APPLICATIONSDIVERS ★ NEW-WORD ★

NEW-WORD (Amstrad Action)NEW-WORD (Popular Computing Weekly)
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Chris Anderson taps away at NewWord. Is it a serious rival to WordStar's supremacy?

If Amsoft had released this program they'd undoubtedly have called it Wordstar Plus. That's what it is. Wordstar plus a few embellishments. Probably wouldn't attract much attention were it not for its price. On any other computer Wordstar plus spelling checker plus mailmerge costs several hundred pounds, and even on the Amstrad Pocket Wordstar will 9ost you over £100. So NewWordis certainly a bargain substitute.

It s greatest appeal will be for people who are familiar with Wordstar and want to run a similar program on their Amstrad. Such people will immediately find themselves at home with NewWord. At least 90% of the commands are identical. Text is entered and edited in almost exactly the same way and files from the two programs are interchangeable.

The main difference between the two programs is in user-friendliness. The authors of NewWord have tried hard to eliminate Wordstar's ambiguous prompts and have also revamped the range of 'help' menus. This, coupled with a good (and very large) manual, means that a newcomer should be able to get to grips with the program a good deal quicker than with Wordstar. However it retains Wordstar's initially confusing system of multi-key commands - this, plus the sheer size and complexity of the program, means that if ease of learning is a high priority, you might well do better to look at a simpler (and cheaper!) word-processor such as Tasword or Protext.

The other main improvements are as follows:

  • Text which you set as bold or underlined is high-lighted on screen in inverse video. This is a valuable addition if you use these functions regularly because without it you can easily forget to toggle off' these commands and so print out a document which is -underlined throughout.
  • There is an 'unerase' facility. If you accidentally delete a word or a line this will restore it. You can even use the facility as a fast way of moving a line from one location to another.
  • You don't have Pocket Wordstar's annoying restriction which limits the size of blocks that can be moved or copied to just 30 words or so.
  • The search and replace function is even more powerful than Wordstar's. In particular you have the option of replacing all occurrences of a phrase from the current cursor position[*******(UK)] as well as all the other choices. Also you can look for the end of a paragraph (hard-retum) - often very useful.
  • The print routines are more powerful, flexible and understandable and it's considerably easier to customise the program for your own printer.
  • There are special commands which allow you mark out individual COLUMNS of data in a document. These can then be moved or copied. Very useful if you regularly produce tables.
  • The mailmerge section of the program includes a facility for conditional printing. For example, you could send out a circular letter including a paragraph which would only be printed for people living in Scotland.
  • The Amstrad version of the program comes ready installed so that the cursor keys and each of the function keys can be used as a shorthand for some of the more common commands. This can be done with Wordstar, but you need to know how!

Are there any disadvantages? Yes, one important one for 6128 owners who don't have an extra disk-drive. The various elements of New Word take up an awful lot of space. The maximum amount of space for your documents you can get on a working disk is 57K less than a third of the total. With Wordstar, once you're familiar with it, you can delete the help-messages file and give yourself double this space. JVewlVord won"t allow you to do this. If you write so much that you need a word-processor as good as this, you'll have to fork out for the second drive. PCW 8256 owners don't have this problem as they can simply run NewWord from their built-in RAM disk drive (drive M) and use drive A for storing documents.

The lack of a second drive is an even greater handicap when it comes to using the EXCELLENT spelling checker program that's included in the package. It can just about be used with a single drive, but you have to constantly swap disks. The checker has a built in dictionary with a remarkable 45,000 words! It's fast and powerful, offering numérous options including the ability to suggest correct spellings for words you're unsure of!

People disagree about the value of spelling checkers, but if you think you could use one, be assured this one is state of the art.

VERDICT

NewWord should hove enormous appeal for two different sets of people: 61 28 owners who can afford a second disk drive, and 82S6 owners who want to go beyond LocoScript. So long as they are familiar with Wordstar or are prepared to spend time getting to grips with a powerful program, this package is unbeatable.

AMSTRAD ACTION #7

★ PUBLISHER: New Star Software
★ YEAR: 19XX
★ CONFIG: 128K or 256K + CP/M+ (Amstrad CPC 6128/PCW 8256)
★ LANGUAGE:
★ LiCENCE: COMMERCIALE
★ PRICE: £69 (disk)

★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ DOWNLOAD ★

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L'Amstrad CPC est une machine 8 bits à base d'un Z80 à 4MHz. Le premier de la gamme fut le CPC 464 en 1984, équipé d'un lecteur de cassettes intégré il se plaçait en concurrent  du Commodore C64 beaucoup plus compliqué à utiliser et plus cher. Ce fut un réel succès et sorti cette même années le CPC 664 équipé d'un lecteur de disquettes trois pouces intégré. Sa vie fut de courte durée puisqu'en 1985 il fut remplacé par le CPC 6128 qui était plus compact, plus soigné et surtout qui avait 128Ko de RAM au lieu de 64Ko.