Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!fluke!moriarty
From: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: FullWrite -- I'm sorry, but...
Message-ID: <4005@fluke.COM>
Date: 6 Jun 88 22:18:08 GMT
References: <8013@drutx.ATT.COM>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Reply-To: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 50

Basically, I ditto Chuq's comments, i.e. I'm not bashing Word, I was glad to
have it, but it was a PC word processor, etc.  Also that FW is more
powerful, except for a few specific areas I described before (styles being
the biggest point).  I might also point out that I'd rather have two good
power word processors on the Mac, and it looks like that's what we may end
up with by the end of the year.  But currently, FW has completely replaced
Word.  I'm looking forward to seeing what Microsoft has up their sleeves
with Word 4.0 (they're demoing it at our local user group meeting at the end
of June -- I'll report).

In article <8013@drutx.ATT.COM> clive@drutx.ATT.COM (Clive Steward) writes:
>    1) The outliner requires selecting the entire document first, to
>    generate an outline.  I couldn't even seem find a way to do this, 
>    across chapter boundaries.  And don't find the outliner interface
>    nearly as easy or failsafe (scrambled text for me often) as Word's.

While I fully agree with your assesments of several of FullWrite's
limitations (especially the paragraph spacing and custom styles, though I
still think they are outweighed by FW's strong points), this I take
exception to.  I used Word's outliner for years and HATED it -- found myself
swearing at the damn thing on occasions.  I really wanted to integrate an
outline with my document, and manipulate it so that the headings were
hidden, in a different style, etc.  I could do it (barely) with Word, but
God Hell, was it ever clumsy and non-intuitive.  A feature which requires me
to go to the manual EVERY time I use it is not a feature.  (And let's not
get into Word's manuals....)

In contrast, FullWrite's outliner fits right in.  I ran through the manual
once, and had one refresher with the reference manual, and that was it.  A
cinch.  As to your specific complaint, you can create an outline in the
document anywhere by using Make Outline -- this inserts an outline at the
insertion point.  And there are several methods for taking current chapters
and transforming them into outlines.  I need to check the manual about
outlines stretching over chapter boundaries, but I think it can be done (the
table of contents feature seems to be an extension of the outliner).

>Can we see the progress as fun?

Yes -- and I think we're in for some real fun here, because I think both
products are going to mature in the very near future.  It takes something
like this to really underline the benefits of competition in a free-market
system.

                        "There will always be survivors."
                                    -- Robert Heinlen
---
                                        Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET:     moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP:  {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
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