[comp.sys.atari.st] Timeworks DTP upgrades

grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham S Thomas) (05/09/91)

From article <2901@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk>, by neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth):
> In article <1991May5.124501.14339@mailer.cc.fsu.edu> boyd@nu.cs.fsu.edu
> (Mickey Boyd) writes:
>>  Timeworks - No longer updating US versions (but are still updating UK ones).
> 
> Hardly. They just did a panic fix to make it work with the TT and maybe fixed
> a few horror bugs while they were at it. Timeworks is static. The PC version
> isn't though and they are pushing the followup Desk Press.

GST know that they've made more money out of ST Timeworks DTP in the
past than they will in the future, so they're not exactly busting a gut
to create new versions of it.  It's still probably the quickest DTP
program to learn, though, and it's OK if your requirements are simple.

I've not had much time to play with the latest UK version (it replaces
v1.12, and is confusingly called 1.h12), but a couple of things I've
noticed are:

It seems to need a bit more memory than the previous version.  I have
about half the memory on my 1040 taken up with ACCs, AUTO progs, etc.
(although I can add about 150k to that when I unload NeoDesk) and when I
run the latest version of Timeworks it reboots the machine when I try to
open a file (of any size at all).  If I take out a couple of
memory-resident programs - any of them - all is well.

It always leaves behind a temporary file on exit - the old version used
to clean up properly (usually).

I haven't had a chance to test whether they fixed the 12pt Dutch font,
which used to print question marks (in the Atari laser version at least)
upside down.

The current version of 1st Word Plus, from the same stable, does seem to
be better than previous incarnations of version 3.  The new version
3.20TT allows you to choose a stable or flashing cursor, lets you
configure hyphenation via an exceptions dictionary, allows you to
redefine the keyboard again (this ability was present in v2, but not in
versions 3.1 through 3.14 - it reappeared in 3.15) and allegedly scrolls
faster than before (I can't tell - I use Turbo ST so it's all faster
anyway.)  Oh, and it fixes a printer bug that appeared if you
reformatted a doc from single to double spacing, and of course it now
runs on the TT.

Graham
-- 
Graham Thomas, SPRU, Mantell Building, U of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK
Email: grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk   Phone: +44 273 678165   Fax: .. 685865