| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ BUREAUTIQUE ★ TASWORD 464 ★ |
| TASWORD 464 (c) Run informatique (AM-Mag) | TASWORD 464 (Computing Today) | TASWORD 464 (Personal Computer News) | TASWORD 464 (Mein Home-Computer) | TASWORD 464 (Cahier de l'Amstrad) |
Many home micros are used for word processing these days, so we've taken a look at Tasman's offering for the Amstrad CPC 464. One of my main reasons for buying an Amstrad was its potential as a home word processor. To date Tasword is the only package available but having fallen out with my typewriter I simply could not wait to see what other packages might offer. Relying on Tasman's reputation founded upon the Tasword package for the Spectrum I sent a cheque; their reputation remains intact. I was, however, disappointed with the presentation until I read the letter explaining that this was not the final program. It says a great deal for any software house when they send out a temporary version of a package rather than simply announcing that the final version will be delayed. The only difference was that the copy I had been sent would only hold around 9K of text while the final program should hold about 14K. The manual despite being a photocopy was complete. It was well laid out and informative, the index linked the commands listed on the screen to the relevant part of the manual. STARTING UP Tasword loads at the slower baud rate but Tasman have chosen not to protect their program so that the user can make back up copies with a choice of saving in fast or normal mode. One can also customise the page layout, special characters, printer control characters, a second character set as well as page, pen and border colours. In fact, one can even change the shape of the cursor. The facility to make back up copies is thus very useful — I hope it will not be abused. In fast mode the program takes about 3 minutes to load and on completion the user is presented with six lines of control characters, an inverse line that serves as a key to the control symbols, 16 blank text lines, another inverse line showing margin and tab information followed by the last line which shows the state of various command switches. The last line also shows the position of the cursor by giving the line and column number. One feature that Amstrad left out is a CAPS LOCK indicator, Tasword has one. When the CAPS LOCK is on the bottom line messages MAIN FEATURES The package really does seem to have all of the features that one could want. Files can be saved and loaded as well as merged. The cursor can be moved by character, word, line or by page. The whole screen can be scrolled sideways in order to view text at the maximum width of 128 characters. Pieces of text can be moved left and right, blocks of text can be copied or repositioned. Text can be deleted as characters, words, lines or blocks. Margins can be set for any width up to 128 positions; this facility can be used to write paragraphs of different widths by setting the margin and then rejustifying the paragraph. A line can be centralised but there is no command to centre a paragraph. TAB commands are present and are very easy to set, the positions are marked on the bottom line. Headers and footers are available and the user can choose to have each page numbered. Page breaks can be shown on the screen the length of the page being entered via the CUSTOMISE command. There is a command to search and exchange text which is easy to use but the user has to stop the search otherwise the program searches all of the empty lines. If text has been exchanged then rejustification will take place to fit the current margin settings, so be careful. The method of inserting text was the feature that I liked least. Inserting a letter within a word was fine but adding text within a line caused the whole line to be broken up, I found myself constantly rejustifying and then One final option that caught my eye was the second character set, this is displayed at the top of the screen after CTRL & / are pressed after which any one of the 92 weird and wonderful shapes can be printed to the screen, though I doubt by my printer. Operating the system is simple, one only has to look up at the HELP window to find the two keys needed to initiate a command. One feature that is valuable is the ability to leave the program, define one of the numeric keys as a frequently used word, or words, and then return to the program.
TYPING BEGINS The Amstrad keyboard makes typing a pleasure and despite reaching quite high speeds I never managed to defeat the program. The wordwrap feature works very smoothly and for any margin settings. The only problem with wordwrap is that long words are often better hyphenated, especially in narrow margin text. I could only manage this by turning off the wordwrap, entering the word and then turning wordwrap back on again. The method of moving or copying text can be very clumsy unless the area of text you want to move happens to be a paragraph. Right hand justification uses excessive spacing especially if the text is within narrow margins and has been edited. I often found that if I unjustified a line I could fit the first word of the next line onto it with ease. Perhaps this is the price of the fairly quick justification process. The move command was easily the slowest, a block would be dealt with at the rate of about one line per second. I had problems when I wanted a piece of 40 column text rejustified into 120 column, my last paragraph appeared badly chewed, this may be due to the fact that I already had over 7k of text and the program needs 2k of workspace. All of the commands are very easy to find from either the HELP window or the HELP page. Each command can be implemented by holding down either the SHIFT or the CTRL key and then pressing the relevant character key. WILL IT WORK YOUR PRINTER? The printer control codes are set up for the EPSON RX80 but they are all fairly easy to change for any other printer. All of the commands that your printer will accept can be sent with the text by means of inverse characters placed in the appropriate places within the text. To underline simply press CTRL & space bar and a list of the printer functions is displayed, enter J and it will appear at the cursor position as an inverse character, underline off is a lower case j. The other printer functions can be accessed in the same manner. Having spent hours hacking at my printer cable to stop the double line spacing problem I was unable to take advantage of the option that should force double spacing, instead I had to increase the line spacing. VERDICT The speed of the program is impressive, I was rarely bored waiting for a command to be completed. Justification of say 23 lines is complete in a little over 8 seconds. Other commands such as moving text and searching take longer but one uses them infrequently and I did not find the delay serious. The package is not comprehensive but it is very well equipped with all of the important functions, even the ability to unjustify a J.W. Spencer , Computing Today |
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