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PRES.TXT
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2006-10-19
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The PRESS Word Processor
reviewed by Charles Good
Lima Ohio User Group
In the past I have reviewed 99/4A and CC40 products that were
never officially released but which nevertheless managed to get into
my hands as working software or hardware. This review is the first I
have ever done of a product that never did exist.
PRESS is probably the most legendary piece of vaporware in the
history of the 99/4A. I remember seeing it in September 1988
advertised in the Fall 1988 Triton catalog ("available November 1"),
probably the only time Triton ever advertised a TI product sight
unseen. I was impressed and wrote Asgard asking about its
availability at the upcoming Chicago Faire. Chris Bobbitt responded
with a two page personal letter listing many virtues of PRESS and I
was hooked. Chris is a very good sales person. At the Chicago show
that year Chris said PRESS wasn't quite ready, but he took my check
for $60 and promised the product shortly. Two yearslater I got my
uncashed check back. Charles Earl, the PRESS programmer never came
through, but in the meantime Chris Bobbitt managed to sell himself and
the rest of the TI community on this fantastic word processr.
I now have a copy of the September 1, 1989 beta test version of
PRESS and its ready for release documentation. Having seen the
software I'm glad I didn't purchase it. If completed it would have
had a couple of significant features I don't like.
The documentation is very fancy looking and probably cost Asgard
software a lot of money up front to print. You get a
paper-with-plastic-coating box containing a 8x9 inch 3 ring plastic
coated binder. Both the box and binder have professional artwork on
the outside. The pages in the binder are professonally printed on
heavy paper with plastic index tabs dividing the pages into different
sections. In the back of the binder is the program disk (there are
supposed to be 3 other disks containing the spelling checker) and a
quick reference card. Very professional!
A little quote from the voluminous advertising text Chris put on
the back of the box gives you some idea of why PRESS seemed so great
to me and Chris Bobbitt back then. "PRESS has hundreds of features -
including hundreds available in no other word processor for the
TI99/4A or its compatibles. You can easily do things in PRESS that
are difficult or impossible in TI-Writer or enhancements of it such as
MY-Word."
The main advertised features are unlimited document size and on
screen formatting, and a 100000 word built in spelling checker.
Document size is limited only to the size of the mass storage medium,
since only a piece of the document is in memory at any one time. With
a hard drive I could easily have put my great American PhD
dissertation all in one continuous file. This feature actually works
in my Sept 1989 version. On screen formatting means there is no
separate formatter. Right and left justification are shown on screen
as you type (not yet in my Sept 1989 version). Double strike,
underline, and italic, or any combination of these show up just like
that on screen as you type (this is in my Sept 1989 version). Just
like most PC word processors you can insert text and all the text to
the right of the cursor just moves over one letter at a time to make
room for your inserted text (not in my Sept 1889 version). Like a
lot of PC word processors such as Word Perfect, many operations of
PRESS are performed on bocks of text. Move the cursor next to the
beginnign of a block and press Fctn/B. Move the cursor down to the
end of the block and press Fctn/B again (doesn't work on my version).
Then delete or move or save only the blocked text.
My version comes with a mouse driver usable with the Myarc mouse
on a Geneve. It is supposed to come with a bunch of printer drivers
for common dot matrix printers so that you can print the fancy text
displayed WYSIWYG on screen. My version has no printer drivers and I
can't get it to print anything from its editor.
The software loads parts of itself off of disk as needed. The
numerous features planned just couldn't be made by the programmer to
properly fit into the 99/4A's limited memory. When your first boot
PRESS you get a fancy title screen with a picture of an old fashoned
printing press. Then you are asked for bitmap or text mode. Bitmap
mode shows on screen all the fancy fonts. Text mode is faster but
doesn't show the fancy fonts. You can still select italic, etc, but
all looks the same on screen. Bitmap is slow, particularly at work
wrap and at left/right up/down screen scrolling. Because of this
slowness in redrawing the screen the software includes a keyboard
buffer. You can type ahead of the screen and the screen will
eventually catch up. Keyboard buffers are automatic in the PC world
since they are built into the PC keyboard. PRESS is the only 99/4A
software I know of that simulates a keyboard buffer.
After selecting bitmap or text if the software senses that you
have an 80 column card or Geneve you are asked for 40 or 80 column
display. You are then given the main menu which offers you EDIT DISK
FORMAT PRINT SPELL CONFIG and QUIT. The 80 column display looks
quite good with a white background. 40 columns are windowed right
with Fctn/5 and (unlike TI Writer) left with Ctrl/5. Windowing in
bitmap mode is kinda slow.
