Back to Basics -- Selecting a Word Processing Program

Software Costs!

Buying computer software can be an expensive proposition, especially for the newcomer. While computer hardware prices have plummeted, computer software prices have, in general, showed no similar decrease. Although we, as Amiga users, are much, MUCH better off in this regard than our colleagues who use MacIntosh and PC clones, high-end Amiga programs can be expensive as well as excellent.

Not all excellent programs are commercial. We are fortunate in the Amiga community to have excellent public domain and shareware software, rivaling and sometimes surpassing commercial offerings. Although public domain/shareware vs. commercial is often debated, it is clear to most that each has its place. Certainly, it hurts little to check out public/domain shareware offerings. However, my recommendation is that if you intend to do much word processing, that you strongly consider a commercial program that has been around for several years with several upgrades and positive reviews in the Amiga publications, provided that you can afford it. Although there are unfortunate exceptions, commercial software is more likely to have adequate documentation, extensive beta testing, telephone support, and a commitment to upgrade.

Which word processing program should you purchase? I can't tell you because I don't know exactly what your needs are? Are you writing a book or are you writing letters to your family and friends? Do you intend to include pictures? Do you need color? What I can do is to tell you why using a word processing program is important and what some desirable features of such a program might be. I can remind you how things used to be in the pre-computer era which, actually, was not so long ago. I can try to help you examine your needs and make an intelligent choice.

The Importance of Written Communication

As a former public school teacher, I can assure you that nothing brings on the boos in a classroom more readily than a request for a written report. The topic doesn't seem to matter. Once one moves beyond "It's no fun" or "It's boring," one soon uncovers deeper reasons such as the amount of preparation required and the necessity to go to the library and look things up. This negative attitude then persists into college and follows us through our careers and our personal lives.

Writing is challenging because it forces us to think about issues and provide evidence for our beliefs. Common expressions that punctuate our everyday speech like "You know what I mean." appear out of place in writing where clarity and detail are expected. One can always say, "I didn't mean it the way it sounded." but it is much more difficult to make the same argument once things are in print. The written word has a permanence that can make us uncomfortable.

But, if you can accept the challenge of writing, the rewards can be immense. The clarity you give yourself will exceed even the clarity you give others. You may reach and influence people you may never meet. Your words may console, help, aggravate, teach, entertain or maybe do all at once. You will have a skill that will serve you throughout life.

Expository Writing

A good word processor will not turn you into a Kurt Vonnegut or a Douglass Adams. It is possible to do excellent writing without a word processor. William Shakespeare seems to have done fairly well without one although it surely is interesting to speculate on the role one might have had. What we are talking about here is not "creative writing" -- although in a sense all writing is creative -- but rather "expository writing" where communication takes precedence over style.

A common approach is to start by making an outline of each section and then listing important points to be made. Most reasonable people would see the need to tailor writing according to the application. Including tutorials in computer documentation is usually very appropriate while including them in a letter to your bank for a credit card application is probably inappropriate.

The Bad Old Days

In the pre-computer age, you took a large block of lined paper and, in long-hand, wrote down a proposed outline. In each section, you wrote down some important points you wanted to make and then nipped off to the library to get some information you thought you might need.

With facts and references in hand, you then wrote out the sections making sure to include your key points and always remembering to leave at least two or three blank lines between each written line. Then you would try to improve your report -- now known as the first draft -- by scratching out a few words here while adding a few others there and then re-arranging sentences and paragraphs by circling them and pointing to new locations with arrows. Soon each page would begin to look like Knute Rockne's handbook of secret football plays for Notre Dame. You then would revise the report by rewriting the more mutilated paragraphs and by saving the less damaged ones by cutting them out and pasting them on clean paper. This was now the second draft.

At this point, you might use a typewriter to get an idea of what the final product might look like before retreating to the library to get a few more references. Your third draft would again be subjected to cutting, pasting and rewriting. Several drafts might be required before a final version could see the light of day.

As you may guess, the mechanics of writing a report were often so great that the important ideas that you wanted to communicate for the paper often were lost in the process.

Enter the Word Processor

A good word processor spares us of the mechanics of writing and allows us to refocus on what we are trying to communicate. We can easily move words, sentences, and paragraphs adding and deleting as we go. We can easily save several versions of our reports to see which we prefer at the end. Word processors make writing less painful and the process of expression, more enjoyable.

