Subject: REVIEW: ProWrite 3.1.3
From: Chris Colohan <[email-masked]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

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[ ProWrite (version 3.1.3) is a text and graphics what you see is what you
get word processor with many strengths and, alas, many weaknesses. - JLT3]

Program Name:  ProWrite
Version: 3.1.3.  3.2 is available (according to AmigaWorld), and I will
post an addendum to this review as soon as I recieve it.
Application:  Word Processor
Price: About $170/Canadian funds
Minimum Requirements: 1MB RAM, Kickstart 1.2 or later, 2 disk drives or
a hard drive.  Printer highly recommended.
Test System:  Amiga 500, KS/WB 2.04, 105MB GVP Hard Drive, 3 MB RAM, 1MB
Agnus, Star NX-1000 Rainbow colour printer.

Program Overview:

ProWrite is a word processor with a large list of features.
Paraphrasing the box it came in, they are:

- type in multiple fonts, sizes, styles, and colours
- import any IFF or HAM picture
- wrap text around pictures
- 2 types of columns
- 100 000 word spell checker and thesaurus
- check spelling as you type
- ARexx support for macros
- undo virtually anything
- search and replace
- sort alphabetically ascending or descending
- document statistics
- keyboard equivalents for most commands
- mix NLQ text of any or multiple fonts and graphics
- colour printer support
- print sideways or across perforations on paper
- print merge
- scale documents
- PostScript support with separate program ProScript
- WYSIWYG display
- Change defaults of all program settings
- Headers and footers
- Title page
- Auto page numbering, date text support
- Up to 10 documents open at once, document size limited by RAM
- ASCII import and export
- Not copy protected
- WB 2.04 support with AppIcons, Tools menu items; Productivity and
  SuperHiRes screen modes supported.
- Speak function reads selected text with system voice

It is fairly fast, and is solid as a rock.  It opens on any screen type
that you specify, and can also open on the Workbench screen.  It is a
powerful program, great for typing up school reports and the like.

Problems:

New Horizons make one mistake with ProWrite, and that is calling it a
"Pro" program.  The instant that you give yourself that designation, you
put yourself in competition with the other Pro programs for this
platform and others.  In no way does ProWrite compete with programs like
WordPerfect 5.1, or MicroSoft Word.

ProWrite is a great home word processor.  It is not a great business
word processor.  Here are some notes as to what is missing or could be
improved:

- There is no view document function.  You have a WYSIWYG display, but
  you only see a small portion of the page at once, especially if you use
  print reduction to get a better quality printout.  So you can't get an
  overall view of the page.

- You can't automatically centre a page top to bottom.  This makes title
  pages a pain, as you can't get a page overview to see if it is centred
  either.

- Graphics are handled incredibly poorly.  If they are going to
  implement graphics, they might as well do it right.  Images are
  dithered as they are loaded, and if you scale an image down you get a
  reduction of resolution on the screen.  This is true of all programs,
  screen representations of graphics never look good (because making
  them look good on screen takes enormous amounts of processor time,
  slowing any program to a crawl).  Unfortunately, ProWrite is truly
  what you see is what you get.  Graphics are not rescaled to the
  printers maximum resolution or colours at print time, the screen
  image is dumped straight to the printer in full lo resolution 8
  colour glory.  Reducing a picture by anything other than an exact
  multiple of 2 results in banding as the dithering is not recalculated
  from the original.

- There are no features supporting footnotes, endnotes, tables of
  contents, multiple or chapter title pages, mixing NLQ and Amiga text.

- It doesn't use the 2.04 Amiga file requestor.

- Gadgets are rendered with a double line flicker producing border,
  instead of the nicer looking and nicer on the eyes 2.04 style
  gadgets.

- It doesn't allow you to hide documents and recall them from the view
  menu.

- When one document is printing, you can't do anything else with the
  program.  If you launch another copy of the program it opens up on
  the same screen, and you can work on something else.  This requires a
  lot of memory and I believe it uses public screens to do this, so you
  need WB2.04.

- The Amiga clipboard device is not supported, so you can't cut and
  paste data between applications or concurrently running copies of
  ProWrite.

- You can change screen modes on startup, but you can't change them
  from within the program.

- You are restricted to single, 1 1/2 or double spacing.

- There is no support for the WB2.04 scalable fonts, you must convert
  them to bitmaps first.

- A template is not provided for the function keys, so you must either
  memorize what they do, make your own, or not use them.

- They claim wrapping text around graphics is possible, but the only
  way I could find to do this is to adjust the margins around the
  graphic.

- There is no option to automatically add Canadian (or European)
  spellings of English words.  The word "colour" is in the dictionary,
  but not "colours".  Same with "centre" and "centred".  These examples
  are from when I tried to spell check this very document.

- When spell checking, you can't browse through the dictionary for
  spellings close by in the list.  And the "guess" spelling function
  makes you wait until an entire list of suggestions is compiled,
  rather than giving them to you as it finds them and letting you pick
  one as soon as it finds the one you want.  The Amiga is a
  multitasking machine, and the program should take full advantage of
  this.

- There is no timed backup feature.  ProWrite is as solid as a rock, so
  you don't have to worry about it corrupting your data, but other
  programs may crash it.  It is not resistant to power outages either.
  To it's credit, it does automatically save in low memory situations
  if it is unable to open a save requestor.

- An excellent manual.  The index could be improved with more
  references (ie, try finding information on changing screen modes
  using the index.  You won't find it under screen, mode, format, or
  resolution).

Overall Impression:

I was able to come up with a large list of things that could be
improved in ProWrite.  This is only because it is such a great program.
According to magazines I have read, it is the best graphical word
processor for the Amiga (with WordPerfect being the king of text)
today.  It is solid as a rock, and never crashed once during my tests.
The features it does have are well implemented.  It is a dream to use
compared to my previous word processor, Pen Pal.  I was forced to
finally give up on Pen Pal because it crashed once every 2 minutes
under WB 2.04, instead of once every hour.  As it is, it is great for
typing up school reports, letters, and the like (I am a student, and
these are my primary uses for it).  But it lacks the inherent
flexibility of a "professional" program, imposing artificial limits on
things like line spacing, and only allowing one title page (a title
page being a page without the headers or footers appearing).

There are also many features under 2.04 that I would like to see
supported, like the clipboard device and standardized file requestors.
The gadgets used make working in interlaced mode a virtual impossibility
without a flicker fixer, as they contain a horizontal line pattern
across the top, causing major flicker.  The embossed look of 2.04 would
look more professional, be consistent with the "new look", and help
reduce the flicker.

Overall Rating:

I like it!  Currently, you can't do any better than ProWrite when you
are shopping for an Amiga word processor.  Except for it's graphical
interface, it can't compete with programs on other platforms like
WordPerfect 5.1 for the IBM.  I would like to see some of these features
added, as they have an excellent foundation to build upon.

Chris Colohan -- [email-masked]
--
Canada Remote Systems.  Toronto, Ontario
NorthAmeriNet Host