From: jkrutz@lobo.rmhs.colorado.edu (Jamie Krutz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: Re: What WP takes the least RAM for long documents???
Date: 21 Jul 92 22:12:51 GMT
Organization: AvailTech

In article <1992Jul20.140200.1582@nynexst.com> clare@nynexst.com (Clare Chu Ayala) writes:

(stuff deleted)

>  Also, what if you want output that can be imported into
>  a PC word processor or a Mac?  I'm imagining joint writing
>  a document where I write a part, and then give it to a
>  friend with a PC or Mac for editing.  Which one,
>  gives the best ascii output for transferring to
>  either WordPerfect or Word?
>
>  What I'm really wondering is if I should upgrade
>  ProWrite to 3.2, or is it like my husband claims, worthless?
>
>  I use Final Copy for a lot of stuff, but so far, only
>  things like resumes and notes to friends with clipart
>  and graphics.
>
>  Thanks for any comments,  Clare
>
>  p.s.  What word processor do professional writers use?

Well lessee.  I've used Excellence and ProWrite to write articles for MacWEEK 
and MacUser (heehee) :)  and other mags including some of the Amiga ones.
 I've played with Word Imperfect and Final Copy.
 I'd say that if scalable fonts are important, use Final Copy.  Maybe when C= 
gets 2.1 out, assuming they have the compugraphic stuff done correctly for 
printing this time, ProWrite and Excellence will be good for high quality 
output at any arbitrary point size.
 If you want to do video scripts ProWrite is the way to go.  It handles 
parallel columns (not just snaking columns) which are essential for video 
scripts.
 If you are doing papers which need footnote and indexing features, check out 
Excellence.  The grammar checker is useful, too (though you should take it 
with a grain of salt as with all grammar checkers).
 
 More to the point of your question: If you want to export text to other 
machines and import from other machines as ascii they all work fine.  ProWrite 
has a filter for loading and saving 2 different formats for the end of a line, 
which helps compatability with some wps on clones, not sure if the others have 
that option.  ProWrite also has a separate program for reading other formats, 
including RTF (used by a lot of wps including Word), Excellence and maybe a 
few others.  Unfortunately the program only reads files and converts the to 
ProWrite's format, but doesn't work the other way around.

What else....ProWrite's ARexx implementation is not complete; you can't do 
commands in some of the requesters (like the font requester for example).  
Exellence just added ARexx but I haven't had a chance to check it out.  Final 
Copy has ARexx but when I had an opportunity to test it it didn't accept input 
to the documented ARexx port so I'll have to try again (I don't currently own 
Final Copy or Excellence).

So, bottom line (oh, and by the way, I think word imperfect is obtuse and I'm 
not impressed with the Amiga version) the word processors on the Amiga 
continue to get better, still need improvement, but are quite useable and 
offer a lot of features.  I'm personally doing a lot w/ARexx and ProWrite and 
having programs share data is very cool.  The current version of ProWrite 
handles text quickly, handles large documents well, has lots of cool features, 
lacks lots of cool features (when will Amiga WPs support IFF-DR2D and paragraph 
tags...?), and basically does the job for me right now.

Hope that helps,
 -Jamie
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications