A WORD USER AWAITS VERSION 3.0



Author: Jack Turner

Date: January, 1987

Keywords: microsoft word 3.0 macwrite

Text:
     Several months ago the long-awaited announcement came from
Microsoft Corp. that their Word program for the Macintosh would be
upgraded and improved considerably.  Ever since the guy from Microsoft
told us a bit about it on his visit last summer, this word handler has
been eagerly awaiting the new version.
     First of all, I need to tell you a bit about how I use my
computer.  As a college English professor, I'd say that 90% of the time
at my mouse is spent in wordprocessing.  I do all my handouts and
various professional writing using Word.  MacWrite is simply just not
powerful enough.  When I first got my Mac, Word was not out yet.  I
suffered through the insufficiencies of MacWrite, but finally breathed
a sigh of relief when the Microsoft product offered improvements in
managing larger documents.  Not only does Word offer features like
footnoting totally absent from MacWrite, but the ability to manage up
to four text windows on the screen at one time makes it possible for me
to do the kind of writing and revising that I find necessary.  
     But when Word comes out this month, it will offer the following
improvements:
          1)  Long document support.  Version 1.05 is fairly clumsy
with longer documents.  The new version promises improvements.
          2)  Improved output.
          3)  Keyboard expansion.  The new program allows you to use
the new keypad as a cursor mover, among other things.
          4)  Data exchange.  You won't have to use Switcher to switch
between Word and other Mocrosoft programs.
          5)  Page preview.  Despite pretensions to WYSIWYG (''What you
see is what you get''), Word in its present version does not really
allow you to visualize easily how your document will look once it's
printed.  Microsoft promises to let us see how the thing will look, two
pages at a time, without having to print it.
          6)  Increased speed.  One of the problems with the present
version of Word is that it is quite slow, especially when you are
repaginating a large document.  I understand that this is because the
program is totally disk-based.  In other words, the program writes much
of your text to the disk rather than holding it in memory, even if you
don't instruct it to save the text.  This is why Word does not benefit
from a RAM disk.  I'm not sure HOW Microsoft plans to increase the
speed, but they have promised they WILL.
          7) Style sheets.  You can set up a bunch of your favorite
formats ahead of time and recall them at will.  You can do that now, of
course, by setting up exemplary Word documents and then using the
''Save As'' command.  Apparently this will be easier with the new
version.
          8)  Various levels of expertise.  Word is a somewhat more
complex (to a certain extent, that's what ''more powerful'' means)
program to learn than MacWrite.  The new version will allow you to
start out at a simple level with a shorter menu and then advance two
more levels to the most ''powerful.''
          9)  Integrated outlining.  I usually don't outline what I
write ahead of time (though I hypocritically try to sell the practice
to my students).  But the new Word will allow you this capability if
you want it.  This will probably make it possible to shift back and
forth between an outline and a document.  If you've ever tried to
outline using Word or MacWrite you have immediately gone out and bought
an outlining program like ThinkTank.  I guess you won't need that
program any more unless, like me, you do your class lectures on it and
need the many extras it offers.
          10)  An 80,000 word spelling checker.  Spelling checkers are
a dime a dozen, and there are some pretty good ones out there.  I use
Hayden Speller, because it works pretty well with Word 1.05.  The main
problem is that you've got to go completely out of Word to use the
spelling checker.  Another one is that you can't check a document of
over a limited number of words.  Also, Hayden Speller, likemost of the
others, is pretty slim (35,000 to 40,000 words).  You can, of course,
add your own words to most of them.  But having the checker inside of
the program will be a real improvement, I figure.  By the way, a
spelling checker will not help you to be a great speller.  Learn to
spell, then use a checker.  They're good mainly for typos.
     The new Word will cost a whopping $395 retail.  If you've already
got the version 1.05, however, you can upgrade for $99 (unless you
bought it since 1 October 1986, in which case it's only $50).  If
you're a registered user, you should have received a mailer announcing
the version 3.0.  I predict that Word will remain the program of choice
for the serious wordsmiths among us.  Look for a review of the new
version in these pages sometime after I've received my new version and
used it for awhile.

Copyright © january, 1987 by Jack Turner