sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) (03/21/88)
I recently received ProWrite 2.0.1, the latest upgrade to ProWrite
(New Horizons Software). Following are some initial impressions and
comments.
ProWrite is a WYSIWYG word processor. Characters can be in multiple
fonts and point sizes (whatever is in FONTS:); and italic, bold and
underlined styles. Characters can be in up to seven different colors;
however, these colors are "hardwired" into ProWrite and cannot be
changed. IFF pictures (including HAM) can be imported into ProWrite
documents, and then resized if you wish.
ProWrite comes with two versions of the program: one for 640 x 400
pixel interlaced, and the other for 640 x 200 pixel non-interlaced.
While the 8 colors that ProWrite uses to print with are fixed,
ProWrite does allow you to adjust the corresponding colors used for
display, so that you can select colors which minimize interlace
flicker.
The quality and speed of the printed output, and the control you have
over printing, seem much improved over ProWrite 1.1. This improvement
is partly due to the fact that ProWrite comes with the new Workbench
1.3 printer drivers, together with a new version of Preferences for
setting all the new driver options.
My printer is an Okimate 20, so I wasn't expecting great output. But
I did see a significant improvement in graphic print quality and speed
(the Okimate 20 now scrolls over blank areas).
"Page Setup" supports several printing orientations. The "Tall
Adjusted" orientation scales the printout to the 80 x 72 dpi on the
screen. Despite the scaling, the print quality appears better than
with ProWrite 1.1 and the 1.2 drivers. "Tall" orientation uses a
resolution that is a multiple of the printer's resolutions, to produce
better text output (at the expense of distorting some embedded
pictures). On the Okimate 20, "Tall" orientation makes characters
print somewhat smaller, but the overall effect is pleasing and quite
legible. The "Wide" orientation produces sideways (horizontal)
printing. (Whichever orientation you select, ProWrite displays the
document accordingly, so you can see how it will print.) ProWrite
also has a "smoothing" option for 18 and 24 pin printers and laser
printers, which further improves print quality.
The Workbench 1.3 printer drivers also support multiple resolutions
for some kinds of printers (such as the ImageWriter II). ProWrite
will use whatever resolution you select (via Preferences).
(By the way, the Workbench 1.3 printer drivers seem to support a lot
of other new options, which ProWrite doesn't use and aren't explained
in the documentation. If someone out there knows all the new
capabilities, I would appreciate it if they would post a complete list
to the net.)
Since ProWrite only supports 8 colors, IFF pictures are put thru a
dithering process when imported into ProWrite, to convert them to
8-color pictures. As you would expect, HAM pictures with many colors
suffer the most, becoming unacceptably fuzzy. But IFF pictures
with 32 or fewer colors seem to survive reasonably.
Actually, I've heard that some desktop publishing packages (e.g.
Shakespeare) will print an embedded color picture using its complete,
correct color palette. If the choice is between dithering for the
sake of 8 color WYSIWYG, or having the printer print the picture with
its correct colors, I would prefer the latter.
ProWrite runs in its own 3 bitplane screen, and makes good use of
Intuition windows, menus, and gadgets. ProWrite 2.0 seems to
conserve chip RAM better than it used to. However, opening multiple
document windows can easily use up several hundred kilobytes of fast
RAM (and slow ProWrite down significantly as well). ProWrite
multitasks with other programs with no trouble.
ProWrite 2.0 has a spelling checker, with a 95,000 word dictionary
that apparently includes a fair number of "computer" words. But even
with the dictionary copied to a RAM disk (it takes up 244K), spell
checking was fairly slow (I could often spot the spelling error before
ProWrite did!).
ProWrite 2.0 also has a "mail merge" capability, for merging data into
a document template (form letter).
Some other niceties: A "Title Page" option inhibits the printing of
headers and footers on the first page of a document. (If you like,
you can start page numbering from zero, so that the page after the
title page becomes page 1.) A "Select All" menu command selects
everything (facilitating global changes). "Copy Format" copies the
attributes (ruler settings, etc.) of the current paragraph, which can
then be pasted to another paragraph by "Paste Format." Paragraphs may
be sorted in ascending or descending order. You can save your default
settings (default font, paragraph format, etc.) to a file, and
activate those settings next time you run ProWrite. (This alleviates
one annoyance of ProWrite 1.1. To ensure that text spacing on the
screen matches what will print in NLQ mode, you must use Topaz 11
font. But the default font that ProWrite starts up with is Diamond
12. If you know that you are going to create documents to be printed
in NLQ, you probably want to reset ProWrite's default startup font to
Topaz 11.)
