dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan) (05/03/91)
Proper Grammar is total garbage. I just got my replacement disks a few hours ago. I've tried running it six times since, and it crashed every single time. It also trips over quote marks and parentheses- if you quote a group of sentences, it will tell you the first one is missing a closing quote and the last one is missing an opening quote. It doesn't always correctly pick up sentence fragments, either- one of the pieces I tried scanning had a character who talked in sentence fragments and it only flagged some of them as errors. It might be worthwile if they get it to run, but I'd advise against buying it, or anything else from Softwood. This is the second time I've bought something from them that turned out to be a bug farm (Pen Pal was the first); I doubt they're capable of putting out a decent piece of software. dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com ...uunet!tronsbox!dfrancis GEnie: D.HEFFERNAN1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I don't understand why you make such a big deal out of everything...haven't you learned; if it's not happenning to me it's not important?" -Murphy Brown
algoa@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Gregory Bowers) (05/04/91)
dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan) writes: > Proper Grammar is total garbage. I just got my replacement disks a few >hours ago. I've tried running it six times since, and it crashed every single It seems to work for me except, under KS 1.2 WB 1.3 it crashes when cutting text from the text window. I tried it under 2.0, it seems to work okay there. >time. It also trips over quote marks and parentheses- if you quote a group of >sentences, it will tell you the first one is missing a closing quote and the >last one is missing an opening quote. It doesn't always correctly pick up >sentence fragments, either- one of the pieces I tried scanning had a character >who talked in sentence fragments and it only flagged some of them as errors. I haven't really used it for anything so I don't know how well it does the job. > It might be worthwile if they get it to run, but I'd advise against >buying it, or anything else from Softwood. This is the second time I've bought >something from them that turned out to be a bug farm (Pen Pal was the first); >I doubt they're capable of putting out a decent piece of software. Yes, it took them a while, but if you give them a chance then maybe they'll fix the problems. As for checking the grammar, it would be interesting to try those documents on grammar checkers for the IBM and Mac (Some of which have been updated a number of times). Anyway, as far as grammar checkers for Amiga are concerned, you don't have much of a choice, I thought it looked quite nice, but it certainly has some bugs in it. Amiga is die beste! 'n IBM is 'n rekenaar? Die Mac is net 'n vrot appel! Pacific Division Champs --- Watch this space for Blazer playoff updates! Portland Trailblazers 2 Seattle SuperSonics 2 ! algoa@eecs.cs.pdx.edu Portland TrailBlazers 63-19 and in the playoffs!
koo@tcville.HAC.COM (Frances Koo) (05/07/91)
Most first versions of software seem to have bugs hidden somewhere. Most
importantly, will the company will make the necessary changes to get it
working? Did you call them about the bug?
The reason I asked was that I had pretty good experience with Pen Pal.
When I called them up about a bug with my printer, I was very specific
about the problem. They fixed it in one of the three free upgrades I
received (without asking). I assume this probably also depends on the
difficulty of the bug fix.
Frances (koo@tcville.hac.com)dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan) (05/08/91)
In article <14729@hacgate.UUCP> koo@tcville.UUCP (Frances Koo) writes: |Most first versions of software seem to have bugs hidden somewhere. Most |importantly, will the company will make the necessary changes to get it |working? Did you call them about the bug? | |The reason I asked was that I had pretty good experience with Pen Pal. |When I called them up about a bug with my printer, I was very specific |about the problem. They fixed it in one of the three free upgrades I |received (without asking). I assume this probably also depends on the |difficulty of the bug fix. I've gotten loads of free upgrades to PenPal, too- they HAD to be free, the blasted program didn't work AT ALL when I got it. It was still about six months before I could get ANY work done with PenPal, and I expect it'll be about six months before I get any work done with Proper Grammar. Besides, there is a BIG difference between a first release that has a bug "hidden somewhere" and one that crashes EVERY SINGLE TIME you run it. I have to ask if anyone USED this software before it was shipped. Last night, I dragged PG over to a friends's house to try it on his machine, with 3 megs of ram and a hard drive. It worked without crashing, but we noticed that the free ram went down and down as it ran. Presumably, it is loading the grammar rules into ram as they're used. At its peak, it took just over a meg of ram, so we concluded that it was crashing on my machine because it was running out of memory and was too stupid to know it. We also discovered that you can't change the abysmal font it uses, even by mucking around with the font files. dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com ...uunet!tronsbox!dfrancis GEnie: D.HEFFERNAN1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I don't understand why you make such a big deal out of everything...haven't you learned; if it's not happenning to me it's not important?" -Murphy Brown