Wordprocessors are generally regarded as being fairly humble beasties. Useful, but not exactly something to get excited about. This may be true for most of them, but not TechWriter.
To a large extent, the features a wordprocessor will offer are fairly predictable. It will allow you to type and format text, to alter the font size, colour, etc. It will provide cut and paste, drag and drop, and all the usual text editing features. It will also allow the user to add graphics and adjust the appearance of the page. So if you haven’t ever tried using TechWriter or EasiWriter, the first thing you will want to know is, “What does it do that I might not expect of a wordprocessor?”. If you already use a version of TechWriter or EasiWriter, the question is more likely to be, “Is it worth my while upgrading to newer versions?”
Icon Technology provide a family of applications with differing facilities. This means you can choose the version that suits your needs, and upgrade later for the difference in cost if you wish. In this review I will refer to TechWriter, but most of the things I write will also apply to EasiWriter. When describing the features of the newer ‘Pro+’ versions I’ll refer to them both as Pro+. TechWriter and EasiWriter actually offer a large range of facilities. Hence it is impossible to cover them all in a review. I will therefore be selective and just try to mention enough of the right things to give a clear picture.
OK, first things first. What features of TechWriter are unusual? Why is it an application that many people find impressive? The roots of the answers grow from the manner in which it works. TechWriter isn’t a conventional ‘frame based’ application. Instead, you define the structure of a document in terms of paragraphs, sections, chapters, lists, etc. Each of these also has a style – a set of properties which you can set, some of which can be ‘inherited’ by other structures which sit inside them. This gives documents a logical consistency and means that the final form flows from the content. It also means reformatting a document to obtain a changed appearance is easy.
The structural approach may seem complex, but in practice it isn’t. Everything is handled for you automatically – for example: lists of items can auto-number themselves as you type them. Hence the details of ‘structures and styles’ can be ignored completely if you wish. For authors, rather than graphic designers, the approach is ideal. It means you can simply get on with writing, drawing diagrams, etc, and the appearance of the result adjusts to suit what you do. This makes creative work almost effortless. For authors, TechWriter is a dream to use.
Usually, the structural relationships will follow the same patterns – paragraphs in sections, sections in chapters, and so on. The various items can then be used and behave as you would expect given their logical relationships. However, at times it is possible to obtain some special effects by ‘nesting’ structures in unusual ways. For example, it is possible to give text a coloured background, or put it in a box by nesting structures.
In each case the effect is obtained by placing the highlighted text inside an in-line equation structure. Although the ‘expected’ use of an equation structure is to allow the used to add a mathematical equation, this shows that, using lateral thinking, it can be used for something quite different. The examples shown are trivial, but serve to indicate the flexibility and control that nesting structures can provide. It also indicates that it may be worthwhile considering TechWriter rather than EasiWriter even if you don’t usually have to type equations because the extra facilities can still be useful !
Amongst the biggest advantages of TechWriter are its extraordinary ability to import and export a large range of file formats. It can import and export Word (6, 7, and 8) documents, and import RTF. When exporting, all graphics (and equations) are automatically converted into BMPs (Windows bitmaps) so the result is fully readable using a suitable version of MS Word. DrawFiles are also automatically converted. If you have ImageFS2 running, it will be used automatically when importing a Word document to convert any bitmap images it understands into sprites, and turn WMF (vector graphic) files into DrawFiles. (TechWriter and EasiWriter can import BMP images themselves, but ImageFS2 is useful to cope with any other types of images you may find in a Word file.) In addition to graphics, features like tables, lists, etc, and styles, etc, are also converted when importing and exporting Word documents.
For anyone who wants to use their RISCOS machine, but has to exchange Word files with our MS cursed colleagues the Word import/export abilities alone makes TechWriter and EasiWriter “worth the weight of the Icon Technology team” – Mike Glover and Bob Pollard – in gold.
DDF files (a sort of !Impression version of rich text) can also be imported. This makes it possible to transfer information from old Impression documents into TechWriter and retain most of the settings regarding fonts, styles, effects, etc.
The other major file import and export facilities are for html (the language of webpages). These aren’t only useful for allowing you to import, read, edit, and print webpages. They have allowed the TechWriter family to move onto another plane of existence, beyond the printed page. TechWriter is now a highly capable webpage creation tool. You can write a document and include diagrams, tables, etc, just as you would for printed output. Then, ‘save as html’ and the document is exported as a webpage (or multiple pages) complete with all the diagrams and equations being automatically converted into browser-readable images.
