Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/c.s.a.reviews/software/text/Wordworth20AGA

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Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: [e-mail] (Stephen Norris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Wordworth 2.0 AGA
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Date: 29 Aug 1993 03:43:53 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 290
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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Stephen Norris)
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Keywords: word processor, AGA, Postscript, commercial


PRODUCT NAME

    Wordworth 2.0 AGA


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    Wordworth has most of the features one requires from a word processor,
and provides a friendly but usable interface.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        Digita International
    Address:    Black Horse House
            Exmouth, EX8 1JL
            England

    Telephone:    [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]


LIST PRICE

    List price is AUS $300, or 150 UKP.  I paid AUS $150 at the recent
World of Commodore show; similar prices may be available elsewhere.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        At least a 68020 processor is needed for any response; I
        recommend more.  Requires at least 2 Megs of free RAM (not 2
        Megs installed, but 2 Megs FREE!); and again, more is better.
        I have 10 Megs, and Wordworth has used up to 7 of them.

        A hard drive is not required, but recommended - Wordworth
        needs about 4 Megs of disk, but may use more if you install
        extra printers.

        If running off floppies, be prepared to swap disks....

        Overall, the software is aimed at an Amiga 1200HD as a
        minimum configuration - with some fast memory it is quite
        usable on such a machine.

    SOFTWARE

        Digita states Wordworth will run under AmigaDOS 1.3, but I
        haven't tried it.  It does run under 3.0.


COPY PROTECTION

    Installation requires the user to enter a license number which is
printed on the registration form.  I assume this means that if you distribute
the software, Digita will be able to tell who did it and take appropriate
action.

    There is no other copy protection.

    Overall, copy protection is invisible once installed.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    A4000/040, 2 Meg Chip RAM, 8 Meg Fast RAM, 120 Meg hard disk.
    Kickstart 3.0, Workbench 3.0.
    Epson dot matrix printer.
    Postscript printer(s) used for testing Postscript output.


INTRODUCTION

    As a long time Excellence! owner (Versions 2 and 3) and a
postgraduate student, I found that Excellence! could not meet all my
requirements for a word processor.  Lacking particularly in Excellence! is
support for structured drawings.  I couldn't really use Excellence! to
produce a paper with bitmapped diagrams and expect to publish it anywhere.

    With this in mind I was interested in buying Wordworth, since it
claimed to be able to incorporate Encapsulated Postscript into documents.


USER INTERFACE

    Wordworth can run either on a public screen (such as Workbench) or a
custom screen, and the user may select any of the available screen modes
with any number of bitplanes possible.

    The user interface is mostly Style Guide conformant, excepting the
arrangement of a few menu items.  It adapts to the system standard font.

    The Wordworth user interface is especially nice, though designed for
a 640x512 pixel (or similar) screen; but since the intended base machine
seems to be the A1200, this should not be a problem.  The screen is arranged
differently from other word processors I have seen:  a small ruler along
the top of the window to indicate margins and tabs, a second ruler down
the left edge, and a tool bar with various icons down the left hand side of
the window (rather than across the top as in other word processors).

    The tool bar allows rapid access to most of the commonly needed
functions (types, typefaces, tabs etc.).  In addition, there is a selection
of menus which provide access to most of the other functions.

    Scroll bars down the right edge and across the bottom of the screen
allow movement through the text.

    The tool bar, rulers and scroll bars can be independently turned on
and off for faster response.

    Multiple windows can be opened at once, with one document being
displayed in each window.  Each window runs independently from the others -
one can be printing, and all the others can be edited, etc. with no
difficulties at all.


GENERAL FEATURES

    All usual word processor facilities are provided, such as:

        - Left, right and both text justification and centering.
        - Variable line spacing,
        - Paragraph formats, with different indentation on the first
          line to the subsequent lines.
        - Bold, italics etc., and a wide selection of fonts (see
          below).
        - Cut, paste, etc.
        - Colour.
        - Support for Encapsulated Postscript, PCX, IFF images.
        - Four tabs:  left, right, decimal and centering.
        - Multiple columns,
        - Headers and footers,
        - Endnotes.

    In addition to these features, Wordworth also supports full on-line
help with a special context mode where the user clicks on the gadget or menu
help is required for.

    Images can be placed anywhere in a document, and text can flow around
them or go under them.  If flowing around, the text can follow the contours
of the image, or go around a box drawn around the image.

