possible. -- --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
ali@navajo.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer) (08/29/86)
>:-o <--- Finally, a picture of THE line eater! In article <223@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes: > Does anyone out there have any opinions on some of the amiga > spreadsheets on the market. I just bought Maxiplan and wish > I had not! Did they write this thing in Lattice or Manx? > > I realize that 1/2meg is not enough for the amiga but running > out of memory when you only have 20 columns and 4 rows is > ridiculous! I played with VIP Professional a bit, and it seems like a great product. I ran through the demos they have (which just go through the various features by simulating keyboard input), and I was impressed. I did not push it to its limits, but with 512K, it told me that 36K were available for the worksheet. (The source code is 400K or so!) I am not sure how many rows and columns that is, but it probably is more than 20 x 4. I had the program go through the graph demos, and it drew real pretty pie charts and histograms on the screen. But it did not look like the program was specifically written for the Amiga; it did not use menus & stuff... In fact, the program is apparently modeled after Lotus 1-2-3. In any case, I liked the program. (No, no, I do not work for whoever makes VIP Professional. I don't even know who makes it...) Ali Ozer, Ali@score.stanford.edu
ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) (08/29/86)
> runs fine with it, can't say I like their color scheme though. You > can save memory by selecting the menu item "limitied colors" or some > such rather than the extended colors. Since this reduces the number of > bitplanes used it makes text rendering much faster. One thing I wished > for in 1.2 but now looks like 1.3 or a custom library ioss "FastText" > no kerning, no proportional spacing , no fancies, just damn fast. Of > course Charlies Heath's TxED is awfully fast so it must be possible. > > > -- > --Chuck McManis > uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com > These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. On a further note, I find that the color scheme used for Maxiplan graphics is kind of poor for doing monochrome stuff. It helps to be able to use dpaint to spruce the graphs up but dpaint can't do pattern fills -sigh- Ed Chaban Plexus Computers Inc. Phone: (408) 943-2226 Net: sun!plx!mts1!ed "Boot me up on the Zen Machine" -Roger Powell Disclaim, Disclaim, Disclaim etc...
cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) (08/30/86)
> > On a further note, I find that the color scheme used for Maxiplan graphics > is kind of poor for doing monochrome stuff. It helps to be able to use > dpaint to spruce the graphs up but dpaint can't do pattern fills > -sigh- > > > Ed Chaban > Plexus Computers Inc. > Phone: (408) 943-2226 > Net: sun!plx!mts1!ed > Last I checked dpaint could do pattern fills, first you draw the area to be filled with some unused color, then you make that the "background" color by clicking the select button over the palette color, then put the pattern you want in the spare screen, then select merge in back from from the spare item off the project menu. Voila everything you painted with "background" color gets what ever was in the spare screen. Now I realize this isn't as easy to use as Aegis' pattern "colors" but it is very flexible. I hope it stays in Version 2 even though they have added a more traditional pattern fill option. -- --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
stroyan@hpfcdc.HP.COM (hpfcrg Mike Stroyan) (09/01/86)
> On a further note, I find that the color scheme used for Maxiplan graphics > is kind of poor for doing monochrome stuff. It helps to be able to use > dpaint to spruce the graphs up but dpaint can't do pattern fills > -sigh- Dpaint can do pattern fills with a little fancy manuevering. The trick uses the "merge in back" option under the spare picture control. This takes the spare picture and copies it into the front picture at each point which is currently in the background color. You set background to a color not used in the picture. Fill the area with background, then load the spare picture with a pattern and do a merge in back. This involves a lot of steps, but gets the job done in a very flexible way. Mike Stroyan, [hplabs!]hpfcla!stroyan P.S. The snap grid is immensely useful for making pattern screens.
walker@sas.UUCP (Doug Walker) (09/02/86)
In article <6672@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) writes: > > > > Does anyone out there have any opinions on some of the amiga > > spreadsheets on the market. I just bought Maxiplan and wish > > I had not! Did they write this thing in Lattice or Manx? I have been using Analyze! for some time now, seems to do fine. It asks you how much memory to partition at the beginning with 128K the default, I always use 128K and I've never run out. Admittedly, I only do my checkbook on it, but I've had two months of checks at one time on there. It doesn't have as many advanced features as, say, VIP, but I don't need those anyway. I saw MaxiDesk at one time and it ran like a dog, too. Might be a trend here.