Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: QuickWrite version 1.1
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Date: 20 May 1993 02:11:08 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Reply-To: mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer)
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Keywords: word processor, commercial
PRODUCT NAME
QuickWrite version 1.1
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
QuickWrite is an entry-level word processor. It uses the Preferences
printer as an output device, limiting itself to the capabilities of that
output device.
COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: New Horizons Software
Address: 206 Wild Basin Road, Suite 109
Austin, TX 78747
USA
Telephone: (512) 328-6650
LIST PRICE
$75.00 (US). Street price should be around $50.
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
While a printer isn't required, the program has little use
without it; one is "recommended". Other than that, you need
an Amiga with 512K of ram. A second disk drive is
recommended. The software should work fine with all CPUs and
graphics chip sets.
SOFTWARE
You must be running at least AmigaDOS 1.2, and it works fine
with AmigaDOS through 3.0.
COPY PROTECTION
None. Installs on a hard disk. The provided program disk is
bootable as a Workbench disk.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
I used QuickWrite regularly on an Amiga 3000 with 2 meg of Chip RAM
and 8 or 16 meg of Fast RAM, running various versions of AmigaDOS.
REVIEW
If you have a printer that does acceptable character printing with
multiple type styles and lousy graphics -- or even no graphics -- you have
only a limited number of options to take advantage of that printer. If you
have some graphics, you can use a DTP package, and get results that are
probably unacceptable. You can use an editor that lets you insert binary
text, and put in the Preferences (or your printers) control codes to switch
type styles by hand. This requires estimating formatting, and can make using
other tools difficult. Finally, you can use QuickWrite.
QuickWrite ("QW") is a "word processor" in the original sense of the
phrase. It does not have desktop publishing functionality, multiple font
support, nor even proportional font support. What it provides is convenient
access to many of the character features of the Preferences printer. For
people who have a printer that has a number of such features, but doesn't
have the graphics support required for a true DTP package (this describes
pretty much any dot-matrix printer), QuickWrite is an excellent investment.
You can start QW from either the CLI or the WorkBench, and it can
run on either the Workbench screen or a custom screen of the user's
choosing. After being started, QW opens a window that will be familiar to
the users of most Amiga DTP or word processing packages. Inside the standard
Intuition window borders you find a ruler with movable triangles that
control text wrapping, a tool bar for setting various options, and a couple
of scroll bars and arrows for moving around the document.
The ruler gadgets control the left margin for the first line of a
paragraph, the left margin for the other lines in a paragraph, and the right
margin. You also click on the ruler gadget to set tab stops.
The tool bar has controls for setting the tab type (left, centered,
right or decimal-aligned), paragraph justification (left, center, right or
fully justified), line spacing (single or double), and optionally setting
paragraph spacing to include a line before or after each paragraph, or both.
In addition, double-clicking on the ruler makes the tool bar vanish
or appear, and clicking on the tool bar outside the gadgets causes it to
vanish.
In addition, there are three gadgets to the left of the horizontal
scroll bar at the bottom of the window. Two are arrows that scroll through
the document page by page. The third is a text button displaying the current
page. Selecting it brings up the "Go To Page" requester.
The Project menu is much as one would expect from an Amiga word
processing package, with commands to Save project, Save As, Open projects,
create a New project, Page Setup, Printing with and without a Merge, and
saving settings. The entries that open file requesters open either a custom
requester that may include extra buttons, or under 2.0 or later, an ASL
requester that won't have the extra buttons. A handy shortcut in the Print
options is Print One, which prints a single copy of the current document
using the current page setup.
The Edit menu has the usual set of options ones expects in an Amiga
editor -- Cut, Copy, Paste and Erase. After that comes a submenu allowing a
selection to be changed to UPPER, lower or Mixed case. Another submenu
allows the insertion of non-text items of various kinds -- the Date or Time,
a Page Break or Page Number, or a non-breaking Space. The Date or Time can
be either the current date or time, or the date or time when you print the
document. You control the format of these items with the requester brought
up by the next entry. There is also an entry for selecting all text in the
document, and entries that bring up requesters for editing preferences and
screen colors.
The Search menu is fairly standard -- Find, Find Next, Change, Goto
Page, and a useful entry that takes you back to the current selection or
entry point. The Format menu provides an alternative access to the
paragraph options available from the tool bar, the ability to set text style
(Plain, Underline, Bold, and combinations) and color.
The Document menu controls some of what you see and edit. You can
use it to edit the header and footer of the current document, or to show the
header and footer in the Document window. The Layout entry brings up a
requester that allows you to specify the margins, for all pages or for the
title page. This menu also holds the entry for manipulating the spelling
checker and gathering the usual document statistics: counts of various
things, average lengths of words and sentences, and a readability level.
