HyperDriven@cup.portal.com (Joseph C McDonald) (02/14/89)
has anyone used Borlands Sprint Editor? I have heard that it is *very*
configurable. I'd be interested to hear some users comments. BTW how much
is it?
-=Joseph=-
HyperDriven@cup.portal.comandyross@igloo.Scum.COM (Andrew Rossmann) (02/19/89)
In article <14642@cup.portal.com> HyperDriven@cup.portal.com (Joseph C McDonald) writes: >has anyone used Borlands Sprint Editor? I have heard that it is *very* >configurable. I'd be interested to hear some users comments. BTW how much >is it? > -=Joseph=- > HyperDriven@cup.portal.com I bought Sprint through Borland when it first came out. (At $100 for people who had other Borland products at the time, I couldn't resist.) I have barely tapped the power of the program, but like it much better than the PC-Write program I used to use. I tend to use it mostly for ASCII files (which it handles with no problems), some small documentation files for programs, and a weekly list of Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror movies on TV in the Chicago area. I use Sprint's 'Plain' printer and send the output to a file for this. It has large printer support, including lasers and PostScript. It even supported my Tandy printer (but, unfortunately, in Tandy mode!) Some close reading of the Advanced User's Guide and a little surgery on the IBM Proprinter command file got me going. Sprint supports macros which are written in a language that has been called a cross between C and Forth. It can emulate several different word processors (at least at the keyboard level.) They all tend to look the same, though. There is also a conversion utility to convert files between Sprint's and other word processor's formats. Sprint also supports a mouse (although response is a bit slow on my XT clone.) Printing and previewing are actually through a separate program, but Sprint makes it look like it's the same program doing everything. Page previewing is in text mode only. The list price is about $200, but it can be bought for around $150 in most places. andyross@igloo.UUCP, andyross@ddsw1.MCS.COM
jxh@cup.portal.com (Jim - Hickstein) (02/19/89)
Yes, I have used Borland's Sprint. I am an old hand at The FinalWord from (formerly) Mark of the Unicorn in Cambridge, Mass (I don't make 'em up...), and Sprint appears to be tantamount to FW version 3. There was some discussion about all this upheaval on the FW BBS (617) 484-2594 a while ago, and this board still seems to be up, in spite of the fact that Borland is now handling all technical support, officially. FW was (and it seems Sprint is) very configurable. Virtually everything that seems like "normal" to FW users is built upon editor and formatter macros, so you can rebuild the entire edifice if you want to. That's how Sprint can offer several rather different user interfaces, from WordStar to EMACS. The editor macros are stack-based, which is weird for first-timers in this arena, but it's not hard to figure out: I made a new macro (bound to the Alt-T key) that transposes abc to cba (they already had Ctrl-T doing ab=ba); this transpose macro operates on the two (or three) characters *to the left* of the cursor, so if you detect the error before blazing along too far, you can correct it without moving from your spot: Nifty! And, of course, if you don't like this behavior, you can just edit the macros that define it: it's all there for the user to read and modify. Formatter macros (interpreted by the batch-mode, non-WYSIWYG document formatter) are compatible with Scribe (Brian K. Reid, et al) from VAX/VMS and TENEX systems. I built a quite elaborate document style on top of these that emulates Control Data's page-by-page revision, with the pub. no. and rev letter in the footer of each page, and a list of effective pages at the front of the update packet; others have actually gotten their laserprinters to emit change bars in the margin (I wish more manuals had these!). In short, if you can't do it, keep trying to figure out why not and you'll find a way. Sprint seems to have Borland's rather insular (not to say arrogant) stamp upon it (compatibility with Scribe seems not to be a concern any more), but I understand that development is a joint effort with Borland and the East-coast founding fathers (well, direct descendants, anyway); this does not bode well, IMHO, but it could be worse. Meanwhile, Sprint has a few significant new features that FW users will appreciate, but it remains to be seen whether the hurdles of several changes that are arguably regressions will keep FW users from embracing Sprint. So far, they all seem to be buying it to satisfy their curiosity; whether they will abandon FW may never be known for sure. I'm still on the fence, having a large body of documents in FW's format. It costs $199 list, $149 discounted (Egghead Discount Software, in this territory). Compared to the $500 editors floating around (some of which indeed are pushing toward desktop publishing, with on-screen text flowing around arbitrary polygons, whereas Sprint is really just a document editor and processor) it's a steal. And if Borland's influence doesn't shut out perfectionists like me (I hate things I can't fix), it could be all right. -Jim Hicktein jxh@cup.portal.com ...!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!jxh