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From: DYOUNG@USC-ISID.ARPA (C. David Young)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: word processing
Message-ID: <8509201222.AA14015@UCB-VAX.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 08:19:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: UCB-VAX.8509201222.AA14015
Posted: Fri Sep 20 08:19:47 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 05:27:58 EDT
References: <850917-130143-205@Xerox>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA
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Lines: 33

bf,
Of the word processors you mentioned, only one works 80 columns (with
the addition of either the Bit-3, Austin-Franklin, or OMNIVIEW), namely
Letter Perfect. Letter Perfect has the added advantage of being able
to merge with the data base program Data Perfect, recognized as the most
powerful (albeit complex to learn) data base for the ATARI 8 bitters. It
has the disadvantage of being a memory hog; putting a single return at
the beginning of a line takes up 80 bytes of text buffer!

I have also found the program SpeedScript, published by Compute in May,
to be more popular than any of those that you mentioned except Letter
Perfect and ATARIWRITER. Its main advantages are that it is very easy to
use and uses ATARI DOS format for its file storage. (The biggest gripe
about Letter Perfect is that it has its own DOS, incompatible with
everything else.)  I found it to be such a nifty program that I rewrote
it to work 80 columns with OMNIVIEW and greatly enhanced its operation
in the process. It is provided free of charge with every OMNIVIEW.

And how could you forget that old dog, the original Atari Word
Processor? It is notable for its dozens of menus, proving just how user
unfriendly a menu driven program can be, its support of only ATARI
printers, and the original drop back mode (probably its only redeeming
feature) for previewing the output using high resolution graphics to
depict its structure.

There are others that have not been mentioned; Text Wizard and Wordman
both come to mind. I even used the combination of MEDIT (the ATARI
program text editor) and FORMS (output formatter) for a while, which,
while powerful, was slow and cumbersome. I shudder to think what we had
to put up with back in the old days to create decent documents!

David Young
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