rcbamw@eutrc3.UUCP (m.waucomont) (04/21/89)
To whom it may concern...
Recently I received my long-awaited copy of the 'test flight' of WingZ.
WingZ is a product of Informix. It is a spreadsheet, enhanced with
a HyperTalk like programming language and nice graphics. Because of
the capabilities to visualize information in a spectacular way, it is
also called a 'presentation spreadsheet'.
All the advertisements from Informix and a review in MacUser made me
very anxious about WingZ. Until I received my test flight last week...
In their ads they stressed things like impressive graphics, high speed
calculations etc. Well, the demo contained a 3D graph, a grid in the
shape of a hat (well, it actually looked like something else, but I
do not want to be called sexist). Anyhow, it took about 2 minutes to
generate the 3D 'hat'. Speedy graphics???
When it was finally finished, I wanted to see the result on paper, so
I chose 'page setup' to see what was inthere. They support 2 resolutions,
72 dpi and 144 dpi (on an imagewriter,that is... if you choose 144 dpi
the picture will be enlarged and printed spread out over 8 pages...).
I chose 72dpi and clicked 'OK'.
THE STUPID THING STARTED REDRAWING THE GRAPH!!!!
(Would it be a stupid idea to BitCopy the area where the dialogue box
will apear into an array, then display the dialogue box, remove it when
done and BitCopy the array back to the window? Would have saved me
another 2 minutes)
The calculation speed wasn't very impressive either. Must be the way
they index cells... sparse matrices... revolutionary... yeah, but
slow!
I have to sign off now, the pizza's I ordered just arrived :-))
But I would like to hear from other Mac users about their experiences
with WingZ. Is there anybody outthere who does have a copy of it
and who would like to share experiences with me and others who
are interested??
M. Waucomont
PostScript.um: If the pizza's wouldn't have arrived, I would have
written a bit more. Maybe even some positive things..FTWILSON@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Frederick Todd Wilson) (04/21/89)
In article <598@eutrc3.UUCP>, rcbamw@eutrc3.UUCP (m.waucomont) writes: >To whom it may concern... > >Recently I received my long-awaited copy of the 'test flight' of WingZ. >WingZ is a product of Informix. It is a spreadsheet, enhanced with... >In their ads they stressed things like impressive graphics, high speed >calculations etc. Well, the demo contained a 3D graph, a grid in the >shape of a hat (well, it actually looked like something else, but I >do not want to be called sexist). Anyhow, it took about 2 minutes to >generate the 3D 'hat'. Speedy graphics??? > >The calculation speed wasn't very impressive either. Must be the way >they index cells... sparse matrices... revolutionary... yeah, but >slow! > >M. Waucomont > I just recently received the real thing and I'm extremely impressed. I must admit that I don't do a lot of calculating and that I haven't done much with WingZ' actual calculating capability. But this article stressed the slowness of the graphing: I'd like to comment briefly on that and a couple of other things. I have a std. Mac SE HD20. The graphing feature that I like the most is the 3-D bar capability. BEAUTIFUL! True, not the fastest thing in the world (about 30 sec.), but well done and EXTREMELY adjustable (viewing angles,etc.). Hell, I'd buy WingZ if only because it blows Cricket Graph out of the water. As for the hat ('sombrero?'), if I understand properly, those are very complicated drawings. Only Mac IIs or 030 machines should be able to draw them with any real speed (math coprocessor). Otherwise, the program seems to be generally well done. I think that many people would agree that one measure of this is a program's Help facility. WingZ has the most extensive, practical, and functional help facility I've seen in any application except HyperCard (not an app., I know). I haven't had the thing for long, but Excel AND Cricket Graph are definitly out the door. WingZ will be my spreadsheet for me for a while, I think. Todd Wilson Apple Computer Student Rep Princeton University "Obviously, it's my opinion [and mine only]. Else, I wouldn't have said it!"
rcbaem@eutrc3.UUCP (Ernst Mulder) (04/25/89)
Considering WingZ and other programs (find out yourself)
I wish people would stop developing programs on fast Mac II or similar
machines, and then making them available on old Mac's too. I think a program
has to work nicely on a Mac Plus for instance before you start publishing
advertisements promising High Speed this and that.
People will buy the program only to realise at home that they have just about
the wrong type of Macintosh.
I saw the WingZ demo at the Mac World Expo, and was really impressed. Only
when I came home and tried the Demo on my Mac Plus... This was a disaster!
As a Mac Plus user I don't want to be obliged to buy a faster Mac...
Okay, *flame* on. :)
Ernst.
>alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (04/27/89)
In article <598@eutrc3.UUCP> rcbamw@eutrc3.UUCP (m.waucomont) writes: >When it was finally finished, I wanted to see the result on paper, so >I chose 'page setup' to see what was inthere. [...] >I chose 72dpi and clicked 'OK'. >THE STUPID THING STARTED REDRAWING THE GRAPH!!!! >(Would it be a stupid idea to BitCopy the area where the dialogue box >will apear into an array, then display the dialogue box, remove it when >done and BitCopy the array back to the window? Would have saved me >another 2 minutes) Not to argue with the other points (I don't have WingZ), but this is definitely a Terrible Bad Awful Idea, and the Apple Thought Police will lock you up if you do this. Actually, it can break a variety of things, most of them obscure, but is more likely to fail in the future. Robert Woodhead wrote an article about tricks for programming the Mac, about two-three tears back, which wound up on the Arpa Info-Mac group (and maybe here too), wherein he recommended doing this. There were many responses about how this wouldn't work in certain circumstances. I won't go into details (you can post to c.s.m.programmers if you want) but for example, how would you handlea window that belonged to a different app (there's this thing called MultiFinder, you know) which was MF-aware and updated windows in the background? You can't. --- Alexis Rosen alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet} alexis@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (last resort)
cole@sas.UUCP (Tom Cole) (04/27/89)
> Recently I received my long-awaited copy of the 'test flight' of WingZ. > WingZ is a product of Informix. It is a spreadsheet, enhanced with > a HyperTalk like programming language and nice graphics. Because of > the capabilities to visualize information in a spectacular way, it is > also called a 'presentation spreadsheet'. > I purchased a copy of WingZ about a month ago myself, and have been very happy with it. See below. > In their ads they stressed things like impressive graphics, high speed > calculations etc. Well, the demo contained a 3D graph, a grid in the > shape of a hat (well, it actually looked like something else, but I > do not want to be called sexist). Anyhow, it took about 2 minutes to > generate the 3D 'hat'. Speedy graphics??? > I am running on a Mac II with 5mb of memory, and no drawing takes more than about 20 seconds. I am running it in a multifinder partition of 1500k. It may be that you are affected by memory shortages or cpu speed. What is your configuration? It should also be noted that WingZ comes wtith two versions, one compiled for 68000-based machines like Plus and SE, and one optimized for 68020 and floating coprocessor. I have tried the 68000-based version and it was *significantly* slower, for lots of obvious reasons. > When it was finally finished, I wanted to see the result on paper, so > I chose 'page setup' to see what was inthere. They support 2 resolutions, > 72 dpi and 144 dpi (on an imagewriter,that is... if you choose 144 dpi > the picture will be enlarged and printed spread out over 8 pages...). > I chose 72dpi and clicked 'OK'. > THE STUPID THING STARTED REDRAWING THE GRAPH!!!! Well, I have to agree here that WingZ is a bit zealous in redrawing things, which can be especially annoying on a scroll. I am willing to wait for redrawing after the end of a scroll, it looks like they update the window during the clickloop, or whatever happens when a scroll occurs. > (Would it be a stupid idea to BitCopy the area where the dialogue box > will apear into an array, then display the dialogue box, remove it when > done and BitCopy the array back to the window? Would have saved me > another 2 minutes) > > The calculation speed wasn't very impressive either. Must be the way > they index cells... sparse matrices... revolutionary... yeah, but > slow! > Well, see above comments about sepeed. I have had absolutely no complaint about recalculation time, and I have built some moderately sized spreadsheets. > I have to sign off now, the pizza's I ordered just arrived :-)) > But I would like to hear from other Mac users about their experiences > with WingZ. Is there anybody outthere who does have a copy of it > and who would like to share experiences with me and others who > are interested?? > > M. Waucomont > As an addendum, I bought WingZ instead of Excell for the graphs and the scripting language. A review (I can't remember where) described the WingZ scripting language as "similar to Pascal". It is much more like Hypercarde's HyperTalk than anything else, and seems pretty powerful. It compiles into pseudo code, and is fairly nimble. It needs (some) debugging tools. I hope that in the future, graphics becomes more programmable, allowing us to create custom graphics from spreadsheet data. Currently, one can choose from a palette of about 20 pre-defined graph types. Then, one uses drawing, dragging, and clicking to annotate or enhance the actual representation of the data. Powerful enough for most needs, I suppose. I just like the feeling of lots of unused power under the hood :-). In summary, I like it. It may be true that it needs a 68020/68030 and an FPU to make it really shine, I have little experience in a 68000 world with it. However, it was a good value, does the job, and was reasonably priced through MacConnection. Disclaimer: I am nothing more than a satisfied user of WingZ and MacConnection customer. These are my opinions, and may not even be worth what you paid for them.... Tom Cole SAS Institute {anywhere}mcnc|rti-sel|sas|cole
aberg@math.rutgers.edu (Hans Aberg) (04/27/89)
>(Would it be a stupid idea to BitCopy the area where the dialogue box >will apear into an array, then display the dialogue box, remove it when >done and BitCopy the array back to the window? Would have saved me >another 2 minutes) >>Not to argue with the other points (I don't have WingZ), but this is definitely >>a Terrible Bad Awful Idea, and the Apple Thought Police will lock you up if >>you do this. The Finder, and the earlier systems actually work like this: By temporarily saving the portion where a dialog box or or menu pops up, and then copying it back again. In a multitasking environment this does not work, because some other application may decide to change the graphics in the area temporarily saved. This is in fact reason to why all processes used to start hanging when pressing the mouse button in earlier systems. Hans Aberg, Mathematics aberg@math.rutgers.edu
