LIPA@POLYA.STANFORD.EDU (William J. Lipa) (04/13/88)
I have been using the new MacWrite ever since I got the upgrade last week, and I have to say that there are many frustrating things about it compared to Apple's MacWrite 4.6. Although the spell checker provides much-needed power, it is poorly integrated into MacWrite as a whole. When you check your document, a truly amazing display of windows resizing, text selecting, and things opening and closing unfolds before you. While not inconvenient in itself, the changing display is annoying and an indication of a poorly designed product. Additionally, the spell checking window is a modal dialog even though it appears to be a modeless dialog. The modality is frustrating, especially since windows with similar functions (ie the find window) are modeless. MacWrite still can die with a system error when you move the insertion point with the left and right arrows and then select undo. Many of the keyboard equivalents have been changed, especially in the Style menu. This again is a violation of the User Interface Guidelines. I find it annoying to not have a keyboard equivalent for superscript and subscript as I used to. The program puts up a dialog with your name and organization at the start. I don't mind this in itself; what really gets me is that there seems to be a DELAY so that you can read this window. I don't need extra delays in my life; Claris shouldn't give them to me. Why don't they just put up the licence window while they do the initialization? Initialization certainly takes long enough. MacWrite is more than twice as large even without the dictionary files. I can't believe the code for the spell checker is 100K, and I can't see any other major enhancements. Still has the left margin of one inch, etc., etc... Oh well, I still like it better than Word, but not much. Bill Lipa lipa%polya@forsythe.stanford.edu -------
merchant@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Peter Merchant) (04/14/88)
In article <576911329.0.LIPA@Polya.Stanford.EDU>, William J. Lipa writes: > MacWrite still can die with a system error when you move the insertion > point with the left and right arrows and then select undo. > > MacWrite is more than twice as large even without the dictionary files. I > can't believe the code for the spell checker is 100K, and I can't see any > other major enhancements. Claris was at the New York Mac Users' Group meeting a couple of weeks ago and showed off MacWrite 5.0. Their comment about it was that the code was so complex that they didn't want to mess with it too much, for fear of introducing lots of new bugs. They said that there are plans for a complete rewrite, but don't hold your breath. They also showed off MacDraw II. Pant. Drool. --- "Save it 'til the morning after..." Peter Merchant (merchant@eleazar.UUCP)
c60b-da@buddy.Berkeley.EDU (Alex Ho) (04/15/88)
In article <8669@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> merchant@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Peter Merchant) writes: > >They also showed off MacDraw II. Pant. Drool. >--- i also saw MacDraw II when Claris demoed for the Berkeley Macintosh User's Group (BMUG). i must agree it's very impressive. we also saw smart forms, which is pretty interesting... what do other people think? alex ho c60b-da@buddy.berkeley.edu
cs178aas@sdcc8.ucsd.EDU (Grobbins) (04/16/88)
In article <2408@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> c60b-da@buddy.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Alex Ho) writes: >i also saw MacDraw II when Claris demoed for the Berkeley Macintosh >User's Group (BMUG). i must agree it's very impressive. MacDraw II also appeared quite expensive and, for a CAD program, underpowered. grobbins@ucsd.edu
osmigo@ut-emx.UUCP (04/16/88)
Re: MacDraw II: I was recently playing with Draw II in a store's display
SE, and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use pallette patterns
in the "lines." Seems all you can get for the lines is plain black. Seems
strange that Claris would remove such an otherwise universal capability in
a supposedly updated version.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<||>---Ron Morgan---<||>-UUCP: {ihnp4,allegra,ut-sally}!emx!osmigo-<||||||||||>
<||>-Univ. of Texas-<||>-------osmigo@emx.UUCP---------------------<||||||||||>
<||>--Austin Texas--<||>-ARPA: osmigo@emx.utexas.edu---------------<||||||||||>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------