sysop@stech.UUCP (Jan Harrington) (01/21/88)
So it was shipped last Wednesday? Has anyone on this network received a copy? I'm getting very anxious ... Jan Harrington, sysop Scholastech Telecommunications ihnp4!husc6!amcad!stech!sysop or allegra!stech!sysop ******************************************************************************** Miscellaneous profundity: "No matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Banzai ********************************************************************************
egv@aicchi.UUCP (Vann) (01/25/88)
> > So it was shipped last Wednesday? Has anyone on this network received > a copy? I'm getting very anxious ... > > > Jan Harrington, sysop > Scholastech Telecommunications > ihnp4!husc6!amcad!stech!sysop or allegra!stech!sysop > > ******************************************************************************** > Miscellaneous profundity: > > "No matter where you go, there you are." > Buckaroo Banzai > ******************************************************************************** Just to let you know Jan, I received my copy last Thursday and have been busy putting it through its paces. I have a few general responses to the program which might be of interest to some of our readers on the net: 1. The program is in some ways overwhelming to a first time user. Even one who considers him/herself a knowledgeable user of MS WORD. Part of the reason is that it is so very feature laden. Another is the way in which those features have been implemented. 2. I began by trying to read the tutorial. While it is well written, it moved a bit slowly for me so I began to look instead at those sections of the manual which contained reference information. About the single most important con- cept to be understood in this application is the notion of the SIDEBAR. 3. Oddly enough some simple things available in WORD cannot be easily done in FW (or at least I have not discovered the proper techniques as yet) or per- haps not at all! One of the things which came immediately to my attention was that all columns are of EQUAL width. This presents a problem for some types of documents. 4. What I wanted to do was create a 3-column document in which two of the columns were narrower than the third. I have yet to find a straightforward means of doing what is trivial in WORD. 5. Neither can I discover a means to add extra leading between selected para- graphs. You can create a GLOBAL amount of extra lead between paragraphs, but cannot create a STYLE of paragraph without this or vice versa. (Again, I want to emphasize, that I have not been able to find a way to do some of these things. Others will perhaps have to show the way.) 6. On the brighter side, the outlining and table of contents features and they manner in which they work together is rather nice. While I did NOT discover a means of employing Postscript instructions in the text body, EPSF docu- ments are allowed, HURRAH! 7. All of the pieces are here, from autosave to document info. I especially lik the manner in which footnotes are handled. Scanning through them all and locating them easily is quite nice. Do wish that the custom styles wer set up to automatically define another when the carriage return was struck. 8. Why did FW make the same mistake as MS in not allowing the user to define the type of format in which date and time appear. MS only allowed the rather brief 1/11/88 format, while FW gives you Saturday, January 11, 1988 which is great but sometimes I want the 1/11/88. Whats wrong with having a choice? 9. The spelling checker and thesaurus are great additions and work well. About the only place I found bugs was in the use of the SIDEBAR with PICTURES. A MacDraw document I imported caused an out of memory error on a 2.5Mbyte Mac. I increased the application memory allocation and the error ceased. But was the handling of the graphic ever slowwwwwwwwwwwww. What gives here. This save graphic in MS WORD was a snap! 10.My complaints are few but real. I would score this a definite 10! BUT I want it all. Please fix the bugs that cause infinite looping when handling graphics. -- Eric Geoffrey Vann Analysts International (Chicago Branch) (312) 882-4673 ..!ihnp4!aicchi!egv