Fat.Tag@SU-SIERRA.ARPA (Tim Gonsalves) (09/29/85)
Last week I received an announcement of The Final Word II from Mark of the Unicorn. The list price is $400 and owners of TFW 1.x can upgrade for $95 (exactly the increase in list price). If all they say in the 8-page booklet is correct and of the same quality at TFW 1.x, Mark of the Unicorn will once again have about the best editor for a micro. In addition, the formatter seems to have been made sufficiently flexible to be useful for a wider range of documents than letters and manuals. Available for PC/MS-DOS. Some of the features listed in the booklet: Editor: . user-programmable commands in a macro language [how powerful is this?] . Emacs customization of keyboard supplied in addition to TFW layout. . mouse support . full path names, DOS commands, faster screen display . 24 files, 6 windows, wild-card searches. Alas, 192K required [how big are the disk files?] . integrated spelling checker/corrector; dictionary may be modified. Requires 256K. With 448K, checks spelling as you type. Formatter: A large number of changes, the most interesting, to me, being the ability to change existing formatting commands and create new ones [are these the same as Modify and Define in Scribe? How compatible is the formatter with Scribe?]. Also, multi-column documents, overprinting, user-defineable templates for various counters. Better printer support, includes different width/height tables for each font; support for laser printers - Apple Laserwriter, HP LaserJet, Adobe Postscript-equipped printers. Configuration is said to be easier. Terminal lengths upto 120 lines supported. The current address of MoU is: Mark of the Unicorn, Inc. 222 Third Street Cambridge, MA 02142 (617) 576-2760 Comments from anyone who has the new version would be appreciated. Tim Gonsalves Gonsalves@SU-Sierra.Arpa -------
johnl@ima.UUCP (10/01/85)
We have been a beta-test site for Final Word 2 for about six months. I
haven't used the editor at all, because I like Epsilon, but the formatter
seems to be greatly improved.
They heavily rewrote the formatter so that practically all of the commands
you would use are in fact environments or macros that are defined in a
configuration file, which you can edit if you don't like it. It does a
good job of driving the HP Laserjet in all its typesetter-ish glory, and
of driving my aging Diablo. All of the device configuration is also
table-driven, so you can adapt it to new printers fairly easily if you need
to. It looks very Scribe-like, but I haven't used Scribe recently enough
to know if the commands are actually the same.
The main complaint that I would offer is that it is clearly a formatter
written by and for programmers. You ask for it, you got it, even if that's
not quite what you were expecting. For producing large documents, it's hard
to beat -- we did an entire several-hundred page manual on it including
fancy page titles, cut-outs for illustrations, and so forth. If you just
want to do a two page letter, it's a pain because you always seem to have
to tweak your macros to get them just right. But it sure is flexible, and
you can make it do amazing things if you're persistent.
John Levine, Javelin Software, Cambridge MA 617-494-1400
{ decvax!cca | think | ihnp4 | cbosgd }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.ARPA
The opinions above are solely those of a 12 year old hacker who has broken
into my account, and not those of my employer or any other organization.petera@hcrvax.UUCP (Smith) (10/03/85)
The Final Word version 2? Sounds to me like the misnamed the first version! Peter Ashwood-Smith, Human Computing Resoures, Toronto, Ontario.
mojo@kepler.UUCP (Morris Jones) (10/03/85)
In article <97800007@ima.UUCP> johnl@ima.UUCP writes: >We have been a beta-test site for Final Word 2 for about six months. Does Final Word really give permission to their beta-test sites to discuss an unreleased product? If they did, was that a good idea? If I were considering purchasing Final Word I think I would postpone it for a while to see the new release. For that reason alone our beta testers sign non-disclosure agreements. My question to the net is this: Since Final Word obviously did give permission to their beta testers to discuss the product, do you think it was a good business decision? -- Mojo ... Morris Jones, MicroPro Product Development {ptsfa,hplabs,glacier,lll-crg}!well!micropro!kepler!mojo
hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer) (10/04/85)
> In article <97800007@ima.UUCP> johnl@ima.UUCP writes: > >We have been a beta-test site for Final Word 2 for about six months. > > My question to the net is this: Since Final Word obviously did give > permission to their beta testers to discuss the product, do you think > it was a good business decision? > -- > Mojo For *true* beta test (i.e., first use outside the developing company) it makes no sense to allow disclosure. However, much "beta" testing is really "pre-release", or early low volume shipment. It is really taste testing, or consumer survey - mislabeled to make the "tester" feel good. In such a case disclosure is usually allowed (or encouraged) because that's part of the purpose. Then when it turns out that there are major bugs/defects, the developer squawks at the bad publicity. Since I can't read Final Word's mind ... ? --henry schaffer ncsu
WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Frank J. Wancho) (10/05/85)
Morris, I received the announcement of the release of the subject product several weeks ago. I would presume that once a product is released, beta testers are free to discuss it. Final Word is a product of Mark of the Unicorn. --Frank