bollman@rocksanne.UUCP (James Bollman) (09/28/87)
Summary:Missing Features Keywords:GEOS I'm looking for a GEOS expert or someone from the company, to answer a few questions. I just got my new GEOS 128 package last Friday and spent the weekend playing. I was first pleased with the package, then displeased with what was missing. 1)How do I get text in from outside the system? I have been using the PocketWriter128 and tried both standard PW files as well as ASCII. 2)No Find and Replace, super or subscript, or a path to my printers Near Letter Quality font. The last is especially missed since none of the 27 fonts supplied is as good. Does GEOS or some other company have a better editor that will run in GEOS? 3)GEOSpaint seems to have a problem recording button clicks and is very hard to draw with in several modes. Am I missing something? Any thoughts or fixes to any of the above? Jim...
mclek@dcatla.UUCP (Larry E. Kollar) (09/29/87)
In article <386@rocksanne.UUCP> bollman@rocksanne.UUCP (James Bollman) writes: >I was first pleased with the package, >then displeased with what was missing. I've had it for several weeks, and am pretty disappointed after the initial thrill. > >2)No Find and Replace, super or subscript, or a path to my printers > Near Letter Quality font. The last is especially missed since none of > the 27 fonts supplied is as good. Does GEOS or some other company have > a better editor that will run in GEOS? There's Writer's Workshop, by Berkeley. GeoWrite is basically a glorified text editor. I've had several problems with Geos, I think in conjunction with my 1581 drive. (Note before I start: just for the record, I bought GEOS 128 from my friendly local computer store. I own a legitimate copy. Just for the record. I haven't sent in the registration yet, but I plan to send my findings along with it when I do.) The system hardware is: C128 1541 (drive 8) 1581 (drive 9) 512K RAM exp. 1351 mouse MPS-801 printer GEOS software: Desktop 1.4 GeoWrite 1.3 I have GeoWrite, GeoPaint, the DeskTop, fonts and desk accessories on the 1581 (with plenty of room to spare). When running in 80-column mode, GeoWrite won't create a new file on the 1581! But it creates just fine in 40-column mode. Huh????? Whether in 40 or 80-column mode, when I exit GeoWrite, I get "System error near $8787" and have to hit RESET to continue. *** YUK *** Another problem: I haven't been able to figure out how to get GEOS to use the RAM expansion as another disk drive. In the Preferences DA, it sees the RAM and gives me the two options (can't remember them right now), but neither one seems to enhance performance at all. "Shadowed 1541," as described in the manual, looks pretty much like a waste of time. I don't think I'm having hardware problems -- all this stuff hangs together just fine in BASIC or Abacus C. The memory test that came with the RAM exp. said all was well. So what's going on? I saw someone from Berkeley on the net a while ago; did you-all release GEOS 128 a wee bit early, perhaps? I suppose I'll have to pay some more to get a working version... I'm not dismissing the possibility that I'm completely off-base & there's something fundamental I've missed. Does anyone out there have a solution? I plan to explore some more; I'll keep you "posted" on anything I find. ======== On another GEOS-related note, has anyone got hold of GeoProgrammer? I saw the announcement for it in the October issue of Byte. I bought GEOS to write applications for; this might make it possible. If it's still in beta-test, I'd be glad to be a test site. :-) May as well post all replies; there are probably others having the same troubles. Larry Kollar ...!gatech!dcatla!mclek "People don't kill people. Toasters kill people." --P.S. Mueller
sentinel@killer.UUCP (09/30/87)
In article <386@rocksanne.UUCP>, bollman@rocksanne.UUCP (James Bollman) writes: > I'm looking for a GEOS expert or someone from the company, > to answer a few questions. I just got my new GEOS 128 package last Friday > and spent the weekend playing. I was first pleased with the package, > then displeased with what was missing. > > 1)How do I get text in from outside the system? I have been using the > PocketWriter128 and tried both standard PW files as well as ASCII. > > 2)No Find and Replace, super or subscript, or a path to my printers > Near Letter Quality font. The last is especially missed since none of > the 27 fonts supplied is as good. Does GEOS or some other company have > a better editor that will run in GEOS? Writer's Workshop from BSW has both of these things included. However, Writer's Workshop is only available for GEOS 64 and thus will only work in 40 column mode on the 128. That is, until the 128 version of it comes out. Basically, Writer's Workshop consists of four programs: GeoWrite 2.0, Text Grabber (for importing text), GeoMerge (for doing form letters), and GeoLaser (for driving an Apple LaserWriter). GeoWrite 2.0 is basically an extended version of GeoWrite with all of the features you mentioned above. Text Grabber handles four or five formats of word processor files... I don't think Pocket Writer is among them, but I know that regular ASCII is supported. Alternately, the book "How To Get The Most Out Of GEOS" from Midnite Press has some conversion programs to get text from C-64 word processors to GEOS... and Pocket Writer IS one of the ones supported. I don't know how well they work, because I've never tried them myself. > 3)GEOSpaint seems to have a problem recording button clicks and is very > hard to draw with in several modes. Am I missing something? Nope. I've noticed the same thing. The main problem I have run into is that the pointer moves with a pixel granularity of two instead of one. This makes it hard for me to do some things, because I like to get things correct right down to the pixel level. Also, I've noticed that sometimes when you close a text region it leaves the box (the box around the text) there AS PART OF THE FILE. I have noticed that these problem seem to much less apparent on the 40 column screen... so if can't seem to get something done in 80 columns, I switch to 40 where I usually don't have any problems. Of course, this is no excuse for the problem, but at least it may help you get something done. > Any thoughts or fixes to any of the above? > > Jim... -- Rob Tillotson ...ihnp4!killer!sentinel 3922-1 Newport Ave. -or- Fort Wayne, IN 46805 ...rutgers!unirot!sentinel (219) 483-2722 (top one preferred)