Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Re .0:
    
>   Can anyone tell me if Final Copy is a WYSIWYG word processor?
    
    It is.
    
>   IS this a better product than Prowrite 3.2?

    The Memory Location is now recommending Final Copy instead of ProWrite
    (it's $50 cheaper and appears to have comparable functionality).
    
>   I'm considering either upgrading Prowrite or possibly purchasing
>   Final Copy... Any/all help about the advantages/disadvantages 
>   of these two products would be very helpful.
    
    #1 son just picked up his A2000HD/P yesterday and got Final Copy.  We
    don't yet know if FC can import ProWrite documents and he hasn't used
    FC for anything.  Time will tell.
    
    In the meantime, I've upgraded to ProWrite 3.2, which has FINALLY
    integrated its PostScript support.  Under WB 2.04, ProWrite supports
    Outline Fonts (FC also claims such support).  Under both 1.3 & 2.04,
    ProWrite 3.2 supports a "high quality" print mode, which renders fonts
    by scaling down from larger point sizes (e.g. from 24pt to 12pt)
    instead of relying on smoothing.  This is VERY compute-intensive (and
    appears to have a bug or two), but it produces high-quality results.

    I recently grabbed Final Copy, and I have been using ProWrite for some
    time, although I haven't done the 3.2 upgrade yet (using 3.1.1).  I
    have not used Final Copy significantly so far, but I can share some of
    my initial impressions.

    As it happened, I got Final Copy and my AmigaDOS 2.04 upgrade during
    the same visit to Memory Location (last week).  I was anxious to see
    how far I could get on the 2.04 upgrade without the required -06 ROMs
    for my A2620, so I worked on that first.  I was able to get it
    installed and running as long as I stayed in 68000 fallback mode.  I
    also have a DKB MultiStart ROM switch installed, so I can select either
    1.3 or 2.0 at boot time.

    Once I was satisfied with that, I decided to look at Final Copy.  I did
    the installation while running on my new 2.0 system.  It went fine, the
    program worked OK.  I later discovered that Final Copy did *NOT* run
    when I booted the 1.3 system!  I still don't know why, but the program
    would apparently load and then exit without ever saying anything.  I've
    reinstalled it while running 1.3, and now it works (although I haven't
    tested this one with 2.0 yet).  

    Anyway, onward to program itself.  I think Final Copy does an excellent
    job with graphics.  I tried importing various brushes, digitized
    pictures, etc.  The graphic could be resized and reshaped at will,
    reduced to a speck and then enlarged without loss of detail.  The image
    on screen is only an approximation, with few colors, but I believe the
    full palette of the original is used during printing.  There's also an
    option to reference the original file (as a link) rather than storing a
    copy inside your Final Copy document.  This is much closer to a DTP
    approach than what I've seen in ProWrite.  It lacks some useful
    features of a real DTP program, there are no drawing tools and you
    can't (as far as I can tell) add text on top of graphics (only *around*
    them).  PostScript output was very quick compared to ProScript (again,
    I haven't seen the new integrated PS support in PW 3.2), and lightyears
    ahead of DTP programs (Professional Page, Pagestream).

    For simple text handling I suspect ProWrite still has a significant
    edge, but Final Copy may be able to close that gap as it "matures".
    Rendering of the outline fonts onto the screen seems a bit slower than
    ProWrite, and the characters tend to look a bit 'scrunched' at normal
    sizes.  You can zoom in to see details, or out for a sense of page
    layout, which is handy.

    Fonts are treated rather strangely.  For whatever reason, they've
    simplified font family names to single characters, e.g. "T" instead of
    "Times", "H" for "Helvetica", etc., and you must explicitly select
    variant font names for _BOLD, _ITALIC, etc.  This is unlike ProWrite,
    which presents these as text 'styles' and feels much more natural to me.
    Surely Final Copy could have hidden this artifact of their implementation.

    Final Copy does not have an "UnDo" feature, so perform destructive
    operations carefully.  I was somewhat annoyed by the fact that screen
    scrolling is not coupled to the cursor.  While reformatting some
    imported text (removing embedded linefeeds), I sometimes deleted stuff
    at the other end of a preceding/following line - which was not visible
    to me at the time.  Perhaps there's a preference setting to control
    this, but I haven't found it yet.

    There are three foreign format import "libraries" included with Final
    Copy.  These allow you to import native files from other WP programs
    (ProWrite, Pen Pal and WordPerfect) as well as simple text.  You simply
    "Open" the desired file, the program identifies its format and performs
    conversion automatically.  I tried this with a simple ProWrite document,
    basic text formatting was preserved but not font selections, etc.  I
    assume this is due to different font architectures employed between the
    programs.  I did not try this with a document containing graphics yet.

    
    	I (the high-school son of the guy listed in the mail header) work
    at Finetastic Computers in Norwood part-time, and have worked with
    Final Copy a little bit.
        It has all the standard word processing features such as
    thesaurus, dictionary, etc., but the print quality is amazing.  The
    reason for this is that it uses outline fonts, but NOT the same ones
    that WBench 2.04 uses.  When a CompuGraphic font is selected by
    ProWrite or excellence! or whatever program, 2.04 generates a bitmap on
    the fly from the outline, and throws the font at the program.  The
    program then uses the bitmap of the font, which looks very good both
    on page and screen because it came from the outline CG font.  This is
    totally transparent to any program that uses the standard Commodore
    library call to list available fonts.
    
