limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) (06/17/89)
Here's the problem. Mom wants to learn word processing, and she wants
to use my Amiga (I'll be backing up the hard disk daily now, eh?). I
don't think I could write enough ARexx scripts to make CygnusED and
Tex to be Mom-friendly. I don't know anything about the <$100 WP
market.
Please respond via mail so we don't bore too many people. I guess the
#1 importance is a manual that explains word processing from "moving
the mouse" and then gets progressively easier :-)
The number 2 priority is crash proof; I don't think I could explain to
her how to interpret the GURU numbers :-)
The number 3 priority is that it cost about $70-$100. ...and no
wise-cracks about how much my $$$ my mother is worth. This is
difficult enough. :-)
Wysiwyg would be nice, having the printer in graphics mode all the
time is ok, but not required.
Thanks in advance.
Tom
P.S. Hmmmm... I wonder what's happening at DevCon...
--
Tom Limoncelli -- tlimonce@drunivac.Bitnet -- limonce@pilot.njin.net
Drew University -- Box 1060, Madison, NJ -- 201-408-5389
Standard Disclaimer: I am not the mouth-piece of Drew Universitylimonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) (07/25/89)
In <Jun.17.00.12.50.1989.29885@pilot.njin.net> I asked for
recommendations for a word processor for my mother. It had to be very
easy to use, no guru's, good manual, and wysiwyg was not important.
For other reasons, we've decided not to buy anything right now (maybe
her own computer later) but if we did buy something we would have
bought WordPerfect because she could take the experience to a job
interview. Also, I know it quite well (and I know their quality of
software, manuals, and support).
Thanks for all the responses, here's the summary.
NOTE: I've edited the summaries a bit; no sigs, etc.
-Tom
From: phoenix@ms.uky.edu
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences
Scribble! is cheap, fast, not entirely inhospitable to new users (at
least for for typing in letters. If you want to do clever things like
changing margins and such, you need to learn dot commands, however.)
I don't know much about the manual. A friend of mine had it and let me
play with it for a while.
It does NOT do graphics or fonts, however.
- R'ykandar.
From: Robin C. LaPasha <ruslan@uncecs.edu>
I'd suggest something like ProWrite. If you've seen MacWrite,
it's kind of like that, or the very old versions of Word on
the Mac. WYSIWYG, fonts, point-'n-click, that sort of thing.
Does some graphics, and has 8 colors (though I've not experimented
with that.) You can squirt some output through the companion
product ProScript (another $30 or so) if you eventually want
PostScript.
I've heard Pen Pal is going to be cool, but it might be beyond
your budget (and I think it's still somewhere in vaporware or
demoware.) _Don't_ get any version of Textcraft; you won't get
graphics or your favorite fonts.
Good luck. We've gotten my mother-in-law going on a Mac. It
can be done as long as they know what they want to do with the
machine. Have fun and plenty of patience ;^).
From: Ken Steele <kms@uncecs.edu>
Scribble! is a cheap and decent wordprocessor. It even
comes with a spelling checker and mail merge facility.
The whole package feels like WordStar 3.30 (i.e., ancient)
but seems ok otherwise.
It is WYSIWYG for bold-face, italic BUT definitely is
not for your mom if she needs color fonts, importing/resizing
pix, or any of that stuff that appeared after 1980. (I did
say ancient.)
The manual does assume that you have never touched a machine
before, and the first section spends time explaining the
difference between "word processing" and using a typewriter.
This does sound like what your mom needs.
--ken
From: jmpiazza@cs.buffalo.edu (Joseph M. Piazza)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Believe it or not, Word Perfect is $99 with their educational discount.
I'm not recomending it specifically though I do think you should at least
consider it.
Half of WP's manual is tutorial and one disk is dedicated to it.
I haven't used it but it is definitely the "to do this, type (or click)
this." If the majority of PC users can use it there's a good chance your
mother could too.
The latest version is pretty bullet proof; especially if your mother
doesn't run a lot of esoteric stuff. :-)
It's $99 complete -- shipping included.
WP is so-so on this score. The line breaks on the screen match the
line breaks on the printout. Special functions -- anything aside from
italics, bold, underlining, etc, are dealt with through a "reveal code" window.
For instance: setting the margins is done with a set margin command.
Simple enough; but if you set margin to, say, 1 inch and then change your
mind and then set it to 1.5 inches, BOTH of the commands will still be in
the document. You wouldn't know this unless you examine it with the reveal
codes command. While this isn't particularly friendly and sometimes I think
computer non-literates can relate to this better, a document can get
cluttered with a bunch of garbage. The tutorial deals with this though,
and like I said, some folks can relate better to this. Personaly, it drives
me up the wall. However I don't work with WP too much (I use Microsoft Word
on my Mac SE at work).
The major strength of WP is that it is a full featured word
processor. The only thing it doesn't handle (in the Amiga version) is
included graphics. They did a good job of blending the PC style approach
with function keys and numbered menus with mouse driven menus.
Every command can be evoked from the function keys (the only way to go on
many/most PC style machines) so it comes with a template for the keyboard.
