Re: GS II booted!

[<Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]>]

In message <37fa1c7b.3114677@news>
CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney) writes:

> I would be cautious about recommending AppleWorksGS to
> anyone because the only format that can be recovered if
> something goes wrong is the Word Processing one.  No one
> knows the file format for the Database, Spreadsheet, Graphics,
> Page Layout or Communication files.  If something goes wrong
> and you don't have a backup that didn't get corrupted by the same
> problem as your original, you end up losing all the data in that file.

Some things to know about using Appleworks GS safely:

1.) Do not pre-load the modules.
2.) Always do a "Save as..." instead of "Save".
     The reason for this is when file corruption
     happens it is in memory and you will save
     the trashed file, overwriting your good file.
     When you do a "Save as..."  with a suffix
     e.g. myfile1 the first save, myfile2 the second
     save etc. you will only lose the most recent
     changes.
3.) For large AWGS files, shift-boot the GS.
4.) Don't do ruler operations on large blocks of selected
     text in the word processor. ie. don't select 10 pages
     of text and try to move the margins or even change
     fonts. It is much safer to do large operations in
     smaller chunks.

Appleworks GS can be used reasonably safely with these few
precautions. If something does go wrong, the text from
the Data Base can easily be recovered with a block editor
such as ProSel 16 or Deliverance. I have successfully
recovered ~95-99% of trashed DB files because the text
is fairly contiguous with delimiters on disk. IIRC,  I kept a template of my
DB file saved and I would copy the text using Deliverance
from the corrupted file, and paste it into a text file. Then,
just import the text file back into the data base. IIRC the
Spreadsheet is tab delimited (but I'm not sure about
that) so a similar recovery method might work, if needed.
Nobody should use the Comm module ;o) and the text
for the PL module, IIRC is also fairly contiguous. I wouldn't
say AWGS is dangerous but I wouldn't trust it for a
dissertation (but then again I wouldn't even use an
Apple II anymore for anything REALLY important anyway).
IMO AWGS was always cooler to use than AW classic. YMMV. :o)

--
Eric <NOchippysSPAM@earthlink.net>