Re: New to IIGS - Freeware COMM progs? Good WP?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

ktakagi@u.arizona.edu (Koichi Takagi) wrote:

>Everyone says ProTerm is the best... all I need is vt100, nothing fancy
>(zmodem is nice but not necessary).  Any freeware available?

The comm system that Nathan mentioned is free, but I don't think it
will give vt100.  For that, there is a shareware one called Zterm.  Even
though it is called Zterm, it lacks zmodem.  If I were seriously thinking
about doing term emulation, I would look into proterm.  The current
version is 3.1, so you might try looking for version 3.0 used.  Version
3.0 is still good and if you are lucky, someone may be selling it for a
few dollars.  Ask on comp.sys.apple2.marketplace.

>Also, is AppleWorks GS unusably buggy as a word processor only? Or is it
>only certain parts?

I actually had no problems with it except during the first three months
of using it.  After that, it has given me no trouble in many years.
Some say that the culprit is setting the modules to preload.  I don't
have preload of any modules set because I use a hard drive.  Extra
memory (4MB or 5MB) tends to stabilize the program.  I don't know
why this program works well on some systems but not so well on
others.

>What's a solid, GUI Word Processor?
>
>Thanks much!

AppleWorks GS is the most comprehensive GS GUI word processor.
It is not perfect and you may need to beef up your system to make
it stable.  The feature set is similar to early MS Works for Mac (ver 2
or so, I think).  With an accelerator and Pointless to access Mac
TrueType fonts, it quite usable.  The spelling checker and thesaurus
are comprehensive, the DTP program is fairly good, the draw program
is nice, but the comm program is not worth much.  The program is
cheap enough now that there is nothing to lose.  I say give it a shot,
especially if you plan to use a hard drive and at least 4MB of mem.
and, preferably, an accelerator.  It is a good complement to classic
AW, since it can read AW3 files and spit out fancy formatted print.