On 4 Nov 97, 08:55pm, STEVE SHATTUCK wrote to David Chessler
on the subject of "Re: TIME CHANGE":
DC>>WP 8 is primarily a bug fix. It loads faster and seems to
DC>>work better in several respects. Few important new features (but
DC>>there have been few important new features since 4.2 IMnotsoHO).
>     Anyone that thinks 8.0 is essentially a bug-fix of 7.0, probably has
The operative word is IMPORTANT
>     NEVER seen the program.  In fact it has so many changes, I DON'T CARE
Well, I've seen both, used them briefly, and I do agree that the
"improvements" don't amount to a damned thing. Which means, as I
said, it's essentially a bug-fix. The main improvement seems to
be improved stability and much faster loading. I call that a bug
fix.
>     FOR MANY OF THE IMPROVEMENTS.  AND, if you believe the same is true
>     of all versions since 4.2, you probably don't need a wordprocessing 
>     package at all.  I can count over 100 changes in 8.0 over 7.0, and 
>     1000's over 4.3.
The important thing is whether there's anything you can do with
the new stuff which (1) needs doing and (2) can't be done with
the earlier version. You actually seem to agree that most of the
changes are insignificant: they don't aide you in doing anything
important, and they are inconvenient to learn to use.
Compared with 4.2 (there was no 4.3, and actually 4.2 and even
4.1 were basically bug-fixes for the notoriously buggy 4.0), the
main improvement of 5.0 was multiple fonts, proportional spacing,
and the ability to handle non-standard graphics characters more
easily. These were important to some people. Tables were useful,
but you could do much the same with columns and tabs--I know
because I've done some very complex tables with columns and tabs.
(Certain text tables are easier with TABLES than columns and
tabs, but I find columns with block-protect work quite well, and
give me much more control of the page breaks.)
The equation editor may be nice, but I've done very complex
equations with 3.0--If you know what you're doing, it's a nicety,
and it probably helps some people. People who really need it,
however, are using TeX, because that's what the mathematical
journals want.
So far, I've found a bunch of things in 7.0 and now 8.0 that
cause me to ask "why would I want to do that?" Things like the
ability to distort fonts (whatever they call it). If I really
want to do that, TYPOGRAPHER does it better. Since 5.1 (and,
indeed, since 4.2), most of the changes have been to make WP a
desk-top publishing program. Well, it still isn't Pagemaker,
Quark Express, or Ventura,  and if you're serious about DTP,
you'll still want one or more of those. But, if you know what
you're doing, you can do all these things with 5.1, using
"advance," columns, the graphics lines on alt-f9 (or even
line-draw on CTL-F3, which has been there since 4.x).
Many of the new or improved features in WP 8.0 have to do with
Web publishing, HTML, and so forth. Again, if you're doing this,
you should be using a specialized program. As Dr. Sam Johnson
said, "when a bear dances, the wonder is not that it is well
done, but that it is done at all." And the result is to make the
program more complex and unwieldy for everyone else (including
the people who do have specialized web-design programs as well as
those who have no need for such tomfoolery).
>      __
>     (__
>     ___)teve     shattuck@execpc.com     via Windows 95
Also using windows 95. Well, you have my sympathy, but that's
"progress."
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