Subject: REVIEW: Wordworth 6
From: [email-masked] (Iljitsch van Beijnum)
Date: 27 Jul 1997 23:30:48 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Wordworth 6

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	Wordworth is a WYSIWYG wordprocessor. This review is about
version 6. There have been many previous versions, I bought version 2
in 1993, but I haven't seen any of the intermediate versions.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Digita International
	Address:	Black Horse House
		Albion Street
		Exmouth
		Devon EX8 1JL
		Great Britain

	Telephone:	+44 1 395 270 273
	FAX:		+44 1 395 268 893

	E-mail:		[email-masked]
	Web:		http://www.digita.com/

LIST PRICE

	34.99 British pounds.

	I ordered the Wordworth 6 CD directly from Digita using my
Mastercard/Eurocard. I paid the above amount and 3 pounds shipping and
handling (I live in The Netherlands), even though their sales
department told me it would be 5 pounds. This was including 17.5% VAT.

DEMO VERSION

	There is a demo of version 2 (WordWorth2demo.lha) in biz/demo
on Aminet. The demo has some limitations: it won't save or print, and
it's ancient...  :-)

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		2 MB free RAM is required to run the program. More
		RAM, a hard drive and an 68020 or higher CPU are
		recommended. Truetype fonts don't work on 68000 and
		68010 CPUs.

	SOFTWARE

		AmigaDOS 2.0 or higher, I think.

COPY PROTECTION

	When the program is first started, it asks for the
registration number.

MACHINES USED FOR TESTING

Amiga 3000/25, 2 MB Chip RAM, 8 MB Fast RAM
Quantum 525 MB SCSI hard drive
AppleCD 300/NEC 210 CDROM drive
BSC ISDN-Master card, HyperCOM 4 card
Radius paper-white VGA monitor
AmigaDOS 2.0, DLG Pro 1.0 BBS system

Amiga 1200, 2 MB Chip RAM
Phase5 Blizzard 1260 with 16 MB Fast RAM
Interworks I-Card PCMCIA ethernet adapter
Quantum 525 MB IDE 2,5" hard drive
External high density floppy drive
Amiga M1438S monitor
AmigaDOS 3.0, AmiTCP 4.0 demo, Samba 1.9.16

Lexmark Optra R+ printer
PostScript and HP Laserjet/PCL 5 compatible
Connected to a PC running Windows 95, shared over the network

INSTALLATION

	The installation procedure uses the Commodore Installer. The
CD contains two versions of the program: a German and an English
one. I installed the English version by opening the appropriate drawer
and clicking the install icon. The installer asked me if I wanted to
install the simple font library that doesn't support the PostScript
and Truetype fonts. I shouldn't have said yes, because I missed out on
the "complex font library" that way. I got it right the third time...

	On the 1200 I didn't have any trouble, except that I had to
make an lha file of the CD and transfer it to my other computer, where
I unpacked it and used the install script. I don't know if it's
alright to install the program on two machines, but I promise not to
use it on both machines at the same time.  :-)

	On the 3000 the installer found some old libraries
(diskfont.library, post.library) that it graciously replaced.

	The online help mentions running from floppy, but I think you
need the distribution on disk for that. It's not possible to run the
program from CD.

INTRODUCTION

	Of course Wordworth lets you edit text like any other
wordprocessor or text editor. No need to get into that any further,
except to say that you can use keyboard commands for most functions,
which I feel is important for a wordprocessor to do: I don't want to
take my hands off the keyboard to grab for the mouse every few words.

	Wordworth uses the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
principle, so the screen is a more or less exact copy of what your
printout will be. The program offers a lot of ways to change the
appearance of the text. There are the obvious ones such as
indentation, justification, super- and subscript, bold, italics and
underlined, but also color, spacing, small caps, width and font (type
face). All major types of fonts are supported: Compugraphic,
PostScript and Truetype outline fonts as well as Amiga bitmap fonts.