Webpage creation is one area where the structural approach of the TechWriter family really shows its strength. The TechWriter family export ‘clean and simple’ html than tends to make for really compact webpages that look good on any browser. Items like tables are automatically turned into html tables, images appear aligned on the webpage in a way consistent with what you see when using TechWriter, but it doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to over-control the output. The user is also given a way to automatically break up a large document into a set of linked webpages when it is exported. This avoids the problem that sometimes appears on the web of a ‘page’ that – in terms of content – is similar in size to an entire book!
It is also possible to add ‘links’ between items on TechWriter document pages that function in a similar way to those you encounter on a webpage. Links are preserved when you import or export webpages. As a result, TechWriter is now a very capable hypertext system. For reference documentation to be read on-screen this is useful even if you have no intention of exporting the results as webpages. It is now possible to click on a link on a TechWriter page and be taken to a new page, or even a somewhere in a new document!
Although Word documents and webpages are the headline items when it comes to import and export, there are many other useful items on this particular list. My personal favourite is one that people rarely seem to notice – ‘save as draw’. If you select this, you can then use the mouse to drag a rectangle over the page. Its use is very similar to the way !Paint can be employed to grab a sprite by drawing a rectangle on the screen. The difference is that it exports a drawfile with all the items in the chosen rectangle laid out as they appeared on the page! This is an excellent way to export laid out text, equations, tables, or whatever you like into any other application that can accept drawfiles.
There are lots of nice features like this which make working easier. For example, drop a CSV file on the page and TechWriter will automatically create a table and place the data in the appropriate cells. Tables in html format are similarly imported. You can export documents in the form of a TeX file, or as PostScript. This is very useful when submitting professional documents to various journals or to printers who have never heard of ‘Acorn’.
A list of features can’t really explain just how easy TechWriter can make creating documents. I recall an orthodox Jewish friend once asking “What does bacon taste like?”. How do you answer this?... Apart from simply saying, “Great!” Well, someone used to using the TechWriter family can encounter a similar problem trying to convey the effect of using it. It is like the feeling we have about why RISCOS is ‘better’ to use than something like Windows. Hard to explain why, but experience shows that it is! After using TechWriter for a short while I realised I had fallen into the habit of using it as a sort of ‘aid to thinking’ when trying to work out a mathematical or scientific argument. It was so easy to use it had replaced scribbling on scraps of paper.
The TechWriter family offer some valuable multi-lingual facilities. As standard, the application comes with an appropriate spellcheck dictionary. This is the ‘UK’ one by default. A number of other dictionaries are available, ranging from ones you’d expect like French and German, to others like Swedish. When you have to write multilingual documents, the structural nature of TechWriter comes to your aid. If you wish, individual sections, paragraphs, etc can have a ‘country’ assigned to them. They will then be spellchecked against the appropriate dictionary. So you can ensure that a multi-lingual document is checked as it should be. In addition to this, you can nominate a font as being ‘right-to-left’. This means that you can then type in and edit languages like Hebrew – either as selections or throughout the document – and it will be formatted and displayed in ‘right-to-left’ order. Taken together, these features make the TechWriter family excellent for multi-lingual use.
Although it doesn’t appear on any of the menus, nor on the button bar, the TechWriter family of software also has another great strength in the helpfulness and dedication of the Icon Technology team. They have built up a well-deserved reputation for answering questions, dealing promptly with any minor bugs in new versions, and adding new features that users have requested. The printed manuals for TechWriter and EasiWriter are also unusually well written. In general, manuals for computer software tend to be obscure and hard to follow. However, the ones provided by Icon Technology are well presented and contain clear tutorials to get you started.
Icon Technology’s excellent reputation for support and customer care has recently been enhanced by their active involvement in an email ‘mailing list’ for users. The TechWriter family of applications has developed over the years in a most impressive manner and throughout that time they have shown that they listen very carefully to what their users are saying.
The new ‘Pro+’ versions have some outstanding features which extend them yet further. The two most significant features are perhaps the ability to include animations, and ‘plugins’ – although the enhanced ability to adjust the placement of images on the page has also prompted many long-term users to upgrade.