    Page numbers, current or updating dates and times can be inserted,
allowing the user to produce documents which date themselves as they print.
Page numbers can be in various different styles, with the option to suppress
the page number on the first page.

    A mailmerge facility is available, but I have not had the need to use
it, so cannot really comment on it.

    A dictionary and thesaurus are provided, and for a pleasant change
the dictionary is a British English one; I am very tired of teaching
Excellence! to spell things (such as "colour" and "realise").

    The thesaurus is reasonable, displaying a selection of synonyms for
a word, and the part of speech for each.  Users can browse the thesaurus,
examining synonyms of synonyms for as long as they wish.

    Automatic generation of index, table of contents and any user-defined
lists (e.g. list of diagrams) is easy and works well.  The user simply
highlights the text to go into the list, adds it with a menu option, and it
is inserted into the list.  Seven levels of indentation are possible in the
list (for example, a table of contents with multiple subheadings), with the
choice of printing page numbers only after the deepest level.


PRINTING

    Wordworth comes with a large range of fonts which exactly match
the fonts produced by various dot matrix printers, and also a set of
Postscript fonts.

    Using these fonts means that the screen display exactly matches the
printout - even on dot matrix printers - and that the printout itself can be
fast, since it is using the printers internal fonts and not printing a
bitmap.

    Normal Amiga fonts can be used in non-Postscript documents, but
then printing will revert to the much slower bitmaps.

    Wordworth produces perfectly usable Postscript output, which I
printed without flaw on an Apple Laserwriter and several other laser
printers.


FILE FORMATS

    This was the one disappointment of Wordworth.  The advertising
material claimed the ability to read and write various file formats.  While
not vital to me, this sounded like a useful facility.  It turns out that
Wordworth can read and write some formats only in a very limited way.  For
example, it can write Microsoft Word documents, but loses all font and
layout information.  In addition, I managed to crash Windows using a file
written by Wordworth (which gave me a bit of a laugh, I must admit - I
thought Windows was supposed to be much more stable than the Amiga, and this
was a program written by Microsoft!).


DOCUMENTATION

    A printed 350-page manual is provided with tutorials that lead
the user through most of the features.  An extensive reference guide
is also contained, as well as a comprehensive index.  An interesting note
is that the manual was prepared using Wordworth itself!

    The provided documentation is both easy to read, and often
interesting, with little notes about the history of printing, and
explanations about fonts and their names.

    There is also a "quick start-up" section which gives the expert user
a short run through the installation procedure, and points out the important
sections of the reference section.


LIKES AND DISLIKES

    Support for Postscript and images in the text is pleasing.  The user
interface is friendly and doesn't clutter up the display too much.  Being
able to turn off sections of the interface should please those who dislike
little pictograms on their displays.

    I disliked at first the limitation of not being able to use normal
Amiga or Compugraphic fonts when printing on a Postscript printer.  But since
this would mean dumping a bitmap to the printer, which is both slow and has
low quality, I have come to accept that this limitation is necessary.

    Wordworth is still lacking some important features.  In particular,
footnotes are really needed, and bookmarks (a la Microsoft Word) would be
useful.


COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    Overall, Wordworth compares very favourably to Excellence!.  Both
are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processors.  Wordworth's
special printer fonts, which exactly match the fonts used by various
printers, are a definite advantage over those of Excellence!, especially with
respect to dot matrix printers.

    Image handling is also better with Wordworth, as is the selection of
screen modes.  It should be noted that Excellence version 3 is now fairly old
(predating the AGA machines), and so a new version should be on the way soon
which may offset these differences.

    Having used both Excellence! and Wordworth extensively, I now use
Wordworth all the time.


BUGS

    I have found several Enforcer hits, and have once managed to crash
Wordworth in about 150 hours of use, which I consider to be reasonable.

    One question I have is why do manufacturers release software with
Enforcer hits?  How do they justify it?  There are no major problems though,
and I haven't managed to reproduce the crash.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    I have no idea what it's like - calling England is a bit expensive
from Australia.


WARRANTY

    There is a 90 day warranty on the disk media.


CONCLUSIONS

    Overall Wordworth is a better than average word processor.  With a few
additions, it would be a very good word processor, which would be well suited
to producing technical documents (such as research papers).


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    Copyright 1993 Stephen Norris.  All rights reserved.

---

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