USER INTERFACE

	Most aspects of the user interface are configureable. "Out of
the box" Wordworth starts with rulers at the top and to the left, a
toolbar to the left and another row of icons for various text
formatting options at the top of the window. On the bottom there is a
status line and a scrollbar, and on the right just a scrollbar. Style
sheets and drawing tools can be displayed in their own
window. Fortunately, everything except for the scrollbars can be
turned off. I didn't find the toolbar very useful at first, because I
didn't understand the icons. Then I discovered that it can be put at
the top of the window (in order to have more room side to side for
text) and the icons can be completely customized. This was also when I
noticed the "copy format" and "paste format" functions haven't
disappeared from Wordworth. But they're only available from the
toolbar. These functions are very important: when you mess up the
formatting of a paragraph it's nearly impossible to get things right
again, without copying and pasting the format of another paragraph.
There is no longer a "print preview" function, but the text on the
screen can be zoomed in or out in order to see something up close or
to see one or more complete pages at a time.

STYLE SHEETS

	I just love the style sheets! This is how it works: when
you're making a large document, such as a report, it's important that
everything is formatted in a consistent way: the headings, chapters
and so on all alike. With style sheets you can define characteristics
for different kinds of text, headings, notes and everything else. Then
all you have to do is tell the program what style a certain portion of
text is and it will be formatted the appropriate way. But that's not
where it ends: if you for instance change the font for a certain
style, everything that's in that style will be changed.

FILE FORMATS

	Of course Wordworth can read a number of text formats: Rich
Text Format, Wordperfect and Word for DOS (not for Windows!), Works
for Windows, Windows Write, Final Copy II and Final Writer, ASCII,
older Wordworth formats. And don't worry, it will read your 15 year
old Wordstar documents as well. Saving is limited to Wordworth,
Wordworth 3, Rich Text Format, Wordperfect 5.1 and ASCII. Don't expect
too much formatting to survive the different file formats. It's also
possible to read TurboCalc spreadsheets as tables.

IMAGES

	As expected from a state of the art wordprocessor, images can
be added to the text. A wide range of graphics formats are supported,
such as IFF, GIF, BMP, PCX, TIFF, IMG (bitmap), CGM and GEM (vector)
and encapsulated PostScript (EPS). IFF 24 bit color pictures are
converted to 256 colors. I don't know about other true color
formats. Surprisingly, it's possible to print EPS pictures to
non-PostScript printers. They look just as good too, only the
dithering is slightly different. Pictures can be made watermarks, so
you can type text over them. The text will appear "on top" of the
image that way. It's also possible to add a variety of other objects
to the text: lines, boxes, circles, polygons and freely drawn
lines. To Wordworth those, as well as pictures, text effects,
textboxes and tables, are all "objects" so they get treated more or
less the same. The text-effects are objects that contain a few words
of text that is transformed in some way: turned into a circle or
spiral, changing the color and so on.

PRINTING

	All types of fonts and graphics can be printed on any
graphical printer for which a Workbench driver exists. Alternatively,
you may use the printer's internal fonts. It's not possible to mix
printer fonts with other types. The reason for this limitation is that
Wordworth is unable to change from textmode to graphical mode in the
middle of a page. That's also why it's not possible to print images
when using printer fonts. Wordworth will also print directly to
PostScript printers, but only using PostScript fonts. (Be it internal
to the printer or on disk.) Be sure to install every printer you
intend to use using the Wordworth installation procedure, otherwise
screen representations of the printer fonts aren't available. On HP
Laserjet (or compatible) printers the Compugraphic fonts can be
downloaded for speedier printing of pages that contain only plain
text. Wordworth supports color printing, but due to lack of an
appropriate printer I was unable to test this. Color images and text
are dithered to different shades of grey when grey scale printing is
selected.

SPELLING AND THESAURUS

	I'm not very impressed by the spelling checker's
dictionary. It doesn't know words like Amiga, FAX, ethernet and
wordprocessor. The dictionary uses British spelling: "theatre",
"centre" and "colour" are ok, it doesn't know "theater", "center" or
"color". It's possible to expand the dictionary with new words,
though. There is also an autocorrect feature, but it uses a different
(much shorter) dictionary than the spelling checker. It's useful as
kind of a macro-expander, though. I found the thesaurus to be very
useful (advantageous, effective, fruitful, helpful, practical,
profitable, salutary, valuable, worthwhile). And yes, the hyphenation
is Wordworth's. (When I exported this text to ASCII al the hyphens got
lost... I put new ones in by hand but I'm sure I missed a few.)

MACROS

	Nearly every function that has a menu item can also be used in
ARexx scripts. There are also "wizards" that perform functions such as
giving tips, creating memos, faxes, invoices and play
hangman... Wizards are actually just ARexx scripts, I didn't see the
exact difference explained anywhere, but ARexx macros are in the Tools
menu and wizards are in the Help menu.

