Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!dalcs!silvert
From: silvert@dalcs.UUCP (Bill Silvert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Publishing Partner Amateur
Keywords: disaster
Message-ID: <2992@dalcs.UUCP>
Date: 18 Aug 88 14:05:36 GMT
Organization: Habitat Ecology Div., Bedford Inst. of Oceanography
Lines: 55

I just got my Publishing Partner Professional upgrade (mailed
Aug. 5), and it is a total loss.  Thick binder with only a few
pages, one disk.  Whatever you do, it crashes or hangs.
Absolutely useless.  Here are some of the gory details:

When you boot it up you get either inverse video (white on black)
in mono or gruesome red and green on the colour monitor.  There
are commands to change the colours, but they don't work.  Not
only is the resultant screen ugly and hard on the eyes, but the
various line types don't always show up very well.

I opened a column and entered some text.  On the first try
nothing appeared.  On the second try I got some text into the
window, but half of it mysteriously vanished while I was in the
process of changing font size.

I started again, opened a column, and imported the distribution
file BUGS.TXT.  It seemed to import OK, although if you use the
wrong option it crashes.  Then I tried to print it -- the font
turned out to be wide bold, and it ran off the edge of my page
(this is a C. Itoh 8510 ProWriter).  I tried to reset the font in
the menu (bold, italic, etc.) but the menu doesn't work --
nothing happens when you click on on an item.

So next I opened a two-column page and imported the same text.
The columns were linked, but after filling up the first column,
PPP superimposed the material on what was already in the first
column!  So I ended up with one column of junk and one empty
column.  I tried to print it and got two bombs.

By the way, although PPP is supposed to come with about 6 fonts,
it doesn't even have those yet -- my disk included Times,
Helvetica, and Hudson.  At least they dropped that stupid System
font default.  I don't know whether the old fonts are compatible
-- I would hate to lose Courier and Symbol.

That is about as far as I got.  There is no value whatsoever in
using the present release.  I hear that SoftLogik had to ship in
order to avoid charges of mail fraud in the US, but they would
have a hard time defending this product!

The only good thing I can say about PPP is that the DOC files are
incompatible with PP 1.02 -- most people see this as a major flaw
(as I would if PPP worked), but imagine the frustration if
someone ruined a working DOC file by loading it into PPP!

Does anyone know if SoftLogik is solvent enough to provide
refunds?  It is hard to believe that the company can survive a
disaster of this magnitude.

-- 
Bill Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division.
Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 4A2
	UUCP: ...!{uunet,utai,watmath}!dalcs!biomel!bill
	CDN: biomel@cs.dal.CDN	BITNET: bs%dalcs@dalac.BITNET