Subject: REVIEW: Final Writer, Release 2
From: [email-masked] (Per Espen Hagen)
Date: 9 Jun 1994 19:38:53 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Final Writer, Release 2 (UK version)

	[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  This review is accompanied by two pictures in
	GIF format.  They will be uuencoded and posted in c.s.a.reviews
	immediately after this review.  They may also be found on the
	c.s.a.reviews ftp site, math.uh.edu, in the directory

		/pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews/software/text/hagen

	The filenames are FWFonts.gif and FWScreen.gif.  Since these are GIF
	format graphics files, and you will need a program such as PPShow,
	FastGif, ViewTek, or a GIF Datatype in order to view it on an
	Amiga.  X window users can view it with "xv".  - Dan]

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") word processor with good
graphics, Postscript, and ARexx support.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		SoftWood, Inc.
	Address:	PO Box 50178
			Phoenix, Arizona 85076
			USA

	Telephone:	(602) 431-9151

LIST PRICE

	I paid NOK 1500 (approximately GBP 140) for Release 1 six months
ago, and GBP 7.95 for the upgrade to Release 2.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		2 MB RAM required.  More is needed for some operations; 4-6
		MB should be sufficient for most users.

		Hard drive required.  A full installation requires about 10
		MB of hard disk space, and a minimal installation 3 MB.

		68020 CPU or better recommended.

	SOFTWARE

		AmigaOS 2.0 or higher required.

COPY PROTECTION

	None.  Hard drive installable (obviously).

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 1200 with Blizzard 1230-II, 40 MHz 68030/68882.
	12 MB Fast RAM, 2 MB Chip RAM.
	Toshiba 250 MB 2.5" IDE hard drive.
	Commodore 1940 and IDEK MF-5017 multisync monitors.

	AmigaOS 3.0 (Kickstart 39.106, Workbench 39.29, SetPatch 40.14).
	MultiUserFileSystem 1.7 on all partitions.
	Running commodities: Exchange, ToolManager 2.1, MagicMenu 1.29,
		CycleToMenu 2.0, The Promotor 1.14, SwazInfo 1.4.55,
		TitleClock 3, Yak 1.58.

	AIBB performance rating vs Amiga 4000-040: 1.05 (integer), 0.67
	(graphics), 0.47 (floating point).

INSTALLATION

	Final Writer comes on seven floppies filled with compressed archives.
The upgrade to Release 2 comes on one disk:  a replacement for the original
Disk 1.  Installation is performed very comfortably with the standard
Commodore Installer program.  When upgrading from Release 1, only the
updated files are installed.

	The upgrade installation did not work for me -- none of the files
were copied!  This might be due to my using MultiUserFileSystem, but I can't
see why.  I tried it twice, with the same result both times.  Instead of
fiddling more with Installer, I performed the upgrade manually (unarchiving
the new files from the Release 2 upgrade disk).

INTRODUCTION

	Until about a year ago, I had not done any real word processing on
the Amiga, and I didn't want to either.  I was spoiled from using high-end
DTP on Unix boxes at work:  Interleaf, a publishing system which makes
FrameMaker look like a toy, requires a HP 9000/735 to run reasonably
smoothly, and costs thousands of dollars per license.  Every word processor
I had seen on the Amiga was so primitive it seemed next to useless.  The
best-looking one was Final Copy II, and the most capable was WordPerfect.
The best was probably Wordworth 2, but it was very slow (I had only a
68020 CPU at 14 MHz then).

	Fortunately, this has changed.  Final Writer is here, and it's fast,
modern, powerful, and easy to use.  It's not in any way The Ultimate Word
Processor, but it's definitely a good product.  There.  Now I'm done with the
conclusion, so let's get on with the review. :-)

USER INTERFACE

	SoftWood have understood one of the most fundamental rules in user
interface design:  different people want to do things in different ways.  As
a result, almost every function in FW can be performed in at least two ways,
and often three or four.  In addition, the user interface is very
configurable.  You can set up custom button palettes, add menu items and
function key bindings, and specify defaults for almost all aspects of the
program.