DOCUMENTATION

	The online help is great, it answered most of my
questions. Online help is available for every menu item by using the
right mouse button to highlight the item and then press the "help"
button. The online help is better than anything else I've ever
seen. However, the manual on the CD isn't very good. First of all, it
describes an older version. Second, it's plain, unformatted text,
which makes for hard reading. I would have expected a Wordworth
version! Of course that way the details of the installation procedure
would be hard to get at before installing the program, but it's not
like there isn't any room for two versions on the CD... But the worst
thing is that the manual just isn't complete. It's a far cry from the
excellent Wordworth book I received with version 2. But the book is
available separately for another five pounds so I guess that's my
fault for being cheap.

LIKES

	I like the output! You can use a wide variety of fonts in your
documents and print them on any printer, at the maximum resolution of
that printer. I also like the fact that I can do anything someone can
do in Word for Windows or Wordperfect on my Amiga, be it with more
effort.  It's great to have style sheets and foot- and endnotes at
your disposal.

DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

	Printing in "normal" mode is slow, even on my 50 MHz 68060 CPU
it takes more than a minute to print a 300 dpi text-only page. On my
3000 (25 MHz 68030) it only takes a few seconds more. The toolbar can
be incomprehensible at times, help bubbles would help a lot. The tabs
are very hard to handle. Automatic chapter/paragraph numbering would
be great. There is no support for different paper trays on
laserprinters, but I guess that's because the Workbench printerdrivers
don't support this either.

	It's a shame Digita didn't change the way in which printing is
handled. On non-PostScript printers you have to choose between
printing fast with no graphics or slow with graphics: it's not
possible to combine printer fonts or downloaded Compugraphic fonts
with graphics. On PostScript printers it's not possible to use
Compugraphic and Truetype fonts.

	On the Digita website it says "including 50 Compugraphic
fonts".  That sounds good but it isn't. Almost all of the fonts are
ugly and/or unusable. I have seen some of them before in
freeware/shareware font compilations. The Shannon Book font is the
only one I kept. Fortunately, I still have my old Wordworth 2
Compugraphic fonts, which are excellent. I don't understand why Digita
didn't include those with Wordworth 6. But I guess a lack of fonts can
be remedied by "borrowing" some Truetype fonts from a neighbourly
Windows user...

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	As a result of a job I had five years ago, I'm very familiar
with Wordperfect and Word for Windows on MSDOS/Windows machines. So
how does Wordworth 6 compare? Pretty well. Word for Windows is a lot
easier to use and complex things such as editing tables are much
easier to do. But in the end it's the result on paper that counts, and
in that department Wordworth can hold it's own.

BUGS

	At first I couldn't get EPS pictures to work on the screen and
the printer in Laserjet mode. This was on the 1200, on which I had a
beta version of the post.library and the PostScript datatype
installed. On the 3000 I had no trouble. Replacing version 23.1 of the
post.library with version 17.7 made all the difference, but now the
PostScript datatype doesn't work anymore. This immediately led to the
discovery of another bug. Wordworth allows the text to flow "around"
the pictures, following the edges of the picture itself rather than
the edges of the "box" the picture is in. But when printing in normal
mode (using the Workbench printerdrivers in graphical mode) the
picture box pre-empts the text, so there is sort of a white box around
the picture where the text is overwritten. The workaround is to make
the EPS pictures watermarks, then the problem disappears. A very
strange bug is one where I imported a file in Rich Text Format with a
file name consisting of numbers, a dot and a dash. I was subsequently
unable to close the window or quit Wordworth, but other than that the
program kept working fine.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	I emailed Digita to ask where I could order Wordworth 6. They
told me I could order it directly from them, so that's what I
did. After sending in the registration card you are entitled to phone
and written support for a month.

WARRANTY

	No warranty, apart from 30 days on the distribution media.

CONCLUSIONS

	Despite the length of the "dislikes" section, I like
Wordworth. I feel it offers excellent value for money. But it's not
perfect: Digita should take the time to fix the bugs and quirks and
improve the speed.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	I, Iljitsch van Beijnum, am the author of this review. Digital
distribution of the review in its entirety is unlimited.

	Email: [email-masked]

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