trebor@biar.UUCP (Robert J Woodhead) (04/27/89)
In article <1774@ccnysci.UUCP> alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) writes: >Actually, it can break a variety of things, most of them obscure, but is >more likely to fail in the future. Robert Woodhead wrote an article about >tricks for programming the Mac, about two-three tears back, which wound up >on the Arpa Info-Mac group (and maybe here too), wherein he recommended >doing this. There were many responses about how this wouldn't work in certain >circumstances. Speaking as the original villian (heh heh heh! Now, sign over your property to me! nyah hah hah!) in this story, I'd like to set things straight. First of all, don't save/restore bitmaps over dialog box calls. It will break for all sorts of reasons, including the screen depth changing on you. Only Apple can get away with these shenannigans reliably (as per the Insert Disk box) because they can upgrade stuff as the environment changed (and you can't). Back in the bad old days before Mac II and Multifinder, you could get away with this gem FOR YOUR OWN DIALOGS. I did this performance hack in Mac Wizardry because in that game there were often a lot of windows that would get obscured by a dialog, and it was a pain to repaint them all, especially on 128k Macs (yecch! ptui!). If you want to get the same effect in your application, you have to shadow each window with an offscreen bitmap that contains a copy of what is in the window; eg: always paint to the offscreen bitmap, then copybits onto the screen (this has the nice bonus that Quickdraw handles depth conversion). Advantages are: very quick repaints when windows are activated, or when a dialog box goes away. Disadvantages: uses lots of memory, and regular operations will be slightly slower due to the extra copybits call. Real use: use only on windows that take more than 10 seconds to recompute, to prevent the onerous wait the original poster got. -- Robert J Woodhead, Biar Games, Inc. ...!uunet!biar!trebor | trebor@biar.UUCP "The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..."
Richard_Allen_Bretschneider@cup.portal.com (05/01/89)
Re: problems/complaints with wingz In article <598@eutrc3.UUCP> rcbamw@eutrc3.UUCP (m.waucomont) writes: >When it was finally finished, I wanted to see the result on paper, so >I chose 'page setup' to see what was inthere. [...] >I chose 72dpi and clicked 'OK'. >THE STUPID THING STARTED REDRAWING THE GRAPH!!!! >(Would it be a stupid idea to BitCopy the area where the dialogue box >will apear into an array, then display the dialogue box, remove it when >done and BitCopy the array back to the window? Would have saved me >another 2 minutes) and then someone else wrote > I wish people would stop developing programs on fast Mac II or similar > machines, and then making them available on old Mac's too. I think a program > has to work nicely on a Mac Plus for instance before you start publishing > advertisements promising High Speed this and that. > (Stuff Deleted > > I saw the WingZ demo at the Mac World Expo, and was really impressed. Only > when I came home and tried the Demo on my Mac Plus... This was a disaster! > As a Mac Plus user I don't want to be obliged to buy a faster Mac... > I agree, and that's why I use Full Impact. The interface is more accessible/ powerful. Works better on "low end" Machines (my home machine is a 4 Meg Mac Plus, and I never dread the "why aren't I doing this at work" blues) And redraws much faster than the W product. Somebody else said that the longest he ever waited for Wingz to redraw the screen was 20 seconds. 20 Seconds! Sheesh! Do you have a hobby you work with while you work on your spreadsheets? ------------------------------------ Ric "Yes, it is a self- Bretschneider serving world out there." ----------------------------------------------
bannon@andromeda.rutgers.edu.rutgers.edu (Ronald Bannon) (07/03/89)
I realize that reading the manual is often not the best way to learn software, however recently people have expressed a small gripe with Wingz inability to split the screen (like MS Excel). So for those people who are using Wingz and wondering how to split the screen see the below reference. [page 76, Wingz Reference Manual] "The SET TITLES command is used to specify row and/or column titles that are to remain on the screen, regardless of which direction the worksheet window is scrolled." Good Luck, Ron Bannon bannon@andromeda.rutgers.edu
dac@zehntel (Dennis Carlson) (12/19/89)
I am running wingz 1.1 on a mac plus w/1meg. So far I like the program, but when I am working on a 3D graph it takes so long for the screen to be redrawn. This happens even if I am viewing the spreedsheet part and not the actual graph. Does anyone know of a way to speed things up? Is there a recalc type setting for just the graph? I will be getting back my mac w/4megs soon, will the extra memory help? Please e-mail me with your responses Thanks The opinions here are true. The author, however, is the product of a demented imagination. ucbvax-\ sun-----}-!zehntel!dac varian-/
sellers@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Todd Sellers) (02/27/90)
Has anyone else had problems with Wingz and the entire window turning light blue. If I watch closely I can see a 2x2 pixel near the insertion point at the top left of the window turn light blue. Then the whole screen turns light blue. If I open a few windows it stops doing this. If anyone has any information on this, I would sure appreciate it. E-Mail is preferred. Thanks in advance! +--------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Todd Sellers | EMail to (sellers@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM) | | NCR E&M Columbia | or (todd@pibtest.Columbia.NCR.COM) | | West Columbia, South Carolina | <THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK> | | 29169 | <INSERT YOUR FAVORITE DISCLAIMER HERE> | +--------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+