chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (11/03/88)
A status report, of sort, for those folks who follow the Word Processor wars. If you don't care, don't read. People on the net for a while probably remember that I've been a fan of FullWrite Professional since the day the shrinkwrap shipped. I've been using the program exclusively since then in my writing and in the development of OtherRealms. Having moved about 100,000 words of material through it in the last six months, I can now look at how well the program works in a production world rather than dealing with the euphoria of the first few weeks. After this time, I still *really* like FullWrite. It's a clean, well-thought out interface with relatively few botches. And I've decided to put Word 3.01 back on my hard disk and convert back to it. The reasons for that are complex. While I'm not a big fan of the Word user interface, it's functional. While I AM a big fan of the FullWrite interface, there are other problems that outweigh the advantages to the point where I'm willing to go back to a lesser interface. Why? Because I need to get work done, and Fullwrite, much as I like it, puts up too many barriers to my productivity. My primary problem with FWP is speed. I've gotten to the point where I actively hate the "Updating Document" box that shows up every time you try to scroll around the document. Make a one word change in a 20 page document and then scroll to the end. Sit and wait, even though no line breaks changed. Do some writing, then jump to a bookmark to check on something somewhere else. Sit and wait.... The curse of WYSIWYG. FWP is so locked into the WYSIWYG concept that it creates problems when you don't *care* how it looks. When you're working on an article with half a dozen bookmarks over 20 pages and need to reference various places, FWP becomes a royal pain because you can't turn the WYSIWYG off. When I'm in the middle of writing a story, I don't care how it looks, and a program that breaks my train of thought to keep up the WYSIWYG concept impacts my writing. It wasn't until the other night when I started watching myself that I realized how much time I was losing to this. It's a little bit here and there, but it adds up quickly (note: what set me going on this search was the realization that I'd gotten into the habit of keeping a book near me while I was writing, and reading while waiting for FullWrite to finish updating itself... I was getting a lot more reading and a lot less writing done than I wanted). To me, performance is the major problem holding FWP back today. If I could just turn off WYSIWYG, or if it was fast enough that I didn't have to wait for it all the time, I'd keep it. Word may not be pretty, but it gets out of my way while I'm writing. For a serious writer, that's critical. This is the killer for FWP for me. The interface is wonderful, but it's not enough. Too much of the system is dedicated to keeping the interface alive, and there's not enough resource left for me, the user. That's not the only place where speed bothers me. FWP is not just sludgy starting up, it's downright painful. Double-click and wait. Eventually, you get the copyright notice, then you wait. Eventually, it tells you it's opening the document, and you wait. Eventually, the document comes up. When you're popping in and out of the word processor (which you have to do because Fullwrite doesn't leave enough memory to do much of anything else....) this starts REALLY getting to you. 45 second to a minute to start up a program and open a document is just too slow. And speaking of memory.... Fullwrite's hunger has been well-documented. Believe it or not, it doesn't particularly bother me, except in a really strange way. Imagine this scenario: you're in your layout program. You start up a background print job with 50 pages of your newsletter (I LOVE background printing!) and exit the program so you can go back to writing something else. Except the layout program uses 800K and Fullwrite uses 1100 and PrintMonitor is loaded in after where the layout program used to be so memory is fragmented and there's no room for Fullwrite. argh! [Hint: if you set all of the programs you use in sequence to have the same memory requirement you may not be able to run them together, but they'll load when PrintMonitor is active.... Apple: here's a suggestion. Create a new bit for an application that tells Multifinder to load it at the top of memory so that things like PrintMonitor can load high and applications can load low and never the twain shall meet, we hope!] The large amount of memory FWP uses has, it turns out, strange side-effects, even in a large memory environment. The final reasonably major hassle I have with FWP is stability. I still crash the program with some reliability (about once a week). Bang! ID=3. I wish I knew why, but I've never found a trend. It just every so often barfs. I'd be happier if it died reliably, becaus then I could avoid doing what kills it. On the PLUS side, I've never lost significant data to it, partly because of the auto-save/backup features of FWP and partly because I'm hyper-paranoid about saving work to disk. So there's a triad of major gripes with FWP: performance, memory and stability. If the performance was there, none of the rest would matter. There are lots of little things about FWP that bother me, too. The weaknesses in the formatting and style-sheets are, for a program that's heavily into display and layout, inexplicable. Lack of real postscript support makes using letterheads difficult. The stationary feature is really good -- and the lack of a "work" menu item to bring them up significantly inhibits the utility. What use is having read-only stationary when you have to go searching for it with SFGetFile? While I prefer the FWP spellchecker, it's modality makes it harder to use effectively, and it's somewhat slow. Thesaurus? I don't use it. A funny little bitch. When you start FWP, it brings up an untitled window. So does word. If you then open a file, Word gets rid of the untitled window. FWP