clive@drutx.ATT.COM (Clive Steward) (06/01/88)
in spite of the religion being formed, I have to wonder on what bases such
great enthusiasm is being grounded. Though perhaps I haven't found features
which answer some of the problems....would be open to suggestions.
And I will add up front, can really appreciate that the postit notes,
change bars, etc., are overlay additions which any word processor
would be the better for, especially for professional/group use.
My position: I think FullWrite has a way to go before it challenges Word as
powerful balanced document tool. And also that Word could be improved
to match ease of use, mostly through some easy visual controls/indicators
added to work with its rich style abilities. (e.g. Consider a little stack
of style layers, showing/selecting styles on mousing).
Now to the experience.
To begin, my model of working with Word has been: quickly write some text.
Then hit it with styles and the index/contents tools to produce a very finished
looking product almost immediately. Pictures and multi-column/sidebars take
a bit of fussing with display page.
I couldn't seem to find anything like this power in FullWrite. All in all,
it feels rather like MacWrite -- you know, rulers everywhere, because it's the
only way to get what you'd like.
In fairness, the sum experience was this weekend, trying to move a medium size
(50 page) document from Word 3. The translator worked somewhat; at least all
my text and pictures came through. However, much formatting, including
headings, was lost. It did tell me so.
Then came the fun. Yes, it's slow, and yes, it takes more than half of
a 2.5 meg Mac Plus; however also no crashes, no problems with Multifinder.
The real problem seems to be the limitations built into a rather fixed document model.
The style model especially seems to be missing essential design and user
freedom features. It may possibly be seen as an improvement, to set base
styles for (only) the text classes the FullWrite programmer thought important.
But why then are substyles singly inherited from these, and themselves not
able to have anything like the same degrees of freedom? Some key points
missing:
1) You can't set the inter-paragraph spacing, except at the
top level, where it is for the entire document.
Thus where I have inclusions of program code, for instance, each CR
separated line will have lots of space, or I will have to multispace
between each paragraph through the entire document, as in using a
typewriter.
2) Substyles don't allow setting first line in/outdents separately
from the global style.
Thus I can't have a style for bullet items, etc.. Back to ruler
pairs for _each_ list and the return to normal text style afterwards.
3) Though sidebars seem to be the intended answer for unusual things,
they don't fill in here (included listings, etc.) at all. And see below.
Other things noticed:
1) The outliner requires selecting the entire document first, to
generate an outline. I couldn't even seem find a way to do this,
across chapter boundaries. And don't find the outliner interface
nearly as easy or failsafe (scrambled text for me often) as Word's.
2) Working with graphics seemed unduly difficult; also the
drawing tools, including interface to Bezier curves, seem very
awkward. I agree that they could be well left out; would
rather use SuperPaint, especially as it's upgrade promises.
3) Sizing anything (especially graphics) included in sidebars appears
to be a royal pain -- resize each of (possibly several -- why are there
several) involved layers first, etc..
And some, like the drawing 'canvas', seem to require sizing by numbers,
not point and drag to fit!
4) Things (notably backspacing over text) seem to slow down in sidebars,
thus making them still less desirable as a substitute for a generalized
style capability.
It's interesting also that the first thing people seem to ask for is
to turn off the WYSIWYG. I agree, though that slowdown is minimal, really.
Obviously some (!) work was put into making screen update rapid; it shows.
And clearly a lot of work went into FullWrite itself, with good intentions.
What I really don't understand is the 'bash Microsoft' tone in the
recent articles, unless it's smarting about the bug-infested first Word
3.00 release.
If you really needed such a tool, weren't you glad it was there? I have
been. Think few of us are really in a position to cast such stones.
And just because a company's getting big, or has to do with IBM (now, I
might have to think about that one), doesn't automatically bring evil.
It's still individuals -- aren't we who write programs always -- who put the
sweat into making these things.
