reyn@trsvax.UUCP (06/01/90)
With all of the discussion of Word for Windows, I am confident that an experienced user out there will lend me some of their opinions and expertise. I bought the $9.95 WFW demo for my wife to see if it would be a good replacement for the Apple Writer she's been using on her Apple II since 1983. Needless to say, she's not going to be that hard to impress, and it's more my desire to move everything over to WIndows than her needs which are dictating her choice of a new word processor. My wife writes fiction for a living, that means that she's in front of the computer writing voluminous amounts of text all day long, and as a side note she actually reads the text that she has written on the monitor. With both the WFW demo and the Microsoft Write which comes with Windows 3.0 the text that is displayed on the screen is, to put it mildly, attrocious to read. Let me interject that I have tried various combinations of font style and sizes, but htey either are hard on the eyes, or much more disturbedly cause the screen to scroll rather than word-wrap at the right margin (as indicated by the ruler). Contrast this to the extremely readable font which the notepad uses, and the result is a rather confused person ( me ) who is sure I must be missing something. The WFW demo doesn't mention this behaivior ( other than to say that Windows will use the most similar font ) and the manual for Write shows illustrations which correspond correctly between the ruler and the display. I dis find a "Draft" mode in WFW, but if that is the mode she'll have to stay in while composing, why do I need a GUI? As I stated earlier, I've probably missed something. Help would be appreciated. John Reynolds, husband of the soon to be famous Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
todd@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Todd Ogasawara) (06/02/90)
In article <292600008@trsvax> reyn@trsvax.UUCP writes: >With both the WFW demo and the Microsoft Write which comes with Windows 3.0 >the text that is displayed on the screen is, to put it mildly, attrocious >to read. Let me interject that I have tried various combinations of font Yes, WfW is nearly unreadable in WYSIWYG mode... It took me a long while before I got "used to" working with the on-screen Times-Roman font (used to represent most serifed proportional fonts: Bookman, Palantino, New Century Schoolbook). >The WFW demo doesn't mention this behaivior ( other than to say that >Windows will use the most similar font ) and the manual for Write shows >illustrations which correspond correctly between the ruler and the display. There are a lot of "dumb" WfW "features." One of my biggest grumps is the way hyphenation works. I noticed that it only hyphenates correctly if the you are in the Page display mode. Hyphenation occurs at inappropriate locations otherwise (words that are not at the end of lines). I was also upset to find that text flows over the right side of the screen no matter which mode I am in if I set the left and right margins to 1 inch. I found I have to leave the left/right margins at 1.25 inches if I want to avoid horizontal scrolling. Here's another upsetting feature... My PostScript printer (an IBM PagePrinter II-031) has 47 fonts. Although Windows Paint (I am still using 2.11, my 3.0 upgrade has not arrived yet) can support those fonts, WfW can only support those fonts defined in PSCRIPT.DRV. So, I can't use Garamond and a number of other useful fonts on my printer from WfW (or Word 5.0 for that matter). I like WfW but find its many limitations and odd design choices irritating to no end. And, I still want to know why I can't shade a box/paragraph when it was so easy to do in Word 5.0.... todd -- Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii UUCP: {uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!ucsd!nosc!uhccux!todd ARPA: uhccux!todd@nosc.MIL BITNET: todd@uhccux INTERNET: todd@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU
a752@mindlink.UUCP (Bruce Dunn) (06/02/90)
> todd@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu writes: > I was also upset to find that text flows over the right side of the screen > no matter which mode I am in if I set the left and right margins to 1 inch. > I found I have to leave the left/right margins at 1.25 inches if I want to > avoid horizontal scrolling. > The amount of text (in inches) that you can display in a left-right direction depends strongly on the resolution of the display mode that you are using. When WFW is used in a standard VGA display mode, it is only able to display approximately 6 inches of text. This means that for a page which is 8.5 inches, you must use up at least 2.5 inches of the page in margins until the line length becomes short enough to be fully displayed on the screen (therefore your comment on left/right margins being 1.25 inches each). If more pixels however are available, more text can be displayed. I am using an ATI VGA Wonder card, which has both standard and two types of Super VGA (SVGA) available. Left-right display capabilities for these modes are: Standard VGA (640 x ? ) - 6.2 inches Super VGA (800 x 600) - 9.6 inches Super VGA/8514 (1024 x 768) - 10.2 inches I am not totally sure of the display capabilities of a Hercules card, but I think that it is closer to that of the 800 x 600 SVGA mode than the standard VGA mode. In addition to getting more text right-left (to the extent that allowing for margins, I can see an entire 8.5 x 11 inch page in *landscape* format using the 1024 x 768 mode), I see more lines of text with the SVGA modes. I am sold on the SVGA high resolutions modes. Screen scrolling is somewhat slower, but not impossibly so. In draft mode, the characters are very easily read, although some of the fonts are more difficult to read and I only turn them on to preview a page. -- Bruce Dunn Vancouver, Canada a752@mindlink.UUCP
