andyc@hplsla.HP.COM (Andy Cassino) (04/07/89)
I've been using LDW Power on my ST for about a month now and would
like to share my impressions of the program with this group.
First, let me mention that prior to using LDW, the only spreadsheet
I'd used was the release 1.0 of VIP Professional on the ST, and that
for only a short period of time. Please bear in mind that comparisons
I make to VIP may not be valid for the current version of VIP.
I've found LDW Power scrolling and editing is quite a bit faster than
VIP, and using G+Plus in "solid" mode seems to enhance that slightly.
(An aside: G+Plus and the early version of VIP I had are NOT
compatible, the GEM menus get drawn weirdly and are unreadable).
Another significant difference between LDW and VIP is that the GEM
interface of LDW is much better designed and nicer to use.
One of the big selling points of LDW is it's Lotus 1-2-3 (R)
compatibility. I imported a VIP .WKS file into LDW with no problem, so
I'm willing to believe I could read in a Lotus file. The acid test came
when a friend who happens to be a banker and uses "real" Lotus on a
daily basis came over and tried out LDW. Shes hates using a mouse but
was right at home using the keyboard to edit and scroll. The only
non-compatibility here is that some error conditions are reported via
dialog boxes and have to be cleared with the mouse.
Things went well until we got to the macros. I told her the LDW manual
said that the macro capability is Lotus Release 1.0 compatible and she
gagged. She said Lotus is up to release 3.xx and there are lots of new
macro capabilities since 1.0. "Why not just buy an abacus?", she
asked. Hmmm...
(Another note on the Lotus compatibility issue was raised in the last
issue of Atari Explorer, in which a reader noted an undocumented limit
of 130 points that can be graphed by LDW. VIP and Lotus DO NOT have
this limit. The reader, a securities analyst, says that this renders
LDW useless for his purposes of tracking stock values over a 220-day
trading year. I know that one of my applications is soon to be
hamstrung by this problem.)
Alas, LDW has another Achille's heel, and that is in its printing
capabilities. If you want anything but plain-vanilla 80-column draft
quality, you have to determine and enter the proper escape codes into
the setup string that LDW thoughtfully sends out before printing! (At
least this is my surmise of how this might work. I haven't tried it
yet, since I don't have an owner's manual for my printer. And LDW's
manual is silent on the actual use of the setup string, I guess they
assume it is obvious what you do with it.)
The other printing option is to use the LDW sideways program which
requires "printing" to a file and then exiting the spreadsheet. (At
last, a reason to buy Revolver?) A gotcha that is not mentioned in the
manual is that you better select the "unformatted" option before you
save to the file or all you'll get is an 80-column sideways print out.
Anyhow, sideways program is rather limited as to what printers it
supports (the program is NOT GDOS and not user-configurable) and NLQ
mode is scarcely better than the normal draft mode.
On the bright side, graphics dumps are done with GDOS and are quite
nice, much nicer than what I could do with VIP.
Oh, and the LDW Manual is documentation in the strictest sense of the
word. It "documents" things all right but it does not tell you how you
might actually use 90% of the features. The macro section is terrible.
The afore-mentioned friend just purchased a 286 machine and so after
she drove LDW for a while I went to her house and drove Lotus. Lotus on
a 12 MHz 286 machine is LOTS faster than LDW. You REALLY see the
difference when executing macros.
Furthermore, the "add-in" programs for Lotus lend it capabilities LDW
can't even dream of. Report-generation is an example. I can't get a
decent quality print-out and here my friend is whipping out the
prettiest reports you've ever seen with nary a %$# escape sequence
typed in!
(I went home and imported an ASCII file dump from LDW to Easy-Draw.
Heh-heh, I thought, more than one way to skin a cat. Well, the
proportional GDOS fonts ruin column alignment and create a mongo
editing job. Time to write a "tabify" program...)
LDW cost me $95 and Lotus runs about $285 discounted, so I guess
that has to be factored in.
In summary, LDW is might be compatible with Lotus but it is NOT
equivalent, and that's a BIG difference.
Yes, I'm disappointed. But, it *is* for home use and I *can* play Time
Bandit when I'm done spreadsheeting! :=)
DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are entirely those of the
author, who has no pecuniary interest in any of the companies
mentioned.
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%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%andyc@hplsla.HP.COM (Andy Cassino) (04/11/89)
In my previous posting re: LDW Power, I said: | Alas, LDW has another Achille's heel, and that is in its printing | capabilities. If you want anything but plain-vanilla 80-column draft | quality, you have to determine and enter the proper escape codes into | the setup string that LDW thoughtfully sends out before printing! (At | least this is my surmise of how this might work. I haven't tried it | yet, since I don't have an owner's manual for my printer. And LDW's | manual is silent on the actual use of the setup string, I guess they | assume it is obvious what you do with it.) Here' an update on this. For one, this is apparently the same situation with Lotus, and one of the reasons Lotus is losing some ground to Excel, etc. Lotus will remedy these problems in their version 3, which is NOT yet out, but due real soon now. This weekend I borrowed a printer manual and was able to print spreadsheets from LDW in NLQ and using other printer features. HOWEVER, there are two limitations in LDW that make this difficult. One is, regardless of your printer setting, if you want >80 columns, you have to select the "Unformatted" print option. Okay, but the printer setup string is not sent out with this option selected, so you have to first print something "Formatted" to get the printer set-up and then switch over to "Unformmated". The second limitation is that LDW Power doesn't pass all ASCII codes. For instance, I can get NLQ on my printer by sending ESC+n (proven in GFA Basic by using the statement "Lprint CHR$(27)+"n"). From LDW, the equivalent string \027n doesn't work, neither does \027\111! It doesn't make sense. I have to use another printer command (ESC+x+1) to get NLQ from LDW's setup string. So, I can now printout a spread sheet about 120 columns wide in compressed NLQ type on my 9-pin printer that looks quite nice. Another correction: though my LDW manual claims Lotus Version 1 compatibility, the (presumably more up-to-date) README file on disc claims Lotus Version 2 compatibility. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % Andy Cassino % % uucp: hplabs!hplsla!andyc domain: andyc%hplsla@hplabs.hp.com % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%