	Final Writer can open screens in just about any mode and depth in the
Amiga Screen Mode database, including those of some 3rd-party, RTG graphics
boards.  It can also run on the Workbench screen.  Unfortunately, you cannot
change the screen mode once the program is running.  Because the mode (or
rather, the depth) that I want to use varies, I have configured Final Writer
so that it asks me at startup.  Final Writer will work on a normal PAL screen
(640x256), but it won't look too good that way.  Some form of
high-resolution display is almost a necessity for this type of program.
640x480 resolution is OK; I use 800x600.

	The user interface is not totally Amiga User Interface Style Guide
(AUISG) compliant.  SoftWood use their own gadgets and requesters, instead of
the standard GadTools and ASL/Intuition ones.  SoftWood's are similar but a
little more "flashy" -- actually, they look a lot like those of Magic User
Interface (MUI) with XEN presets.  I would have preferred the standard ones,
but it's no big deal really.  They also use an irritating, AvantGarde-type
font in requesters and menus.  This problem can be remedied by copying the
font of your liking to "FWFonts/SWScrFont/13".  The replacement font doesn't
even have to be size 13!  (This fix is just a kludge and not documented in
the manual.)

	I have included a screen shot of Final Writer in 64-colour mode, with
my replacement font (XHelvetica/11), showing some of the windows, palettes
etc of Final Writer.  (Actually, the picture doesn't do FW full justice,
because the colourmap is grabbed only in 12-bit color).

	[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  See the picture "FWScreen.gif", as described at
	the top of the review.  - Dan]

	You can have many documents open at the same time.  Many of the
special windows, like the Speller and Thesaurus windows, are "non-modal";
that is, you can leave them open and continue writing/editing the document.
Some other special windows (as well as all requesters) ARE modal, though,
meaning that you can't continue editing until you respond to them.

WORD PROCESSING FEATURES

	Before Final Writer, most word processors on the Amiga were OK for
simple tasks like writing letters, but they lacked a lot of the features
needed for large projects.  In this area, Final Writer is by far the best
word processor for the Amiga.  A very important feature is Final Writer's
PARAGRAPH STYLES.  You can define styles for headings, sub-headings, normal
text, and so on.  A style can contain information about font name,
attributes, and size, plus tabs, alignment, spacing and more.  The style to
use in the current paragraph can be selected in one of four ways:  menu,
function key, popup-menu gadget, or button.  The style of each paragraph is
remembered, so that if you later change the definition of a particular
style, all paragraphs with that style will be automagically updated.  This
is a basic and important feature in any good word processor -- but Final
Writer is the ONLY word processor for the Amiga that supports it, as far as
I know.  [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  Although it is not strictly a word processor,
TeX supports styles through the use of macros. - Dan]  Final Writer Release 1
had a bug which made it difficult to use more than seven styles, but this
appears to have been fixed with Release 2.  Another problem with styles is
that any attributes used in parts of a paragraph (e.g., italics) will be
removed if the paragraph styles are changed.  This has reportedly been fixed
in Release 2.1 (which I haven't received yet).

	Final Writer can handle "sectioned" documents.  Each section can be
like a document on its own, with its own page setup and paragraph styles.
In addition to one or more "Main" sections, a document can contain several
pre-defined, special sections -- Outline, Table of Contents, Table of
Illustrations, Bibliography, Endnotes, and Index -- that can be generated
automatically at any time.

	Like any other good WP, Final Writer also supports a spelling
checker, a thesaurus, and document statistics (word count, average word
length, etc).  The spelling checker in my UK version uses British English --
I don't know what the US version is like -- and works very well, and the user
can add new words to the spelling dictionary.

	There are lots of other features I won't go into here, like master
pages, mail merge, and even a very simple calculation function.  The standard
Amiga clipboard is supported -- you can select and copy text from a Shell
window and paste it into Final Writer, for example.

FONTS AND GRAPHICS

	Final Writer can use three types of fonts:  Agfa Compugraphic (the
Workbench standard format, as in CGTimes), Type 1 (PostScript), and
SoftWood's own NimbusQ format.  It's a bit annoying with all these font
formats, but each has its own advantages.  Compugraphic is the standard
format and "should" be supported by any Amiga program.  Type 1 fonts are
very common on PCs and Macs, so there are vast numbers of them available,
both commercially and in the public domain.  The NimbusQ format isn't used
by any Amiga word processor except those from SoftWood... but NimbusQ fonts
are VERY fast.

