Archive Magazine 1995/ARCHIVE95.iso/discs/pipeline/abacus/p_line/DreamProg2/ReadMe

Text File | 1993-10-21 | 16KB | 290 lines

%OP%VS4.13 (28-Apr-92), Gerald L Fitton, R4000 5966 9904 9938
%OP%DP0
%OP%IRY
%OP%PL0
%OP%HM0
%OP%FM0
%OP%BM0
%OP%LM4
%OP%PT1
%OP%PDPipeLine
%OP%WC1022,2262,52,1748,0,0,0,0
%CO:A,72,72%
%C%PipeDream or Resultz
%C%by Gerald L Fitton
Keywords:
PipeDream Resultz Fireworkz Fitton

PipeDreamá4 or Resultz

The question of whether to buy (or stick with) PipeDreamá4 rather than
Resultz is one which has been put to me many times in the last couple
of months particularly by users of PipeDreamá3.  I've decided that this
isn't a fair question so I'm going to give an answer which many of you
will regard as more than a little unsatisfactory.  My defence is that
at the end of my exposition you will want to ask a different question -
even if I can't answer that one either!

The price of PipeDreamá4 has fallen.  Those of you who have bought it
at the lower price reaffirm what I have always believed: it was the
price rather than the specification which deterred you from purchasing
PipeDreamá4 in the past.  The price of upgrading from PipeDreamá3 to
PipeDreamá4 (direct from Colton Software) is attractive and many are
taking this option rather than upgrading to the more expensive
Fireworkz.  As a result of the reduction in price of PipeDreamá4,
PipeLine has many new members and this augers well for the future of
the PipeLine user group.

Sticking with the commercial features (rather than the technical
description), the drawback of buying PipeDreamá4 is that it is most
unlikely that it will be upgraded any further so that, over a period of
time, you may become dissatisfied with features that it doesn't have.

Now to some technical points.  It is my opinion is that PipeDreamá4 is
far from the end of its life because it has features that many people
want that Resultz doesn't have.  In particular, PipeDream offers fast
printing (using PipeDream printer drivers) using fonts resident within
your printer - I call this character printing.  If you use the system
font for your screen display then that will 'match' character printing
and gives a much faster screen response than outline fonts - also many
find the system font easier to read than outline fonts.

PipeDreamá4 also supports command files (called macros in PipeDreamá3).
With a command file you can change the shape of your document.  For
example you can add, delete and move columns, rows and blocks.  You can
automate a complex search and replace sequence (such as converting
'sexless' to 'smart' quotes and converting to ligatures).  You can even
save and load files, or parts of files from and to documents.  Resultz
does not support command files.

It is just an opinion of mine but I believe that the charts facilities
of PipeDreamá4 are 'better' than those provided by the rather basic
charts module of Resultz.  Others disagree.

Another good point is that there is a long history of PipeDream usage.
What follows from this is that if you have a problem you can't solve
then the chances are that someone else has a solution - you will almost
certainly get useful advice from either the Colton Software technical
help line or the PipeLine user group.

Finally we come to the reason why I think the question of comparing
PipeDreamá4 with Resultz is unfair.  PipeDreamá4 is an integrated
package which is primarily a spreadsheet, indeed, until Resultz was
released there is no doubt that PipeDreamá4 was the best spreadsheet
available for the Archimedes - but PipeDream is not only a spreadsheet.
For example it is also an excellent word processor with a deep paste
list so you can cut as many words or blocks as you like and then paste
them back in last cut first pasted order - Resultz, like Impression,
has a paste depth of only one object.  PipeDream is also a highly
useable 'flat form' database which can be searched and sorted.  I could
go on listing other features of PipeDreamá4's integrated nature - but I
expect that you can list them yourselves.

Resultz

What has Resultz got that PipeDreamá4 hasn't?  I shall have to answer
that in two stages.  Let me start by describing some of the facilities
of Resultz before I move on to Fireworkz.

Resultz is much more WYSIWYG than PipeDream ever was or ever could be.
By this I mean that you can see where the edges of the page are.  You
can create a Resultz document which consists of many pages down but,
unlike PipeDream, a Resultz document can consist of many pages across
as well as down so that, however wide your spreadsheet, you can always
print every column (albeit on a separate sheet of paper).

In Resultz you can have a deep row containing a headline at 36ápoint
followed by many narrow rows of mixed numerical data and text at
12ápoint.  In PipeDream this would be difficult if not impossible and
certainly wouldn't look on the screen as it would print.  Resultz
supports vertical alignment; this means you can place text or numbers
at the top, bottom or centre of a slot (as well as left right or
centre).

In Resultz there is what I call a 'Line break' facility.  If you tap
<Return> on its own then, as in PipeDream, you will move down into the
next slot but, if you hold down <Ctrl> whilst tapping <Return> you
will find yourself on a new line but still within the same slot.  To
cater for slots consisting of many rows of text, the size of a Resultz
slot grows downwards automatically to match the number of lines of text
it contains.  You can change the line spacing in Resultz line by line
if you wish.  This is a mixed blessing - many users of Resultz turn
this facility off because they find it causes Resultz to slow down to
an unacceptable degree.

Resultz allows you to draw boxes around slots.  This is useful if you
have a mixture of tables and text on the same page.  In PipeDream the
grid is either on the whole sheet or not at all.

Resultz formatting relies on Styles and Effects.  Whether it is the
number of digits to be displayed after the the decimal point or whether
you wish to protect a cell, the 'best' way of producing the desired
result is by defining and then applying a style.  For example you could
define a set of styles called Precision_0, Precision_1, etc as having 0
decimal points, 1 decimal point, etc and, if you decided that you
wanted to change a block to a precision of 1 dp then all you need to do
is mark the block and apply the 1 dp style.  Box_On and Box_Off could
be two styles for drawing boxes around slots and removing the box
respectively - I'm sure you can see how to protect and remove
protection from a marked block of slots.

If you are not sure whether you want to buy Resultz then I recommend
that you try the Resultz demo disc.  The demo disc version does
(nearly) everything that the full version will do except that you will
not be able to save or print your work.  With the demo disc you can
load and run Resultz applications created by other people, you can
change the data, add new rows, columns and functions, you can reformat
them (on screen only), drag in style templates or create your own
styles.  You will also be able to drag your PipeDream spreadsheets into
the demo version of Resultz and see how much faster they recalculate.
I have found Resultz to be about three times faster than PipeDream for
most of my small spreadsheets but I find it much slower than PipeDream
for my biggest sheets when I try layout modifications such as inserting
or changing the width of a column.

As a companion to the Resultz demo disc I suggest you buy the
Septemberá1993 ZLine disc because it contains tutorials for and many
examples of using Resultz.  If you buy the Septemberá1993 ZLine disc we
can send you the Resultz demo disc free of charge.

Fireworkz

In the first of the two press releases I received it says "Fireworkz
will be available at the Acorn World Show ..... priced at ú169á+áVAT".
If you have registered your purchase of both Wordz and Resultz then the
press release implies that you will receive Fireworkz without asking
for it!  In any case I am assured that registered ("family"?) users of
both Wordz and Resultz will get Fireworkz free of charge.  If you have
both Resultz and Wordz but have not registered with Colton Software
then I suggest that you do so right away.  Although, when you read
this, version 1.05 of Wordz will have been available for quite a while,
it hardly seems worth while upgrading to Vá1.05 when Fireworkz is so
near.  Nevertheless, for the record, and for those of you with Wordz
and not Resultz, the upgrade to Vá1.05 is free of charge.

If you buy Resultz but not Wordz then you will be able to use all the
spreadsheet facilities of Resultz and you will be able to type text
into text slots and align the text to left, right or centre but there
will be facilities peculiar to Wordz that you will not have.  For
example, you will not be able to create styles with tab stops since
that is a Wordz facility.

If you buy Wordz but not Resultz then you will be able to type in text,
create styles having tab stops, you'll have a dictionary, spell checker
and many other facilities not available in Resultz.

If you have both Wordz and Resultz then you will be able to save a
document from one package and load it into the other.  For example, you
can create a document in Wordz using a style containing tab stops and
then drag that document into a Resultz window.  The style (including
the tabs) will be accepted by Resultz and you will be able to apply
that style anywhere in the document as if it were a Resultz style.
What you will not be able to do in Resultz is change the position of
the tab stop.

Of course, I could have chosen many other examples of what can be done
in one package but not in the other but you will have to make do with
the tab stop example.  To appreciate exactly what you can do in one
package and not the other you really need to try it.

