★ APPLICATIONS ★ BUREAUTIQUE ★ PYRAWORD ★ |
| Pyraword (Amstrad Action) | Applications Bureautique |
The name "Pyraword" may conjure up images of a multi-headed demon capable of swallowing the whole unabridged dictionary in a single mouthful it is in fact Gremlin's latest offering, a word-processor. You may ask what possible good another word-processor could do. Lots - Pyraword is simple enough for the novice yet has ample features for advanced users.
When Pyraword first loads, it reads a file WPRINTER.CFG. This is a standard Ascii file which contains information on Paper and Pen inks, linefeeds on or off. character set and printer codes. You can alter this file to suit your needs. Cursor movement is controlled by the arrow keys. Cursor speed can be set at normal or fast (fast is real hare's pace). Screen scrolling is impressive: it must be the most rapid yet achieved on an Amstrad. Its drawback is that as text scrolls it becomes illegible.
Routines to copy, delete or move a block - essential tools for any real word-processor - have been incorporated. When referring to blocks. 1 mean a section of text: in Pyraword you mark its beginning and end with Control-B and Control-E. and the block changes to reverse video. The block-copy allows for multiple copies to be made within the current text or even to another file on a different disk. Block-delete asks for confirmation before binning the text. And even after deleting, the block can be retrieved as long as another block hasn't been marked. One rather disappointing aspect to Pyraword is that margins can be set no more than 80 characters apart. If a print code is inserted at the right-hand margin, however, a line more than 80 characters across can be sent to the printer. If you have used a word-processor before you will recognize several key sequences as virtually standard. With Pyraword you will have to learn some new keypresses that are not immediately obvious. For example, Control-R formats text. R contrived to stand for 'Resnake text." Even more obscure. Control-N for "New input' is used to read in or merge another file to the cursor position. Pyraword, like a coin, has heads and tails: on one side it's extremely well thought out; the other side is close to the bottom. On the plus side:
The minus side:
A command mode gives you a degree of control over the system: you can alter the current drive, delete and rename files, select a different national character set (to get things like French accents), paper and pen inks can be changed, backup files can be zapped and Ascii files can be compressed - all very handy. Marvellous freedom is given for defining printer control codes. All information is stored in a text file, which you can edit to suit your particular setup. Print parameters such as top margin, bottom margin, lines per page and form depth arc handled easily. Headers and footers can likewise be defined without trouble. Gremlin's claim that Pyraword is the complete word-processor" may be overdoing it somewhat. It certainly has enough features to shame certain "word processors" and if you are a first-time buyer its a good buy.
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