SEARCHING FOR THE WRITE STUFF
Which word processor? Mike Wright finds some programs too unprofessional for words.
WORD PROCESSOR
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95
TASWORD TWO
Memory: 48K
Price: £13.90
MICRO PEN
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95
SPECTEXT
Memory: 48K
Price: £13.95
Word processor programs are the most common of the 'business' programs and their use extends beyond the workplace to the home and school. This month four word processing packages are reviewed: Word Processor from Quicksilva; Tasword Two from Tasman Software; Micropen from Contrast Software; and Spectcxt from McGraw-Hill. The prices vary considerably and, as you might expect, so too does the quality and features of the programs.
Word Processor is the first venture by Quicksilva outside the games market. The program takes about a minute to load and is written completely in Basic. The inlay provides one side of loading instructions and two sides of adverts for other Quicksilva products. The instructions, such as they are, for using the program are included as a help option in the program.
Once Word Processor has loaded it displays a menu of seven options. Those are: 0 - Exit; I - Help; 2 - Clear machine for new text: 3 - Edit text; 4 - Print text; 5 - Load text; 6 - Save text. On first loading option 1 must be chosen to discover what features and commands are available. There are three screens of Help information altogether but it is not until the second screen that you find out that a copy of the screens can be produced by pressing CAPS SHIFT and 4. Of course, if you now want a copy of page 1 you must return to the main menu.
There are two types of commands. The first set is for editing from the keyboard. The commands are formed by a combination of CAPS SHIFT and a numeric key. Most of them follow the Spectrum commands, so that 5, 6, 7 and 8 are used to move around the text, 2 and 3 control the CAPS LOCK and 0 deletes the character to the left of the cursor, 1 is used to clear a line of text, marked by the cursor, and 9 is used to create a blank space for inserting a character. CAPS SHIFT 4 is the print command but it will only copy the screen. If you have only two or three lines of text that wastes a lot of paper.
The other commands are used by first going into Extended mode - i.e. by pressing both shift keys together - before selecting the command. The commands allow the user to move the position of the cursor to the top, the bottom or any line of text; to mark and delete a block of text; to open up the text to allow extra text to be inserted and then to close it up again. However, all commands must be given at the start of a line or they are overwritten on the text and are ignored. When characters are deleted they are replaced by spaces.
The usual facilities of a word processor such as a choice of margin settings, type of justification and a search and replace feature are all missing. Although a wordwrap feature is included, so that if a word straddles the end of a line it is automatically transferred to the start of the next line, it is so slow as to be almost pointless.
This is not a program to be recommended even as an introduction to word processing. Better word processor programs have been printed in the listings section of some magazines.
By comparison Tasword Two is probably the most commonly used business program for the Spectrum. It is produced by Tasman Software and is accompanied by a manual. It is, surprisingly, the only package of the four that has such a manual and included in it are two very useful sections, one on adapting Tasword Two to drive almost any printer interface currently on the market, and one on converting it to run from microdrive. Tasword Tutor, an instructional text file designed to help the user learn the commands, is also provided on the cassette.
One of the great drawbacks of word processors for the Spectrum has always been the 32-column screen width. Tasword uses a redefined character set which gives 64 characters per line. An option to display a 32-column window in normal size is available if the characters are too difficult to read on your television.
The program boasts an impressive list of features that are found usually only on much more expensive programs. Those include wordwrap, setting of margins, rejustification of text, block copy and move, replacement of any word by another word, and control of the print type for printers other than daisy wheels.
The first time it is loaded you should establish the control codes for your printer. That is done by pressing SYMBOL SHIFT A to stop the program and display a menu of loading, saving and printing options. Option g is used to redefine the graphics on keys 1-8 as printer control codes. On first loading they are set with codes for the Epson FX-80 typefaces.
That menu is also used to enter Basic while retaining Tasword Two in memory so that it can be modified to run from a microdrive. Full instructions on the necessary changes are given in the manual. Once the changes are made and the program run the same menu is used to save the customised version.
The last two lines on the screen are used to display a status report on the text, including the position of the cursor by line and column, and whether the right justification, insert mode and wordwrap are on and off, as well as a pointer to select EDIT for help. Selecting EDIT produces a list of commands and their functions together with an option for a further list. Those are taken directly from the manual.