The ability to include and display animated graphics is obviously primarily useful for onscreen documentation, either as TechWriter documents or on webpages. And until someone comes up with ‘animation capable paper’ this will remain the case! However, the facility turns out to have a number of side-benefits. Animations can be accepted in a variety of forms including, animated GIFs, Iota Complete Animator files, and EUCLID Ace files. Pro+ can also accept, and animate, spritefiles that contain a series of sprites. As a result it isn’t actually necessary to have any additional software to make animations for a Pro+ document, or webpages. !Paint will do at a pinch!
In addition, Pro+ can now be used to convert some animation types by using the html export/import as a mechanism for provoking file conversion. For example. try dropping an Iota Complete Animator file onto a Pro+ page and you will see it displayed. Export the page as html and this animation will be converted into an animated GIF so that the animation can be seen using a normal browser. Now reimport the html – or just the GIF – back into Pro+ and it will be converted back into a spritefile containing a series of sprites as the animation ‘frames’. This can be animated on the Pro+ page, or saved as a normal spritefile. Hence Pro+ can essentially be used to create, display, and convert animations. Another benefit of this extra facility is that the need to be able to accept and display animated GIFs means that static GIFs can now be dropped onto a Pro+ page and will be converted into a Sprite for display. Hence GIFs join Sprites, DrawFiles, JPEGs, and PNGs as images that TechWriter can display.
Acorn (as was) developed a ‘plugin’ system to allow items embedded on a webpage to call other applications or pieces of code. The initial use for this was to provide support for things like Java applets on webpages. Pro+ has adopted this protocol. As a result, it is now possible to include Java applets that run on Pro+ pages. This has a number of quite dramatic consequences. The most obvious – and simplest – being that it is now possible to use Pro+ to work on webpages that include Java applets. However, it goes much further than this...
Despite what appears on the web, Java is not only meant for adding ‘eye candy’ to webpages. It is a serious, powerful programming language and environment. The plugin capability therefore permits the user to employ the Java language to include some quite significant and useful items in TechWriter documents.
The easiest example I can give here is a demonstration Java applet I wrote myself, shown in the accompanying figure. The applet reads a series of numbers from a text file, does a least squares fit to a straight line, and then displays the result on the TechWriter page. To change the displayed graph, just edit the data, save the new version of the file, and click on the ‘replot’ button of the applet. This is just a simple example. It isn’t meant as a dramatic advance in numerical data analysis. However, it does show that it is now possible to manipulate data and graphically display the results automatically on a TechWriter page. Although this example uses Java, any system could be employed that follows the Acorn-defined plugin specifications.
Although early days as yet, the implications of this are quite dramatic. Imagine being able to include ‘Mathematica-like’ active analysis and graphical displays on document pages. Or perhaps a mini spreadsheet, or... The point here is that the applications of this facility are open ended. By adding this capability Icon Technology are throwing open TechWriter and allowing third parties to use it as a host for almost any plugin extras they wish!
Amongst the new features of the Pro+ versions is a considerable increase in the number of available keyboard shortcuts. This is useful as most people who write a great deal tend to find it is much quicker to access facilities via the keyboard, whilst typing, rather than have to stop typing and use the mouse to access the menus or the button bar along the top of the document display window.
Pro+ has over one hundred new potential keyboard shortcuts. In earlier versions, the shortcuts were provided as a way to quickly access the features of the menus and button bar. Now they can also be used to obtain characters that aren’t normally available with a single keypress. To demonstrate this the current version (6.05 as I write this) has some modified keypad actions. For example, pressing the ‘/’ key of the keypad will type a ÷ division sign, and pressing the ‘.’ key of the keypad will type a · middle-dot (decimal point). These actions can all be controlled by the user, so it is now possible to adjust or rearrange the actions of the keys in a variety of ways to suit personal preferences.
I have been using various incarnations of TechWriter since 1992. Quite frankly, it has transformed my working life due to its power, its flexibility, and its sheer usefulness. So far as I am concerned, it has grown into the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of RISCOS software. With it, I find that RISCOS easily remains my first choice for a professional working platform. Without it I probably would have been driven to switch to a completely different computer for all my work. Having seen the way the TechWriter family has developed I have grown more and more impressed with both it, and its creators.
So, the bottom line is, if you have to write anything on a RISCOS machine, you should do yourself a favour and get a copy of a member of the Icon Technology family. If you only write the occasional letter or short document the EasiWriter will fit the bill. However, if you want what is probably the most useable and flexible document processor on any computer platform, go buy TechWriter Pro+. Highly recommended!
© Jim Lesurf
8th Jul 1999
approx. 2950 words
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