	Final Writer comes with over 120 fonts, all in the NimbusQ format.
Most fonts come in four separate versions -- Plain, Bold, Italic, and
BoldItalic -- so you can divide this number by four to get the "real" number
of fonts.  Nevertheless, the selection is very good and sufficient for most
users.  I've included a picture of the various fonts supplied with Final
Writer (in Plain mode only).

	[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  See the picture "FWFonts.gif", as described at
	the top of the review.  - Dan]

	The font requester does not have a preview box.  All the fonts are
shown in the manual, but it is a pain to look in the manual each time I want
to try a new font.  (This is why I made the font picture mentioned above.
When I want to view the fonts, I push a button in the Final Writer Tool
palette, which runs an ARexx script, which in turn uses PPShow to display
the font picture.)

	As for graphics, Final Writer can import bitmapped and structured
graphics (in IFF ILBM and EPS formats, respectively).  These loaders are
quite versatile.  All kinds of IFFs are handled, including HAM8 and 24-bit,
and the EPS loader can import files saved from programs like ProVector,
Multiplot, and GnuPlot.  100 EPS clip-art objects (some brilliant, some
mediocre) are also supplied with Final Writer.  Imported graphics can be
scaled, with or without aspect ratio preservation, but NOT rotated.  A
somewhat annoying feature is that all IFFs are shown as if they were NTSC
format (approximately 5:6 pixel aspect ratio).  Why can't SoftWood use the
aspect ratio information stored in the IFF, like ImageFX and other programs
do?

	There are also some basic but quite useful drawing tools -- lines,
arrows, boxes, rounded-corner boxes, ellipses, and text blocks.  These can be
scaled, moved, and rotated.  Graphic objects can be grouped and ungrouped,
moved to the front or back, and text can be made to flow around or above each
graphic.  No you can't easily write text in a spiral like with Wordworth 3,
but this can probably be done through an ARexx script...

AREXX PORT

	One of the best things about Final Writer is the ARexx port.  It has
approximately 200 commands.  This is very good for a word processor.  Having
an ARexx port means you can create scripts to emulate many of the "unique
features" found in other word processors, like Wordworth 3's "Text effects"
mentioned previously.

PRINTING

	The program can print to any Preferences printer, or to PostScript
via SoftWood's own driver.  I normally use Postscript.  I don't have a
decent printer myself, so I print to a Postscript file, put it on a floppy,
and carry it to the nearest Postscript printer.

	I tried printing the "Cindy" document shown in the first picture
accompanying this review (FWScreen.gif).  First with colour PostScript to
file:  11 seconds.  Then I printed to a Preferences printer (HP DeskJet,
redirected to a file by the CMD tool).  This took 2 minutes in greyscale,
2:30 in colour.  Not exactly zero time, but not too bad either considering
the complexity of the document, and the output quality is excellent.  (In
case you haven't seen the picture:  it includes a bitmapped, 256-colour
picture, a colour EPS picture, and five or six different fonts.)

	The PostScript driver can download fonts to the printer.  It works in
colour or grayscale, and you can set custom halftoning.  The driver is OK,
but it has its flaws.  For instance, colour images are apparently printed
only in 12-bit color (instead of 24-bit) and grayscale images in only 16
shades of gray.

SPEED

	Final Writer is very fast at most operations:  IFF and EPS import and
scaling, font loading, text input, document reformatting, Postscript
printing, and spelling.  Text input handling is critical for a word
processor.  Final Writer handles this "asynchronously" -- all the time
that's necessary is used to keep up with user input.  If you add text at the
beginning of a long document, reformatting of the rest of the document is
given a lower priority than displaying user input on the screen.  This means
Final Writer will at least be usable even on slow systems.  There are few
things more annoying than a word processor which can't keep up with user
input.

	Document scrolling speed depends entirely on screen depth and window
size (pretty obvious?).  Scrolling a 4 or 8 colour screen is very fast (at
least on my system), and 16-64 colours will still give reasonable speed, but
128 and especially 256 colours really are useful only for viewing your
results before printing.  (This is the reason why I would like to be able to
change screen depth while FW is running.)