opens up a second window. Don't ask me why, but that really bothers me. The outlining is a lot better than Word, but I still use Acta -- it's available in any application, which outweighs any advantage an integrated outline might have. Nothing special. One of the big disappointments to me is the change bars. Again, the problem ties into the WYSIWYG concept. If you change the format instead of the text, it logs it in the change bar. This isn't always a good idea. For instance: when I write, I use single spacing to keep as much text on the screen as possible. When I print, I print double-space for editing. This involves selecting the entire document and setting the line spacing (itself a relatively slow operation, come to think of it), printing, then setting it all back. The change in spacing, though, sets the changebar for the entire document. The changes are lost. foo. Yes, you *could* lock the changebar, most stuff around and then unlock it. That's too much hassle -- changebars aren't worth it to me. You ought to be able to set it up so that changebars change on text changes only. Search/replace functions are very powerful, but can get exceptionally slow, and there's not status monitor like Word has. Try loading 50K of text downloaded from Unix into FWP and s/r all occurances of -- to an em-dash. Starting it just before dinner is a good idea. Which reminds me. FWP *needs* an expert mode where you get get it to stop nattering at you. Not just the "updating document" note above, but things like "Change all is not undoable. Are you sure?" -- when you're doing some complex text manipulation, that message gets rather tired after a while. A month of using FWP, I'd figured out that Change All wasn't undoable, and I really didn't want to see that dialog box any more. One night, my wife came running into the den because she heard me yelling at the top of my voice "Yes, Dammit, I DO want to do it!" -- these are nice beginner features, but for expert users, you can start driving them crazy. Another real problem I have with FWP is importing non-FWP stuff. With OtherRealms, it's not unusual for me to end up working with 200K FWP has lots of potential. If they realize that potential in the next release, it'll be a killer product. To do that, though, they're going to have to do two things: o fix the performance problems. A word processor has to be fast. writing is hard enough to do when you aren't constantly being interrupted by the program. Every time I lose my train of thought, my writing suffers. A word processor that bitches at me or forces me to way hurts. o find some way to get away from the WYSIWYG format. When the primary purpose is writing and getting the words into the computer with as little delay and hassle as possible. When I'm writing a memo or a letter, WYSIWYG is fine. When I'm writing a novel, it isn't. Let me turn it off and worry about later. Writing and formatting are separate chores. you can do them together, but you don't HAVE to, and many times I prefer not to. A program that forces me to is getting in the way. So, for now, I'm going back to Word 3, and then to Word 4. And when the new FWP comes out, I'll probably switch back if Ashton-Tate does what they should do to the program. Until then, I'm going to bitch about Word's user interface, but I won't be sitting and waiting on my Word Processor, either. Pretty and Slow loses this time. Chuq Von Rospach Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms chuq@sun.COM It's not justice you want, Roderick! It's blood!
sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) (11/04/88)
In article <75917@sun.uucp> chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >My primary problem with FWP is speed. I've gotten to the point where I >actively hate the "Updating Document" box that shows up every time you try >to scroll around the document. Make a one word change in a 20 page document >and then scroll to the end. Sit and wait, even though no line breaks >changed. Do some writing, then jump to a bookmark to check on something >somewhere else. Sit and wait.... > >The curse of WYSIWYG. No, the curse of bad programming. It is incredible to me that anyone could write a word processor (with some admittedly nice features) that requires over a megabyte of memory. And then still make it slow. The rest of your article was great, and I think it pointed out the numerous problems with FullWrite, but I just couldn't let this one point slip by. It's like the difference between PageMaker and Ready,Set,Go! when inserting text (a difference I'm sure you're aware of, Chuq, since you've been one of RSG's biggest supporters): one is a dog, the other isn't. In fact, it's one of the reasons people *use* RSG rather than PageMaker. Speed is *very* important, but it does not prohibit the use of a full WYSIWYG display. Look at WriteNow for a good example of a fast program that supports true WYSIWYG all the time. It doesn't need a "quick and dirty, enter the text but don't format it" mode, because it was programmed correctly. It also doesn't need a 1100K partition under MultiFinder, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, thanks for the article, and here's hoping that Ashton-Tate cleans up their act soon. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." cmcl2!esquire!sbb | esquire!sbb@cmcl2.nyu.edu | - David Letterman
grg@berlin.acss.umn.edu (George Gonzalez) (11/05/88)
If you just want to bang in a lot of text really fast, use a stripped down high speed word processor such as Turbo Pascal's Editor, or MPW Shell. These simple editors are blazingly fast. They don't do much, but they are fast. And they do enough to let you bang in lots of text and do minor editing. *Then* when you've typed it all in, move it to FullWrite and make it pretty. Yes, it would be nice if FullWrite were faster at mundane things. But look at it this way: it's easier to speed up a slow program such as FullWrite than it is to clean up a clumsy user interface such as MS Word. So we're likely to see a faster FullWrite before we see a easy-to-use MS Word.
casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres) (11/05/88)
In article <768@esquire.UUCP> sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) writes: >... the curse of bad programming. It is incredible to me that anyone >could write a word processor (with some admittedly nice features) that >requires over a megabyte of memory. And then still make it slow. Not to mention buggy, and not to mention features that just don't do the right things. To be more specific, I can reliably make FWP go south by doing a simple manipulation on an outline; the wristwatch comes up and spins forever. And in stylesheets, you might think that selecting "italics" (for example) would set an "italics" attribute on the affected text, wouldn't you? But guess what: it doesn't SET the ATTRIBUTE, it TOGGLES it. Serious brain damage here. Not that I like the other word processors on the market a whole lot better. I think they all suck. I wish someone would do a decent one, but I don't think it's about to happen. David Casseres
straka@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Straka) (11/08/88)
In article <768@esquire.UUCP> sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) writes: |In article <75917@sun.uucp| chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: ||My primary problem with FWP is speed. I've gotten to the point where I | |Speed is *very* important, but it does not prohibit the use of a full |WYSIWYG display. Look at WriteNow for a good example of a fast program |that supports true WYSIWYG all the time. It doesn't need a "quick and |dirty, enter the text but don't format it" mode, because it was |programmed correctly. It also doesn't need a 1100K partition under Then again... A few days ago, a colleauge stopped by to upload some text to his UNIX(R) box. His documentation file was in WriteNow, and I happened to have a conversion program in my Jasmine PD stuff on the HD. So, I said, let's try to convert this to text to upload. A ~80K Writenow file took ~20 MINUTES to convert to raw text (on a Plus)! Evidently, not all is quite lightning-fast with WriteNow. -- Rich Straka att!ihlpf!straka Avoid BrainDamage: MSDOS - just say no!
chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (11/09/88)
>A few days ago, a colleauge stopped by to upload some text to his UNIX(R) >box. His documentation file was in WriteNow, and I happened to have a >conversion program in my Jasmine PD stuff on the HD. So, I said, let's try >to convert this to text to upload. Aha! I knew I forgot something. A few more serious gripes with FullWrite as it handles text: Problem #1: It's so tied into WYSIWYG that it imports the text and folds it into the WYSIWYG paradigm. This means that if I want to modify a text file I have to convert it, change it and unconvert it again -- which is all quite slow. Word is smart enough to leave it text until I do something to the formatting, which is really nice. I finally had to track down a copy of Edit for text files that were too large for miniWriter because I couldn't work with them rationally with FWP. Problem #2: A killer. I'm surprised I forgot it in my first posting. FWP will NOT import all files. FWP can't dynamically create chapters, which means that very large text, word or macwrite files won't load. It runs out of memory and says "sorry, you lose." One of the things I have to do with OtherRealms at times is do global edits of things like typeset quotes and em-dashes. On a 200K file. You cannot load a 200k TEXT only file into a 2.5Megabyte mac running FWP under unifinder. No way. No how. Sorry, you shouldn't import files that large Now, if you assume for a moment that the only editor I have is FWP, and I upload 150K of text from my Un*x box to import into my WP for formatting, I'm going to be rather peeved when I'm told that there's no way to get that text into my WP. I have two choices. Split it into tiny pieces on the Unix box and upload it again, or find another editor on my Mac to split it into little pieces and import them one at a time. Or do what I did. load it into Word, which didn't blink an eye, and do the editing there. I consider FWP's virual memory system broken because it won't allow importation of an arbitrary amount of text. If IT wants to split it up into chapters, that's fine. But trying to force me to 'fix' the text before it'll accept it is stupid. As long as I have to use another editor to massage the text to make it acceptable to FWP, I might as well use that other editor full time. Which is what I did... Chuq Von Rospach Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms chuq@sun.COM It's not justice you want, Roderick! It's blood!
cy@dbase.UUCP (Cy Shuster) (11/12/88)
In article <76574@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > I consider FWP's virual memory system broken because it won't allow > importation of an arbitrary amount of text. ... Thanks, Chuq. We hear you. Keep those comments coming! --Cy--
borton@uva.UUCP (Chris Borton) (11/16/88)
In article <6565@ihlpf.ATT.COM> straka@ihlpf.UUCP (55223-Straka,R.J.) writes: >In article <768@esquire.UUCP> sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) writes: >A ~80K Writenow file took ~20 MINUTES to convert to raw text (on a Plus)! > >Evidently, not all is quite lightning-fast with WriteNow. The 'Translator' program that comes with WriteNow is distinctly not up to par with the marvellous programming done in WN. Here is another case of 'bad programming' -- the routines I have now to read the text from a WriteNow file into my text editor DA would do that 80K job in the realm of 50-200 seconds (offhand guess, based on memory of a 50K file). Those routines will be appearing eventually in SigmaEdit... -cbb -- Chris Borton borton%uva@mcvax.{nl,bitnet,uucp} Rotary Scholar, University of Amsterdam CS