moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (05/10/88)
Just played with the FullWrite release that came into Fluke, and a few hours
later ordered a copy from ComputerWare. Basically, it looks pretty much
like the pre-releases, except for the documentation and the addition of the
one feature whose absence would have kept me from using the program. Runs
well under 2 megabytes, speed-wise -- could be faster, but it wasn't having
problems keeping up. Reads in Word 3.0 files OK (though I hadn't tried
anything too fancy -- gonna try a multi-column, multi-style document when my
copy comes in). The beta I've been using worked pretty well in the first
place for me, so they may just have spent the majority of time cleaning up
the really insidious bugs and adding dBASE Mac compatibility (I can do
without that, thank you).
The really gosh-golly good news for me is the addition of a checkmark button
in the spelling checker, like Word. I know that sounds minor to you, but I
use that kind of thing all the time, and I don't think I would have done a
lot of spell-checking in FullWrite without it.
Customs styles, why they look adequate for my purposes, are still missing
two features which need to be added in a future release: setable first-line
indention -- a style can be indented for the whole paragraph, but first
lines of paragraphs cannot be indented/(exdented? outdented?) by style, and
paragraph spacing by style. These really should be in for completion's sake
(FullWrite is pretty robust everyplace else).
Custom styles in general, while easier to use than Word Style Sheets (and
I've argued about this with several people -- easy is a very subjective
word), are currently less powerful (though I like being able to set "select
paragraph" in the custom style definition sheet). I had a *very* bad
experience with MS Word 3.01 the other night, where it wouldn't change the
font according to the Style Sheet, and I am not feeling particularly
generous towards them of late.
Well, I'll try writing next weekend's Seattle Film Reviews in FullWrite and
see how it goes. Let you know later....
"The living dead don't NEED to solve word problems."
---
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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