What do we expect from a word processor? A reasonable expectation is a document with an attractive typeface, appropriately spaced and centered, free of spelling errors. Although a laser printer may be ideal, a good word processing program should bring out the best quality of whatever printer we have.

First we list some general software requirements, some of which are obvious and should apply to any computer program. A word processing program .....

1. MUST BE CRASH AND BUG FREE. No matter how many fancy do-dads a program may have, nothing is more exasperating than losing your work to an incompletely tested program. This is square one.

2. SHOULD BE EASY TO INSTALL AND USE. If the program is a genuine pain to use -- and to some extent you must be the judge -- avoid it. Otherwise, you might as well go back to cutting and pasting.

3. MUST COME WITH ADEQUATE DOCUMENTATION. This is a notorious weak link! And yet, practically all of us know that a well-organized manual written in plain English and containing tutorials and a good index is worth its weight in gold! When the on-disk "read-me" file is longer than the manual, it's time to re-write the manual!

4. MUST LOAD AND SAVE FILES IN NON-AMIGA FORMATS. Have you heard of IBM and MacIntosh? Have you heard of WordPerfect and Microsoft Word? Well, just about everyone else has. In many businesses, these computer platforms and programs are exactly what you'll find. If you need to transfer files to and from the Amiga, you'll quickly appreciate the value of at least some degree of compatibility. Some will tell you that if you save a document in ASCII format, you can read it other computer systems. While this is true, you do it at the expense of losing format control characters such as those that control underlining or making letters bold. Therefore loading and saving in ASCII is not a solution. Programs that can convert to and from non-Amiga formats such as what Art Department Professional (ASDG, Inc.) does for graphics, become fast favorites among Amegans and earn themselves bundles of money in the process.

5. SHOULD PERFORM AUTOMATIC SAVES. The first time you lose a long report to a computer (or program!) malfunction will be the time you realize that a program that automatically saves your work is a user-friendly program indeed! The automatic save feature should be part of any Amiga creativity or productivity program including graphics and programs. Most of the programs that I use would profit immensely from this feature.

6. SHOULD HAVE "HOOKS" INTO AREXX. As many Amegans know, AREXX is the programming language officially adopted by Commodore for the Amiga. For software that support it, AREXX allows programs to send data back and forth to each other. AREXX programs can automate repetitive processes and even allow users to create new features that the authors of the original program never thought of!

   Even if you or I are are not clever enough to program in AREXX (Actually, its easier than BASIC, but don't let on you know!), others are writing little programs some of which you will find useful. Indeed, there has even been a trend among commercial developers to write AREXX programs to make their software easier to use. Others are linking word processing programs with desktop publishing programs with database programs and so on, but not necessarily through AREXX. As in real life, good communication is key.

7. MUST HAVE RESPONSIVE TELEPHONE AND/OR BULLETIN BOARD SUPPORT. Wasn't this one of the reasons why we purchased a "commercial" product? It is understandable that in the Amiga community where companies may consist of just a few people for telephone support not to be available throughout the day. However, most calls ideally should be answered within 24 hours. Also, note the word "responsive." If there is a glitch in the software, there should be some attempt to come up with a work-around or a "bug fix" within a reasonable time. Software support needs to be a built-in feature for a program to retain its credibility.

And then there are those issues specific to word processing. Word Processing programs ....

1. SHOULD HAVE THE "BASIC" FEATURES. All word processing programs are able to move words, sentences, and paragraphs around ("cutting and pasting"), load and save text files, and, at the very end, output the results to a printer. Margin, line spacing, font selection, and tab control as well as text centering are standard. Inclusion of a spelling checker and a thesaurus is common as well.

   Of course, some programs implement these functions better than others. Some can output to a postscript printer while others are limited to screen dumps of text which can produce poor results. Some programs have spell checkers that are slow and have problems guessing the word you were trying to spell. Others have thesauruses which would be inadequate for grade school.

2. SHOULD FEATURE AUTOMATIC SAVES. This is such an important point that I couldn't resist including it a second time. Sure, you say that you'll remember to save it yourself. But aren't you the same person who postpones backing up the hard drive?

And then there are those features more important to some than to others. Word Processing programs should ....

