carter%sloth@gatech.edu (Carter Bullard) (03/08/89)
(Understand, that i am not normally a violent man. but i must have
reached my breaking point. i apologize to my mother and my god.)
gentlemen,
it does not seem to me that there is any intellegence in a corporation
that distributes a piece of software, that is as brain dead as NeXT's
WriteNow application. Normally, when you find a program that is as bad
as this one, you just block its existence out of your conscience. But
NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! This piece of code is like a siren on the shore of
computing. Since it is the only piece of software that has any promise of
producing a quick memo with multiple fonts, one gets lured into the idea
that, "it won't mess up. its only a 5 line memo with my name on it.
how could it crash?" I'm sure you can imagine the outcome.
Wrecked! Washed up on the deserted island of NeXT textprocessing without
food, water or any hope of rescue.
But wait, is that 0.9 on the horizon? i'll start a fire with
my laser printer to get its attention ..... Blast, maybe a book
of matches would have been a better idea.
Carter Bullard
School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers}!gatech!carter
Internet: carter@gatech.edubayes@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Scott Bayes) (03/10/89)
>(Understand, that i am not normally a violent man. but i must have >reached my breaking point. i apologize to my mother and my god.) > >gentlemen, > >it does not seem to me that there is any intellegence in a corporation >that distributes a piece of software, that is as brain dead as NeXT's >WriteNow application. Normally, when you find a program that is as bad >as this one, you just block its existence out of your conscience. But >NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! This piece of code is like a siren on the shore of >computing. Since it is the only piece of software that has any promise of >producing a quick memo with multiple fonts, one gets lured into the idea >that, "it won't mess up. its only a 5 line memo with my name on it. >how could it crash?" I'm sure you can imagine the outcome. >Wrecked! Washed up on the deserted island of NeXT textprocessing without >food, water or any hope of rescue. > So what happened? WriteNow is considered one of the better simple word processors on the Macintosh. Why the violence? Be specific, please. I've never seen it crash on the Mac. >But wait, is that 0.9 on the horizon? i'll start a fire with >my laser printer to get its attention ..... Blast, maybe a book >of matches would have been a better idea. > >Carter Bullard >School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 >uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,rutgers}!gatech!carter >Internet: carter@gatech.edu Scott Bayes satisfied WriteNow (Macintosh) user
NMKATZ@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Nicholas M. Katz) (03/14/89)
In article <15290007@hpfcdc.HP.COM>, bayes@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Scott Bayes) writes: >So what happened? WriteNow is considered one of the better simple word >processors on the Macintosh. Why the violence? Be specific, please. I've >never seen it crash on the Mac. > > >Scott Bayes >satisfied WriteNow (Macintosh) user The whole point of the complaint is that WriteNow is such a marvelously good pr oduct on the mac, utterly relaiable and a pleasure to use. So it is especially sad to see something which bears its name but which lacks most of its functiona lity and a fair amount of reliablilty come out as WriteNow 0.8 on the NeXt. I echo the flamer's hopes that in its 0.9 incarnation, the NeXt version will stop being a disgrace to the good name of WriteNow. nick katz nmkatz@pucc.bitnet (a satisfied WriteNow (Macintosh) user a dissatisfied WriteNow (NeXt) user)
erica@kong.gatech.edu (Erica Liebman) (12/05/89)
I am currently putting together the buzznug newsletter and for a (currently)
16 page document, it took me 10-20 seconds to go from the top of the
document to the bottom (by the enter the page to go to) and nearly 30 seconds
to alt-scroll up!@!! There was nothing else running in the background. (Apps
I mean!)
Any suggestions on how to speed up performance in writenow would be
GREATLY appreciated.
