rsingh1@dahlia.waterloo.edu (12/23/89)
Amiga word processors suck.
That's the conclusion I just came to. I am an owner of Prowrite, some
recent version, and just typed in a short 20ish page document.
All I wanted to do was to print it out text style. Fancy? I thought not.
A few lines were centred, a few were underlined, and a few were
'carefully 'structured''
I typed it all in just fine. I spell-checked it (Slow), but when I went to
print it (Star NX1000), double space style, some lines were 'tripple spaced',
and some were just plain messed up. As well, the program did not understand
page-breaks worth beans. Often, I would find 1 or two lines flowing over
on to the next page. The entire thing supposedly was Wysiwyg on my screen,
and what printed was close, but not like what was on screen.
Fine I thought. A printer incompatability for some bizzare reason.
Let me go and get a panasonic 1091i (and I did). Same sort of thing.
I set page length in preferences to 66 lines, and all that. Did everything
properly, but it just didn't print. I decided to abandon Prowrite, and
my entire system for the dealers system. I went over there, and booted
up a complete-waist of time (Write! of Gold Disk's Appetizer set). While this
accursed useless program looked pretty enough, the proportional scroll
gadget had the worst 'feel' possible, and there was NO WAY OF KNOWING what
PAGE you were ON, let alone what line of that page. I suspect they want you
to insert 'Codes' into the text for that. How bloody intuitive.
I had to re-space the entire document with this thing. And when I go to
print, I find there is NO WAY to set the margins!, OR space on the top
or bottom of the page! It 'Did' let me set the line count though. (66),
(I even COUNTED on a page to make sure), and I positioned the top of the paper
RIGHT AT the print head, but it still SCREWED UP the page breaks. AND!!!
It put out a 'BLANK PAGE' AFTER EVERY SINGLE PAGE IT PRINTED! GARBAGE CODE!
What did I do next? Why, I booted up the dealers copy of Pen Pal, but that
crashed when I tried to bring up the requester to load. GARBAGE!
Then they fished out a demo of 'Excellence' (with save disabled). This
seemed like it would work, and it did, for the first page. Then it screwed
up on the header/footers again! It seems to get confused with spacing and
fonts (when you go to print ascii).
Then what? Why by now I was getting remarkably pissed.
Every single word processor I tried crashed or did not work.
So, in desparation, I uploaded the text file to a friends MAC, drove
accross town and re-formatted the text YET AGAIN.
We selected a pretty standard font, and sent it to print on an image
writer. A few minutes later, it's done. Perfectly spaced. Perfect
margins. Perfect header/footer space. And the software performed
flawlessly.
I really like my amiga, (vetran A1000) owner, but after this many years,
I would like to see developers not selling software that doesn't even
work. The amiga printer driver should bring up it's own window, asking
for settings. And the settings should not be 'how many characters left
margin". No. They should ask "how many CM margin?" and ask how I would
like the page to be split (at the line, not 'around it').
All I want is reasonable output from a line printer (Paged). And only
1 program for the amiga has ever delievered this, but I don't have enough
money to buy it (Word Perfect). It seemed to work nice.
Sorry for not being very coherent. I'm pretty pissed. It looks like the only
way to get something done on the amiga (that looks done) and do it with
'ONE' product, is to buy the top of the line. (Probably TEX).
Without a better standard of software, the amiga is toast.
We have great graphics programs and 'Editors', but the rest sort of sucks.
That's sad.