At startup from the main menu you must first choose DISK and then
open a document. You enter a document name, then press Fctn/9 (back),
then use the left arrow to move to EDIT, and then press <enter> to
display the first part of the document. This seems to be to be a very
cumbersome procedure. If you have a file in memory and you want to
look at another file you first have to close the current file and than
load in the next file. The procedure for closing a file is Fctn/9
(Back), then right arrow to DISK, then <enter>, then down arrow to
"Close Document", then up arrow to "Open Document" to load in the next
document. This also is a cumbersome procedure but there are hot key
shortcuts to these commands.
I DON'T LIKE THE PRESS DISK FILE FORMAT. Minimum file size is 51
sectors! When you open a file, if the specified file isn't on disk a
new empty file 51 sectors long is created with the open name you
specified. Have a two sentence note you want saved? 51 sectors. How
about a 1 page letter? 51 sectors. If you have a really long
document it is saved in multiples of 50 sectors plus one file
allocation sector (51, 101, 151, etc sectors long). This wastes losts
and lots of disk space. Files are saved in DF255 format, which means
that only PRESS can read PRESS text files. PRESS is supposed to be
able to import DV80 files into an already open PRESS document
(cumbersome) and export its text to DV80 format. My beta test PRESS
can't do these things. Like it or not DV80 is the text format
standard in the 99/4A world. The inability to scan a disk of PRESS
files on screen with a file viewer such as DM1000, DSKU, or Funnelweb
is potentially very inconvenient. Because of the 51 sector minimum
DF255 file format I would not now purchase PRESS even if I had the
chance.
Here are the options available from each of the PRESS main menu
headings. Most of these features can also be accessed directly using
Ctrl or Fctn plus a letter key. You can also create macros which are
user defined hot keys that invoke a specific chain of these commands.
Macros can make some cumbersome repetitive keypresses easier and more
user friendly.
EDIT. This puts you in edit mode and displays one screen of the
current document. Most of the document is not in memory and remains
in "virtual memory" on disk. As you write the document is
continuously being saved to disk.
DISK. Open Document- do this before moving to EDIT. Close
Document- this exits a document saving it. Merge Document- similar to
TI Writer's mail/merge option. Get Document- merges a second document
into the current document at the cursor position. Import Filet- Input
a DV80 file into an already opened PRESS document. Export File- save
text as DV80 with no left margin. Save Block- Saves a blocked part of
current document as a separate smaller document while retaining
current document on disk and in memory. Directory- of any path. You
move the cursor next to a file name and press a key to open import
copy delete protect get view move rename or unprotect the file and you
can move foreward and back among the directory tree structure of a
hard drive. None of this Directory stuff works on my beta test
version.
FORMAT. Vertical Dimensions- This gives you a sub menu that
lists Top Margin, Bottom Margin, Lines/Page, Lines/Inch, and Line
Spacing. Margins- which gives you a sub menu listing Left and Right.
Tabs-. Indent-. Outdent-. Pitch- which gives you the sub menu 10
Chars/in, 12 Chars/in, Compressed, and Proportional. Justification-
which gives you your choices of Left (even margins on left only),
Right (even margins on right only), and Full (even margins on both
sides). Header-. Footer-. Page Numset-. Center- which gives your
choice of Page (vertically between top and bottom of page) and Text
(current line centered between margins). Define Columns- in which
your choices are Snaking (like a newspaper text goes to top of next
column) and Parallel (for alligning tables of numbers). With each of
these column types you get a new menu that says Automatic or Custom.
Notes- include a short note with the document that is displayed on
screen but not printed with the document.
PRINT. Current Document- with a sub menu listing Selected Pages,
Range of Pages, All, or Merge. External Document- ie a PRESS file
that isn't the one currently open. Select Printer- from the list of
printer drivers (that doesn't exist in my beta version). Device Path-
to redirect output to a disk file. Printer Feed Options- your choice
of Continuous or Single Sheet. Insert Printer Code-.
SPELL. Word- the word under the cursor. Selected Pages-. Range
of Pages-. Full Document-.
CONFIG. This does absolutely nothing in my beta version and
there is nothing about this menu item in the docs. Presumably this
lets you set up a path name for loading PRESS, a default printer with
driver, and extra memory. The documentation says PRESS takes
advantage of "extra memory in minimems, supercarts, etc." but it
doesn't say what this memory is used for.
QUIT. This closes the current document and returns you to the TI
title screen with just one keypress.
In conclusion, PRESS does some tricks that other TI word
processors can't do, such as on screen underlining and italics.
Nevertheless, the huge minimum file size and non standard file type
would make many TI users unhappy. I talked to Jack Sughrue, a beta
tester mentioned in the documentation, and he agrees with me about
these two problem areas. I think Funnelweb, with its on screen right
justification and IBM graphics, is now better than PRESS was supposed
to be.
.PL 1