Erica (erica@cadnext5.gatech.edu)
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Erica J. Liebman Internet: erica@kong.gatech.edu
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
"Grep foo whilst ye may, oh daemons of the spring" -- EJLrb@acsu.buffalo.edu (rick bidlack) (09/16/90)
Rick Bidlack rb@acsu.buffalo.edu
rb@acsu.buffalo.edu (rick bidlack) (09/17/90)
I have been unable to get special overstrike characters such as accents and cedillas to work in WriteNow. The User's Reference Manual is unclear about whether these should work in that environment....but the French section of the manual has many examples of such, and NeXT, Inc. claims it was written with WriteNow. Any clues, someone? RickBidlack rb@acsu.buffalo.edu
neil@ms.uky.edu (Neil Greene) (11/27/90)
For some reason I have been unable to find any UNDERLINE option anywhere in a manual or commands in WriteNow for the next. Has this option been forgotten, or left out on purpose?
b645zai@utarlg.utarl.edu (Jay Finger) (11/28/90)
In article <neil.659718190@s.ms.uky.edu>, neil@ms.uky.edu (Neil Greene) writes >For some reason I have been unable to find any UNDERLINE option anywhere in a >manual or commands in WriteNow for the next. Has this option been forgotten, >or left out on purpose? According to the local NeXT rep, the version of WriteNow distributed with Ver 2.0 of the OS will do underlining, whereas the previous versions did not. A question for the PostScript gurus out there: is underlining an attribute that text can have, where you can say "underline all text from now on until I say otherwise", or does the code have to explicitly draw lines under the characters? ---- #include <stddisclaimer.h> Jay Finger Computer Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington b645zai@utarlg.utarl.edu finger@csun5.utarl.edu
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (11/28/90)
In article <10416@helios.TAMU.EDU> b645zai@utarlg.utarl.edu writes: >A question for the PostScript gurus out there: is underlining an attribute >that text can have, No. >does the code have to explicitly draw lines under the >characters? Yes. -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!uiuc.edu!s-dorner
abe@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Vic Abell) (11/28/90)
I believe WriteNow acquires underline at release 2.0.
neil@ms.uky.edu (Neil Greene) (11/28/90)
Thanks for the many replies, I had heard locally that the underline option had been left on on purpose (reasons unknown here) and wondered what others had heard. (ie - software release, timing, frammaker "it is all rummors"). Anyway, thanks.
louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) (11/28/90)
Then typesetting documents, you don't often need to be able to underline since you have boldface and italic fonts available. On a "dumb" ASCII printer, you would underline book titles, etc, where you really should have used italics instead. Of course, I guess people wanted it bad enough, so yes, underlining is indeed in the 2.0 version of WriteNow. louie
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (11/28/90)
Actually, most postscript fonts include underline characters, and many
word processors use overstrikes to accomplish underlining. This has
the benefit of providing different-thickness underlines for
different-thickness fonts.
It has the disadvantage of underlining some characters with heavy
strokes, and others with light strokes, when different font facs (i.e.
normal & italic) are mixed and underline on the same line.
F O R e x a m p l e
===== -------------
This kind of underlining would occur if "FOR" were in a bold face, and
"example" were in a light face.
Don W. Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gilliesaraftis@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Alex Raftis) (11/28/90)
In article <10416@helios.TAMU.EDU> b645zai@utarlg.utarl.edu writes: >In article <neil.659718190@s.ms.uky.edu>, neil@ms.uky.edu (Neil Greene) writes >>For some reason I have been unable to find any UNDERLINE option anywhere in a >>manual or commands in WriteNow for the next. Has this option been forgotten, >>or left out on purpose? > >According to the local NeXT rep, the version of WriteNow distributed with >Ver 2.0 of the OS will do underlining, whereas the previous versions did not. > >A question for the PostScript gurus out there: is underlining an attribute >that text can have, where you can say "underline all text from now on until >I say otherwise", or does the code have to explicitly draw lines under the >characters? >---- The answer is sort of. When you underline in PostScript, at least on a Laser- Writer (it might be modified on the NeXT), you use a special version of the show command. This version allows you imbed code that will be execuated after each character is drawn. The easiest way would be to just make a procedure that does this and call it something like showul. -- -------------------------------------------------- Internet: araftis@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU America Online: xela (Real Life: Alex Raftis)
flank@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Brett Jacobson) (11/28/90)
In article <61300056@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >Actually, most postscript fonts include underline characters, and many >word processors use overstrikes to accomplish underlining. This has >the benefit of providing different-thickness underlines for >different-thickness fonts. > >It has the disadvantage of underlining some characters with heavy >strokes, and others with light strokes, when different font facs (i.e. >normal & italic) are mixed and underline on the same line. > > F O R e x a m p l e > ===== ------------- > >This kind of underlining would occur if "FOR" were in a bold face, and >"example" were in a light face. > While this may be true in some instances, the "correct" way to create an underline is to draw a .5pt line under the characters (perhaps a bit larger if the font is 24+pts). A system that uses overstrike will fail alot, since most systems do not provide an underscore character that will connect to another. In this instance, you would get some thing lik this: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ You would get a small bit of white-space between each underscore. This doesn't happen on typewriters since they are mono-spaced, but the majority of fonts on the NeXT are proportional (Courier exempted), and would exibit this effect. Note: An underline is NOT a valid accent in the typesetting world. An underline comes from the paste up marking to signify italics, hense the reason nroff creates underlines (for printers), and troff/psroff creates italics (for typesetters). Just though I would clear the air on this (I used to be a graphics designer in my previous years, at least for a while anyway...) Chris Petrilli Austin, Texas (512) 327-0986
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (12/03/90)
In article <10416@helios.TAMU.EDU> b645zai@utarlg.utarl.edu writes: >A question for the PostScript gurus out there: is underlining an attribute >that text can have, where you can say "underline all text from now on until >I say otherwise", or does the code have to explicitly draw lines under the >characters? You have to draw the lines yourself.
