Re: AWGS Reclassification

[wily@svpal.svpal.org (Paul Creager)]

Bruce Maples (themaples@worldnet.att.net) wrote:
: Just a thought, here -- How much interest is there in AWGS, anyway?
: Enough to want some sort of upgrade?  Add-ons?  What?  Claris is going
: to ask, I would think.  Might be worth finding out about source code.

This has been discussed before.  Basically there's no way in hell Claris 
_could_ upgrade AWGS, even if they wanted to.  If some of the best GS 
programmers around couldn't do it, Claris (who I'm sure employs no one 
fluent in 65816 assembly) couldn't do it.

Quality did supply the (mostly) uncommented source code to several 
programmers, in hopes of some progress.  As I understand the story, the 
code as supplied wouldn't even compile.  A lot of tweaking had to be done 
just to get it to link and compile.  "Spaghetti code" comes to mind.  All 
of the programmers that took a crack at it gave up out of frustration and 
disgust.  "Better to start from scratch" was the solution I heard.

That brings up something not mentioned before.  If "Dr. Tom's" claim that 
Claris only gave Quality the rights to sell it, then why did Quality:

  A)  Also get the source code from Claris?
  B)  Proceed with attempts to modify/enhance said source code?

It seems to me that Quality's agreement with Claris was a lot more than 
simple resale rights.  Either "Dr. Tom" is lying or the people he spoke 
to at Claris don't know what they're talking about.  (Even odds on this 
one, folks.)

As for interest in AWGS, I think that, even though it's not the most 
stable software sometimes, most GS owners should have it.  As time has 
gone on, certain parts of AWGS have been surpassed.  The comm module 
sucks, so just about any other telecom program is better.  Quick Click 
Calc is a superior spreadsheet, GraphicWriter III is a better page 
layout program, and Platinum Paint is a better graphics program.  But AWGS 
offers integration among its modules, and really has the only viable word 
processor around.  (Unless there's another that supports multiple rulers 
that I'm unaware of.)

So all in all, AWGS has a place on my hard drive.

 
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