FinalWord, PerfectWriter, Mince & Scribble
Fat...@su-sierra.arpa
Thanks to all who replied to my recent request for info on The Final Word
and Perfect Writer. Appended are summaries of the replies I received. My
apologies if my editing has inadvertently changed the import of any
message.
Tim Gonsalves
Gons...@Su-Sierra.Arpa
I've tried PW and own Mince (Mince Is Not Complete Emacs) and FW for
the IBM PC. Perfect Software negotiated w/ Mark of the Unicorn (Mince
& FW people) to sell their Minceclone, but since I prefer Mince to PW
I'll talk about it instead.
How close to Emacs is Mince?
Almost the same key bindings but no fancy stuff (e.g. query replace
yes w/o recursive edits, but pascal mode no). 7 files/buffers, 2
windows max. Uses swap file for virtual memory, 256k max; I keep it
on a ramdisk.
Is it extensible?
Comes with lots of C source in case you want to add modes, change
bindings etc. and have a C compiler (they used Lattice [Microsoft]).
It does enough for me so I don't bother.
What is its formatter like?
Mince has a matching formatter Scribble, a tiny Scribeclone. (List$:
Mince or Scribble $175, both $275) Chapters, sections, footnotes,
headers, index & ToC, refs, supports many printers well at once; no
bibliography, device dover,... FW's formatter is the same.
FW is a newer product, has a faster CRT driver, allows 12 buffers, has
DIRED, allows printspooling, lets you continue after exiting
(remembers buffers etc from swap file), but has key bindings
incompatible w/ mince. However, ProKey will make 'em very close, and
I have a hacked-up FW that looks like mince too. Note Scribble does
come w/ C source but not FW.
I haven't used either of these, but I have used Mince (which is fully
customizeable) and these other two are clones. I am very pleased with
Mince, and it seems to be an accurate subset of Emacs (as per the
name). One person I know has decided to go to VEDIT (PC) which he
claims is different from Emacs but contains more of the spirit than
the Mince clones. I have completely switched over from the losing WS
editor (although any reasonable screen editor would have supplanted
that monster) to Mince, and would suspect that the same would have
been true for the clones. Only problem with the clones is that FW is
not customizable yet and PW won't be. The text processor is a Scribe
clone and, although more complete than the nroff type of beastie which
is public domain from CUG, i don't really care for it. My main
problem with it is that it really requires a proportional spacing word
quality printer to use it to the fullest, and I only have an FX-80
(which, by the way, is a truly incredible printer).
I've worked with EMACS, and both MINCE and the Final Word from Mark
of the Unicorn. MINCE is quite close to EMACS. The Final Word is
based on the EMACS style of editing but uses a completely different
user interface based on an orthogonal command set. That is, you
specify the direction in which you want to go (FORWARD/REVERSE), the
kind of object you want to affect (CHARACTER/WORD/...) and the
operation. Although better for naive users, the Final Word tended
to require too many keystrokes for ex-EMACS users. The key/command
rebinding feature was nice, but since not all of the original EMACS
commands were provided, it was impossible to make the Final Word
look exactly right.
The integration of formatting with editing in the Final Word was a
bit hokey, but worked well. Bottom line: I no longer use the Final
Word, but now stick to EMACS and MINCE and an external formatter.
I use PW on an IBM PC. PW is quite close in the commands that exist to the
emacs commands, but it has no M-X commands, or C-C commands. It also has no
keyboard macros (the biggest complaint). Finally, the alt key is not
implemented in the current version as a meta key (version 1.00). You have
to use escape. Mince, which is another emacs look-alike, does use the
alt key, but is much slower.
On the positive side, PW has a scribe-like formatter, which while it has some
bugs in it, is still pretty good.
I've been using PW for about 10 mos. now, first on a Kaypro and now on a
Columbia MPC. PW seems to be an implementation of most of the standard
EMACS commands, with a few extras thrown in for convenience (and a few left
out for inconvenience). It is not extensible. In the stock version and in
Final Word there is a program that will let you rebind the keys after a
fairly hairy editing session on a messy bindings definition file. All in
all, I feel satisfied with PW -- there have only been one or two times that
I've really wanted to write a mock-lisp command.
The Perfect Formatter on the other hand is almost useless. It tries to do
too much for the user. Instead of letting you define a format with a set
of primitives, it provides a (incomplete) set of predefined environments.
These are adequate for simple business documents or papers, but not for
technical reports or dissertations. Perhaps the most annoying thing about
it is that it makes you specify several major style parameters at the start
of a document and won't let you change them at any later point (margins,
for example). Nor does it support printing parts of a document separately
so that you can change style -- you can't chain documents with different
styles and it won't let you adjust page numbers (to fake it) if you print
them separately. It also goes out of its way to use obscure printer
features. Other complaints include: Won't let you keep a long
bibliography, won't create a table of contents unless you number chapters
its way, etc., etc., etc. All in all, I've decided to scrap it in favor of
another stand alone formatter if I can find one (Microscript by Microtype
looks pretty good....)
The rest of the perfect package is pretty nice. I especially like the
fact that it integrates well (all of the file formats are compatible
and the menu system works pretty well -- though it sometimes forgets
what file you were working on, and isn't smart enough to apply the
proper suffix all of the time). The speller is adequate although I
really prefer The Word Plus.
In summary, I think I would recommend the editor (or Mince) but not
the formatter. The formatter is good at formatting letters.
The FW formatter does not handle bibliographies automatically -- a drawback
for technical articles. Otherwise, seems an adequate subset of Scribe.