[Coco] Re: Multi-vue Vs. Deskmate 3

[Rogelio Perea]

"Glen VanDenBiggelaar" wrote, among other things:

> I noticed a lot of you use and Like m-vue, but I have not seen anyone
> lately mention Deskmate. I have Deskmate "1" still sealed and Deskmate
> 3, was there a Deskmate 2? or 4?. Other than "no windows" and more
> programs and more colorful, it seems a real contender to MVUE.
> What are your experiences/or opinions on it?

As it has been noted in other replies, MultiVue is more of an
environment than a suite of applications like Deskmate is for the
CoCo, on the MSDOS realm Deskmate had a real chance at becoming THE
windowing environment but MS Windows 3.x took its chance away -
several third parties released software specifically set to work under
Tandy's Deskmate... if only Tandy had ever released data on the CoCo
version I bet we would have very much enhanced 'buillt-in' apps,
meaning a better word processor, spreadsheet and terminal. The Paint
program of Deskmate 3is pretty decent considering the constricting
environment it runs on.

I have been an avid user of Deskmate in the CoCo, both the '1' and '3'
versions. I did ran a daily log using Deskmate 1's TEXT on a CoCo 1, I
had the computer set at an office for an ISP I worked for, no one else
knew how to 'operate' the CoCo much less OS9 so the whole thing was
alien to my coworkers and they kept their curious hands off it :-)

Following on the usage of the built-in apps I did a few minor things
with the spreadsheet, very basic layouts and family financial
planning, that until I got Dynacalc!. On the CoCo 3 version I play
from time to time with the paint program. Still use the calendar more
to keep a log of important family events and other things.

Yes I could do those things in my 'big' Dell system, perhaps even the
Palm pilot, but it is so much more fun to do it on the CoCo.

On the imrpovements I would root for in Deskmate apps:

Text - some text formatting would be welcome, bold, underline,
italics, sup/sub-script, text alignment, justification, word count...

Spreadhseet - independent and "loose" column width adjustment, the
current auto-width is annoying; probably a few more enhanced formula
tools. Never had to go beyond the 99x99 matrix size so probably that
would still be ok.

Any other ideas?



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-=[ Rogelio ]=-