Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!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 on shelves
Message-ID: <3720@fluke.COM>
Date: 11 May 88 18:21:18 GMT
References: <158@amcad.UUCP> <52428@sun.uucp>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Reply-To: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 97

I think I'd emphasise the point Chuq made -- the program is extremely
intuitive.  I've been spending the last few hours trying to explain to my
manager how to format a document in Word 3.02 for our documentation people.
He uses Framemaker at work on a Sun/3 and has a Mac at home, and after about
an hour we had come up with some extremely choice curses for Microsoft, Bill
Gates, and the MS Word user interface engineer in particular.  Yes, MS Word
can do almost anything, but getting there is such a pain-in-the-ass; and
it's easy to forget the sequences for doing tasks between uses of Word.  

And we all know what the manuals are like...

A few comments on chuq's FullWrite article:

In article <52428@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>- The manual is incomplete in some areas. It mentions, but never explains, 
>	stationery (read-only documents that are used as templates). It
>	barely mentions something called background files, which are (I
>	think!) used to import stuff like EPS files into stationery. I
>	really don't understand what they do, how, or why. I'm hoping that
>	the examples shipped with the program explain it, since the manual
>	ignores them. This looks to be, also, the only way to get postscript
>	code into your documents. Hope I'm wrong on that one.

No question that they screwed up in describing this.  For the record,
FW documents saved in format "Stationary" are basically read-only formats
for future letters -- you can't save them under the name they're opened
under.  I find this more preferable than the MS Word "Read-only" option,
which I will forget to set every 10th iteration...

And yes, that's the only way to get EPS files into FullWrite.  Backgrounds
basically allow you to import paint, EPS and (I think) PICT pictures into
the "background" of the document -- as if it were the pattern for
stationary.  Has the option to only show up on the first page, thus making
letterheads easier.  It's easier to use than MS Word 3.02's methods for
dealing with Postscript, but I assume Word 4.0 will have EPS support in the
future.  Both programs need improvement here.

>+ They've implemented something called a variable. A more generalized flavor
>	of the various page/date/time icons in Word headers. you can define
>	your own, too (I'm not sure why yet, though). One that I find
>	missing is the # of words (variables exist for pages and
>	characters).

The idea of user-definable variables is so that you can set the variable to
a string, place the variable all over the document (person's name, etc.).
To change the string throughout the document, you need only change the
variable once.

>o A thesaurus. I'm not terribly convinced a computer thesaurus buys you
>	anything over a desk model (and the desk model is cheaper). But
>	we'll see.

I've been using the Microlytics on-line thesaurus for a while now, and I'm
divided on it, too.  It is a lot easier to use the Microlytics model, and it
is fairly good; on the other hand, I'm a thesaurus snob, and Roget's has a
better selection (though the words found exclusively in Roget's tend to be
fairly esoteric).  Improve your word power, kids...

>o Imports Write and Word files. Exports only Write files. Initially I was
>	bothered by this, but it makes sense. The Word 3.0 file structure
>	is an amazing bitch to work with. And if you're exporting, you lose
>	most of the special features -- and you're likely setting things up
>	to import into another program that is also likely to read Write,
>	not word files (or both). Macwrite is the primary text-transfer
>	format for the Mac -- even Word reads it. So there's no real reason
>	to export in anything else.

Still, if you're writing articles for various magazines, you have to hope
that FullWrite will be available there soon.  I know I want to write my
articles in FullWrite, and hope that the rest of the world comes around
soon.  But it's a crap shoot.

PS  The one feature no one seems to mention is that the Change/Replace
option not only allows you to specify text to change, but also look
for/replace specific styles/fonts of text.  Very, very handy...

>All in all, it looks to be a definite step up from Word 3.0. Easier to use,
>a lot more writer friendly, a lot more intuitive. It is definitely,
>definitely a word hacker's program, not for the casual writer. But it set
>itself off for the high end, and it seems to have achieved it. This is a
>first impression, though. I'll tell you more when I have a couple of weeks
>under my fingers. 

Me too -- mine arrived today, and I'm certainly going to give it a workout
right off.  Word 4.0 will be nice, I've heard; but unless they're going to
make Style Sheets and the user interface a LOT easier to use, I won't be
interested. 

                        "Spare me, gentle knight!  Tenure shalt thee have,
                         and gold, and several attractive female teaching
                         assistants."
---
                                        Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET:     moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP:  {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO:        You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
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