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From: fisher@gazelle..UUCP (Chuck Fisher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: FullWrite Professional 1.0
Message-ID: <787@elxsi.UUCP>
Date: 11 May 88 16:46:15 GMT
References: <4715@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Sender: news@elxsi.UUCP
Reply-To: fisher@gazelle.UUCP (Chuck Fisher)
Organization: ELXSI Super Computers, San Jose
Lines: 70

I have used the "Pre-Release" version of FullWrite
Professional since receiving it last January.  I
just got my version 1.0 last week and here are some
of my observations...

The program is a definite memory hog, 1 MB is not
enough if you plan to use the built-in graphics
drawing capability.  Running on a greater than
1 MB system you should UN-check the 1 MB size
in the "Doc Setup" command dialog window.  Otherwise
you'll get "out of memory" warnings even though
plenty of memory remains.

Now for my "hot buttons"...
FullWrite still does not support paragraph spaceing
control except on a entire document basis!  I
complained about this on the Pre-Release version
and it still hasn't been fixed.  If you import
a Word 3.0x document, get ready to have your
paragraph spaceing ignored.  (Of course it 
does alert you to the fact that "some formating
information is ignored.")

My second complaint is the production of tables.
You can't use column rules or boxes unless you
create the entire table in the "Picture" module.
Painstaking, but it can be done.  No wonder there's
no example of generating a table in the entire
two-volume documentation!

On the positive side...
I attended the Apple Business Forum held in San
Francisco last week and was able to button-hole
the product manager for FullWrite.  I explained
my displeasure and he told me that the paragraph
spaceing problem was already fixed for the next
release due out this fall. (The next two upgrades
are free to original purchasers of FullWrite
when it was of a more etheral nature.)  When
complaining about table production, the product
manager said that a "table module" like the
"picture" and "sidebar" module will also appear
this fall. I breathed a sigh of relief...

The product manager also commented on the 
memory aspects of FullWrite.  He said that
a new "basic" editor module one-fifth the
size of the current one has already been
written.  Besides being more compact, it is
also much faster.  He was unsure if it would
be included in the fall upgrade, however.

Now back to some nice things about FullWrite...
I really like the ability of "classifying"
Figures, Tables, and the like. It's easy
to reference them with them with "see Figure 1
on page 10" types of citation.  Something Word
still can't do! 

Also, the "picture" module is very MacDraw like.
Although not as feature laden, it does have
full text editing/styling capabilities, arrows,
and bezier curves.  I now can compose most
digram within FullWrite rather than pasting from
other applications.

Guess I'll have to wait until fall before I'm
Fully satisfied however.  :-)

Chuck