[Coco] Wordprocessor

[farna at amc-mag.com]

Rick, that was so long ago I can't really say. I do remember that I 
printed in two columns though, couldn't say how many characters each 
(probably around 30). Now that you mention it, I think I recall your 
column as requiring very little editing to fit the space. Probably 
because you noted the column width and formatted accordingly. I can't 
recall if we spoke about that or not, but either way it made life a 
little easier for me! Seems like I remember mentioning to someone that 
sending things like program listings already formatted for the column 
width made life so much easier by preventing unintended mistakes due to 
me reformatting, but I may have mentioned that to everyone who sent in a 
listing of some sort. I occasionally altered column width to better 
accommodate a listing -- making a text box narrower was easy.

A true page layout program is so much easier than using a word processor 
or graphics program to create a newsletter/magazine/book!! A WP has too 
few functions for layout, a graphics program (like Adobe Indesign forced 
on PageMaker users) has way too many functions and is much harder to 
learn. I use PageStream now. Have used it on Linux, but succumbed to the 
Windows version a couple years ago after having issues getting it 
running again after a Linux upgrade. The issue was where files were 
placed/expected, but wasn't easy to figure out, even those in the 
community couldn't help much. I'd fixed that issue several years before, 
but couldn't locate my notes either. Wife uses "my" computer also and 
wasn't fond of Linux -- only because she had to use Windows at work, 
preferred something familiar rather than having to learn something 
different for occasional use at home. That's not unreasonable, so when I 
upgraded computers the last time I just switched. Versions of PageStream 
for both, and a Mac version as well, and price is reasonable. Works very 
similar to the old PageMaker to boot!


========================================================

Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2023 18:17:22 -0600
 From: Patrick Ulland <rickulland1 at gmail.com>


Interesting. Most of the content I sent you was pre-formatted in
dynastar, the $very $expensive wordstar clone still? available in EOU
today (ds,df,spell, but it's complicated).? Ever notice I was writing
towards a column width?

-ricku

'Operating System Nine'

On 1/8/2023 4:24 PM, Francis Swygert via Coco wrote:

         I did a lot of writing on a CoCo3. Nearly everything I wrote for 
"the world of '68 micros" was done on a CoCo3 then exported to a PC page 
layout program (Aldus PageMaker, before Adobe screwed it up. The one or 
two for the CoCo simply didn't make good enough output or were too slow 
or hard to use). I also wrote my second Rambler (car) related book 
mainly using a CoCo3. I used Simply Better. VIP is great for letters and 
shorter documents, but being graphical makes it slow. I wouldn't want to 
use it for something like I did! SB wasn't WYSIWYG, but it could be set 
up for a 63 or 64 character screen width which is about right for 10-12 
point fonts. It then had a screen where it would make a graphical 
representation of the page with just lines instead of text. That still 
lets you know where indents are and paragraphs begin and end. I used the 
63/4 width and made my pages that width, which made it easy. It would 
also do 80 column text (so you could use between 63/4 and 80) that 
shifted th e text screen from side to side as you typed. I found that 
annoying, so standardized on a width it would display.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Fix-It-Frank Handyman Services
E-mail: farna at att.net
Phone: 803-604-6548