I think that the competition will bring us better versions of both
products, and possibly growth towards (RTF?) generalized interchange
formats. Clearly, presenting an easy interface to document quality
formatted text is a complicated problem.
Can we see the progress as fun?
Clive Steward (not my best literary effort..., but it's pseudo-Monday)chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (06/02/88)
>My position: I think FullWrite has a way to go before it challenges Word as >powerful balanced document tool. I would say it this way. FullWrite has a way to go before it becomes what it's potential shows that it should be. I feel that it already matches Word in power and beats it in ease of use and flexibility. There are certainly some areas where it is weaker, but there are some areas where it is much stronger, too. So all of this is on balance. If the areas where it is weaker (some formatting issues and styles) are critical for you, it might not be a good time to switch over. >And also that Word could be improved >to match ease of use, mostly through some easy visual controls/indicators >added to work with its rich style abilities. Microsoft hasn't shown any great track record on "improving" their user interface in my mind. Word 3.x always felt to me like a PC program with a veneer on it, rather than a Macintosh program. I could get it to do what I wanted it to do, but I always felt like it was fighting back. I don't have that feeling with FWP. >To begin, my model of working with Word has been: quickly write some text. >Then hit it with styles and the index/contents tools to produce a very finished >looking product almost immediately. Pictures and multi-column/sidebars take >a bit of fussing with display page. My model is very similar, as a matter of fact. What's important, though, is that you stop trying to do things the way Word does them. The writing paradigms are very different, and until you stop trying to make FullWrite act like Word and start doing things the way FWP was designed to do them, you're going to be very frustrated. Think how frustrated you'd be if you were trying to go the other way, and kept trying to bring up sidebars in Word to store stuff in. It isn't fair to put down one program because it isn't like another program. That's MUCH different than putting a program down because it can't do something. >I couldn't seem to find anything like this power in FullWrite. It's there. Once you start working with FullWrite, you'll find it. >it feels rather like MacWrite -- you know, rulers everywhere, because it's the >only way to get what you'd like. Not at all true. I use rulers more in FWP than I did in Word, but only because you can't (yet) put rulers in your styles. Word has just as many rulers, it's just that the display mechanisms are different (and, of course, you can turn them off in both). Assuming rulers are turned on in both, what Word does is show the current ruler in the ruler bar at the top of the window. What FWP does is show the rulers, in context, with the text. I find the latter much nicer to use, since I can SEE where the ruler definitions change. With Word, that can be a pain. >In fairness, the sum experience was this weekend, trying to move a medium size >(50 page) document from Word 3. The translator worked somewhat; at least all >my text and pictures came through. However, much formatting, including >headings, was lost. It did tell me so. I've been using it three-and-a-half weeks. A weekend with a program of this complexity is nothing, frankly. It took me about two weeks to really start getting any kind of feel for it at all, and I'm just starting to be what I would consider proficient, having now slogged about 60K worth of stuff through it. How long did it take you to learn Word to the point where you could beat it into submission? It took me longer than it's taken with FullWrite. >The style model especially seems to be missing essential design and user >freedom features. The style model is weaker than Word. Ashton-Tate on CompuServe has acknowledged this, and has said (without going into details) that it'll be significantly enhanced in the next release due this fall. I would expect that the new release will allow styles to have most of the functionality of Word styles, including paragraph spacing and rulers. There may also be something like a "Based on" style. > 1) The