1 - Commodore Is Awesome

instalment of their award-winning word processor. But
is Final Writer 5 a major update, or just another fine
I tuning? Gareth Lofthouse reviews...
R
e
only does Softwood continue to
fight tooth and nail for domina-
0 -1" tion of the Amiga applications
g-
market, it even has the gall to take on Mr
ou've Gates himself. Yes, Final Writer is about to
gchallenge o t Microsoft's monolithic Word in a
utbid
to o make a serious dent in the lucrative
hworld aof
PC word processing.
ln
But d before you bombard Softwood with
i
letters of protest at their treacherous betrayal
of the Amiga, take a moment to look at
at
Final Writer 5. You might just be surprised.
t Far from releasing an old product with a
r o few tweaks to milk a dying market,
t Softwood has actually put Final Writer
h athrough
one of the most substantial over-
ehauls
it's had in a while_ With over 24
menhancements
since release 4, this looks
s . like the product of a company that remains
Nvery
serious about Amiga-based develop-
co
ment
But first the basics (the majority of you
t
who've heard this all before should skip the
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AMIGA COMPUTING
OCIOBER / 996
,
next two paragraphs). Final Writer has vied
for the position of top Amiga word processor
for years, and with good reason. A WYSI-
WYG product, it was one of the first to feature
a user-friendly GUI complete with
neat control icons and point-andclick
requesters. In other
words, it doesn't just
work well, it looks good
too.
Final Writer
includes basic drawing
tools to enhance
and illustrate the
content ol your documents.
More importantly, it's faster when it
comes to manipulating, formatting and
OOP OF THE TABLE
It's been a long time coming, but at last
Final Writer 5 allows you to create and
incorporate tables into your documents.
Tables are independent objects you
can position anywhere. They are vital for
documents where you need to present
numerical data in a manageable and
visually effective form - so much so that
once you have them, you wonder how
you did without them.
Still, better late than never, and
i Softwood have now done an excellent
job by introducing an extremely versatile
tables generator. The 'Tables
Preferences' requester is a powerful
tool, with all the options you're likely to
need.
restructuring lengthy sections of text thar
arch-rival Digita Wordworth - and that afte•
all is what a good WP is about. El
Now on to the refinements introciucec
' Desi
with release 5. First up, Final Writer nos'.
includes a new Auto Correct facility. Ss the
name suggests, this will instantly alorreo
your regular typos - thus teh will m
iracu
lously reappear as the, for example.
It's also possible to use this featsire
t-,••
automate repetitive phrases and le ngthy
mar
con'
rele
regi
tho
,hay
erls
names_ If, for example, you were crea ting a
tutorial for Final Writer 5, you could add
an
Auto Correct item to change tw5 to Final
Writer Release 5. Then whenever you typed
pre
use
tw5 the program would correct it ti3
pro-
duce Final Writer Release 5. More useful
than it initially sounds, believe it or nlot
Auto Correct will also capitalise th e first
letter of sentences and correct two initial
capitals in a sentence.
Release 5 now allows you to creat e d0Cuments
using a template. The 'NevJ
from
Template' option doesn't just oper your
document it updates the dates and times
the document and leaves the name set as
Untitled. So what? This means yot.1
can't
accidentally save a newly modified .
of the document on top of your ter,
nplate,
making it perfect for protecting anceusing'
templates for regularly used letterhea rds
and
forms.
s
Swapping between regularly used i
docul
ment formats is also made easier by a new
o
option allowing you to save sets n
)f style
sheets and assign them to documi!nts.
In
practice, thi5 means you can have ternplates
for different business letters, irwoices.
personal correspondence and so
on, allowing you quickly
to
develop regularly needed
document types.
Possibly the single
most important innovation
for serious 1NP
users, however, will
be the introduction of
full featured, industri-
ing to
ent
This
a half
work
Final
Amiga
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Ever
non
ow
will
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al strength RIF import higl
and export filters. RTF is vital for users want- exp
out
gra
imf
Ion
The 'text flow' option allows you to
have the document's body text flow
around the left of right of the table, or
over the top of the table_ A 'distance'
option tells Final Writer how much space
to leave between the table and the text
flowing around it, while if you type in a
title for your table in the 'Title' area, the
table's title will be appended to the spe•
cial Table of Illustrations section
Tables can be customised with 16 1
background colours (useful for ontrasting
different columns or rows of data)
and different thicknesses for the lines
that divide the table up.
It's as simple as it sounds - and that's
how it should be.
-ANEW
ust
rev
prt