Likewise, every command can be accessed through the traditional Mac/Amiga
pull down menus.
When a function puts up a requestor the options are numbered -- hit
that key and it will execute it, go to next requestor, or whatever. But you
can also click on the option with the mouse on the same requestor! Very
clean for both keyboard AND mouse users. I switch between them myself.
Another possibility is ProWrite. I've only played with it on a few
occasions but I found it to be nicely WYSIWYG -- very straight forward and
MacWrite-like. I also see it can be had for less than $80. Definitely worth
looking into.
Flip side,
joe piazza
From: "Thomas M. Breeden" <tmb@davinci.acc.virginia.edu>
Organization: Image Processing Cntr, Univ of Va.
Get WordPerfect. Then she may be able to convince someone in the I*M PC
world that she has indeed "learned word processing."
Not only that, but WP actually is a VERY good program on the Amiga.
Keystrokes will transfer to the I*M PC version, but mouse control is
complete if you want to use that.
They probably spent more time and money on the Amiga manual than most
companies spend on the entire program. Also, there is a whole "LEARN"
disk of material tied into the manual tutorial.
I think I have seen it advertised for $130. If the last rumors are true
that they will continue to improve it (tho not up to v5) then you can
be sure that these improvements will be available at negligible cost.
I bought it as soon as it was out, and have received about 15 upgrade
disks from them gratis.
Also, there is an educational discount if you qualify, directly from
WordPerfect.
- Tom Breeden
From: isi!mark@rutgers.rutgers.edu
I have used ProWrite for several years. In version 2 it is both easy to use
and pretty powerful. Compares favorably in ease of use w/ Mac s/w.
Good luck. (standard disclaimer...satisfied customer, etc.)
PS The manual is good and everything can be done through pull-down menus.
Mark
From: steiner@mcc.com (Don Steiner)
I would recommend Scribble! It's low priced, easy to learn and fairly
intuitive. It has a few quirks, which are easy to learn to avoid
(possible the "professional" version of Scribble! has those ironed out
- I don't know.) I've tried out quite a few WPs (from Cygnus to
Excellence!) on my just-starting-college brother-in-law, and Scribble!
was by far the easiest to him to use. It will show underline, bold
etc. on the screen and does some minor formatting real time. Other
formatting has to be done via dot commands (I know - quite arcane) but
it's fairly fast. All real WYSIWYG prgramms I've seen on the Amiga tend
to get slow when doing pasting in the middle of lots of text - they've
got a lot of reformatting etc. to do. Scribble! avoids this. It does
all the things you want for a typical paper or so - several files can
be open at once, nice menu support, neat way of doing cut/paste,
headers/footers, spell checking (its spell checker is better than
Excellence!'s), printing stuff ...
So even though Scribble! is a very old program (I got mine three years
ago) I still find it to be the easiest entry level fast WP program.
What's nice is that if you ever want to upgrade to doing real fancy
stuff, then you can get Excellence!; Sribble! files import easily
into Excellence! (it recognizes the bold, underlining etc.) So what
I've ended up doing is writing all my stuff in Scribble!, bringing it
over to Excellence! for final "processing", writing as a postscript
file and then printing that file on a postscript laser printer (at
work or local copier places).
The Scribble! manual is also decent for beginners.
Hope this helps,
Donald Steiner
From: Greg Mumm <gregm@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
We (my family) has had pretty good luck with Scribble. You might like
to check that out. Of course if your mom is as dumb as MY mom then
the situation is completely hopeless :-( ( Can you say "computer
illiterate )
From: kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk)
Organization: Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
You might take a look at ProWrite - maybe you have, but it's the first
decent wordprocessor that meets the needs of both my wife and my
9-year old son. My wife just needs to write letters & term papers. My
son wanted the fancy fonts/color capabilities (I have a CGP220 color
inkjet). ProWrite is very well organized & is paragraph based, so
different paragraphs can be formatted differently & remember their
format. I used to like a simpler version of this capability on some of
the old P-System based editors. Also, commands build on each other -
like some of our favorite text editors :^) but different. This is as
opposed to standard wordprocessors that require a different command
for say, deleting a letter and deleting a sentence.
Well, maybe not a tutorial, but one can use just the capabilities in
the menus to get the job done.
I have yet to see this be anything BUT completely stable. Now ProScript
(converts PW files to Postscript) has crashed on me a couple of times.
About $75 or so from Go-Amigo.
Wysiwyg/graphics normally, but can do draft. Supports proportional
fonts quite well.
Kent Polk
From: pds@quintus.com (Peter Schachte)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
I've been pretty happy with ProWrite. WYSIWYG and pretty simple and
intuitive. It ain't TeX, power-wise, but it handles the basics. I
can't really comment on the manual; I don't use it much.
Stay away from VisaWrite. It crashes a lot.
Good luck.
Thanks again!
--
Tom Limoncelli -- tlimonce@drunivac.Bitnet -- limonce@pilot.njin.net
Drew University -- Box 1060, Madison, NJ -- 201-408-5389
Standard Disclaimer: I am not the mouth-piece of Drew University
"DEC's All-In-1 isn't completely useless, but it's a nice attempt."