Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Re .0:
    
    I've been asking the same question and have pretty much convinced
    myself that ProWrite 2.5 (plus ProScript for PostScript output) is the
    best choice.  In addition to being able to wrap text around graphics,
    ProWrite claims to be faster than its competition.  As one who is
    forever outrunning geoWrite (on the C=128), I've become sensitized to
    this aspect of bit-mapped WYSIWYG word processors.
    
    Excellence! is tempting, but it's well outside my price range.  It even
    has the feature of performing spelling verification at ENTRY time,
    which would be particularly nice for my 13-year-old.

    Some info in notes 2355, 2694, 2951 for starters. (dir/titl=word 2000-last
    turned up these. Proably others prior to 2000 as well).

    
    ProWrite/ProScript get my vote.
    
    Ed.

    Excellence works well for us. It also contains a program to tell
    you what grade level the letter was written at. (i.e. 9th grade).
    
     I understand that there is an upgrade do soon but I don't know
    what it contains.

    Hi Gregg!
    
    That was directed to the last reply.
    
    I've used WordPerfect, Scribble! and Scribble!Platinum.  Haven't tried
    ProWrite.  My vote is for Scribble!.  It has a spell checker and is
    very simple to use.  No graphics capability.  The nicest part is
    scrolling through a large document with the scroll gadget.  You can
    move to any point in the text almost immediately.  I've made some
    rather large documents with it and have been completely satisfied.
    
    I thing the cost is around $80.  Scribble!Platinum has a larger
    dictionary and a theasaurus but you need a lot of memory to load it
    into.
    
    Ken

    V2.5 of ProWrite has a while-you-type spelling checker as well as
    the standard check-document checker.  This function is menu selectable.
    
    ProWrite is also much faster (V2.5) than previous versions.  There
    is also an added function which allows you to remove or add <cr>
    after each line, useful for importinf text into ProPage, etc.
    
    ProWrite also has a document evaluation feature, i.e. counts number
    of words, average length of word, etc, for "readability".
    
    If you do not have a postscript printer, ProWrite now allows you
    to mix pictures with NLQ text.  Previously, the page was just output
    as a bitmapped page to the printer.
    
    If you want a low cost way to mix graphics and text, but don't want
    to go the ProPage/Draw/etc route, then ProWrite is a reasonable
    solution.  If you already have ProWrite <2.5, the 2.5 upgrade comes
    with a free upgrade cupon for V3.0 when it is available.
    
    John
    

    
    
    	Looks like ProWrite will get my $$'s.  Now the only question is
    does the 2.5 version come with a free 3.0 upgrade, or should I
    hold off until 3.0 comes out?  If the answer is wait, when will 3.0 
    be avaiable?
    
    		-mt

    Some info on wordperfect. I've used it for some time with only a few
    problems (see below) and prefer it over demos I've seen of Scribble and
    Excellence, but then I'm not real interested in pasting pictures into
    my documents at present.
    
    Re .5:
    
    Wordperfect also has a speller/thesaurus (OZ version available for us
    downunder!) and scroll bar for positioning anywhere. The nice thing
    about Wordperfect is that documents produced on the Amiga are
    completely compatible with Wordperfect documents produced on IBM-PC
    compatibles, VAX,... versions, so you can move your document
    from machine to machine with few hassles. Another handy feature is that
    all commands are available either through pop-down menus or via the
    function keys. The macro facility is also very handy for those invloved
    command sequences.
    
    As to the problems:
    
    I've had to disable the auto-activate feature of Dmouse when using WP
    because WP has big problems interacting with the mouse when WP posts a
    requester to the screen. When two are up the mouse becomes impossibly
    jerky. However once the mouse is positioned within the bounds of the
    pending requester everything is ok again. This, and the fact that the
    WP cursor flickers when the mouse is moving with Dmouse auto-activate
    enabled, leads me to suspect that WP is actually looping on GetMsg() on
    the IDCMP port instead of doing a WaitPort(). Very annoying!, and
    sloppy programming if that is the case. With auto-activate disabled on
    Dmouse everything works fine.
    
    Another small nuisance factor is that (like me) the guys who wrote WP
    didn't seem able to get the proportional gadget (scroll bar) algorithm
    right. When you click in the prop gadget, below the button, the button
    moves down but not to the next place it should. It goes down to where
    it should, the screen updates and then the button clicks back a
    little. Annoying, but maybe there's a reason for it.
    
    As to what's going to happen with updates of WP, that's another
    question. I've heard the developers of WP write everything in assembler
    (for speed I guess) on a MesS-DOS machine, then port the new code to
    the other machines in the native assembler of the particular machine.
    This makes for run-time speed but I can't help thinking it must be a
    very difficult way to maintain and enhance software for different
    machines. As to whether a port of V5 WP (graphics etc) will make it to
    the Amiga, I read in a recent Transactor editorial that WP has decided
    they've made about as much as they can in the Amiga market and have
    decided to cancel the V5-V6 upgrade project, but they have committed to
    bug fixes and v4.2 enhancements, so there is some future in it.
    
    After all that negative stuff (minor in comparison to the value of the
    package overall), I must say that I'm extremely happy with WP. It is
    robust (latest version I have has never had a guru attributable to WP,
    then again I haven't seen a guru in a long time except when I'm
    developing code!), is packed with features, has very good
    documentation, on-line help, highly integrated with Intuition, etc...
    

When using ProWrite, in order to use the NLQ font built into a printer, one must
use the Topaz 11 font to get the correct spacing, etc. 

Is there an equivalent font to use if I want to use the proportional spacing
feature built into the printer (Star NX-1000)?

If not, can I create one from Topaz 11 if I know what the character widths are
for my printer's NLQ fonts? 

How can I instruct ProWrite to enable the printer's proportional mode (embedded
escape sequence)?

Dave