Kling%UCI-20B@Uci-750a.ARPA (03/26/84)
From: Rob-Kling <Kling%UCI-20B@Uci-750a.ARPA> A friend of mine is interested in getting a micro w/a text processor and was attracted by Televideo's which his colleagues use, along with Perfectwriter. He is a historian who writes books & knows "nothing" about computers. I showed him some messages you wrote during the fall complaining about the rigid formatting of the PW formatter. He showed the message to a colleague who uses PW and the colleague said that it is *now* possible to override the fixed styles of PW. I happen to use Multimate on an IBM-PC, but would not recommend it for bookwriters since it doesn't handle footnotes well. [It's super for letters and memos; OK for short reports.] I'm not sure whether PW has come out with more advanced releases which resolve many of the problems you reported (& thus is not an awful suggestion). Or if you think that something else is a better choice for a computer novice. (I am reluctant to recommend FinalWord, but it may be a good bet if he buys a CP/M machine.) Since he wants a micro as an electronic bookwriter, I am suggesting software first. [If the current release of Micro-soft Word were not so buggy and awkward in places, I would recommend that.] Has PW improved to be a plausable product for bookwriters? Can you suggest a better text processor for computer novices? (he will *not* customize his terminal with ProKey, for example). Thanks Rob Kling UC Irvine
SHahn@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (03/30/84)
From: Sam Hahn <SHahn@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA> Don't know much about it, but Jerry Pournelle swears by WRITE, which he uses to write his SF with. Available from Workman Associates. I'll be looking at it in the next couple of weeks myself... -- sam hahn [shahn@sumex] -------