🚀 go-pugleaf

I really like WriteNow, mainly for two little tricks:  it has command-keys that
  1. change the size of the selected text, one point at a time, and
  2. sub- or superscript the selected text  "    "   "  "   "
 There are also buttons that increase and decrease the line spacing one point
at a time.  Not that I have need for 37pt Times with 53pt leading or
anything exotic.  But you don't have to write many chemical formulas before
you get plenty disgusted with the raggedy line spacing that sub/superscripts
force.  Besides, sub/sups really should be at least a point smaller than the
regular text.  The last manuscript I wrote (in MacWrite), I had to Find for
"2", with a subscripted smaller 2 in the Clipboard ready to paste when I
hit a 2 that was supposed to be subscripted -- which of course was only a 
minority of the 2s that were there, so you didn't want to poke along; but
then again you sure didn't want to hit ^F too quick and watch one pass by,
'cause if you couldn't find it you'd have to start all over again.  Sort of
an arcade game with ^F and ^V for buttons.  After completing Level 1 you
go on to the 3s.  Then the second Wave: superscripts!

I'm also impressed with WriteNow's speller.  Not that I'm very experienced
with the competition, having perfect dixn without such aids, but the speed
of that thing and the insightfulness of its guesses are almost scary.  Sure
gives MacLightning the dunce cap.

The other major features don't mean as much to me.  The multicolumn
formatting and miscibility of graphics with text perform as advertised, but
no better, so this is still a long way from letting you do real page
layout.  The ability to change the header and footer as often as you like
within a document (as well as allowing different ones for odd vs even pages)
is of course wonderful.  Why do I feel like I shouldn't have to summon up
gratitude for a simple thing like that?  Why in 1987 can't a software
customer simply demand a certain minimum functionality?

Somebody here complained about the fact that MacWrite and MS Word and even
Text files have to be translated with a separate program before WriteNow can 
read them.  I was put off by that too, and even more by the fact that
WriteNow can't even Save As a text file without its Translator.  But I quit
complaining when I saw that the Translator is almost as large a file as
WriteNow itself.  Granted, 71K seems a bit large for a program that
just interconverts file formats, and mainly in one direction.  But 79K is
pretty lean and mean for a wordprocessor, or anything serious on the Mac.  You
can put WriteNow and its dictionary (50000 words in 100000 bytes -- how do they
do that?) and a reasonable set of fonts on one 400K disk.  And of course you
can move plain text in and out via the Clipboard, so I put MockWrite on the
system and so far haven't had any reason to run the Translator.

So what don't I like?  Bugs.  I haven't had any crashes, but I have seen
some pretty wild LaserWriter output.  I went around and around with one line
that had a subscript in a smaller font.  The next character jumped out to
the following tab stop, or the right margin if no tab stop, and printed on till
it ran out of acreage.  There was nothing obvious different between that
line and the other lines that worked fine, except that it was all 
italicized.  Changing all those things (style, size, subscripting) one at a
time didn't lead to any satisfying conclusions.  I'll try to trap it when I
get a little time, but the point is that WriteNow's WYSIWYG can promise more
than it delivers.  The other incidents also involved mixed styles or
mixed graphics and text.  Except, I can swear I was once able to create a
continuous horizontal rule by leaning on the underline key in Times 18, but
now all I can get is a string of dashes unless I use a smaller size; at
least this one shows the same story on the screen as on the Laser.

-- Dave Matthews
ARPA:   matthews@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
USENET: ...{cmcl2,shasta,uw-beaver,rochester}!cornell!tcgould!matthews
PAPER:  Dept. Plant Pathology, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853 USA
BELL:   (607)533-7820
DISCL:  My employer ignores my opinions altogether.