🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct30.145229.11569@mail.cornell.edu> John T. Chapman,
jtc1@cornell.edu writes:
>I'll give a more complete report when I get mine, but here's my 

Well, I got it on Friday, Oct. 30th (not bad...; also shipped FedEx 2nd 
day)

Interestingly, they shipped a flyer from Alki Software, makers of the new 
MasterWord plug-in command module. As reviewed in the latest MacUser 
(Dec. '92), MasterWord adds a number of features to Word, including Grep, 
a (more) customizable tool-bar, better help, etc. This suggests that 
Microsoft is (more or less) endorsing Alki's MasterWord as an 
enhancement. Hmmm....

Anyway, new things:

* Toolbar. Icon dock that can go across top or down left or right of 
screen. Can assign virtually any command (from Commands menu) and lots of 
color/grey icons to positions on toolbar. Unfortunately, aside from the 
defaults, you have to decide what icons go with which commands. Also, no 
apparent way of editing icons, but I may be wrong on that. If you use the 
mouse, this is a quick way of doing some things. On the other hand, all 
the functionality is there through the ability to assign keyboard 
equivalents to any command.

* Microsoft Graph. Fairly slick graphing program, similar to Equation 
Editor or Drawing module in the way it is accessed. Provides limited 
spreadsheet-style data entry (can link to a table of data in Word, 
though) and generates large variety of charts, including 3-D. Feel and 
functionality is very similar to Excel 3.0 and 4.0 charting, although 
they are much more powerful and have a couple additional chart types.

* Addressing. Easier dialog creation of envelopes; also allows you to 
store/recall addresses as if styles or glossary entries.

* Text annotation. Allows you to embed post-it notes in a document. These 
can have a number of different 'markers' to show that a note is attached. 
Very similar to footnoting, but notes are displayed in a floating dialog, 
rather than attached to the end of the page/section/document. Not sure 
how they are printed yet. Hmmm... Looks like you can set up Word to show 
them in separate paragraphs at the appropriate points, with a icon marker 
to designate it as an annotation. Also suggest a way (kludge) to only
print 
annotations.

* Bulleting/Nesting of paragraphs. Additional commands (also initially 
attached to Toolbar icons) that provide for quick bulleting and 
nesting/unnesting of paragraphs. Not very configurable, unfortunately.

* Tables. New icon on Ribbon (NOT toolbar) that displays a pop-up menu 
with a grid display of a table and a size display (Row X Col) at the 
bottom. Just click and drag to insert tables of virtually any size. Also 
can select columns, rows or cells and click on Table icon to have Word 
insert selection. (No easy way to delete them, though; you still have to 
go through menus, or set up key/toolbar for those commands).

* DropCaps. Basically a short-cut of the Frame command designed to 
automate the insertion of DropCaps into your document. Also has an option 
for in-the-margin 'dropcaps'.

* Odd/Even pages. Simple radio buttons in Print dialog to choose what 
pages you want printed. Useful when doing double-sided prints.

* QuickTime. The QuickTime module is included, enabling you to 
insert/play movies in your document.

* Grouping in the graphics editor. Apparently you can now group/ungroup 
objects in the drawing module. (You couldn't before?!? Yuck!) I don't 
know much about this as I _NEVER_ used the drawing module before and 
don't plan to. From what I saw, it's not worth much if you own any sort 
of basic draw/paint program (and I have DeskDraw/Paint, Canvas _and_ 
SuperPaint, so what's the point...)

* Find File adds folder support. Sort of. Well, it's kinda quirky, but at 
least you can select a SINGLE path to start your search. No multiple 
folder searches as far as I can tell, though. Also seems the AutoDoubler 
conflict is fixed (at least with AutoDoubler 2.0). (Found a compressed 
file when Readable Files was selected; did not need to switch to All 
Files).

* Bug fixes from 5.0a. Spelling and Grammar modules are updated to fix 
the bugs. Spelling is more responsive, showing a % checked in the status 
area (left part of horiz. scroll bar).

* 3-d look Ruler/Toolbar. (Optional!)

* New PowerBook features. Small (well, ok, 2.2M is hardly small, but it's 
not the 7M that the full install takes.) installation option, along with 
a battery monitor and supposedly a way to minimize disk accesses. Hope I 
can access the latter feature regardless...

Well that's about it. I'm sure there's something else, but this list is 
already too long. Is it worth it? Hard to say. Alki Software's MasterWord 
looks like a much better (if more expensive) toolbar and has 'neater' 
features (GREP and some macro capability among others). Charting is only 
useful if you don't have (or can't use (memory?)) a decent spreadsheet 
app. Still, it's cheap and does make a few things a bit 
quicker/easier/nicer.

Opinions from others that have received their copies?

- John 

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  John T. Chapman                                     jtc1@cornell.edu
  Office of Computing and Statistical Consulting
  Cornell University - College of Human Ecology
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