Re: Teach/Shadow Write Question

[casa@unm.edu (Jim Pittman)]

Re:
: Subject: Re: Teach/Shadow Write Question Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998
: From: dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) Organization: Empsoft
: Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
: 
: Anonymous <x.y@tennis.net> wrote:
: 
: > I opened a text document in Teach, and started to do some editing.
: > 
: > On some of the lines I try to 1) click the mouse at the beginning
: > of the line to move the text cursor to that location 2) press
: > SPACE or TAB to move the line away from the left margin.
: 
: This won't work unless you pressed Return at the end of the
: previous line. Otherwise you are just inserting extra spaces
: at the end of the previous line (with word wrapping).
: 
: Simple solution: just make sure you press Return at the end of
: a paragraph before trying to indent the following line.
: -- 
: David Empson
: dempson@actrix.gen.nz
: Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand

I use Hermes instead of Teach, but this illustrates one of the few
things I don't like about Hermes and most other editors: it does not
show TABs or RETURNS on screen, and if you use a proportional font
such as Shaston, space characters are not as wide as most of the
visible characters, so any "extra" spaces you enter won't show up
correctly by pushing the visible characters to the right the same
amount that you'd see if you typed in extra visible characters. If
you have a document on screen in Teach (or Hermes) there's no easy
way to tell if it is all word-wrapped or if lines have RETURNS at
the end; you'd pretty much have to check each line. Wouldn't it be
nice if Teach (and Hermes) had a toggle to make TABs and RETURNs
visible. I hate editors that hide things like TABs, RETURNs and
"extra" spaces so I can't tell where they are.

I have not found an editor or word processor or desktop publishing
program for the Apple IIgs that comes even close to doing everything
I need, so I find myself using two or more editors plus a desktop
publishing program for all but the very simplest editing chores.
Here are some that I use or know about, with comments:

AppleWorks 5.1 -- Works in text mode. Screen shows a monospaced font
(the Apple II text characters) with no proportional effect visible on
screen. <Apple-Z> will turn on or off the "zoom" feature which either
does or does not show RETURNs, TABs and various printer formatting
codes. Has a super spell checker! Caution: it does not always show
actual space characters! Version 5.1 allows you to preview on screen
the way your document will print; useful if not very high-fidelity.

Hermes (ShadowWrite) -- Sort of a more-user-friendly Teach, it's a
handy, simple, everyday file opener/editor with some useful special
capabilities. You can double-click to open a file on the desktop and
Hermes will load and open it. You can select a monospaced font (I
have three: Courier, Monaco and Spectrum.8) if you DO want a space
to be the same size as a visible character. Hermes lets you remove
control characters quickly and easily; very handy for getting rid
of the CTRL-J characters at the end of lines in an MS-DOS file. It
will open just about any kind of file, letting you get (sometimes
useful) glimpses of what's in a non-text file. I almost never use
"Teach" documents so it is handy to have Hermes always save files
as text.

Word Works Pro -- This editor lets you explicitly search for and
replace Tabs and Newlines -- you call them "\t" and "\n" in the Find/
Replace box; I don't know of any other desktop editor that can do
this. Unfortunately it is slow and highly prone to freezups.

The "vi" editor under Gno/ME -- You can tell vi to show TABs and
Newlines (do :set list) if needed. It uses the mono-spaced
characters of the standard Apple II text screen. It does many of
the standard UNIX commands including some wildcard characters (I
don't know of any Apple II editor that can do any useful wild-
cards except the ancient DOS 3.3 Super-Text word processor). Un-
fortunately vi is quite slow and does not allow lines longer than
about 255 characters, so it is nearly useless for editing word
processor documents.

AppleWorks GS 1.1 -- The editor is fairly quick and easy to use and
you can select fonts as you wish. Its spell checker is practically
useless compared to AppleWorks 5.1 and it's prone to crashes. Works
with Pointless. (I made a token effort to use the desktop publishing
module of AWGS and found it cumbersome and slow as compared to
GraphicWriter III, and it has a terrible reputation for crashing.)

GraphicWriter III 2.0 -- Pretty good desktop publisher with some nice
capabilities. Pretty close to WYSIWYG and you can tell it to show or
not show TABS and RETURNs -- I wish I could tell it to default to
show them but it does not, so I always have to remember to tell it.
Use any font you want. Works fine with Pointless. I have had numerous
freezups with GraphicWriter, though.

ProTerm 3.1 editor -- It also uses the mono-spaced Apple II text
screen and also lets you turn on or off visible TABs and RETURNs.
No spell checker. I have made little use of this editor, but many
think it's the best overall Apple II editor.

Spectrum 2.1 editor -- I haven't used it except while I'm logged on
the UNIX system at work by phone so can't comment on any weaknesses.

EgoEd -- I never used it enough to like it and I found it very slow.

Word Perfect GS -- Weird and wonderful but I have never been happy
with it. The spell checker/thesaurus is fascinating.

Word Perfect IIe/IIc -- Complex and user-unfriendly; how anyone could
like this I'll never know.

AppleWriter 2 -- Despite Don Lancaster, I have always hated this
powerful but idiosyncratic word processor. It's the supreme example
of, "I'm the programmer, I know best and you'll do it my way." No, I
take it back, the SUPREME example of arrogant programming is ProSel.
No, I take it back again; there are hundreds of examples of supreme
arrogance in computer programs; AppleWriter and ProSel are merely two
spectacular examples in the Apple II universe.

In summary: I tend to do as much as I can with TEXT files, mainly
because it's simpler to edit them and exchange them among most of
the computer systems I deal with: UNIX, Apple II DOS 3.3, Apple IIgs
ProDOS, MS-DOS, Macintosh. I use GraphicWriter III 2.0 to print out
anything that I want to look "nice". Despite its many irritations and
limitations I find AppleWorks 5.1 the most useful all-around Apple II
editor. But I wish I could find a good word processor that would do
all I want, the way I want. In the meantime, I have to jump back and
forth among many different editors.

- Jim Pittman - AppleQuerque Computer Club - casa @ unm dot edu