🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1419@atari.UUCP> kbad@atari.UUCP (Ken Badertscher) writes:
>In article <446@electro.UUCP> ignac@electro.UUCP (Ignac Kolenko) writes:
>|unfortunately, it doesn't look like there are gonna be any more versions
>|from microsoft. so the initial version is the final version. 
> 
>  That's interesting, Ignac.  Where do you get your information?
>Last I heard, we are trying to entice Microsoft into updating Write.
> 
>|i don't understand why atari just didn't hire any programmers to fix the
>|damn bugs in write. 
> 
>  Because the damn program belongs to Microsoft, and we don't have the damn
>source code.  It's damn difficult to hire damn programmers to fix the damn
>bugs when you have no damn source. 

as to my information, i have a friend who had a few work terms at microsoft as
a programmer back when they released write. he informed me that microsoft
basically just got the program to a working state, then gave the executable to
atari to market, since ms has absolutely no interest in any other machine or
market than ibm or macintosh. microsoft was supposedly under contract to make
updates only if atari was able to sell 50000 copies of ms write, and so far
i don't think that they have reached that goal.

as to having atari fix the source: stupid comment on my part. i will try to
keep my yap shut about things like that in further comments on the net. i stand
corrected!!!!! sorry!!!			:-)

but, write came out, lemee see, what three years ago, and only now you're trying
to "entice" microsoft to update it???? to me, that just sounds like microsoft
has absolutely no interest in doing anything with the program. (no fault found
with atari on this point)

interesting to note: my friend from microsoft even had a copy of an internal ms
write version that had special code to speed up screen displays when using the
standard st font, which i don't believe made it into the release version. this 
is the version that i have played around with a couple of times and based my
comments on. (it may be that his internal version had extra bugs that the
release version didn't have.)

but that fact alone shows that microsoft itself thought the word pro was just
TOO slow. since write was a port from the macintosh, where the program actually,
keeps up with a fast typing speed, the reason for the slowness in the atari
version must lie in the non-optimized code in atari GDOS, and GEM itself, which
handles the plotting of fonts to the screen.


>|as it stands, ms write is usable for small jobs. for any large word processing
>|jobs, you just can't trust it.
> 
>  MS Write is used for Atari internal engineering documentation, and is
>being used to maintain and upgrade the developer documentation.  It is
>a very powerful word processor.

i don't disagree with you there Ken. you seem to be a pretty cool guy when
it comes to answering problems about the atari computer, so i don't want to get
on your bad side (the more friends from atari, the better for all of us!!!)
in fact, i wasn't trying to tick anyone off with my "review", but don't you
guys find it a little cumbersome trying to edit any document over five or six 
pages in length. scrolling back and forth is just way to slow. screen updates 
when you have many font styles on the screen just crawl. this of course is 
a programmer talking who is accustomed to the lightning speed of screen updates
in the text editor tempus.

> 
>  I admit, I must sound like I'm gushing, or "holding the company line,"

ya, it does. but blaming the installation procedures of GDOS as the reason of
why write is such a pain to use is not the direction you should be
heading. i have always wondered why there *seems* to be no attempt to rewrite
ALL of GEM in assembly. if atari has any chance to gain access to the 
business market here in north america, a *FAST* graphics operating system is
a definate necessity. the mac roms are written in assembly, and that operating
system really flies (same processor as the atari, yet drastically different 
apparent speeds!!!)

if you guys rewrite ALL font handling code in GEM and GDOS in assembly (or at
least use an optimizing compiler), things will suddenly look good for ms write
and atari in general.

well, keep up the good work Ken. it's nice to even be flamed from atari once in
a while. :-) :-) :-) 
it shows that there is activity down there in sunnyvale. :-)


(ps: i was able to see a demo of the ATW on the weekend. wow!!! nice machine.
if atari can get it out to the market real soon, atari may be able to make
a small fortune. good work atari!!!!

pps: software demoed: x-windows, c-compier (*very* intelligent linker!!! the
"hello world" program with full window handling was only about 2K long. better
than most C compilers on, say, the ibm pc. nice graphic demos. helios seems to
be a pretty robust operating system, but with 7 or 8 graphics demos running at
the same time, things began to bog down. but then again, so does our sun 3/60
when running a similar number of colour demos. i wish i had 6 grand to plunk
down on this machine!!!)

-- 
Ignac A. Kolenko (The Ig)          watmath!watcgl!electro!ignac      

"Those who can't, criticize" (author unknown)
"ain't it ironic that according to Rushton, Suzuki is right!"