[1389] in NetBSD-Development
Re: Evaluating Applixware
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Debajit Ghosh)
Wed Oct 23 15:32:56 1996
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
Cc: linux-dev@MIT.EDU, netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 23 Oct 1996 14:53:13 EDT."
<199610231853.OAA15893@the-light-fantastic.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 15:29:12 EDT
From: Debajit Ghosh <djib@hematite.mit.edu>
>>>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 1996 14:53:13 -0400, Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU> said:
Greg> My observations so far:
Greg> * It provides a presentation designer, something we
Greg> don't have on Athena right now. The presentation designer
Greg> doubles as a drawing program, but I didn't see anything that
Greg> looked better than The Gimp in that respect.
It's pretty good (the graphics tools/presentation program), and one thing to
note is that the newest version claims import and export ability between .ag
(Applix Graphics) and PowerPoint files..
Greg> * The word processor is in some respects easier to
Greg> understand than Framemaker is, and will be easy to
Greg> understand for users of Microsoft Office. However, it
Greg> doesn't have an easy way to double space (you have to go
Greg> into paragraph settings and specify something like .17
Greg> inches in the "line spacing" box), which will be a source of
Greg> questions.
We should definitely provide an easy way to change the keyboard shortcuts (to
something more familiar/reasonable); the defaults are not that great..
Also, you mentioned (over zephyr) that some filters were add-ons or somesuch.
I'm not sure what might be and what is supposed to come with Applixware, but
I cannot import certain filetypes (the filter is missing), most importantly
Frame files. And I cannot export to anything. This is something that is
really useful -- it's really nice being able to import Word files, and
exporting them so I can share files with others on Macs/Windows machines.
If they are add-ons, we should definitely get them, as they are quite useful..
Greg> * The file dialog for saving files doesn't let you
Greg> specify a full path (it doesn't like / characters in
Greg> filenames). You have to "jump" to the appropriate directory
Greg> and then specify the filename. This is pretty bogus.
On a similar note, you cannot specify a print command -- you either print
to a listed printer in the print dialog box or print to a file (and if you
want to print to a file, you have to say that (ie check the approprite box)
every time). This is less than optimal.
Greg> * It will make a 24MB sparc classic swap a bit, and
Greg> will probably hose a 16MB box into the ground, but it's
Greg> quite responsive on a 32MB machine.
When I first got Applixware, I had 16 megs.. it was bearable if I shut down
most everything else I had running ;-). 32 is really the minimum if you want
to run anything else, like emacs, Netscape, etc..
Greg> applications. Neither seems very high value for our
Greg> environment.
Plus a neat mail program -- not very useful as-is, though, for Athena..
Greg> My overall impression is that if the licensing price is
Greg> okay, having Applixware would be a big benefit to our
Greg> environment, filling the lack of a good word processor for
Greg> Linux and NetBSD and the lack of a good presentation tool
Greg> for any Athena platform.
I agree completely.. despite some of the gripes, this is a much better/more
familiar word processor than what is available now. And the graphics programs
and spreadsheets will be useful for many people; this is in effect a Microsoft
Office for UN*X and will have similar benefits. I've been using it for a few
months and am quite happy (and do not need to reboot to Win95 nearly as much
:-) and would really like to see this made available on Athena (again, if
pricing is reasonable..). They seem to want to appeal to the student crowds
though -- the CEO mentioned this to me when I first talked to him, and now
Red Hat has slashed the prices for students... :-)
-Jit