outliner requires selecting the entire document first, to > generate an outline. I couldn't even seem find a way to do this, > across chapter boundaries. Chapters are completely separate entities, and (basically) nothing crosses the boundaries. This may or may get relaxed later, it's a fairly basic part of the design of the program. What WILL happen is that the next release will be smaller, faster and make better use of chapters so that chapters can be larger, reducing the need to arbitrarily split text up for memory management. > 2) Working with graphics seemed unduly difficult; also the > drawing tools, including interface to Bezier curves, seem very > awkward. I agree that they could be well left out; would > rather use SuperPaint, especially as it's upgrade promises. I haven't used FWP enough to comment, but I will point out that Word 4.0 will ship with SuperPaint, the current version, not the upcoming SuperPaint II. So if you want the added features of SP II, you still have to go and buy it... I'm ALSO looking forward to SP II since it will do auto-tracing of bitmaps, which I can then shift over to Freehand to manipulate. (at least until Freehand comes out with an auto-tracing mode). >If you really needed such a tool, weren't you glad it was there? I have >been. Think few of us are really in a position to cast such stones. I was very glad I had word 3.0. I would have died limited to MacWrite or WriteNow. But it always felt to me like it was hoarding it's power -- it would always make me fight to get what I wanted out of it. FullWrite doesn't do that to me. I also have problems with Microsoft as a corporation -- the hassles getting information, the inability of them to let me know of new versions (yes, they DID ship out 3.01 free, bless them. But did they bother to send you a message when they released 3.02? Or Excel 1.06? Or did you find out from a friend, and then wait four or five weeks for the upgrade to show?). I'm getting much better vibes from Ashton-Tate on support and futures for the product -- and they aren't afraid to admit to bugs in public (I'm keeping an eye on the A-T Forum on CompuServe. There's a very refreshing openness and a high level of expertise on that board, things I always felt were missing from Microsoft's on-line groups up there -- where the common answer seemed to be either silence or "Call our support number") This doesn't make Word a worse Word Processor. But FWP is the first one I've seen that has the power to take Word on in its own territory. And FWP is the first WP that really has been designed to be a Macintosh word processor. And it shows -- it is, for all it's power and complexity, simple and intuitive. >And just because a company's getting big, or has to do with IBM (now, I >might have to think about that one), doesn't automatically bring evil. No, by a long shot. Ashton-Tate ain't small. But I have talked to dozens of people who have had to order upgrades (that they found out about on Bulletin boards) for bug fixes in Microsoft products. And had the request get lost, sometimes two or three times. When Excel is crashing every few minutes on your Mac II, and it takes you twelve weeks to get the fixed version of the program because Microsoft lost the request twice and then spent three weeks shipping it to you, it doesn't engender a lot of corporate loyalty. And I know enough people who have been in this position that I don't believe it to be a rare fluke. It happens a lot. I used to work with a lot of Microsoft products. Microsoft File, which hasn't been updated since 1984 (it'll get a facelife this year, but I wonder why they bother). Word 1.05, later Word 3.0, later 3.01. A love/hate relationship. Excel 1.04 (now 1.06, but I haven't asked for it). The only one I have left is Excel (actually, I have Word on my disk, primarily because my editor requires my articles to be shipped in Word format -- so I write in Fullwrite, export in Macwrite, and import into word before mailing it off. Other than that...). And my guess is that Full Impact may well do for Excel what FullWrite seems to be doing for Word -- giving people a choice (for the record, I really like Excel, and have no intention of switching over.) Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Robert A. Heinlein: 1907-1988. He will never truly die as long as we read his words and speak his name. Rest in Peace.
wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu (Pierce T. Wetter) (06/03/88)
>My position: I think FullWrite has a way to go before it challenges Word as >powerful balanced document tool. And also that Word could be improved >to match ease of use, mostly through some easy visual controls/indicators >added to work with its rich style abilities. (e.g. Consider a little stack >of style layers, showing/selecting styles on mousing). > > > Thus where I have inclusions of program code, for instance, each CR > separated line will have lots of space, or I will have to multispace > between each paragraph through the entire document, as in using a > typewriter. > 3) Though sidebars seem to be the intended answer for unusual things, > they don't fill in here (included listings, etc.) at all. And see below. Actually, it would seem to me that sidebars would be ideal here. Especially since the place sidebar dialog shows you the margins of your document, you can easily fit the sidebar across the entire width, then paste in your program text. Since Sidebars work as mini-chapters, this would seem to work rather well. What exactly are the problems you have when you do this? > > 3) Sizing anything (especially graphics) included in sidebars appears > to be a royal pain -- resize each of (possibly several -- why are there > several) involved layers first, etc.. > > And some, like the drawing 'canvas', seem to require sizing by numbers, > not point and drag to fit! Hear, Hear! Where's the size box? How am I supposed to know how big my sidebar should be if I cant see it in my document? > >What I really don't understand is the 'bash Microsoft' tone in the >recent articles, unless it's smarting about the bug-infested first Word >3.00 release. > Its not that, really. This is how I describe the difference between Word and FW, to my friends. Word is a PC word processor ported to the mac, FW is a mac word processor. Both FW and word have their faults. Words major fault is that it is cumbersome to use to do many simple things. (How many people have tried to add all the options in the character, and paragraph formats to their menus?). Words major strength is it can do almost anything though it might be a lot of work to get there. FW major fault is that there are some areas which need work (such as styles, and changing the sizes of things), but its still better then word 1.0. FW major advantage is it consistent, comprehensive use of the mac interface. double-clicking on something (sidebar, posted-not, ruler etc) opens it so you can edit it, selecting an area of text then a new ruler creates two, one before and one after, so that you can change just that section without affecting everything else. This is the main reason I prefer it to word. I can do anything I want, I don't have to spend 10 min looking up what silly key command does the thing I want to do. Since you previously made heavy use of styles, I can see how this would make you more of a word fan. Pierce ---------------------------------------------------------------- wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu Race For Space Grand Prize Winner. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Useless Advice #986: Never sit on a Tack.
dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) (06/03/88)
In article <55035@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >>My position: I think FullWrite has a way to go before it challenges Word as >>powerful balanced document tool. There are somethings FWP makes very easy. You need to use it a little longer and then you'll start to appreciate it. You also mentions that you have only used FWP for a weekend. Well I think is says a lot that you were able to figure out how to do most of the stuff in FWP in a weekend. It took me about 2-3 weeks before I could start to complain about Word 3.0. Not because it's a more powerful product but because it's a more frustratring product. Tell me how to do a page break in word. {I know how to do it, but I had to look it up in the documentation}, now figure out how to do a page break in FWP. This is a very simple example of where Word fails a user interface test and FWP excel's {stealing from the MacWrite Model of WP}. >I would say it this way. FullWrite has a way to go before it becomes what >it's potential shows that it should be. I agree, I can't wait for FWP 2.0. Should be hot!!! There are some thing's in FWP that are better than Word. The User Interface is wonderful. Word 4.0 better have a major Overhaul of it's User Interface if it's going to win my vote back from FWP. Also using FWP like you would use Word is not the way to go about it. ONe of the wonderful things about the Macintosh is it's ability to present the user with information in different manners. This encouages different models of operation. Using FWP like Word is like using a Macintosh like you would a DOS machine. It takes a different mental model, and after discovering the ground rules of the model it is then more powerful than any other computer. FWP is a similar product. It is so generalized in so many areas that you can make it do most anything once you "get the religion" about how it works. There are several things good about Word, but none of them would make me give up FWP. But it is very NICE to be able to argue about Word processors for the Macintosh after all these years. And you have to admit that we're all arguing about how to improve two very powerful products to begin with. This is almost as bad as complaining that we only have 1 or 2 megs of RAM to play with, gosh dad this really sucks!! BTW: Has anyone noticed that the MS-Dos/OS 2 world has suddenly become much quieter, or is it just me. -- David M. O'Rourke Disclaimer: I don't represent the school. All opinions are mine!
chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (06/07/88)
Folks, PLEASE be careful when editing followups. This message implies that I said: In article <3043@polyslo.UUCP>, dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) writes: > In article <55035@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > >>My position: I think FullWrite has a way to go before it challenges Word as > >>powerful balanced document tool. When it isn't true. What I really said was: > >I would say it this way. FullWrite has a way to go before it becomes what > >it's potential shows that it should be. But the way the followup was formatted makes it almost impossible to tell this, unless you're carefully counting angle brackets. If you're going to quote someone in a followup, please make sure you're really quoting them, and not someone else from a previous followup. chuq Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Robert A. Heinlein: 1907-1988. He will never truly die as long as we read his words and speak his name. Rest in Peace.
moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (06/07/88)
Basically, I ditto Chuq's comments, i.e. I'm not bashing Word, I was glad to have it, but it was a PC word processor, etc. Also that FW is more powerful, except for a few specific areas I described before (styles being the biggest point). I might also point out that I'd rather have two good power word processors on the Mac, and it looks like that's what we may end up with by the end of the year. But currently, FW has completely replaced Word. I'm looking forward to seeing what Microsoft has up their sleeves with Word 4.0 (they're demoing it at our local user group meeting at the end of June -- I'll report). In article <8013@drutx.ATT.COM> clive@drutx.ATT.COM (Clive Steward) writes: > 1) The outliner requires selecting the entire document first, to > generate an outline. I couldn't even seem find a way to do this, > across chapter boundaries. And don't find the outliner interface > nearly as easy or failsafe (scrambled text for me often) as Word's. While I fully agree with your assesments of several of FullWrite's limitations (especially the paragraph spacing and custom styles, though I still think they are outweighed by FW's strong points), this I take exception to. I used Word's outliner for years and HATED it -- found myself swearing at the damn thing on occasions. I really wanted to integrate an outline with my document, and manipulate it so that the headings were hidden, in a different style, etc. I could do it (barely) with Word, but God Hell, was it ever clumsy and non-intuitive. A feature which requires me to go to the manual EVERY time I use it is not a feature. (And let's not get into Word's manuals....) In contrast, FullWrite's outliner fits right in. I ran through the manual once, and had one refresher with the reference manual, and that was it. A cinch. As to your specific complaint, you can create an outline in the document anywhere by using Make Outline -- this inserts an outline at the insertion point. And there are several methods for taking current chapters and transforming them into outlines. I need to check the manual about outlines stretching over chapter boundaries, but I think it can be done (the table of contents feature seems to be an extension of the outliner). >Can we see the progress as fun? Yes -- and I think we're in for some real fun here, because I think both products are going to mature in the very near future. It takes something like this to really underline the benefits of competition in a free-market system. "There will always be survivors." -- Robert Heinlen --- Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind... <*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>
dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) (06/07/88)
I posted a message that could lead the reader to improperly draw a conclusion about who said what, this was do my my over zealous deleting of lines in order to trim the message down. I am sorry if this has caused any problems. I will not let this happen again in the future. Please accept my apologies, I didn't mean to mis-quote anyone. -- David M. O'Rourke Disclaimer: I don't represent the school. All opinions are mine!
awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) (06/10/88)
With all the net traffic so adoring of Full Write, I decided I had to try it. I work at Ashton-Tate on PCs, but it's just me and my Mac when I go home. I have 2 Meg of RAM, so that's one controversy I didn't worry about (we have some 1 Meg Macs in the office, and we haven't had any problems with FWP except that you can't have 200k of sounds in CheapBeep and expect to run in just a Meg). I felt like posting this because people are bashing Word and no one has mentioned the best thing about FWP. One writer said that Word was a PC word processor ported to the Mac, but FWP was a Mac product. I think that's unfair. I'd say instead that for all the cumbersome-ness of Word, you'd expect the features of FWP instead of having to stare at the watch cursor as you toggle Page Preview mode. I think Word deserves the title "Mac software," but its just second-generation wp while FWP is third-generation. But the main reason for going to FWP, which is every bit as cumbersome as Word as it struggles to keep the display WYSIWYG while you struggle to say what you want to say, is trendiness. There is a set of page-layout and typographic cliches that happen to be "in" this year, this month. And FWP is savvy enough to make these conventions easier than other word processors do. For example, it looks great to leave a 2" strip down the left side of each page with a vertical rule next to the text. You can do that in Word, but it's dirt simple in FWP. What Word can't do anywhere near as easily is to paste a picture in that 2" strip. Or another stupid style thing: FWP lets you do Bold, Italic, like Word, but they also have Small Caps, where the lower-case letters are capitalized, but smaller than the upper-case letters. Check out most advertising, annual reports, etc. and you'll realize that this is the single biggest cliche of the desktop publishing fashion year. And FWP's got it. These are my observations as someone familiar with Word and now familiar with Full Write, not as an Ashton-Tate employee. I work on dBASE IV; I know nothing about the other stuff except as a user. /alastair/
cloos@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (James H. Cloos Jr.) (06/13/88)
In article <371@dbase.UUCP> awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) writes: > >another stupid style thing: FWP lets you do Bold, Italic, like Word, >but they also have Small Caps, where the lower-case letters are >capitalized, but smaller than the upper-case letters. Check out most >advertising, annual reports, etc. and you'll realize that this is the >single biggest cliche of the desktop publishing fashion year. And FWP's >got it. You imply that Word can't do this, but it CAN, and easily, too. Just hit command-shift-H, or check out the Character dialog under the format menu; you can even add the option to the format menu! -JimC -- batcomputer!cloos@cornell.UUCP |James H. Cloos, Jr.|#include <disclaimer.h> cloos@batcomputer.tn.cornell.EDU|B7 Upson, Cornell U|#include <cute_stuff.h> cloos@tcgould.tn.cornell.EDU |Ithaca, NY 14853 |"Entropy isn't what cloos@crnlthry.BITNET | +1 607 272 4519 | it used to be."
hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (06/14/88)
>another stupid style thing: FWP lets you do Bold, Italic, like Word, >but they also have Small Caps, where the lower-case letters are >capitalized, but smaller than the upper-case letters. Check out most >advertising, annual reports, etc. and you'll realize that this is the >single biggest cliche of the desktop publishing fashion year. And FWP's >got it. ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ So does Word 3.x. >/alastair/ Kurt W. Hirchert hirchert@ncsa.uiuc.edu National Center for Supercomputing Applications
jackd@copper.TEK.COM (Jack Decker) (06/16/88)
I'll concede that FullWrite has got some pretty trendy DTP features as far as layout goes, but why-o-why did they leave out automatic kerning and true style sheets? The lack of these two features just shot down the Mac as a possibility in our manuals group. jack "the drudge" decker "A mind is a terrible thing to waste on a religious fundamentalist."
frank@mnetor.UUCP (Frank Kolnick) (06/20/88)
In article <46100161@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> hirchert@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >>another stupid style thing: FWP lets you do Bold, Italic, like Word, >>but they also have Small Caps, where the lower-case letters are >>capitalized, but smaller than the upper-case letters. Check out most >>advertising, annual reports, etc. and you'll realize that this is the >>single biggest cliche of the desktop publishing fashion year. And FWP's >>got it. > ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ Since you mentioned it, no package for the Mac (that I'm aware of) does true small caps, which are actually a distinct font with proportions and line weights different from normal caps. Word (etc.) just give you smaller sizes of normal caps. Or you can fudge them with a package that lets you fool with the font's strokes, etc. (e.g., Adobe Illustrator -- I know, not a convenient solution). However, I'd be very interested in being corrected, i.e., does anyone know of a DA or something that will do small caps properly (based on standard fonts, as opposed to adding a new font. Or does FWP really do this?). (BTW, regarding FWP vs. Word vs. ..., I'm quite happy with Word for text, Cricket Draw or Illustrator for diagrams and Xpress for layout. I find that I prefer to mix the 'best' of each function rather than having a totally integrated package -- isn't that what Macs are for? I also have only a meg. of RAM, which I'll complain about later.) -- Frank Kolnick, UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!mnetor!frank BELL: (416)-475-8980 ext. 311