/Paul Anton Sop (Esquire?). rsingh1@dahila.waterloo.edu/
/Graphic Designer 4 Spaghetti Western Words and Images /
/100 Kinzie Ave, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, N2A 2J5 /
/(519) 578-8525/742-0372 (if seriously really desparate)/rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu (Rick Francis Golembiewski) (12/24/89)
One thing that I noticed in your post you mentioned that Excellence! messed up on the printing of your document (in ascII mode) this is because ascii mode is for quick drafts, to get the printing to come out right you have to print in postscript, or 'normal (graphics mode of the printer) mode' since all printers will have different built in fonts, and unless you use a font with the same characteristics as the printer's font then you wont get the same number of characters per line etc. The Mac gets around this by forcing use to use an image writer or laser write alaways and thus you have to print using a graphic mode rather then using the printers ascii font. -Rick Golembiewski rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu
stern@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Eric G. Stern) (12/24/89)
In article <19466@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, rsingh1@dahlia.waterloo.edu writes: > Amiga word processors suck. > That's the conclusion I just came to. I am an owner of Prowrite, some > recent version, and just typed in a short 20ish page document. > All I wanted to do was to print it out text style. Fancy? I thought not. > A few lines were centred, a few were underlined, and a few were > 'carefully 'structured'' > I typed it all in just fine. I spell-checked it (Slow), but when I went to > print it (Star NX1000), double space style, some lines were 'tripple spaced', > and some were just plain messed up. As well, the program did not understand > page-breaks worth beans. Often, I would find 1 or two lines flowing over > on to the next page. The entire thing supposedly was Wysiwyg on my screen, > and what printed was close, but not like what was on screen. > /Paul Anton Sop (Esquire?). rsingh1@dahila.waterloo.edu/ Of course you had problems. You were trying to do something the hardware was incapable of, not the software or the printer drivers. It says right in the manual that for ASCII printing (draft mode) you are restricted to the topaz-11 font and single space and a few other parameters that I don't remember right now. That is because that is what printers do when asked to do ASCII printing, not because of some capricious decision by the Prowrite authors or your device driver writer. By the way, if you had printed it out in standard (graphics) mode, it would have come out fine. I have the Star-NX1000 printer and with the new printer driver I have no complaints with my Prowrite output. Eric Stern stern@unix.cis.pitt.edu
robertw@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Robert B. Williams) (12/25/89)
>It looks like the only way to get something done on the amiga (that >looks done) and do it with 'ONE' product, is to buy the top of the line. > ... [which I can't afford.] Well of course that's about the price you got into when you used your friend's Mac. Robert (you gets what you pays for) Williams
mikef@hpspdra.HP.COM (Mike Fischer) (12/27/89)
Sorry there were so many problems printing the file. Sounds like some of the other responses offer helpful suggestions. Several of my friends have ProWrite and are quite happy with it. I haven't bought a word processor program yet, mainly because of the type of hassels you went through. The answer seems to be in the necessity to become an expert with whatever program is chosen, a big investment of time. My approach to editing, formatting and printing similar documents has been with MicroGNUEmacs (mg2b) on Fish 147, or MicroEMACS (v 3.9e) on Fish 119 for editing, then proff on Fish 9 (that's right, NINE, this one has been around for free since about the spring of 1986!) for formatting. To print, I direct the output of proff to prt: A major reason for my choices is the great similarity between proff and formatters I use at work: nroff and troff, and the same for emacs as my editor. My learning investment for these was very short, to get to basic usefulness, due to reasonable defaults and simple structure. Then as I need more capability, I can learn just what I need. -- Mike Fischer mikef%hpspd@hplabs.hp.com
ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ (Ian Farquhar) (01/02/90)
In article <oZZ0yoK00W0TE9qKJu@andrew.cmu.edu> rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu (Rick Francis Golembiewski) writes: >One thing that I noticed in your post you mentioned that Excellence! messed >up on the printing of your document (in ascII mode) this is because ascii mode >is for quick drafts, to get the printing to come out right you have to print >in postscript, or 'normal (graphics mode of the printer) mode' since all >printers will have different built in fonts, and unless you use a font with >the same characteristics as the printer's font then you wont get the same >number of characters per line etc. The Mac gets around this by forcing use >to use an image writer or laser write alaways and thus you have to print using >a graphic mode rather then using the printers ascii font. > >-Rick Golembiewski rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu Actually, I was not terribly impressed by excellence!'s PostScript support, but then I have yet to find a program on the PC or the Amiga that generates truly good PostScript code. Incidentally, PostScript very rarely prints bitmapped images, it generates bitmaps using device and resolution independent operators. On the subject of printer fonts. MS Windows actually has a very good idea (yes, it does have a couple of good points) concerning the way it maps a screen font to a target device. Each device (say, a printer driver) has a set of font characteristics (character set, serifed, family etc) that are available to the OS. The screen fonts have a similar set of characteristics. When both are combined, the printer driver is able to find the closest font in the printer to the one being displayed on the screen. An elegant solution to a difficult problem. Incidentally, CBM, when are you giving us a Postscript printer driver? Ian Farquhar Office of Computing Services Macquarie University Sydney, Australia. Dz41
liberato@drivax.UUCP (Jimmy Liberato) (01/04/90)
ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ (Ian Farquhar) writes: >Actually, I was not terribly impressed by excellence!'s PostScript >support, but then I have yet to find a program on the PC or the Amiga >that generates truly good PostScript code... Well, as long as the pitch is set to the correct size (15) the Postscript output from excellence! is perfect. I agree with you though, offering two fonts and three sizes is quite pathetic. >Incidentally, CBM, when are you giving us a Postscript printer driver? Good idea! -- Jimmy Liberato ...!amdahl!drivax!liberato
kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) (01/04/90)
In article <7Q7BH56@drivax.UUCP> liberato@drivax.UUCP (Jimmy Liberato) writes: >ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ (Ian Farquhar) writes: >>Incidentally, CBM, when are you giving us a Postscript printer driver? > >Good idea! Ahhh, two more people who see a need for a Postscript printer driver. Hey guys, have you gotten royally flamed for asking for a Postscript Printer Driver like I have every time I asked for one? Seems most people think there is no need for one with Postscript converters around, but what they fail to perceive is that there are many programs which only build their own raster info to pass to the printer device. I see no way to get this info to a Postscript printer. Keep Plugging. (More thoughts on the subject withheld to prevent flames), ==================================================================== Kent Polk - Southwest Research Institute - kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu Motto : "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing" ====================================================================
fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) (01/06/90)
From article <24804@swrinde.nde.swri.edu>, by kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk): > around, but what they fail to perceive is that there are many programs > which only build their own raster info to pass to the printer device. I > see no way to get this info to a Postscript printer. There is a program on your Workbench 1.3 disk (SYS:Utilities/Cmd) called Cmd which allows you to redirect output from PRT: to any disk file. I've never used it, but the concept is so simple it must work. It would be nice to have a Postscript printer driver but if you really need to send output from PRT: to a Postscript printer now Cmd might help you. --Fabbian Dufoe 350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South St. Petersburg, Florida 33705 813-823-2350 UUCP: ...uunet!pdn!jc3b21!fgd3
kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) (01/07/90)
In article <825@jc3b21.UUCP> fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) writes: >From article <24804@swrinde.nde.swri.edu>, by kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk): >> around, but what they fail to perceive is that there are many programs >> which only build their own raster info to pass to the printer device. I >> see no way to get this info to a Postscript printer. > > There is a program on your Workbench 1.3 disk (SYS:Utilities/Cmd) >called Cmd which allows you to redirect output from PRT: to any disk file. CMD only directs SER: or PAR: output to a file. By the time it has gotten this far, it has already passed throught the printer driver of your choice. Unfortunately, not the printer driver of my choice :^) BTW, for you Citoh ProWriter fans, I finally got some time to work on that Prowriter driver of my dreams. Got a few things to work out, but if I get to keep working on it, it may be available soon. (How about 6 graphics resolutions?) ==================================================================== Kent Polk - Southwest Research Institute - kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu Motto : "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing" ====================================================================
maj1@tank.uchicago.edu (Major Robinson jr.) (01/12/90)
In article <76@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mq.oz (Ian Farquhar) writes: >Incidentally, CBM, when are you giving us a Postscript printer driver? Now THAT would be really nice! -- Major Robinson jr. maj1@tank.uchicago.edu