akk2@ur-tut (Atul Kacker) (05/26/88)
We have recently seen a spate of postings on what you can and can't do with
SidebarWrite, er... FullWrite. Can you run it on a 1 Meg Mac or not? Can you
do multiple and single columns on a single page? etcetera, etcetera..
Chuq Von Rospach is correct in suggesting that people who have only tried the
demo version of FullWrite, keep their mouth shut or barring that qualify all
their postings with the preface - " I have only tried it on the demo version".
These postings only add to the confusion and as Chuq points out is not fair to
Ashton-Tate (Restrict your flaming for Microsoft ;-)).
However, the 1 Meg controversy has still to be resolved. Perhaps someone who
has a 1Meg Mac AND has the shrink-wrap version of FullWrite can give a
definitive answer.
So far as I understand, you can run FullWrite on a 1 Meg machine, however it
can be slow. How slow?
What is the size of the largest document you can create on a 1 Meg Mac, that
has only text, before FullWrite complains about not having enough memry to
work with? How about a document that has a half page graphic on each page?
What is the largest document size in that case?
What happens if someone creates a humongous document on a 5Meg machine and
hands it to someone who only has a 1Meg machine? Will FullWrite be able to
open that document? If not does it give the user an option to use only a
portion of the document at a time?
These, I feel, are extremely important questions in view of the current
shortage of 1Meg SIMMS. The shortage will in all likelihood last well into
1989 and answers like -"Go and buy more memory if you want to use FullWrite"
are just not reasonable.
Comments? Answers?
--
Atul Kacker | Internet: akk2@tut.cc.rochester.edu
| UUCP: {ames,cmcl2,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!ur-tut!akk2
"Gun control is being able to hit your target"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/26/88)
>However, the 1 Meg controversy has still to be resolved. Perhaps someone who >has a 1Meg Mac AND has the shrink-wrap version of FullWrite can give a >definitive answer. You can run Fullwrite on a 1Megabyte machine. If, however, you start slogging in INITs, startup screens and the kitchen sink, you no longer have a 1Megabyte machine. Depending on how many INIT's you use, you could in fact have a 600K or 700K machine, and FullWrite won't work with that. >So far as I understand, you can run FullWrite on a 1 Meg machine, however it >can be slow. How slow? I run FullWrite in an 1100K Multifinder partition, which is more or less the same as a 1Meg mac. It's slower than Word 3, but not so slow you want to kill it. About the only time I start running into problems is when I have four or five 60K files open simultaneously and am cutting and pasting text between them (yes, I do that. Try it on word sometime for REAL giggles). >What is the size of the largest document you can create on a 1 Meg Mac, that >has only text, before FullWrite complains about not having enough memry to >work with? How about a document that has a half page graphic on each page? >What is the largest document size in that case? The FullWrite manual doesn't say. But I've run 30 page documents with >20 screendumps into a single FullWrite Chapter without any problem. >What happens if someone creates a humongous document on a 5Meg machine and >hands it to someone who only has a 1Meg machine? Will FullWrite be able to >open that document? If not does it give the user an option to use only a >portion of the document at a time? No, and No. It will tell you it doesn't have memory to open it. What FullWrite DOES do, though, is allow you to limit the size of a chapter so that it can guarantee opening on a 1 Meg Mac. If you attempt to pass that limit, it will warn you. That seems like a reasonable alternative to me -- allow those that care about 1Meg compatibility to do so, but not burden all the other users. It's trivial to get around the 1Meg limit, by the way. Split the document into multiple chapters, as only one chapter is in memory at any time. Infinitiely nicer than multiple documents! 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.