mfi@cis.ufl.edu (Mark Interrante) (05/22/91)
MacWeek (5/21/91) writes that version 3.0 for the mac will be released this fall with lots of Mac System 7.0 features and paragraph and character styles. I for one would find NW alot more useful if it had styles (once you've had them it's tough to go back) :). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Interrante Software Engineering Research Center mfi@serc.cis.ufl.edu CIS Department, University of Florida 32611 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote from a west Texas farmer "status quo is Latin for the mess we're in."
pyrros@cis.udel.edu (Christos Pyrros) (05/23/91)
In article <28649@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> mfi@cis.ufl.edu (Mark Interrante) writes: >MacWeek (5/21/91) writes that version 3.0 for the mac will be released >this fall with lots of Mac System 7.0 features and paragraph and You all may find this interesting; I loaded a MacWrite II file into MacWrite II (v 1.0.1 or 1.1, don't quote me!) and saved it as a WriteNow (1.0?) file. I placed it on an MS-sauce floppy, loaded it on the NeXT and....WriteNow gave be a bunch of unformatted text. I fired up NeXT WordPerfect 1.0.1 (release 3/18/91) and it came up _perfectly_. Chris
samurai@cs.mcgill.ca (Darcy BROCKBANK) (06/01/91)
Is there any way to *embed* a graphic beside text? I only thought that one line of text could go beside a graphic, but I recently saw an embedded graphic in the 1991 software release catalogue. The format I want is this: ----------text-----------------------text-----------------------text------------ _______________________ ----------text-----------------------text------------ | | ----------text-----------------------text------------ | | ----------text-----------------------text------------ | graphic | ----------text-----------------------text------------ | | ----------text-----------------------text------------ | | ----------text-----------------------text------------ _______________________ ----------text-----------------------text------------ ----------text-----------------------text-----------------------text------------ Is it possible or not? thanx. - db
thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark R. Thomsen) (06/02/91)
Darcy BROCKBANK writes Is there any way to *embed* a graphic beside text? I only thought that one line of text could go beside a graphic, but I recently saw an embedded graphic in the 1991 software release catalogue. Not in existing versions of WriteNow. FrameMaker and WordPerfect do this. Practically everything generated as typeset docs at NeXT, such as the software release catalogue, was probably done with FrameMaker since it was available so early. I suspect that in order to provide room for 3rd party folk NeXT will not push for higher-end page layout functionality in WriteNow. Mark R. Thomsen
jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) (06/02/91)
/ comp.sys.next / samurai@cs.mcgill.ca (Darcy BROCKBANK) / May 31, 1991 /
> Is there any way to *embed* a graphic beside text?
Yes, there is a kludgy way to do it. Make your text's margins where the
text is to be placed (i.e., don't include the graphic), and enter the
text. On the line just below the text, enter the graphic, with the margins
appropriate for it. Select the graphic and keep hitting Superscript until
it lines up with the text.
If you find yourself doing this frequently enough, buy FrameMaker or
WordPerfect...
Jacob
--
Jacob Gore Jacob@Gore.Com boulder!gore!jacob