Re: AW5 vs WP 1.1 for 2e

["Hugh Hood" <hugh.hood@a2central.com.remove-6ip-this>]

  To: Michael J. Mahon
Fellas,

AppleWorks 5.1 was a _major_ improvement from 3.0. Popularity doesn't equate
to merit. Just ask Melinda Doolittle. <g>

I still run 5.1 every day in my business with several custom macro sets
doing very specific tasks. Quite simply, I'd say it's the best 8-bit
software ever written.

AppleWorks 3.0 is still on my hard drive, and every now and then I'll run it
just for the heck of it. Man, from menu navigation to database capabilities
to file manipulation to text file processing to ..., it just doesn't hold a
candle to 5.1. Thank Randy Brandt for that. And, most of the TimeOut
applications that were used with 3.0 were either built into 5.1 or were
updated to work with 5.1. I'd never consider 5.1 a 'downgrade'.

It's a shame 5.1 was introduced just as everything Apple II was collapsing.
But, that's the way it goes.

Programming in UltraMacros is very satisfying and rewarding. You'd be very
surprised at what can be accomplished. Very.

Will Nelken wrote two fine tutorial books on UltraMacros programming. He's
asked me to convert both to Adobe Acrobat .pdf format and they are almost
complete. Whether he releases these books will be up to him, of course. He
is the author and publisher, and holds the copyrights. Also transferred to
CD for Will Nelken was the 26-issue TimeOut Central.

I transferred for Joe Kohn (Shareware Solutions II) the entire AppleWorks
Forum's NAUG on Disk to CD. I don't know if it is yet for sale, but it
contains a huge amount of info on AppleWorks and UltraMacros.

Likewise, Ms. Cadieux was a huge proponent of AppleWorks and UltraMacros
programming. I own and still refer to many of the materials she published
under the Texas II banner. She cultivated a host of contributors who were
very talented, including Wally Bradford, Barclay Clemesha and somebody named
'Cub'. I never figured out who that guy was, but he was pretty darned good.
Folks who write their own assembly language routines to interact with
AppleWorks are a special breed.

I'm not aware as to whether she has transfered her materials to CD and made
them available for sale. If not, you may be able to purchase them used on
eBay or other places.

Frenchman Christian Serreau was an absolute AppleWorks guru. He published
some technical articles in his AppleWorks Gazette that will blow you away.
You'd have thought he was one of the programmers of AppleWorks 5.1.
Strangely, he disappeared in the mid '90s, never to be heard from again. Too
bad. He seemed like a true believer. The (4) issues of the AppleWorks
Gazette may still be available from Howard Katz.

Finally, Mark Munz is currently updating his AppleWorks 5.1 emulator to run
under OS X. It's called Deja II and his website is
http://www.dejaIIx.com/blog/

I've been an Apple II guy since the fall of 1979 and have seen a ton of
Apple II programs in my life. I really don't think Apple II programs get any
better than AppleWorks 5.1.

BTW, the old Quality Computers published the manuals for both AppleWorks 4.0
and the 5.0 update. Converting those to .pdf would be a coup (probably from
Quark, PageMaker or FrameMaker), as the actual AppleWorks 5.1 program is
already out 'there'. These two manuals did not, however, contain the docs
for UltraMacros. 


Hugh...
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