1. IMPORT GRAPHICS. Word processing programs now include some of the features of desktop publishing software. Not only are multiple column layouts fairly common, but the ability to import grey scale or color graphics into a document and have text flow around it is touted a main feature. The quality of the graphics as they appear on the printed pages may lead one to choose one program over another.

2. SUPPORT POSTSCRIPT. Perhaps this should go in the "must" section. The major advantage that I see is the ability to scale text (and graphics, if they are vector based) often as part of desktop publishing. Bitmapped fonts are small pictures of letters and numbers. As with any pixelized computer image, scaling bitmapped text to a larger size results in an uneven, and usually visually unpleasant, appearance that we call "jagged."

   Scalable, printable fonts allow you to scale text to a large size without getting "jaggies." This is because postscript fonts, unlike bitmapped fonts, are mathematical descriptions of letters rather than the letters themselves.

   Without going into detail, conversion from mathematical description to flesh and blood letters is either performed by the printer, thus making it a postscript printer, or by an (Amiga) program, a postscript interpreter. Thus postscript can be output on a dot matrix printer once the document has been run through an interpreter.

   Regrettably, some word processing programs require that you use their own proprietary postscript fonts thus limiting your choice.

3. ALLOW AN INDEX TO BE CREATED. If you are writing a textbook or a manual, then you will most likely want to create an index so that readers can look up specific topics rather than have to hunt for them through pages of the text. The ability to easily create an index does not appear to be a common feature of Amiga word processing programs. Many Amegans do not need this feature. However, if you do need it, its presence is invaluable.

4. PROVIDE READABILITY STATISTICS. I find it useful to know whether the document I have written is appropriate in terms of the educational level required for understanding. I recommend that you try this function. You may be surprised at the results!

5. CONTAIN, OR LINK TO, A GRAMMAR CHECKER. While I never slavishly follow the recommendations of a grammar checker, I am usually interested in what it has to say. The best of these will help you avoid egregious mistakes and, at the very least, make you think about your writing.

The Word Processing Programs I Chose.

After much soul searching, I decided that I would tell you the word processing programs I use. Shortly after I purchased my first Amiga 2000 four years ago, I bought a copy of ProWrite (New Horizons). I was influenced by its ability to import graphics which seemed rather unique at that time. Although I was disappointed by its lack of an index generating function or convenient handling of footnotes, I found the program to be overall stable. Additional (bitmapped) fonts were available for it as well as a program to give it postscript compatibility. It always seemed to get reasonable reviews in Amiga publications. If no one waxed poetic about the program, at least no one damned it.

When I was generating text for my computerized medical teaching file, I thought that Gold Disk's program Transcript gave the easiest use and the best compatibility with Gold Disk's HyperBook program. I found this word processing program to be fast, efficient, bug free, and non-crashable. For an Amiga program, its interface is unfriendly and it makes no pretense about not being able to import graphics. It is a program meant for writers (yes, you can make an index) and it is totally reliable. Although I purchased TransWrite, which is the upgraded program, nine months ago, I have yet to install it on my computer. Actually, I'm rather satisfied with the old program!

Although I purchased ProWrite for its graphics handling ability, I actually made little use of this capability. I produced mainly text and I liked the output ProWrite generated first on my OkiLaser 400 and now on my Canon BJ-20 bubble jet printer. Nonetheless, some friends had been raving about a new word processing program from Softwood called Final Copy that is supposed to do great things with graphics and postscript. Since these are now areas in which I would like to be more involved, I have recently purchased a copy of the program.

So, Which Word Processor Will You Choose?

The word processor you choose will ultimately depend on your pocketbook and your needs. The information that you need in order to make an informed choice comes from reading comparative reviews, speaking with friends, watching dealer demonstrations, obtaining a demo disk, or some combination these. For myself, I find that reading Amiga publications is the most useful, and, not for just the head to head comparisons of different products. I like to read how users feel about a particular program and what problems they have had using it. I also read multiple reviews in several different magazines in order to cancel out reviewer bias.

Ultimately, you need to know what ideally you want in a computer program and then see which one most closely fulfills your needs. My software requirements may not be the same as those of the reviewer and I make up my own mind, hopefully with some of the information the reviews supply. By providing you with a brief (albeit incomplete) list of typical word processing features, I hope that I have been able to challenge you to think about what you need from a word processing program and that, as a result, you will select a program with which you will be satisfied with for years to come.

January, 1993

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