At the start the wordwrap is on, the text is justified - in other words it appears as the text does on this page - and is overwritten at the cursor's position. The wordwrap is fast enough for letters not to be lost while it is functioning. Wordwrap can be switched off. The justification can also be turned off allowing text to be justified on the left but ragged on the right. A third option allows lines of text to be centred. Individual lines can also be justified or unjustified. The only automatic justification, however, is on new text. If text is deleted then the spaces remain until the paragraph is reformed.
One very useful feature enables you to mark blocks of text and then to move or copy them to other points in the text.
Another powerful feature is the Replace, or find, command.
At its price Tasword Two is an outstanding program. It has managed to overcome many of the inherent disadvantages of the Spectrum in providing features which one would normally expect on much more expensive programs. One notable feature for commercial use not included is a mail-merge facility. That has now been corrected and a Tasmerge program that will allow data to be taken from a Masterfile file should be available soon.
The third offering is Micropen from Contrast Software. The program is remarkably easy to use. All the text editing commands require only the CAPS SHIFT and a numeric key. The features offered include justification, reformatting of paragraphs after deletions, user-defined graphics and a search facility.
Unlike the other programs there is not even the most basic of status reports. You are left to remember your position within the text. That makes using the option to move to any particular line difficult. Otherwise movement through the text is achieved using the cursor keys.
When new text is added the existing text is automatically reformatted. However, when text is deleted the paragraph needs to be reformatted manually. The justification can be turned on and off. The search option can be used to search for any string in the text. If you search for a non-existent string the program will continue looking forever and to escape you must break into the program. Numerical key 9 asks for the text to be entered and permits the entry of graphics characters - including user-defined.
The options to load, save, create, edit and print a file form a separate menu.
Once again the manual is supplied as a text file already held in memory and to use Micropen the manual has to be cleared from memory and a new file created. Another, more important, drawback is the program speed. The wordwrap is only slightly faster than that of Word Processor and even a two-fingered typist will soon overtake the program. Against that must be balanced its case of use. It would, possibly, make a good introductory program to demonstrate some of the facilities available on 'grown up' word processors. As a business program it compares favourably with the Quicksilva Word Processor.
Spectext from McGraw-Hill promises a great deal including all the features of a full word processor, a filing system and a Mailmerge facility as well as being microdrive compatible. In fact Spectext consists of four programs - Spectext, Specfile, Specmerge and print mod on one side of the cassette.
On opening the case, however, you are likely to be disappointed. There is no printed manual. Instead a leaflet is provided explaining how to load the program followed by the first of two text files that comprise the manual. That can be printed on a full-size printer, although it seems that only the Kempston, Hilderbay and Interface 1 interfaces are supported by the software. I was unable to get it to work with my Tasman interface and had to resort to the ZX printer. That resulted in a manual eight feet long.
On loading the program displays a menu which offers eight options: 1 - Enter text; 2 - Load text; 3 - Print text; 4 - Read/Edit text; 5 - Save text; 6 - Reorganize; 7 - Switch printers; 8 - Catalogue. You select the first option to start typing in text.
A special keyboard-scanning routine is used to speed the Spectrum response. It works so well that even the fastest typist is unlikely to outstrip it. New lines, paragraphs and pages are inserted by pressing ENTER and 1, 2 or 3 respectively or z - to return to the main menu - followed by ENTER again. That slows down the input and somewhat defeats the purpose of the keyboard-scanning routine.
The biggest disadvantage lies in the way it displays text on the screen. It is unformatted and is effectively treated as one continuous line of characters interspersed with graphics characters to show where paragraphs and pages start. The text is formatted as it is printed but cannot be justified.
To edit text option 4 is used. That allows commands to be used at two levels. At the first level text can be added, deleted or printed from the cursor position to the end. Those functions are accessed by a, d or c respectively. Pressing z leads to the next level. An indicator is used to show the current option, ENTER is used to toggle between the search and replace options and a block move facility. Before text can be moved it must be deleted. For some reason the move option moves the last piece of deleted text.
Options 2 and 5 are used to load and save text. Both microdrive and cassette can be used. Using the microdrive facility to store text still leaves the program to be loaded from tape.
The text is printed using option 3 and option 6 allows the user to change some of the parameters such as the number of characters per line, the left margin and number of lines per page as well as offering automatic page numbering and double spacing.
