From: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (J. D. McDonald)
Subject: Re: ARGHH!-WFW2.0 Sucks big time!
Summary: W4W is verys seriously flawed
Organization: UIUC SCS
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 17:37:14 GMT
Keywords: Crashes problems wfw

In article <1992Oct6.154722.6579@alw.nih.gov> arm@helix.nih.gov (Andrew Mitz) writes:

>In article <1992Oct6.104956.25064@news.uni-stuttgart.de> skok@itwds1.energietechnik.uni-stuttgart.de (Holger Skok) writes:
>>Hi folks,
>>
>>Anybody having similar experience with WFW2.0?
>>I have been working on a fairly large document and tried to split it up,
>>in order to improve response time and to make the handling of the files
>>easier. I divided the document into chapters and stored them in separate
>>files. Then I created a control file in which I entered the separate
>>chapters with the Insert File function. 
>>Using the proper display mode I could also see that the control file
>>indeed only contained a few headlines and the insertion fields. 
>>Imagine my surprise when I checked the size of the control file and
>>found it to be as large as the sum of all sizes of the inserted files!
>>(~3MB for a 46-page document containing many MS-Draw images)
>>
>>I know that WfW2.0 does have trouble with importing images. Even though
>>there is a check box in the dialog to not include the image in the file
>>but to just reference the image file and only store its name in the WfW
>>- document, this doesn't work. Answer from MS-support: It's not a bug,
>>it's a feature.
>>But I hate that it's the same with the include file function. Am I
>>making some mistake?
>>
>>Now with the 3MB-file I keep experiencing crashes
>This is what the Insert File means.  Sorry its not a c %include.

That is in fact a serious design flaw. 


>Getting mad at your tools...
Actually, yes. 


I think you might try to learn to use WFW a little better.  If you 
>use the outline and style features, you can build a large document
>and still move around in it very quickly.
True. But still it is clunky. Can you say too big for a floppy backup?
That is too big!!



>WFW and Ami Pro are part of an evolution of personal wordprocessing.
>Their abilities are outstanding improvements over the previous 
>generation of Wordstar and Wordperfect. 


> (We will leave the TeX people
>out of this discussion.)

No you won't. Sorry, we can't be left out. W4W is different from TeX,
and easier to use in many ways. But not in all ways. Its flaws are
more severe .. TeX, for example, has no bugs. IF you find one, the author
will actually pay you money. The output of TeX is clearly superior,
especially in equations. The lack of a "bibtex" full equivalent is a
serious lack (which, admittedly, can probably be fixed without Microsoft's
help. But W4W is seriously buggy and in some ways seriously klunky. 


W4W also lacks other seriously needed features - character and
paragraph styles, for instance.

One of the biggest ... in fact, I would say THE biggest ... flaws in
W4W is that you can't read the intermediate files (modulo things like
indluded bitmaps) and can't (the topic of the original post) #include
other files. It is **very** possible to introduce bugs into a W4W
file that simply **can't** be fixed, because you can't read the file
and see what they are. People knock TeX because it is a "programming
language". True, but W4W is too, in a sense, **and it prohibits you from
reading the code to find bugs**!!!!

************************************************************************

W4W is like a 
programming language would be if the code was "write and delete only" and
you could only tell if it was right  by examining the output .. 
no debuggers!!!  (I.e. once you wrote the code, you could never examine
it exactly ... only delete lines of the source without seeing them, 
only knowing what you intended them to do (e.g. seeing the comments).

************************************************************************


Doug McDonald