Finally, let me add this, if I create a style, or set of styles using
Wordz and send you a disc with such a Wordz document then you will be
able to load it into Resultz and it would look just like it does to me
in Wordz.  What you will not be able to do in Resultz is modify the
styles I have created.  If I send you a set of styles (in the form of a
blank template) which I have created using Wordz then you will be able
to load that set of styles into Resultz and create documents similar to
those I have done in Wordz.

Where does Fireworkz come into the equation?

FireWorkz will allow you to integrate both Wordz and Resultz into one
package with one icon on the icon bar.  If you do that then your
Fireworkz package will have the 'functionality' of all the things I
have called 'modules' from Wordz and from Resultz.  You will find that
your one Fireworkz package will have spreadsheet functions and charts
available from the Resultz modules and, from the Wordz modules, tab
stops, dictionaries and the spell checker.  The modular nature of
Fireworkz will ensure that the only modules loaded into the memory of
your machine will be those needed for the documents you have loaded.

Now I hope that you are beginning to see why it is difficult to compare
Resultz with PipeDream.  The modules which comprise Resultz are only
one part of the broader concept of Fireworkz.  Indeed, some of the
Fireworkz modules, such as those which will run the database or improve
the charts; they have not been written yet.  As I have said before, you
will be able to 'mix and match' those parts of Fireworkz that you want.

What I would dearly like to know is what the full extent of Fireworks
will be.  Of course that is impossible to know; I believe nobody knows
yet!  If you have an idea for a particular facility you would like made
available for addition to Fireworkz (eg a draw module), then I'd like
to hear from you.

Let me return to the commercial side of Fireworkz.  One problem which
exists for suppliers of software which I highlighted in an earlier
PipeLine article is that their positive cash flow exists only when they
sell a package.  When they supply you with free upgrades this
represents negative cash flow for them.  It is difficult (particularly
in the Acorn World) to persuade existing users to part with more cash
for the upgrade; asking dealers and distributors to pay for upgrades
which they provide free to users won't work because they are certainly
not into negative cash flow transactions.  To a large extent Fireworkz
overcomes that commercial problem but, I believe, it will at the
expense of making problem solving for the Colton Software help line and
the Fireworkz user group much difficult.

Let me explain.  Think of Fireworkz rather like a Lego kit.  First you
buy a starter set containing a few blocks and, with it, you can do
quite a few interesting things.  You find that you want to do more - so
you buy another box containing parts not in the starter kit.  I believe
that Colton Software will continue to enhance Fireworkz by marketing
'upgrades' as modules which you can buy and then integrate with your
personal Fireworkz package.  As you add more modules (such as a
database module, an intermediate or advanced charts package or a draw
or paint package) the 'functionality' of your 'custom built' Fireworkz
package will increase.

From the commercial angle, as you buy the extra modules you provide
Colton Software with positive cash flow.  As I explained in my previous
PipeLine article, Colton Software, like any software writers, need
positive cash flow in order to continue to exist.  To put it bluntly,
if you keep asking for additional facilities for which you are prepared
to pay then Colton Software will keep designing and selling them.
Fireworkz is a 'pay as you go' package rather than a 'free upgrades'
package!

From my point of view as the organiser of a Fireworkz user group I can
see that I shall have to cater for a wide range of Fireworkz
configurations.  That will make life 'interesting' (in the Chinese
sense of the word).  I can see that I will have to say to some of my
enquirers not "You need to upgrade to version 4.13 of PipeDream" but
"I suggest that you buy the 'Advanced charts module' if you really need
to produce such a chart".  Think about it and let me know your views.

To summarise

I hope that, in refusing to compare Resultz with PipeDreamá4, I have
shown you that a direct comparison is less meaningful than you might
have believed.  What you need to compare is the functionality and cost
of PipeDreamá4 with that of the 'ultimate' Fireworkz package that you
want to build up from a kit of modules.

Now consider:
 (a) I don't know what you want
 (b) Nobody knows everything that future Fireworks modules will contain
 (c) Fireworkz is open ended

I hope you'll agree that although I can't answer the simple question
"Which is better?" you're now better informed than you were before.  My
personal view is that I shall continue to use PipeDreamá4 for a
considerable time, particularly with my larger documents and where I
have PipeDream 'templates' which enable me to know where the edges of
the page is or where I rely on command files or dependent documents
that are in PipeDream format.  I shall use Fireworkz for my smaller
documents when I need to include graphics and when I have to be careful
about locating the edge of pages.

If you have both Resultz and PipeDream then perhaps you'd like to share
your thoughts with other subscribers to PipeLine.