moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (02/26/90)
Geez, I feel like I should be doing one of those Coke ads:
"Remember me? I'm the guy who waited breathlessly for FullWrite
Professional to come out from Ann Arbor Software, then waited when it
shifted to Ashton-Tate, and finally bought it when it first came out.
Loved the interface, loved the features, thought this was the be-all
end-all of word processors.
"Well, I went full-tilt over to FullWrite when I got it. Loved it, loved
the graphics features, loved the font-sensitive change, loved the
thesaurus and the document dictionaries and all that. Noticed the
problems right off, but had 2 Megs of memory so space limitations
weren't killers for me. Definitely noticed the speed problems, and
pointed out that FullWrite definitely had hardware limitations -- but I
was willing to live with them. Polled the net for other FWP users'
suggestions for enhanced features and/or bugs to be fixed. Mailed
them/handed them to a handful of Ashton-Tate people I met at local user
groups, volunteered for Beta testing (something I almost never do --
takes too much time to do it right), and waited for future editions.
"And waited. Got an SEx, and was disturbed to find that FullWrite still
ran very slow (particularly the backspace) on the '030. Some of FW's
bugs (mostly speed, but also some of the fine points of graphic
placement) really began to get on my nerves. Chuq, the other prolific FW
user on Usenet, decided he'd had enough and moved back to MS Word. I
stuck with FW, though I continued to get updates to Word. (Needed to --
two of the magazines I wrote for wanted articles in Word format.) Heard
back from Ashton-Tate only when I would make phone calls, or when I
brought it up when company reps would show up at Fluke, or at the user
group."
"Ashton-Tate begins the plummet downward; the Mac programming division
gets merged in with the PC staff. The Knife in MacWeek makes a few
noises about how FW is on track for Beta testing, but after a while
those tidbits disappear. I keep giving myself deadlines of when I'll
move back to Word 4.0 (which I notice is looking pretty functional), or
take a shot at Nisus."
"What breaks the camel's back? I've got several articles to work on this
month, I just got Grammatik Mac, and I've decided that the vapour just
isn't worth having to download everything to MacWrite 4.5 format to use."
"So, Ashton-Tate, I've moved to Microsoft Word 4.0 this weekend! If you
want to bring Joe Montana on and have him try to convince me to switch
back, be my guest, but be careful -- I may be able to turn *him* to
Word."
Actually, it was pretty easy. Spent an afternoon making Word 4.0's menus
correspond (kinda) to FrameMaker on my Sun Workstation at work. Set up Word
templates in a flash (Word doesn't have a special "template" type, but just
lock any Word document from the Finder, and it becomes (basically) a
template.) Feel is really nice -- speed is *really* nice; documentation is
a good deal better this time around (but not perfect.) Biggest hassle is I
can't figure out how to turn a FullWrite user dictionary or document
dictionary into a list of words (FW stores them in some kind of hashed
pointer format); may just have to forego that. (Unless anyone out there has
suggestions?)
Things I miss the most? 1-2 menu key system; documents having their own
dictionaries; case/style/font-sensitive change/replace. Would be nice to
see something more powerful in the search area for MS Word 5.0....
Yeah, I still think FWP has an awfully good interface, and a set of features
(when they work) that add up to one of the best word processing concepts
I've ever seen. And I still wish for the perfect document processor
(FrameMaker 4.0 for the Suns has taken a LOT of the best from FW, Word and
other sources, and come up with a mighty fine entry); and I have a feeling I
might take a hankering to Nisus if given half the chance. But frankly, I've
got better things to spend $200 on, and many, many better things to spend my
time on than learning to get used to another damned WP. And after all this,
I just don't trust Ashton-Tate to deliver the goods. (I wouldn't hand the
family silver over to Bill Gates, either, but I think he's got a pretty
solid word processor here.) FWP had the spark, but not lungs; and I need a
word processor that I can write dependably and comfortably with, not an
ideal to wait around for.
Come to think of it, this whole thing has a disturbingly familiar
resemblance to several romantic entanglements of the last two years...
"And cruelist of all, I've learned that the bucks
in this criticism thing just aren't what they
should be. I figure if I'm not gonna make any
jack in my chosen profession, the least I can do
is vent my spleen. My motto is VENT FOR THOSE WHO
CAN'T."
-- Ian Shoales
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
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