HMS Newsletter 3.4

December 1993

In this issue Marc Bizer reports on new products and software from
Apple, reviews WordPerfect 3.0 and Conflict Checker. Is it time
academic users of Microsoft Word to make the big jump to WordPerfect?
Marc helps us decide.

Happy Holidays. - Joe

News of upcoming products and software from Apple

(from the annals of MacWeek)

As many of you are probably aware, 1994 marks the tenth anniversary
of the Macintosh and also heralds completely new computers based on a
totally new microprocessor chip known as the PowerPC. While software will
have to be rewritten in order for these machines to run at their full
potential, Apple has promised that they will be compatible with
already-existing software which will run at least at Quadra speeds in a
so-called "compatibility mode." These new computers promise to run software
specifically designed for them at two or three times the speed of the
fastest Quadra. In the second half of March three PowerPC-based Macintoshes
will be available in already-familiar enclosures at three price levels:

o From $2,000 in a Quadra 610 (or Centris 610) enclosure with a 60 MHz
PowerPC 601 chip in 8/160 to 8/230/CD configurations. This computer will
have one PDS (processor direct slot).

o From $3,000 in a Quadra 650 (or Centris 650) enclosure with a 66 MHz
PowerPC 601 chip in 8/230 to 8/500/CD and AV options. This computer will
thus have 3 NuBus slots.

o From $4,000 in a Quadra 800 enclosure with an 80 MHz PowerPC 601 chip in
8/230 to 8/1,000/CD and AV options. In addition to 3 NuBus slots, this
computer will have 256 kilobytes of high-speed "Level 2" cache (secondary
fast memory which compensates for the fact that microprocessors usually
have to wait for information because they work much more quickly than
standard RAM) which will make it very fast indeed.

The PowerBook line is also due for significant changes. PowerBooks based on
the low-power PowerPC 603 chip will not be available until next Fall at the
earliest, but the current Duo 250 (active-matrix grayscale) and 270c
(active-matrix color) models will sport the 33 MHz 68LC68040 chip (the
68040 without the floating-point processor) next April. In addition, the
all-in-one PowerBooks as we currently know them will cease to exist at that
time; Apple will then introduce the "Blackbird" modular line, apparently
equipped with two modular bays which can accommodate an extra battery,
processor expansion cards (PDS-style) or PCMCIA cards. The trackball will
be replaced in these models by a "touchpad" in approximately the same
place; furthermore, they will have two small speakers for stereo sound
mounted on the display panel. Four Blackbird models have been announced:

o The 520 and 520c with a 25 MHz 68LC040 processor. Both will have
passive-matrix screens: 520 features 16 grays, while the 540 will offer
32,768 colors.

o The 540 and 540c with a 33 MHz 68LC040 processor. Both will have
active-matrix screens for the sharpest possible image without ghosting and
the widest viewing angle: 16 grays in the case of the 540, and 32,768
colors in the case of the 540c.

Finally, soon after these new computers become available, Apple plans to
release a new version of System 7, System 7.5, which will ship in both
standard and "Pro" versions for those familiar with the new System 7 Pro.
The Pro version will include, in addition to the PowerTalk messaging
facility, the long-awaited QuickDraw GX extension. According to MacWeek
(December 6), "QuickDraw GX makes it easier for developers to create
applications with PostScript-like abilities such as object rotation,
stretching and skewing. It also enhances the Mac's handling of fonts,
offers a dramatic improvement to the PrintMonitor and includes Apple's
ColorSync extension for device-independent color management. System 7.5 Pro
will also include Adobe Type Manager 3. 7 GX. Among the other features
included in both versions of System 7.5, there will be a new help facility
called "Apple Help," good old MacTCP (finally!), the PlainTalk speech
synthesis (not recognition) extension, and Macintosh Easy Open which
performs automatic document translation.

Software Reviews

WordPerfect 3.0

Joe Coohill wrote a superb review of high-end word processors
(Microsoft Word, Nisus, and WordPerfect 2.1) in volume 3, number 1 of the
HMS newsletter. In his conclusion, Joe declared that WordPerfect was the
academic's choice because it was a winner in more categories than the
others; specifically, it offered "superior header/footer creation and
manipulation," "the best footnote and endnote features," and macros.
Nevertheless, Joe explained that he was not changing to WordPerfect because
of Word's unique table feature, easy styles, and sectioning. I must confess
that I have remained with Word since version 4.0 precisely because its
table feature is unparalleled and essential to my work. How must this
assessment be revised for WordPerfect 3.0? WordPerfect 2.1's advantages of
course remain in version 3.0. WordPerfect 3.0 also has a wonderful tables
feature, removing one major obstacle to its adoption by me. However, it
still does not have sections, nor, in spite of an improved interface, does
it offer styles as easy to use as Word's. Such a cursory evaluation does
not do justice to this complete revision of WordPerfect, however.

Like Word, WordPerfect with its associated files places
considerable demands on hard disk space: 7-8 megabytes. However, this is
the latest release of WordPerfect, while the upcoming version 6 of
Microsoft Word (due in the Spring) is rumored to require at least twice
this figure. It requires a minimum of 1.2 megabytes of RAM, and the
installer increases the amount it will use depending upon the user's memory
configuration, up to 3 megabytes for those who have eight or more megabytes
of RAM.

