aron (05/13/82)
Does anybody know anything about a new WP system called Perfect Writer? I would appreciate mail responses - I'll summarize to the net. Aron Shtull-Trauring harpo!presby!aron
aron (06/09/82)
A while ago I posted a request to get more info on Perfect Writer, a new
word processor for CP/M micros. I recieved the following replies.
The first may seem overly biased, but the substance of his message
seems to be confirmed by a review in this weeks Infoworld. (the sender
requests anonymity to avoid a deluge of mail)
I.
I am the chief programmer for the Perfect Writer system. I think
that it's absolutely fabulous. The editor is like (MIT) EMACS and the
formatter i like (CMU) SCRIBE. There are extensions and limitations,
most of which have to do with the fact that the system is meant to be
run on a dink machine (CP/M and 56K). There is a menu system for beginners
which can be disabled when you get 'expert'. there is a help system. There
is a facility for rebinding the commands to any keys you want WITHOUT ANY
PROGRAMMING or patching. support is for terminals ranging in size from
9x51 to 60x132. printers supported include most popular daisy wheel models,
and nearly any plain printer. the formatter allows true proportional spacing
without patching the printer drivers with code you have to write (a la W*).
Perfect Speller is integrated with PW, allowing in-context spellinc
checking and correction. PS has a 20,000 word dictionary and strips one prefix
and two suffixes (if applicable) thereby extending it's usable vocabulary. both
the affix table and the dictionary are user modifiable. the dictionary itself
is stored as a hash table thereby reducing it's size and increasing the speed
of the checker.
PW compares favorably with W* in speed and PS is as fast as SpellGuard.
II.
>From houxs!hansen Mon May 17 17:12:39 1982 remote from harpo
I saw Perfect Writer demonstrated at a recent micro show. It is an Emacs
clone, with a documentation preparation language (very!) similar to Scribe
and a built-in spelling program, written by a couple of people who went to
(where else?) MIT. It's price is around $200-300, with an extra $130-200 for
the spelling system, depending on who you buy it from.
It is supposed to work on any CP/M based system. It allows editing of
multiple files/buffers with one or two windows and has its own virtual
memory system built in. It is no very modifiable; you can buy the source for
parts of the system (it's written in C), and modify that, but that's as
close as you get to writing your own commands. I think it requires 48k, but
I'm not sure.
Overall it looked like a fairly good system for a micro, it you can stand
Emacs and Scribe (no flames, please, I use them both) and have the memory to
support it.