hallett@macbeth.steinmetz (Jeff A. Hallett) (05/26/88)
In article <2120@ur-tut.UUCP> akk2@ur-tut (Atul Kacker) writes: > >However, the 1 Meg controversy has still to be resolved. Perhaps someone who >has a 1Meg Mac AND has the shrink-wrap version of FullWrite can give a >definitive answer. > >So far as I understand, you can run FullWrite on a 1 Meg machine, however it >can be slow. How slow? Well, I meet these criteria. FullWrite Professional version 1.0 runs on a 1M Macintosh Plus. It displays some speed degradation, but nothing really severe -- a minor annoyance at best. The power of the environment more than outweighs it. I have not had it crash yet. > >What is the size of the largest document you can create on a 1 Meg Mac, that >has only text, before FullWrite complains about not having enough memry to >work with? How about a document that has a half page graphic on each page? >What is the largest document size in that case? > >What happens if someone creates a humongous document on a 5Meg machine and >hands it to someone who only has a 1Meg machine? Will FullWrite be able to >open that document? If not does it give the user an option to use only a >portion of the document at a time? Well, now here is a point. FullWrite has an option that notifies a user if the current document chapter will grow beyond 1M. Sometimes pictures are sufficient to do this, or if a chapter is close to the limit, there won't be enough memory for the drawing window. However, it avoids a crash and provides a mechanism that will ensure that a chapter created on a 5M machine will be editable on a 1M one. Jeffrey A. Hallett | ARPA: hallett@ge-crd.arpa Software Technology Program | UUCP: desdemona!hallett@steinmetz.uucp GE Corporate Research and Development | (518) 387-5654 +--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | "The past is just a fiction created to explain the discrepancy between | | my current state and my senses' perceptions." | | - The Ruler of the Universe | | "The Restaurant at the End | | of the Universe" | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) (05/26/88)
In article <2120@ur-tut.UUCP> akk2@ur-tut (Atul Kacker) writes: >We have recently seen a spate of postings on what you can and can't do with >SidebarWrite, er... FullWrite. Can you run it on a 1 Meg Mac or not? Can you >do multiple and single columns on a single page? etcetera, etcetera.. Yes you can run it on 1 meg. I likes more memory though. Yes you can have multiple columns on a single page. >However, the 1 Meg controversy has still to be resolved. Perhaps someone who >has a 1Meg Mac AND has the shrink-wrap version of FullWrite can give a >definitive answer. 20 to 30 pages in one chapter at a time on a 1 meg machine. FullWrite breaks a document into chapter. The document can be as large as disk space allows, as long as each chapter can fit into memory. On one meg it's slow because it keeps swapping as much memory as possible to make room for the data. But it's not as slow as MacWrite, nor as fast as MS Word. It's usable. >What is the size of the largest document you can create on a 1 Meg Mac, that >has only text, before FullWrite complains about not having enough memry to >work with? How about a document that has a half page graphic on each page? >What is the largest document size in that case? Haven't tested the Max with graphics yet but it goes WAY down real fast! Here again though it's by chapter size, not document size. >What happens if someone creates a humongous document on a 5Meg machine and >hands it to someone who only has a 1Meg machine? Will FullWrite be able to >open that document? If not does it give the user an option to use only a >portion of the document at a time? I think you're out of luck. But the person on the 5 meg machine would've been warned if they had "1 meg limit" set in their preferences. I own a Dove 2 meg upgrade and I run FullWrite under "Normal" finder so that it has all the room it want. My RoomMate runs it under MultiFinder with 1250K, and doesn't seem to have any major problems. I think I'll start a slight controversy, if Ashton Tate needs to dump something to get the memory requirement down. How about the Picture drawing enviroment. I'd rather use a "real" drawing enviroment anyways. Comments, anyone just absolutly in love with FWP drawing enviroment. I'm not. The rest of the program is very very good, but the drawing enviroment might be a good canidate for axing. -- David M. O'Rourke Disclaimer: I don't represent the school. All opinions are mine!
gandreas@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Glenn Andreas) (05/26/88)
In article <54570@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > >You can run Fullwrite on a 1Megabyte machine. If, however, you start >slogging in INITs, startup screens and the kitchen sink, you no longer have >a 1Megabyte machine. Depending on how many INIT's you use, you could in fact >have a 600K or 700K machine, and FullWrite won't work with that. > >I run FullWrite in an 1100K Multifinder partition, which is more or less ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >the same as a 1Meg mac. It's slower than Word 3, but not so slow you want to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Not wishing to be too picky, but a 1100K Multifinder partition isn't really that much the same as a 1Meg mac. A 1100K mf partition is just that - 1100K of free space. A 1 meg mac still needs space for the screen (let's not forget that 23K) and the system heap. Sure, as was mentioned, loading with INIT's (and a debugger (especially if you modify is so that it works with screen swapping animation - adds 32K)) will really cut down on your free memory, but just the basic system (system 5, I haven't gotten 6 yet) still takes up around 230K (if I remember correctly). This still leaves you with less than 800K of space. While FullWrite sure seems nice, I can at least get Word 3 running with Multifinder and still have enough left over to run Excel (well, if I cut down the partition for Word a bit) on my 1 Meg machine. Not that I plan to stay at 1 Meg for long though... Just as a side note, I've made a hypercard stack that lets you specify different boot configurations (one with everything, one with nothing, one for programming, one with standard utilities, etc...) and it moves the INITs and other things in and out of the system folder as needed. If there is interest, maybe I'll post it (never did see anything come out of comp.binaries.hypercard :-).
chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/27/88)
> I think I'll start a slight controversy, if Ashton Tate needs to dump >something to get the memory requirement down. How about the Picture >drawing enviroment. I'd rather use a "real" drawing enviroment anyways. >Comments, anyone just absolutly in love with FWP drawing enviroment. I'm >not. The rest of the program is very very good, but the drawing enviroment >might be a good canidate for axing. I tend to agree. I have SuperPaint (looking forward to SuperPaint II with autotrace) and Freehand on my disk. Between the two, I can usually do what I want without the draw environment. But -- for folks who don't have a draw environment, it's probably a good deal. Microsoft is certainly not ignoring it -- they're going to be bundling SuperPaint with Word 4.0. It's convenient, which is nice, but I don't think integrated systems really sell on the Mac -- they aren't really needed (you don't believe me? As Lotus. The only exception is Works, which seems to be the integrated system for folks who want all these tools, but don't need high-end stuff on any of them). My bet is that a lot of people are either going to stick with bitmap programs like MacPaint or SuperPaint, or graduate to the high-end stuff like Freehand or Illustrator. The draw layer seems right in the middle somewhere to me. I do plan on giving it a good workout as soon (hah!) as I stop being under deadline pressures and have time to putter. Right now, I can't afford it -- learning a new word processor is more than enough fun (yes, folks, I literally switched word processors in mid-stream, breaking rule number 3 of writing. Which says something of what I think of FullWrite. And I haven't regretted it [and before you ask, Rule #1 is "Back up your hard disk" and Rule #2 is "Damnit! Back that thing up! Now!"). But I expect that I'll probably standardize on Freehand, because I don't think I'll be able to do what I want to do in the FWP draw layer -- especially since the work will end up having to be exported to a layout program. 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.
verber@apatosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark Verber) (05/27/88)
In article <54570@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >You can run Fullwrite on a 1Megabyte machine. If, however, you start >slogging in INITs, startup screens and the kitchen sink, you no longer have >a 1Megabyte machine. Depending on how many INIT's you use, you could in fact >have a 600K or 700K machine, and FullWrite won't work with that. > I guess you can say that Fullwrite will run on a 1MB machine, but I would say that it just barely runs. Before I dropped in extra memory (5MB total) into my MacII I had only 1MB of RAM. I was running System 4.2. The only INIT I was using was Suitcase. When I openned a document I had written earlier (2 pages w/ 2 column) I got a message that said 'Don't add anything to your longest chapter'. Well there was only one chapter (i.e. my document). This bothered my a lot. Now I must say that I did some editing, and that I did extend the 'longest chapter' without any problems, but I did worry me. I don't think that running FW in a 1100K partition is at all like running it on a strait 1MB machine. Something I found interesting though was the fact that the same document had no problems on my MacPlus at work. Looks like FW was specifically shoehorned into a MacPlus. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark A. Verber MaBell: 614-292-7344 Computer Science Department MX: verber@cis.ohio-state.edu Ohio State University DUMB: verber@ohio-state.arpa 2036 Neil Ave, Columbus, Ohio 43210 UUCP: ..!att!osu-cis!verber
sbb@esquire.UUCP (Stephen B. Baumgarten) (05/27/88)
In article <2914@polyslo.UUCP> dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) writes: > I think I'll start a slight controversy, if Ashton Tate needs to dump >something to get the memory requirement down. How about the Picture >drawing enviroment. I'd rather use a "real" drawing enviroment anyways. >Comments, anyone just absolutly in love with FWP drawing enviroment. I'm >not. The rest of the program is very very good, but the drawing enviroment >might be a good canidate for axing. Agreed. Since you pretty much need more than 1 meg to run FullWrite at this point, getting rid of the drawing environment would allow those people who have only 1 meg to create larger chapters, and everyone else to run their favorite drawing program with FullWrite under MultiFinder. - Steve
barad@tulane.tulane.edu (Herb Barad) (05/27/88)