In a manner similar to Microsoft Word 5.1, WordPerfect 3.0 offers a
button bar and ribbons (called "ruler bars") which control such functions
as layout, fonts, styles, tables, lists (indexing, tables-of-contents, and
cross-referencing), and merges. The pre-existing button bars are
extensively customizable, and new button bars can easily be created and
displayed (however, button icons are always associated with specific
functions, unlike in Word where icons can be redefined). There is
furthermore a configurable status bar which can indicate page/line,
document number, battery status (for PowerBooks), and much more; it also
displays an abbreviated help which unlike balloon help is instantly
displayed as you wave the mouse pointer over different parts of the
interface (there is also extensive regular and balloon help). To conserve
screen "real estate," the button, ruler, and status bars can be turned off;
only the thin "control bar" which controls the displays of the different
ruler bars must remain visible. WordPerfect gives the user extensive
control over a large array of preferences. Keys can be reassigned (although
menu items cannot be rearranged, added, or removed as in Word).

WordPerfect 3.0 has many features absent from Microsoft Word. I was
thrilled to see its cross-referencing abilities (so that you can refer to
pages, footnotes, etc. in your document and have the reference updated
after revisions are made), only to be disappointed to learn that that
cross-references have to be "generated" manually. In other words, if you
modify your text after establishing a cross-reference, you must remember to
update the reference- it will not happen automatically when you go to
print! To make matters worse, indices and tables-of-contents also fall
under the category of cross-references, and updating a cross-reference
requires that they be regenerated too. WordPerfect is much more
multilingual than Word: text and styles can be associated with different
languages, so that different spell-checkers are applied to portions of text
in different languages. The thesaurus is wonderful: it displays results in
three panes, so that as you move from one synonym to the other, all of the
results of the two previous searches are simultaneously visible.
Spell-checking and grammar-checking are much faster than in Word (and
WordPerfect's grammar checker integrates the spell-checking and thesaurus
functions seamlessly, unlike Word's). WordPerfect offers different column
layouts on the same page, better sorting, and nicely displays command-key
equivalents in dialog boxes when the command-key is held down.

Here are my criticisms. WordPerfect's interface in my opinion is
still not as easy to use as Word's. Word's style hierarchy which goes from
character to paragraph to section to document is beautifully simple and
logical; other word processors would do well to imitate it. Scrolling is
much more rapid than in previous versions of WordPerfect, even faster than
in Word; however it isn't as smooth, and pulling down the vertical scroll
box to move throughout a document does not automatically update the page
number display as in Word. More importantly, screen redraw when insertingwords and lines in the middle of paragraphs is much slower than in Word,
causing the display to flicker which fatigues my eyes (and I would suppose
that it would be particularly annoying on PowerBooks with passive-matrix
screens). I have found one area in which WordPerfect is defextensionely
inferior to Word: indexing. It is true that unlike Word, WordPerfect allows
you to generate an index from a list of terms (called a "concordance").
However, WordPerfect can only only handle two entry levels (not a great
disadvantage), yet it is significantly handicapped by the absence of Word's
enormously useful "hidden text" style. The real problem with computerized
indexing lies in making sure that variations of the same expression appear
under the same index heading. If you refer to James Joyce on page 3 and
Joyce on page 5, your word processor will have two entries, "Joyce" and
"James Joyce." The hidden text style sidesteps this limitation by allowing
you to insert "James Joyce" or preferably "Joyce, James" everywhere in the
text but not have "Joyce, James" displayed because you can hide whichever
portions of the text you choose. I recently indexed an entire book in Word;
it was an unavoidably tedious process, but the indexing was facilitated by
Word's glossary and most importantly by the hidden text style which allowed
me to store recurring expressions with hidden text and to insert them by
typing abbreviations I had associated with them. Not everyone indexes,
however.

Finally, conversion of Word documents is far from perfect. A
chapter of my book in Word 5.1 format caused WordPerfect to declare an
error and then to freeze. The enormously powerful macro function in
WordPerfect is hardly touched upon in the manual and left to the on-line
help; this is one feature which should be carefully explained in print.
There are numerous small bugs in the program (vertical scrollbars tend to
disappear, for example), but these will surely be fixed soon. I miss the
fact that Word retains the last three cursor positions and allows you to
return to previous places in a text by typing command-option-z.

By competing so competently with Word 5.1, WordPerfect 3.0 finally
offers relief to those who seek alternatives to Microsoft's products.
WordPerfect 3.0 already offers the features which have been on my Microsoft
wishlist since Word 4: multilingual spell-checking, cross-referencing, and
macros. For people already using Word 5.1, WordPerfect 3.0 does not seem to
warrant a change. Word 6 is rumored to offer multiple undos (up to 100), a
feature I would love, among other improvements. If it competes with
WordPerfect, Microsoft could be ahead this Spring in the race for the
premier Macintosh word processor.

Conflict Catcher II

Extensions managers are useful for people who have installed on
their Mac several system enhancements known as extensions and control
panels; Now Utilities' NowMenus and SuperBoomerang are good examples to
these, and the Now Utilities package includes its own competent extension
manager, Now Startup. Other popular extension managers include Apple's own
Extension Manager 2.0.1 (free; available by FTP from many sites) and
Symbionts 2.3 (shareware; $20). A good extension manager will not only
allow you to change the order in which extensions and control panels load
in order to avoid conflicts, but also to build "sets" which can be invoked
upon startup by pressing a single key (Apple's Extension Manager can't do
this). For example, I don't want the fax control panel for the Global
Village modem to be installed every time I run my computer because it uses
a significant amount of memory, so I have created a "fax" set which loads
it with my other extensions upon startup if I hold down the "f" key.
Conflict Catcher II is an "intelligent" extensions manager in that it not
only allows you to reorder your extensions and control panels, but in the
event of a crash during startup it can help guide you through the
elimination process required to isolate the extension or control panel that
is responsible. It does this extremely well through a series of questions
which it asks upon restart. Although users can do this by themselves,
Conflict Catcher II automates the process and provides nearly fail-safe
resolution of conflict problems.

jmfarmer@students.wisc.edu

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Last Update: 9 April 95