From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: The big wordprocessor debate!
For many years, people have been
arguing about which wordprocessor is
the best for the BBC, these have
usually been biased to the persons
favourite, which I assume is a fair
point because people generally don't
advocate in favour of things they don't
like!
In my youth, with an Acorn Electron I
often used Mini Office because it was
the only word-processor I had.
Later on, at school on the BBC Micros
I also used Mini Office a lot and was
introduced to Wordwise which I quickly
changed to my wordprocessor of
preference.
When I had a BBC B to myself I
abandoned Mini Office in favour of
wordprocessors which didn't need to be
loaded from tape!
These were Mini Office II which I
hardly ever used, View which I used a
bit more than Mini Office 2 but still
not much and finally Wordwise + which
I used almost every time I used the
computer.
My liking of Wordwise back then was
mainly due to the fact that it produced
pure ASCII text files which are useful
if you don't have a printer for the
fancy stuff. Aside from that I also
used it to edit BASIC and LOGO
programs, speed was the major factor
here and Wordwise + definitely has it.
Now that I have a BBC Master, Mini
office won't work, not that I'd use it
anyway. I have Edit, View and Wordwise
+ plugged into the machine and I must
confess now that I have no favourites
inasmuch as I like them all for what
they do.
When I am editing Basic programs I
generally use EDIT.
When I am writing program
documentation or creating text files I
normally use Wordwise + unless the
files use control characters, then I
use EDIT. I also sometimes use
Wordwise + when chatting to deaf
friends. Wordwise + is also quite
useful when printing labels as
printer commands can be easily
embedded in the text.
When I am writing letters I usually
use View because of the ease of
formatting and I don't lose the text
if I press Break!
Recently I have discovered SideWriter
which I often use when debugging
programs because it is inobtrusive
and always available. Edword has been
gathering dust since I got it many
years ago, Pendown never really had a
chance, Folio was used a few times a
long, long time ago Stop Press needs
documentation, Wordwise + 2 won't work
in Sideways ram so it needs blowing
onto an EPROM. Interword eats into
valuable RAM space. I have another 10
or so wordprocessing packages for the
BBC each of which is never used for
various reasons.
Overall, I don't think that you can
assign the title of best wordprocessor
to any particular program because they
are all so different in their
strengths and weaknesses.
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