The View menu holds, for some reason, the About entry. It also
allows you toggle the entire Ruler into and out of existence, and control
what units of measurement it uses. You can also enable or disable the
showing of page guides and "invisible" characters. Enabling this last
option causes whitespace characters to have unique non-character glyphs
displayed for each type of whitespace: a feature I found very useful and
miss in other word processing packages. At the bottom there is a selection
list of all open documents, allowing you to choose the active one from that
list. Since there is a limit of 10 open documents, this menu will always
fit on the screen.
Finally, there is the Macro menu, used for invoking REXX macros.
There are spaces for 10 macros, a requester that allows you to select ones
that are not on the menu, and an entry for customizing the entries. It's as
flexible as most Amiga programs, and more so than some.
QW takes better advantage of 2.0 features than other programs do.
For instance, it opens a public screen, making it easy to start other
applications on that screen. KeyShow is a favorite of mine for accessing
characters via the ALT key. Heavy WorkBench users may find the Application
Icon even more useful, as it lets you open projects by dropping their icons
onto it.
The user interface is largely Amiga User Interface Style Guide
compliant. Not completely -- some menu entries are in strange places, and
some shortcuts are rather odd. For the most part, I found the interface
comfortable and easy to use. The one problem is that redrawing the windows
-- especially on an 8-color screen -- was slow even on an A3000. Turning on
the ruler and tool bar made it awful. The rest of the program seems
reasonably snappy, though.
As a word processor, QuickWrite does what it claims to do. It
lets you format documents using a set of constant-width type styles as
supported by the Preferences printer driver. It doesn't let you mix
type sizes -- going from condensed to elite, for instance -- in a
single document. It is an entry-level package. It gives you WYSIWYG
control of text, but you have to set it all yourself. You can't define
a text style, nor change attributes of all text of one "style" with a
single command. As such, it's perfectly adequate for letters or short
papers, but I'd hate to try doing anything very long with it. It's
probably perfect for undergraduate use, but people doing a thesis or
dissertation will want something more powerful.
If you decide you've outgrown this package, you can buy an
inexpensive upgrade to New Horizon's ProWrite DTP package.
DOCUMENTATION
QuickWrite comes with a softbound, 76-page User's Manual. It also
includes a 12-page pamphlet covering the differences between 1.0 and 1.1.
The documentation is for beginners and follows the process of creating and
printing a document, with the more esoteric features (ARexx, AmigaDOS 2.0
features) left for last. It includes an acceptable index, and appendices
cover error messages and trouble shooting. It's adequate, which is better
than much of the documentation one sees.
LIKES AND DISLIKES
The ability to put meaningful names in the Rexx Macro menu is nice.
It would be nicer if that text weren't the name of the macro you're
running. Date and time stamps that are the time of printing are very nice;
other packages should include this feature. The time spent redrawing a
window -- even for an activation -- is inordinately long. Support for
changing between the Preferences fonts in a single document would be nice,
but I can understand that this is a non-trivial undertaking. Adding more
real DTP functionality -- style sheets, etc. -- would also be nice, but is
also probably beyond the scope of this product.
COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS
As far as I can tell, there really aren't any similar products
available. There are some "text editors" that include part of this
functionality, and at least one module of a modular DTP package might be
considered similar. Entry level DTP packages such as FinalCopy are
sometimes billed as word processors, but they include more functionality,
and require a better printer. What QuickWrite reminds me of more than
anything else is the word processors -- WordStar, Magic Wand, etc. -- that
were available a decade ago. There is now a GUI, and it really is WYSIWYG,
but it provides much the same functionality.
BUGS
While I found no bugs, I had a number of problems with third-party
printer drivers. QuickWrite expects a lot from a printer driver; many
printer drivers don't deliver. SuperDJC2, a PD Brother HR printer driver,
and the GPFax printer driver all failed in one way or another.
Also, the product doesn't work with SoftWood's Proper Grammar,
neither I nor II.
VENDOR SUPPORT
In chasing down the problems with the printer driver, I talked with
the tech support group. They were knowledgeable, courteous, and provided
quick and accurate responses to my questions.
CONCLUSIONS
I'd say the product is excellent for what it is intended to do. It
isn't a DTP package; it's a small word processor for use with character
printers. I'd recommend it without qualms to anyone looking for a program
for doing short documents on a printer with poor or non-existent graphics
capabilities.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright 1993 Mike W. Meyer. All rights reserved.
---
Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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