Specific is used to set up a simple database for subsequent use with Specmerge. Like Spectext it is run from a main menu which allows the database to be designed, to add, sort or search and edit the file, as well as the usual save and load facilities. The design option is used to establish the number of fields in the database and their names. Once designed the data is entered via the add option. That prompts for the fields one at a time and also shows the available space; to finish adding data the STOP Function key is used. The records can be searched for any string or any field edited using the search/edit option. That permits unwanted records to be deleted. Sort allows the database to be sorted into alphanumeric order on any one field.
Specmerge allows a specially prepared text file to be merged with fields from Specfile. An up arrow followed by a series of numbers, corresponding to the fields in Specfile, and a second up arrow marks the places in the text where the contents of those fields will be inserted. The feature makes the reproduction of personalised letters very easy.
Of the four programs only Tasword and Spectext can be said to approach the standard necessary for business use. Spectext itself is a useful but limited word processor but the addition of Specmerge improves it. Unfortunately it is not improved sufficiently to challenge Tasword, unless mailing-list facilities are the main requirement.
Quicksilva Ltd, 13 Palmerston Road, Southampton, SO1 1LL.
Tasman Software, 17 Hartley Crescent, Leeds, LS6 2LL.
Contrast Software, Farnham Road, West Liss, Hampshire GU33 6JU.
McGraw-Hill Book Co Ltd, Maidenhead, Berks SL6 2QL.
| Gilbert Factor | 2/10 |
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YOU HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY, NOW ALL YOU NEED IS THE SOFTWARE. BILL BENNETT ASSESSES WORD PROCESSING FOR THE HOME.
WORD PROCESSING was invented in 1968 by IBM. A magnetic tape machine connected to an electric typewriter allowed a typist to produce a number of copies of any letter or document typed into the system.
What made the word processor more than a clever but expensive photocopier was a simple editing facility which let the typist change small parts of the document on the magnetic tape. Today's word processors, range from home letter-writing packages, to huge devices the size of freezers capable of storing an entire encyclopaedia in memory.
The print you see on the pages of newspapers, books and magazines like Your Computer is produced by an advanced form of word processing called typesetting. Words are typed into a typesetting machine and juggled around. Modern photo-typesetting machines are only slightly more sophisticated than ordinary word-processors.
All these systems, from the most powerful dedicated microcomputers based around one special program to the most humble home unit all have a number of features in common.
These are an inputting device - usually a keyboard - a real-time output device - usually a video display screen - a printer or batch output device, a working memory, a disc drive or tape back-up memory and a central processing unit.
REPLACING THE TYPEWRITER
More important than all that hardware is the software. Over half of the world's business computers are used at some time or other as word processors, which makes it the single most important computer application.
In the home a computer can be used in conjunction with a relevant software package to replace a typewriter.
Students can use them to type essays neatly and edit and correct them as many times as necessary. Some word processors interface with databases, allowing - for example - an almost identical letter to be sent to a list of people. The program might even print out a list of names and addresses at the end of the run to help you label the envelopes. Certain relevant phrases or words, such as Sir, Madam, Mr or Ms can be inserted at relevant points in the letter.
Word processors are popular with authors, who like to revise their material constantly before sending it to a publisher. The same applies to playwrights, scriptwriters and some types of journalists. Secretaries use word processors, and to some extent are being replaced by them. Because secretaries often have to type the same sentence time after time, they can, for example, type the sentence or paragraph just once, store it on disc and recall it with a few keystrokes each time it is to be used.
Certain professionals, especially solicitors, often need to write letters and documents which are cobbled together from standard clauses. They find word processors a boon. How about your local computer users' club? A word processor could help you produce a newsletter.
The keyboard is the front-end of any computer system and, when applied to a word processor system, its design is all important. Ideally a keyboard should be as near to a typewriter keyboard as possible. The keys should have a positive feel to them, so that you know when they are hit. If this is not possible then audio feedback in the form of a keyboard bleep can be almost as good.
Keys should be laid out as on a typewriter, in the QWERTY pattern. The more standard the better. The space between keys is important, fiddly little keyboards are much harder to use than those with the keys spaced in the conventional way. A proper space-bar is a great help, as are proper shift keys, ideally one at each end of the bottom row of letters.
