moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (06/10/88)
[Responding to Clive Steward's comments and criticisms of FullWrite 1.0]
I appreciate the detailed list of FullWrite improvements/bug fixes; I'll be
running through them, and I'm sure several of them will make it into the
"wish list" I'm sending to Ashton-Tate (some of them are there already).
I have to leave it at the "agree to disagree" stage with your opinions of
the general FullWrite user interface, and specifically the outliner. For
producing professional documents (especially academic papers), I find
FullWrite to be the first product available (on any
microcomputer/workstation I've used) that has an interface which really
addresses the intricacies of document production. As you point out, it's an
immensely complex subject, and we seem to differ on our impressions of how
close FullWrite comes to the "ideal" document processor (a subjective
concept, at best); the point I really can't reconcile with is that you feel
Word 3.02 comes closer to said ideal than FullWrite. While 3.02 is an
adequate word processor for mid-level document processing, it provides a
user interface so difficult to master that its utility is seriously
impaired.
I used Word 3.02 for 2 years, writing 20 and 30 page articles liberally
spaced with graphics, and it didn't get proportionally easier as time went
on. Having produced five similar articles on FullWrite, I am far more
satisfied -- the program is much easier to use, and it's capabilities more
powerful. Granted, the current limitations of the program (primarily speed
of backspacing and a need for easier sidebar control) are serious drawbacks;
but given the choice of working with FullWrite or going back to Word 3.02,
there's no question of where I stand. When Word 4.0 comes along, I'll
certainly take a good look and re-evaluate my opinion (ditto for the next
version of FullWrite); it's being demonstrated at a local user's group in
two weeks, and I'm looking forward to it a good deal.
I might also point out that, at least in the current market, word processing
programs (like FullWrite and Word) and page layout programs (like PageMaker
and ReadySetGo!) are conceptually different beasts. The line between the
two genres of applications is fuzzy; I tend to divide them on whether they
allow "linking" of text columns. Frankly, I wouldn't recommend FullWrite as
page layout software for anyone who wanted to produce a moderately
sophisticated newsletter, due mainly to a lack of PostScript support and
some problems I've had mixing floating sidebars with placed sidebars (this
may well be due to my own ignorance, however). When I've been lauding
FullWrite in this newsgroup, keep in mind that I am not evaluating it as a
page layout application. I think that a word processor for the Mac should
have decent graphics and WYSIWYG support, and FullWrite provides just about
what I want in a word processor (BUT they need to do some work in allowing
one to move and size sidebars).
Oops, didn't mean to take up so much space on this... my apologies.
"It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a
bank at night."
-- Willie Sutton
---
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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