chuq%plaid@SUN.ARPA (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/15/86)
I've finally gotten around to working with Ensemble, and I've run into a
number of problems. Does anyone know if Hayden is planning on upgrading
the product any time soon?
After a week of trying to get it to do a relatively simple operation, I've
found a number of serious flaws that people looking at ensemble should be
aware of:
o the documentation is quite dense and missing a number of important
facts.
o there are significant deviations from the standard mac application
interface. For instance, if you are in the computation window and
select some text (so that it shows black) and then click a button,
the text associated with the button is appended to the selected text
instead of replacing it (augh!). Also, shift click selection extensions
are NOT supported, neither are double click word selections.
o they claim you can do simple spreadsheet work in ensemble. Don't
believe it. (Ensemble is an integrated database)
o getting data in and out of Ensemble is a pain -- you can use the
clipboard or scrapbook, but it is impossible to get it to generate a
text file. It doesn't work well with Macwrite, Word, Paint, or anything
except Ensemble because of this.
o the program is exceptionally modal, which is REAL frustrating on a
Mac. Not only does each of the major functions have a mode (you can be
in label printing mode, or database mode, or graphing mode) but each
major function has a couple of modes (usually things like 'design' and
'data entry') and many of those have many modes, too (form design has a
mode for calulations, a mode for field definition, a mode for form
decoration, etc....). To get from one place to another, you sometimes
find yourself passing through half a dozen screens, clicking menu items
or close boxes multiple times. There are no shortcuts.
o when printing, Ensemble does NOT remember your previous choices in the
printing manager dialogs -- if you're using mailing labels on a 12" page,
for instance, you have to click the "fanfold" button EVERY TIME.
Two of ensemble's fix functions are mailing label's and form letters. One
thing that isn't made clear is that there are significant limitations to
how these functions work. The application I've been playing with has been
the obligatory phone list of my friends (name, address, phone, comments).
Since I just moved, I wanted to drop notes to people and print mailing
labels. There are also a number of names in the list I don't want to waste
labels on, so I SELECT only those items I want to print. Simple, right? No,
since the mailing label function doesn't allow selects. The documentation is
REAL fuzzy here, but there is one line that says "One label is printed for
each record". No mention is made of printing a subset. Well, next step is to
try to build a new database with just a subset of the old database, and then
run it through the label function. Well, I tried a half dozen approaches,
and couldn't find one that works. The documentation doesn't cover this.
Am I imagining things, or is printing a mailing label batch from a subset
of a database a pretty straightforward operation? I'm rather fed up with
Ensemble (it only cost me $99 on sale, and the graphing functions are well
worth it just for that as long as you don't need to put LOTS of data into
it...) because it seems to me that this should be a SIMPLE thing to do.
Would Microsoft File handle this function properly? Anyone out there
do something similar?
chuq