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- From: jfreter@triton.unm.edu (The Myth)
- Subject: Re: Review of Ami Pro 3.0 ???
- Message-ID: <yqknmyp@lynx.unm.edu>
- Date: Wed, 02 Sep 92 14:28:55 GMT
- Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
- References: <1992Sep1.211716.4875@ecl.psu.edu>
- Lines: 57
-
- In article <1992Sep1.211716.4875@ecl.psu.edu> jam@ecl.psu.edu writes:
- >Does anyone have a review of Ami Pro 3.0 ? What improvements
- >were made in this upgrade ?
-
- Well, it just came in and I've not worked with it that much, but some things
- to note:
-
- BIG BUG in the screen display. If you try to insert some text into another
- block of text, the inserted text is displayed on top of the original text,
- and a copy of the original text moves aside to make room. This disappears
- as soon as you do some kind of redraw (i.e. change the view). It's annoying,
- but not impossible to live with.
-
- It runs much faster than 2.0 (386 SX/20 4MB, standard VGA). It prints faster
- if the printman is disabled and the AmiPrint options are set for no
- background printer than AmiPro 2.0 (Panasonic 1124i).
-
- Drag and Drop is quite easy to use. Unfortunately, you still can't select
- a paragraph with imbedded frames (graphics, text, equations, etc.) and copy
- or move them together. You have to move the text and then move the frame.
- The reason for this, I found out, is that AmiPro was intended to do some
- DTP where page layout is important. Text fits around the frames quite nicely,
- and those frames get fixed to a point on the page.
-
- The grammer checker is not as good as the Grammatik that was offered free
- with 2.0, so just install Grammatik.
-
- There a several new features added, too. There is a much better charting
- package (but still no scientific plots, it's all business). The program
- adds a scanner interface and retoucher. The drawing program is a little
- nicer. AND THE EQUATION WRITER SUPPORT TEX BETTER. I haven't tried this
- part, yet, since I don't use TeX and have no TeX files to import. But,
- the manual and the new since 2.0 part of help explain that they've added
- the ability to use TeX commands.
-
- The SmartIcons are easier to use since they've added the ability to put
- spaces between groups of icons. The size is adjustible so you can choose
- a size you like and that fits your display system.
-
- Overall, I think that this program is worth the $49 that I had to pay for
- upgrading from 2.0 (I bought 2.0 less than 6 months ago). It is also worth
- the $79 upgrade from 2.0 (bought more than 6 months ago) or from Word/ Word
- perfect. I definately do not think that this program is worth $400 or so
- that the non-upgrade price is set at (but then again, neither are Word or
- Word Perfect). This is still a much better and easier to configure program
- than both Word and Word Perfect. It is even closer to being true WYSIWYG
- than the others. I ran a few informal tests, and I couldn't tell the diff-
- erence (except by resolution) between the layout on the screen and the way
- the file printed.
-
- If you must buy any windows word processor (instead of sticking with DOS
- and a DTP combined), then this is the one to get. It still outperforms
- word perfect and word 2.0a. It makes Word Star for windows look like a
- word processor written for a Commodore-64. And Lotus's customer support
- is respectible (even though they still don't have a 1-800 number for
- bug reports).
-
-