sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) (04/09/87)
As you all probably know from the ads in AmigaWorld: ProWrite (New
Horizons Software, Inc.) is a multifont, multicolor, WYSIWYG word
processor with up to 8 windows. I've owned ProWrite for less than a
week, but I thought I would let you know what I've experienced so far:
1. ProWrite seems to be consciously patterned after MacWrite; similar
menus, ruler, etc. Both horizontal and vertical scrollbars are
available. However, ProWrite lacks such sophisticated features as
spelling correction. Also, the documentation doesn't explain whether
it's possible to read files from a hard disk or RAM: disk, if you
already have two floppy drives; the filename requester seems to just
let you toggle between the floppy drives.
2. ProWrite really can use all the fonts in the fonts: directory. It
also comes with 3 new 15-point fonts: Granite (a ripoff of Macintosh
Geneva?), Marble, and Serpentine. I added Zuma fonts to the fonts:
directory and they work well too.
3. ProWrite uses the Amiga 640x400 interlace mode exclusively. So
what about interlace flicker? ProWrite has a Shift-Help option that
dims the screen colors, reducing flicker. Also, the documentation
recommends Jitter-Rid or a high-persistence monitor. Actually, I find
that lowering the contrast and brightness on the monitor work
reasonably well. My major gripe is that ProWrite uses a lot of thin
parallel horizontal lines in their requesters, scroll bars, etc., that
exacerbate flicker unnecessarily. Oh well, I expected I'd be buying a
high-persistence monitor eventually....
4. I have been pleasantly surprised by the output from ProWrite on my
Okimate 20 printer (especially given the poor quality of output from
Notepad). ProWrite's default font (Diamond 12) looks very good, and
most of the Amiga's other built in fonts seem at least fair.
Ironically, ProWrite's own Granite font looks awful, because the
Okimate 20 seems to print the 1-pixel-wide vertical lines of Granite
characters so thin they cannot be easily seen. (This problem also
occurs with Aegis Impact!, so I assume it's the printer driver's
fault, not ProWrite's.) New Horizons recommends the Apple Imagewriter
II for use with ProWrite.
5. The color palette is a fixed 8 colors.
6. You can insert IFF pictures (created by other programs) into your
documents. This isn't as convenient as in the Mac, however, because
you must read the IFF picture from a disk file. Also, due to
ProWrite's limited color range (8 colors), the color range of 32-color
IFF pictures will be greatly reduced. ProWrite offers "shading"
(color smoothing) options that alleviate this problem somewhat. Note
also that the pictures will be made to fit a hi-res screen. Example:
for a lo-res 320x200 picture developed in Deluxe Paint, the picture
will end up in a ProWrite document as only half as wide and half as
high.
7. ProWrite can read in text created by other word processors and
editors.
8. ProWrite is not copy protected.
9. ProWrite won't win prizes for speed. I am a fast typist and I can
get ahead of ProWrite. But typeahead works OK.
10. ProWrite is 147K in size, and documents seem similarly large-sized
(especially with embedded IFF pictures). New Horizons recommends at
least 1 Meg of RAM, and I agree (I have an extra 1 meg sitting in my
Xpander II).
11. ProWrite appears well-behaved. It runs in its own hi-res screen
and multitasks with other Amiga programs (like the VT100 emulator I'm
using now). ProWrite uses Preferences to find out paper size, paper
type, and graphic shading (black/white vs. color). ProWrite appears
fairly stable. I have been able to crash it only by going into
Preferences and changing printer options while ProWrite was sending
output to my Okimate 20.
All in all, I am quite satisfied with ProWrite. It is the first Amiga
word processor to be comparable with MacWrite in support for fonts and
embedded pictures. You can produce some great results with
multicolored text and IFF pictures. And (finally!) I can put
Textcraft out to pasture.
Steven Litvintchouk
MITRE Corporation
Burlington Road
Bedford, MA 01730
Fone: (617)271-7753
ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford
UUCP: ...{cbosgd,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,philabs,security,utzoo}!linus!sdllachac@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Gerard Lachac) (04/09/87)
I am curious now of other experiences with ProWrite using different printers.
How about:
Epson LX-86
Epson FX-86
ImageWriter II
I would like to hear a recommendation of which printer to get, since I am
going to the big Trenton State Computer Fest with $300 or so dollars and will
be looking specifically for a printer.
Recommendations???
--
"Truth is false and logic lost..."
- Neil Peart
(who at the time didn't realize he was talking about RU)
lachac@topaz.rutgers.edu <--------OR--------> {seismo|ames}!rutgers!topaz!lachacsdl@linus.UUCP (04/12/87)
> How does ProWrite interface with non-graphics printers (daisys, etc)? I don't know. The manual says, "...ProWrite will support several different letter quality and dot matrix printers," nothing more specific. They don't even state whether ProWrite definitely supports all the printers in Preferences. The only thing it says is, "ProWrite will read your current Amiga Preferences settings for 'Printer Name,' 'Paper Size,' 'Paper Type', and 'Graphic Shading'....If you are using a non-graphic printer, you should use the Topaz font in the eleven point size to get properly spaced and aligned text." > I agree that being able to print amiga fonts is important, but sometimes > I need letter quality output. Also, does the manual say anything about > use of laser printers? (thinking ahead for the future 8-) No, the ProWrite manual says nothing about laser printers. By the way, I was reading in Amazing Computing (vol. 2, no. 4) about the Calligrapher font editor. This program will enable you to produce color fonts. Kailash Ambwani of Gold Disk stated that, with multicolor fonts, you could then have dithered (anti-aliased?) fonts, eliminating the "jaggies" in font characters when printed out as bitmaps (i.e. on dot-matrix printers). (You can experiment with this effect using Deluxe Paint II.) I sure hope that Gold Disk follows thru on that idea. In fact, if New Horizons is listening out there, they should consider it too. ProWrite can already handle multiple colors, so perhaps adding dithered fonts wouldn't be that hard for them. Another idea: Now that word processors like ProWrite and VizaWrite support multifont text, it would sure be nice to be able to incorporate it, with all its multiple fonts, into desktop publishing programs like Page Setter. Anyone know if this is either doable today, or is planned? Yet another thought: Will Word Perfect support multiple fonts? Steven Litvintchouk MITRE Corporation Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 Fone: (617)271-7753 ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford UUCP: ...{cbosgd,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,philabs,security,utzoo}!linus!sdl
markr@garfield.UUCP (04/14/87)
In article <2386@linus.UUCP>, sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes: > > 10. ProWrite is 147K in size, and documents seem similarly large-sized > (especially with embedded IFF pictures). New Horizons recommends at > least 1 Meg of RAM, and I agree (I have an extra 1 meg sitting in my > Xpander II). > New Horizons recommend at least 1 Meg. (I think it said on the box it will run on 512K.) A friend tried it on 512K.. It works fine... (Woops!) He had just one little problem.. IT CAN'T PRINT ON 512K! I hope people don't start making alot of software that needs 1 MEG to run. (In no time we all will need 8 Megs!) Joseph Dawson