leeke@cascade.STANFORD.EDU (Steven D. Leeke) (12/07/86)
I received a demo copy of MindWrite v1.0 from MindWork Software late last
week and was rather pleased with what I saw - at first. The manual has a
very professional look and feel (or did Apple copyright that too :-)), and
from the reference card the features looked impressive - then I made the
mistake of actually putting on my HD20 and firing up the Plus (3.2,5.3,etc.)
to try it out. What a let down. I managed to crash the system half-a dozen
times within the first 5 minutes. They were great crashes too, video blitzing,
etc. I finally figured out what the majority of the problem was - the menu
items that refered to documents were not disabled when there were no documents
available so by selecting them the program crashed. Selecting Page Setup was
a guaranteed crash w/o a document. I have to wonder about who beta tested
this product.
Then I only tried commands when I had a document open and things settled down
quite a bit. The program took a lot effort and the original concept appears
to be a good one - but the implementation is lacking. Examples:
1) The document windows have a slew of controls in the right thumb control area
for zooming and changing window size - most of it is not needed and clutters
up the user-interface.
2) Non-standard buttons are used in dialogs that resemble HD20 icons - I had
a hard time figuring out what they were intended to be until I started playing
with all the dialog controls.
3) It isn't clear what you're manipulating when start grabbing pieces of an
outline - that is, the extent of what you are about to drag, erase, etc.
4) The program is big - about ~228k - plus it has a help file that is a
MindWrite document that is 41k.
5) It requires its own PostScript driver file to be able to print the symbols
it uses in outlines on a LW.
6) It requires AT LEAST 288k to run under switcher - better have a plus if
you want to run it with Draw or Draft, etc.
7) The vertical scroll bar was very inaccurate in reflecting the true position
of your place in the document.
Finally, I had been wondering why Icon Review would hang onto a piece of
software such as Multi/MindWrite when its vaporware history has been so
problematic. I got my answer when I read the back cover of the manual
in the credits section - it reads like an Icon Review employee summary!
The principal authors are Cary Wyman and Linda Moncrief - Dennis Moncrief (I
believe) is the publisher of the Icon Review (sister, wife?). It was written
in Aztec C. The program does run very quickly when it hangs together. One
thing that surprised me only after I had tried to use the program was that the
manual (248 pages) was supposed to have been written using MindWrite. Clearly,
it would have be disquieting to see Word or something else as the tool for
writing a manual for a new WP, but I had to wonder whether I was using the
same software as they had! The final manual layout was done in PageMaker.
In summary, MindWrite is chuck FULL of features (maybe too many in some areas)
and needs more debugging and polishing. I would say thay it is roughly worthy
of beta now rather than release - but given its vaporware past and the upcoming
release of Word 3.0 (with all of the features of MindWrite and a lot more) they
were in a squeeze to get something out. My fear is that they may have caused
themselves a great deal of harm in the process. MindWrite could be a great
low-cost WP package - but it needs work.
If anyone has had better experiences with this software please let me and
the net know.
Steve Leeke
--
Steven D. Leeke, Center for Integrated Systems, Stanford University
{ucbvax,decvax}!decwrl!glacier!leeke, leeke@cascade.stanford.edu
Disclaimer: I disclaim any knowledge of the above message and its contents.