ruslan@uncecs.edu (Robin C. LaPasha) (06/06/90)
Well, I've had a couple of weeks with ProWrite 3.0.1. There are both bouquets and brickbats for New Horizons. First, a quick rundown of what ProWrite currently is and works with. The new ProWrite needs a meg of memory and is $175 list, as opposed to the 2.5 version which could work in 512K and was $125 list. It has new features. You may not need them or think they're worth buying more memory for. If you do, New Horizons has (several) upgrade policies for owners of previous revs of ProWrite, and there was a coupon in my upgrade notice for a cheapo upgrade to a meg for 500 owners who don't have a meg yet. You also need two disk drives (2 floppies or floppy+HD.) ProWrite is a WYSIWYG word processor. It can use multiple fonts (normal Amiga bitmap fonts) and put them into multiple styles. It can import IFF pictures, re-size them, and display/print them in ditherings of 8 colors. A new feature in 3.0 is the ability to show page guides and paragraph breaks and margin lines and such, if you want to see them. It can merge print. Now with 3.0 it has a thesaurus, as well as spell checker. Also new are an ARexx port and ARexx-based macros. Most menu commands have keyboard equivalents; in addition, there are some nice "click X times" and click+key options for selecting text (including "select all.") New for 3.0 are Undo and Redo commands (they "change" depending on what it is that you've done last.) You can cut and paste formatting - and now styles in 3.0 - as well as text. The formatting is a grab-it ruler-based thing, but you can specify most spacing and tabs (several types) in several ways, down to 1/16". The new "Layout" menu item gives you more control of page margins. PW 3.0 can have up to 5 multiple columns, snaking and parallel (I have more to say about them in a subsequent posting of details.) I vaguely remember hearing that they could be in landscape mode, but I haven't tried it. As far as I can tell, ProWrite doesn't seem to use the standard Amiga clipboard, though of course as a word processor it has some sort of clipboard facility. Printing is based on Preferences printers; 18-24 pin and other "nice" printers get a "smoothing" option for printing. (The WorkBench 1.3 printer drivers and printing software stuff are included with ProWrite. You _can_ use 1.2 WorkBench but you should probably use 1.3 (personally, I've never had any good luck mixing revs in pieces of systems software...)) Some of the available printer tweaking goes beyond Preferences selections. Unlike most WYSYWIG word processors, you can use printer fonts with ProWrite (and even print your pictures at the same time, too.) You can start ProWrite from CLI or WorkBench. As I'll discuss in my later posting, you have lots of display options. End of the quickie summary! (My next posting will have gory details of the pluses and minuses of 3.0; skip it if you're not seriously looking at WPs right now.) -- Robin LaPasha |Keeper of the Amiga ruslan@ecsvax.uncecs.edu |Hypermedia Mailing List