I am in the unfortunate situation of having to purchase one without any
time to research it, so I thought I'd turn to the net and see what you
good people think of the various packages available.
There is one limitation the package must have: Scalable fonts which print
out on a laser printer as scalable fonts, but they can't be jaggy (as in
a straight bitmap dump). What we're looking for is something that works
like Pagestream and Final Writer in that it generates an extremely high-
res bitmap of the page and sends it to the printer. Whilst this takes
a few mintes (even on an 040), it beats the jaggies and you don't have
to purchase a PostScript cartridge for the laser printer (oh, we don't
have postscript on the laser!) :)
Here's a couple of comments which people may be able to answer:
TurboCalc 2.0: I've used an older version of TurboCalc in the past and
was distressed by the lack of thought for printing. Basically, you either
get a low-res bitmap dump (ugly and not professional) or straight ASCII to
the printer, hence most spreadsheets will not fit on the page. Uggh!
FinalCalc: An upcomming product from Softwood. This is bound to offer
the printing abilities we require as it is from Softwood (ala Final Writer).
However, how far away is the release? And it will be the first version,
so will it be feature-lite?
Easy Ledgers II: Never seen it, but its twice the price of the others.
This doesn't mean its twice as good though. Anyone ever used it?
Any help, advice, etc, would be greatly appreciated in this time of need!
Many thanks,
Jason.
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Final Calc is now available from Softwood. I received a flyer advertising it
for $99.00 (it will soon rise to $249.00). However, this may be only to
registered owners of Softwood products. Call them at 1-800-247-8314 to find o
out.
I think this is your best bet.
Tom.
Given this over-riding requirement, better try and get SoftWood to ship
you the first box off the line. None of the spreadsheets I've used on the
Amiga have scalable, jaggy-free fonts. Final Calc is supposed to.
And the ad says ... "... advanced PostScript outputputting facilities with
flexible font handling ..." which sounds like what you are asking for.
Just how much more than a generic spreadsheet it will be, who knows? I
don't _need_ a better spreadsheet but will likely spring for it anyway.
> There is one limitation the package must have: Scalable fonts which print
> out on a laser printer as scalable fonts, but they can't be jaggy (as in
> a straight bitmap dump).
Dave Meyer (dme...@tiac.net) replies:
> Given this over-riding requirement, better try and get SoftWood to ship
> you the first box off the line. None of the spreadsheets I've used on the
> Amiga have scalable, jaggy-free fonts.
Just to set the record straight, ProCalc 2 DOES support outline fonts.
It uses the AmigaDOS (Compugraphic) font engine to generate "jaggie-free"
display and printed output. It also produces PostScript and EPS output
that use the standard Adobe built-in fonts.
That said, I'm still looking forward to getting my hands on Final Calc,
just as I'm looking forward to TurboCalc 3. (I guess I'm a "spreadsheet
junkie". 8^)
Bill
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