DOCUMENTATION

	Final Writer comes with a very well laid out, 300-page, paperback
manual.  I believe the entire manual was written using Final Writer.  The
manual contains both a tutorial and a more "reference"-like section.  The
ARexx commands are described in detail.  The appendices include printouts of
all the fonts and clip-art items included with the package.

	Release 2, being only a minor upgrade, comes with a four-page
supplement to the manual.  The pages are small, use a large font, and even
include some pictures, but the new functions are covered adequately.

	There is no on-line help.  Not that I miss it, but I'm sure I would
use it if it were there....

LIKES

	I like the speed, the graphics support, the high quality output, and
the word/text processing features.  I like the ARexx port.  And the manual
is good, too.  Also, the price is very reasonable for a program this
powerful.  Upgrades are cheap.  And I like... aw heck, it's much easier to
list the few things I DON'T like. :-)

DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

	The things I "dislike" the most about Final Writer are the things
which aren't there... at least not yet.  These include:  tables, equations,
auto-number streams, floating graphics, footnotes, dotted tabs, RTF import....

	Also, I don't really like the non-standard user interface (custom
gadgets and requesters), even though it doesn't at all look ugly.  And I
dislike that graphics output is limited to 12-bit colour/4-bit grayscale.

	Being Norwegian, I would like to see multiple-language support in
Final Writer.  I couldn't care less about localization (I use English Locale
settings anyway), but I would like a Norwegian spelling checker and
Norwegian hyphenation.  There is actually a Norwegian version of FW Release 2
underway, but I think multiple-language support should be an integral part of
Final Writer.  With such a system, other languages could be supported simply
by adding new "language modules".

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	I guess Wordworth 3 is the only Amiga product that can reasonably be
called similar.  I have tried only the demo version myself.  The two programs
are very similar on the surface, but my opinion is that Final Writer has much
more "under the hood" than does Wordworth.  FW's text formatting abilities
(especially the Paragraph Styles) are hugely superior to those of Wordsworth.
Wordworth has a few advantages over Final Writer, but almost all of them are
in quite unimportant areas:  Text Effects, PCX graphics import, etc.
Wordworth is slower, it doesn't support Postscript printing, and it doesn't
have an ARexx port.  It's interesting to see that virtually all the magazines
that present Wordworth as comparable to or even better than Final Writer,
are British.  Outside Britain, Final Writer wins the comparison tests hands
down.  Does this have anything to do with the fact that Wordworth is a
British program...?

	PC owning friends of mine call Final Writer "Word for Workbench";
they say the user interfaces of the two are very similar, especially with
FWR2.  I haven't used Word much, so I don't know how to compare the two.

BUGS

	None worth mentioning.  (I can't think of ANY right now, but I'm sure
there are some).

SUPPORT

	SoftWood have listed phone and fax numbers in England for technical
support (for the UK version).  At least one of the programmers (Pat
Brouillette) is on the Net and answers questions on the USENET newsgroup
comp.sys.amiga.applications.

WARRANTY

	Only the usual 90-day diskette limited warranty.

CONCLUSIONS

	Final Writer is a professional word processor, and it is best at home
on a "professional" computer.  It requires AmigaDOS 2.0, ten megabytes of
hard drive space, a reasonably fast CPU, a few megabytes of RAM, and in
reality, a high-resolution display too.  Yes, it does eat quite a bit of
hard drive space, but most of it is for data (fonts, clip art, dictionary,
etc.), and this would be the same for any word processor.  If all you have is
an unexpanded A500/600/2000, Final Writer is not the program for you.  If, on
the other hand, you DO fulfill the above requirements, Final Writer is a
program that will use your system to its full potential.

	Final Writer is a fast, modern, powerful, and easy-to-use word
processor with more than a slight touch of desktop publishing.  It's not in
any way The Ultimate Word Processor, but it's definitely a good product.
(Deja vu?)  I can recommend it to anyone with a half-decent Amiga setup.

	On a scale from one to ten, I would give Final Writer an 8.  It
stands well above its competitors on the Amiga, but there's still plenty of
room for improvements:  tables, equations, footnotes, floating graphics...

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	Copyright 1994 Per Espen Hagen.  All rights reserved.  The author
can be reached by Internet e-mail as [email-masked].

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