In article <11002@steinmetz.ge.com> desdemona!hallett@steinmetz.UUCP (Jeffrey A. Hallett) writes: >In article <2120@ur-tut.UUCP> akk2@ur-tut (Atul Kacker) writes: >> >>However, the 1 Meg controversy has still to be resolved. Perhaps someone who >>has a 1Meg Mac AND has the shrink-wrap version of FullWrite can give a >>definitive answer. >> >>So far as I understand, you can run FullWrite on a 1 Meg machine, however it >>can be slow. How slow? > >Well, I meet these criteria. FullWrite Professional version 1.0 runs >on a 1M Macintosh Plus. It displays some speed degradation, but >nothing really severe -- a minor annoyance at best. The power of the >environment more than outweighs it. I have not had it crash yet. Well, I've had it crash on me. I have a 1 Meg mac (running a clean system with no INITs) and I've been trying to print out a document that was created on a larger Mac. The "1 Meg limit" option was set and I had no notification that my 20 page document (with a couple of PICTs) exceeded the limit. When I did manage to get it to print, FullWrite complained about lack of memory and warned that some pictures may not print correctly. Many of them did not! By the way, I DO have the released version. All in all I'm very pleased with it, but I have experienced 1 Meg problems. -- Herb Barad Electrical Engineering Dept., Tulane Univ. INTERNET: barad@tulane.edu USENET: barad@tulane.uucp
mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney) (05/28/88)
In article <2914@polyslo.UUCP> dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) writes: > The rest of the program is very very good, but the drawing enviroment > might be a good canidate for axing. No no no! If you have complicated drawings in a big document, the last thing you want to do is cut & paste for every change. [Ok, I'm biased; I always thought cut & paste was a pain, electronic or not.] Actually, I would assume (silly me) that the drawing environment segmented out nicely, so it wouldn't help very much to remove it. Now if it could only do "smart" drawings ala Design... Who knows, a year from now FullWrite might be the first to break the 2 Mb barrier. Brian McElhinney mce@tc.fluke.com
peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) (05/30/88)
>> I think I'll start a slight controversy, if Ashton Tate needs to dump >>something to get the memory requirement down. How about the Picture >>drawing enviroment. I'd rather use a "real" drawing enviroment anyways. >>Comments, anyone just absolutly in love with FWP drawing enviroment. I'm >>not. The rest of the program is very very good, but the drawing enviroment >>might be a good canidate for axing. I tend to agree. I write documentation that needs screen dumps, so I need a drawing environment that works with draw objects as well as bit maps. For me, the drawing environment of FullWrite would go largely unused. However, I do love those Bezier curves! -- Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121 UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter BITNET: Peter@Acadia Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) (05/31/88)
In article <14428@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> verber@apatosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark Verber) writes: >Something I found interesting though was the fact that the same document had >no problems on my MacPlus at work. Looks like FW was specifically shoehorned >into a MacPlus. No a basic Mac II uses more system memory than a Mac Plus, you have less availible memory on a 1 meg Mac II, than you do on a Mac Plus. Try it sometime look at the system heap on a striped system on a II and a Plus, you'll find the plus uses less memory. -- David M. O'Rourke Disclaimer: I don't represent the school. All opinions are mine!
blknowle@uokmax.UUCP (Bradford L Knowles) (06/10/88)
In article <3904@fluke.COM> mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney) writes: >In article <2914@polyslo.UUCP> dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) writes: >> The rest of the program is very very good, but the drawing enviroment >> might be a good canidate for axing. > >Actually, I would assume (silly me) that the drawing environment segmented out >nicely, so it wouldn't help very much to remove it. True, about the only thing you would save is disk space. > >Brian McElhinney >mce@tc.fluke.com -Brad Knowles UUCP: ...!ihnp4!occrsh!uokmax!blknowle ARPA: blknowle@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu SNAIL: 1013 Mobile Circle Norman, OK 73071-2522 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Philosophy of Boris Yeltsin: "If one wants to be unemployed, one will criticize ones' boss. If one wants to be sent to Siberia, one will criticize the wife of ones' boss." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Disclaimer: (The above opinions are my own. They have nothing to do with the Univeristy of Oklahoma nor intelligance of any sort. :-)