    	Final Copy, however, gets much better output because it uses real
    outline fonts, and sends them to the printer, much as desktop
    publishing programs like PageStream and ProPage do.  It can load and
    can only get its exceptional quality from its own fonts, which are in a
    nonstandard format.  The fonts were designed by some other font-only
    company, who also did the fonts for PC-GEOS Ensemble.  Instead of
    sending a bitmap to the printer(like ProWrite does when invoking a 2.04
    CG font), DTP programs and Final Copy send a font which can print at
    the maximum resolution of whatever printer you
    use.  This means that Final Copy can use the Compugraphic fonts by
    loading them as a bitmapped font, but only gets its touted output
    quality when using its own fonts.  Supposedly new fonts in this format
    are coming.
    
    	The screen representation of the fonts is horrible, though.  If
    you're planning on writing letters and other short documents, Final
    Copy is fine.  But for essays or long papers, excellence! or ProWrite
    would probably be better.  Final Copy goes for approx. $65.00.
    
    
    						Mike

    I too just received a copy of Final Copy. It's not a bad program for
    small reports. Here's some additional observations:
    
    Final copy prints faster than Propage.
    
    I only have a dot matrix printer (LJ252). All the post script fronts
    print with great quality on a dot matrix printer. Although fonts
    selection is weird. i.e. they use A, B, T, Z for font names. There's
    a really nice Ole' English font included.
    
    You can add graphics to a header. But I noticed that it will only print
    on the first page. Most likely a bug.
    
    By for now,
    
    Rich

    I have some questions regarding Final Copy.
    
    o  Would it be ok for doing 15 page reports for school?
          Some one had mentioned that it was not bad for "small reports".
          What is it about Final Copy that makes one say this?
    
    o  Is the screen always showing poor quality characters, or is this
       only in a certain mode?
    
    o  For general home and school use is ProWrite 3.2 really worth the ~ $40
       difference in price, compared to Final Copy?
    
    I need a solid, good quality wordprocessor for home, school and civic
    activities.  In the <$100 range what are my options?
    
    
       Eric

    Re .5:
    
>   o  For general home and school use is ProWrite 3.2 really worth the ~ $40
>      difference in price, compared to Final Copy?
    
    As with anything else, that depends on what is most important to you. 
    I've been happy with each version of ProWrite that I've had.  At this
    point in time, I think it *is* worth the extra $40 for MY purposes.
    
>   I need a solid, good quality wordprocessor for home, school and civic
>   activities.  In the <$100 range what are my options?
    
    You might consider QuickWrite, ProWrite's "little brother".  You give
    away graphics support and a number of other whizzy features, but that
    could be okay for your needs.

    I have both textcraft and prowrite.  For run-of-the-mill reports and
    simple stuff textcraft is fine.  For multiple column newsletter styple
    and landscape printing the prowrite works while the textcraft doesn't. 
    When using the printer's default fonts prowrite is o.k. but for the
    fancier printing prowrite is s   l   o   w because it bitmaps the
    entire printed page and all of the blank areas as well.  Prowrite
    supports colors, textcraft doesn't.  prowrite supports graphics within
    the document.  Spell checking while typing is a neat feature.  The
    thesaurus is kind of useful and easy to use.  (The kids love the spell
    check)  I'm not familiar with Final copy, however.
    
    Bob

    I noticed that Final Copy and Pen Pal are from the same company.  How
    are they marketing them differently?
    
    		Eric

re: .8
>    I noticed that Final Copy and Pen Pal are from the same company.  How
>    are they marketing them differently?

Since I owned Pen Pal before Final Copy was available, I received a notice
of FC's availability, and Softwood enclosed a comparison checklist of sorts,
contrasting the two products.

The major difference they noted was that Pen Pal is a word processor and a
database tool, and has mail merge. Final Copy has scalable outline fonts.
They noted that if you have a laser or 24-pin dot-matrix printer, FC will
produce very "smooth" fonts, unlike Pen Pal's bitmapped fonts. (Both will
use the printer's fonts, if you choose).  FC will produce multiple-column
text, PP won't. FC has a thesaurus, PP doesn't. Both have spell checker.

In use, the FC spell checker seems much better than the PP version. PP can
do some fancy graphical things, because it will use any font in the FONTS:
directory, and can do boxes and borders and the like. But FC seems to produce
a more "professional" copy. The outline fonts in FC are a little tough to
read on the screen, but otherwise it's pretty nice to use. It has crashed
a few times, mostly because it was having problems with my printer setup.

Cheers,
John O.

    Yes, I am wondering when they are going to have outline fonts available
    for PenPal and when they are going to allow the use of "real" outline
    fonts instead of just those from Softwood.

    I have not got Final Copy to work properly on my system (2000w/3Mb
    2'HDs & 1.3, HP_Paintjet printer). I'm in communication with Softwood,
    but all they seem to tell me is that either my system is screwed up
    or I've not installed their product right.
    
    If it worked, it would be a nice product.
    
    ... Rich

                     <<< Note 5225.11 by CARROL::MELLITZ >>>
                 -< They haven't got the bugs worked out yet. >-

>    I have not got Final Copy to work properly on my system (2000w/3Mb
>    2'HDs & 1.3, HP_Paintjet printer).

Final Copy is amazingly sensitive to the rev of 1.3 that it sees. I have no
idea why. I discovered this by testing between two versions of 1.3 running
on two different 2000s. Use the VERSION command to discover what version of 
1.3 is running. (It's actually a library in LIBS:, version.library) I forget
what the exact number is, but if you upgraded quickly from 1.2, then you
can bet that the OS is causing a problem. I think my OS version was ##.20,
and I had to get ##.34 or so - I don't remember the version numbers off the
top of my head. If the version you have just quickly exits after loading,
with no explanation, that's probably the OS.

Softwood recently sent a new version of FC, which I think is supposed to fix
this problem, amoung a few other problems, but I can't get it to work, yet,
so I have not installed it. I don't mind trying out field test software, but
I wish Softwood would tell you these things...