I am a very fast typist, and I found that I can easily get ahead of
ProWrite and have to wait a second or two for it to catch up. But
if you're only an average typist, ProWrite's response should be
adequate.
ProWrite 2.0 seems to have fewer bugs than ProWrite 1.0. I had some
guru problems while trying to run ProWrite 2.0 with the older
Workbench 1.2 drivers, but installing the 1.3 drivers seems to have
fixed this.
The only recurring problem I've had is that when printing several
pages (continously) in graphic output (any orientation), when the
printer is finished with the current page, it doesn't quite scroll all
the way to the beginning of the next page; it consistently falls short
by about 2 lines. If, on the other hand, I select "cut sheet" (so
you're prompted to enter each new page), it falls short by only 1/2
line per page. Perhaps it's a bug in the Okimate 20 printer driver
rather than in ProWrite. However, there doesn't seem to be an obvious
workaround; ProWrite seems to ignore the page size that is set via
Preferences.
Things I'd like to see in a future release (ProWrite 3.0?):
1. Faster keyboard response while typing, especially when
inserting into the middle of a paragraph, and with multiple windows open.
2. Paragraph formats should include a default font choice. ProWrite
should allow you to name each format, and select a format from a
requester or menu that shows the current names of formats. (This
would then work like the "style sheets" of MicroSoft Word for the
Mac.)
3. Support for hyphenation.
4. Support for footnotes.
5. An option to print an embedded picture using its original color
palette, rather than the "dithered" one created by ProWrite. I could
even live with just displaying an outline of the picture, so long as I
knew it would print with its proper colors.
6. PostScript support.
7. Larger selection of point sizes for fonts. If Diamond is the
default font, then Prowrite should provide a full range of point sizes
for Diamond, not just the standard Amiga 12 and 20 point sizes. (You
certainly need a small point size for subscripts and superscripts.)
Overall, I am quite satisfied with ProWrite 2.0. With the improved
WYSIWYG printing, mail merge and spell checker, ProWrite looks
increasingly like a "serious" word processor.
Steven Litvintchouk
MITRE Corporation
Burlington Road
Bedford, MA 01730
Fone: (617)271-7753
ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford.arpa
UUCP: ...{cbosgd,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,mit-eddie,philabs,utzoo}!linus!sdl
"Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to
conquer the world." -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.daveb@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Berezowski) (03/22/88)
In article <27373@linus.UUCP> sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes: > >I recently received ProWrite 2.0.1, the latest upgrade to ProWrite >(New Horizons Software). Following are some initial impressions and >comments. > >The only recurring problem I've had is that when printing several >pages (continously) in graphic output (any orientation), when the >printer is finished with the current page, it doesn't quite scroll all >the way to the beginning of the next page; it consistently falls short >by about 2 lines. If, on the other hand, I select "cut sheet" (so >you're prompted to enter each new page), it falls short by only 1/2 >line per page. Perhaps it's a bug in the Okimate 20 printer driver >rather than in ProWrite. However, there doesn't seem to be an obvious >workaround; ProWrite seems to ignore the page size that is set via >Preferences. > This 'problem' is probably due to the eprom in the Okimate-20 printer. The spacing accuracy of the printer is such that sometimes you get white lines in a graphic dump. To alleviate this, Okidata put a new eprom in the printer that linefeeds slightly less than 24 pins (the height of the print head) when the paper is advanced. This corrects the white line problem BUT creates two new ones. One: sometimes you get overlapping areas of color (dark banding) instead of white banding (I feel that this is a fair trade off). Two: this kludge throws off the printer device's idea of how far the paper has been advanced. ie. If the paper is advanced 66 times (144 dpi * 11 inches / 24 pins) it hasn't advanced 11 inches (like it should) instead it has advanced 9 and 78/144 (ie. it is out by 66/144 of an inch). This is a very crude example but I think you get the idea. If memory serves, Okidata allows you to turn this 'kludge' on and off via dip switch #5 on your plug-n-print module so you can try it without if you want. Regards, David Berezowski