gustwick@wf-aus.cactus.org (Bob Gustwick ) (06/03/90)
reyn@trsvax.UUCP writes: > With both the WFW demo and the Microsoft Write which comes with Windows 3.0 > the text that is displayed on the screen is, to put it mildly, attrocious > to read. Let me interject that I have tried various combinations of font > style and sizes, but htey either are hard on the eyes, or much more > disturbedly cause the screen to scroll rather than word-wrap at the right > margin (as indicated by the ruler). Contrast this to the extremely > readable font which the notepad uses, and the result is a rather confused > person ( me ) who is sure I must be missing something. > > The WFW demo doesn't mention this behaivior ( other than to say that > Windows will use the most similar font ) and the manual for Write shows > illustrations which correspond correctly between the ruler and the display. > > I dis find a "Draft" mode in WFW, but if that is the mode she'll have to > stay in while composing, why do I need a GUI? > > As I stated earlier, I've probably missed something. Help would be > appreciated. sigh. no, you haven't missed a thing. it is as bad as you think it is. i'm running w/ a hercules card and a deskjet printer.... i called microsoft asking how to solve the problem that some fonts scroll off the right side of the screen. solution? get a new printer they said. the offending screen fonts were hard coded into my printer driver they said, and to fix the problem would require a new printer driver... when i reminded them that i had the most recent deskjet driver that microsoft destributes for hewlett packard, the responce seemed to be 'oh well, try to find a work around, like not using that font, or get a new printer.' times-roman seems to be the only font that gives me usable WYSIWYG type screen layout in WFW... i agree that the times-roman screen font is not the most readable thing on the planet. i can only hope that the promised microsoft/apple royal font technology will show up soon and solve all our problems. in the meantime, i find it difficult to go around trying 3rd party windows font stuff when it will all be become obsolete within (hopefully) the next six months. if you get too frustrated, go buy a mac. macs work now, today. if you bought an intel machine w/ windows 'cause it was cheaper, then you have found out (as have i) why it is cheaper. it doesn't work as well. i suspect that this will begin to change w/ the new windows 3.0, but a decent windows font technology is still not here yet. but perhaps font problems are no problem at all. perhaps my only problem is the windows support people. can anyone out there offer any insight? ...bob
akm@dogmatix.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal) (06/03/90)
In article <8023@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> todd@uhccux.UUCP (Todd Ogasawara) writes: >In article <292600008@trsvax> reyn@trsvax.UUCP writes: >>With both the WFW demo and the Microsoft Write which comes with Windows 3.0 >>the text that is displayed on the screen is, to put it mildly, attrocious >>to read. >Yes, WfW is nearly unreadable in WYSIWYG mode... It took me a long while >before I got "used to" working with the on-screen Times-Roman font (used >to represent most serifed proportional fonts: Bookman, Palantino, New >Century Schoolbook). I find the display just fine, and almost exactly what I get on my printer. Perhaps this is because I am using HP PCL fonts on a deskjet, and the Helv and TmsRmn fnts that come with windows seem to be just fine. Another possibility is the display resolution. I use Herc at home, and VGA at work. I can imagine that if I had CGA, I would have probems. kartik ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anant Kartik Mithal akm@cs.uoregon.edu Department of Computer Science akm@oregon.BITNET University of Oregon
tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu (Tom Haapanen) (06/04/90)
Todd Ogasawara <todd@uhccux.UUCP> writes: > I was also upset to find that text flows over the right side of the screen > no matter which mode I am in if I set the left and right margins to 1 inch. > I found I have to leave the left/right margins at 1.25 inches if I want to > avoid horizontal scrolling. This is not a problem in 800x600 (or greater). Of course, now my Win3 is running at 640x480, andI'm getting rather annoyed. (The first part of the SVGA driver didn't arrive here -- does anyone have it available for FTP or email?). [ \tom haapanen --- university of waterloo --- tom@mims-iris.waterloo.edu ] [ "i don't even know what street canada is on" -- al capone ]