trw@gec-rl-hrc.co.uk (Trevor Wright Marconi Baddow) (01/07/87)
Do any early users of Manuscript have any comments to share yet? Trevor Wright Marconi Research Centre GEC Research Ltd Chelmsford UK
kc@rna.UUCP (Kaare Christian) (01/15/87)
> Do any early users of Manuscript have any comments to share yet?
Lotus Manuscript (henceforth ms) is a very interesting word processor.
It is fantastic for some things, so so for others, and surprisingly
awkward for certain usually simple operations like deleting a word or
moving the cursor to the end of a sentence. My bottom line
recommendation is to buy it if you need a word processor for large
documents, a word processor that lets your import spreadsheets or
graphics, a word processor with a nice outliner, or a word processor
that formats tables and equations. I wouldn't buy it for my secretary,
and I wouldn't buy it for casual letter writing, but I enjoy using it myself.
There are two articles on ms in the PC magazine that I received in the
mail today, one by Bill Machrone (the chief editor) and one by Jim
Seymour. In a forthcoming issue of PC magazine (March?) there will
be a full review of ms written by myself and Robin Raskin.
Ms is a striking product because there is nothing else like it on the
market. Probably the closest thing that I've seen is WordMarc, but to my
eye ms and WordMarc are in two separate leagues. Ms is also striking
because it has lifted (figuratively) the Unix eqn program for
typesetting equations. If you know eqn, you already know how to format
equations with ms. (There are differences of course, all of the sybols
have different names, but the layout words --sub, super, matrix, above--
are almost identical.) Eqn does a slightly better job than ms, mostly
because in-line equations in eqn can be taller than the line. ms in-line
equations are always just one line tall. (Control over line spacing is
one of my few gripes about ms.) However for display equations the two
products produce surprisingly similar results, with ms better in some
ways at producing tall roundy things.
The table layout part of ms has a user interface totally different than that
of tbl, the Unix table formatting program, but the results are
similar. It is easy to box tables, draw lines, etc. The table editor
is an on-screen, menu and ruler line control system that is
considerably more visceral than the tbl system. Once again I think that
the traditional Unix tool can prodcue slighly better looking results,
mostly because it is impossible in ms to fine tune the line spacing to
widen or compact tables. Other than that the two produce very similar
results.
Ms is very impressive at handling large documents. I fed it a one
megabyte file and it handled it easily. It could do a global search in
about thirty seconds and load the file from disk in about forty seconds.
Even with a huge file the outliner makes it easy to move things around.
Some editors on the PC claim to work with huge files, but ms really
does.
Ms imports graphics (1-2-3 graphs, Freelance stuff, and things from a
few digitzers), spreadsheets, ascii, or DCA. The speller is very good,
the help system is good, the manual is good. There is an on-screen
print previewer that is very useful. It works at acceptable speeds for
pages that don't contain graphics or equations, but it can take
minutes/page (on a 10 MHZ AT) to preview pages that contain multiple
graphics or equations. The performance of ms would be adequate on an XT
*only* if your work didn't include graphics, equations, or big
documents. Ms is a package that begs for an AT, and it's a
good argument for 386 technology.
My biggest gripe is the user interface. I had a lot of trouble
getting used to hitting the INS key to exit from the dialog boxes.
Some dialog boxes let you strike the first letter of parameter items to
go-to that parameter, other dialog boxes only let you arrow-key around.
And once you get used to striking INS to work the editor dialog boxes, then
you have to learn to strike ENTER to manage the menus in the help system.
There are many fill-in-the blank panels for selecting format items, and at
first I couldn't reliably find the one I wanted. Nothing in particular
is hard to understand, but I spent a while developing my reflexes and
learning their vernacular (columns, blocks, sections).
Well this is much more than I had planned to say. If you have specific
questions let me know.
Kaare Christian
cmcl2!rna!kc