BSW+: Expanded Desktop needed

[sebugg@presby.edu (Stephen Buggie)]

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sebugg@preby.edu                                    June 11, 1993

            BANK STREET WRITER PLUS:   WORD PROCESSOR
        WANT SOFTWARE PATCH TO EXPAND ITS DESKTOP BEYOND 18K
        ====================================================

To the Apple Programmers Group,

I am a registered owner of BANK STREET WRITER PLUS, a mouse-based text-based
word processor for the 128K IIe/IIc.  It has pull-down menus, dictionary and
thesaurus, macro commands, and is memory-resident on a single 140K disk side.

I am a registered owner of other (MouseWrite, BeagleWrite, Sensible Writer,
Appleworks 2.0), but I keep coming back to BSW+ because of its speed, ease of
operation, and automated use of ProDOS directories.  The operation of BSW+ is
very easy; it was advertised as being simple enough for third graders to use.

A main limitation though of BSW+ is that its desktop --- the size of the file
you can work on --- is only about 18K.  But I have a 1024K RAM card in the
AUX slot plus RAMFACTOR 1024K in slot 7, yet the software does not use any
of that extra memory!

The 18K desktop is a real limitation because many of the college tests I write
take about 25K of text, which means that I must split the test into two
separate files for printing.

Does anyone want to try rewriting the code to expand the desktop to take
advantage of available RAM?   Even an expansion to 50K would be highly useful.

What about the publisher?  Broderbond Software has virtually abandoned BSW+;
certainly no more upgrades will be forthcoming.  My most recent letter from
them a year ago said something like this:  "We are now a two platform company:
Macintosh and IBM.  The programmers who wrote BSW+ are no longer with us so
we cannot help you."

I hope there aren't any complications on writing such a patch.  As everyone
on this list knows, there are dozens of software patches that modify Appleworks
to improve its performance.  An expanded desktop beyond 18K would upgrade BSW+
to the status of a major league word processor.

I should mention that the disk side is nearly full: only about 5 blocks of
empty space are available, so the system code itself would have to be
changed.  If anyone wants to attempt to write such a patch to expand the
desk top, I will be happy  to lend the disk.


Stephen Buggie

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 ** Stephen Buggie  Psych Dept  Presbyterian College   Clinton SC 29325 **
 ** sebugg@presby.edu                 voice: (803) 833-8337 or 833-1632 **
 **                           IIe/IIc loyalist                          **
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