The return key should be to the right of the middle two rows of letters, and it should be impossible to hit it by mistake, or to accidentally hit some other key which has dire consequences. Function keys are a great help to word processing, as they enable the various functions of the software to be implemented quickly. There is also less chance of something going wrong if they are used.
FUNCTION KEYS
Dedicated word-processors usually have the function keys marked with the relevant function. Home packages are easier to use if there is some way of doing this. For example, there is a strip of Perspex above the function keys on the BBC Micro, which can have a printed list of the functions inserted beneath.
Some people find it easier to type using a small keyboard which will sit on their lap. Many home micros are ideal for this. On bigger micros, there is often a numeric keypad to the right of the main set of keys. This can be used in a word processing system as a cursor control pad. Other ways of moving a cursor around involve control-characters, function keys and in some cases even joysticks.
Repeat keys can be useful and many home computers have an auto-repeat facility which starts after the key has been depressed for a certain amount of time. There are a number of alternatives to the keyboard approach but the only one that is likely to be seen by most home users is the Microwriter, which can be used with the fingers of one hand.
The display is every bit as important as the keyboard. Together with the keyboard it forms the interface between the user and the word processor. Before the advent of cheap personal computing the keyboard-display team was often known as a terminal, a name which is a hangover from the days when computers were large expensive machines with a number of terminals.
For serious word processing, choice of display is crucial. A bad display can ruin your eyesight if used for more than a few hours a day.
For display the home user has three choices: you could spend money on a monitor, simply use the television set, or if your machine allows it, an LCD display. For home word processing there is little point in spending a lot of money on a monitor unless you intend to do a lot of word processing, or you have another use for the monitor.
A monochrome monitor has the advantage of higher resolution than the average TV, but it costs money. Also most home micros do not readily connect to monochrome monitors. Often they have green screens with light-green characters, which in theory at least are better for the eyes than white on black. Many experts prefer yellow on a brown or orange background, as this is thought to be more restful.
Most home users will be content with the more usual TV display. If you intend to use this it is more important than usual to tune the set in properly. You may even need to adjust the setting on your micro. Do not attempt this without consulting your manual because you could make things worse than they already are.
The set needs to be properly tuned because you are going to spend a lot of time looking at the screen, and especially if your micro is capable of 80 characters to a line, you will quickly get eyestrain. Some word processors make use of colour, but the majority do not. It is up to you how you adjust for this. I find that a sharper clearer picture can be obtained on most machines by sacrificing some of the colour quality.
Certain home micros have a naturally white or green background with the writing in black. This is harder to tune properly than a predominantly black background with white, or light-coloured characters. If your software allows you to choose, always choose a darker background. A television is capable of displaying fewer characters on the screen than a monitor, but with home computers the width of the display is usually determined by the hardware. A screen which can display more characters makes it easier to find your way around the text you are processing. It can also allow you to inspect on the screen the actual format your document will take when it is finally printed out.
If the screen width is as narrow as the Vic-20 - only 22 characters wide - horizontal scrolling may be used to allow you to input long lines. Alternatively the software might just turn the text around at the end of a line and leave the width-handling until the output stage.
The majority of home micros can interface to Centronics-type printers fairly easily. That does not mean that the printer has to be a Centronics one, merely that it has that type of interface. This opens up a whole range of printers to the microcomputer, from the Sharp/Tandy multicolour plotter/printer upwards.
The Tandy CGP-115 produces adequate printout in colour for a number of tasks, and is good value at around £150, but only prints to a width of 4.5in. Slightly more expensive but much better in terms of quality is the black-and-white Seikosha GP-80, which also happens to be the Vic printer and the Acorn Atom printer. This produces a dot-matrix output which is suitable for just about anything a home word processor will ever print. The Oki-Microline printer also falls into this category.
At around £200 this gives a high enough quality of print for us to accept letters and articles written using them. They are also suitable for students to use when writing essays, but could only be used as a commercial printer by the tiniest of businesses.
Above the Seikosha and Oki comes the Epson range of printers and these really are superb. They are capable of producing output in a number of sizes and widths, and some of them can even produce text in a number of different typefaces. They also allow expanded and condensed print. Used with certain word-processors they have proportional spacing.
Proportional spacing occurs when the number of characters sent to a line by the computer is not enough to fill it. If nothing was done the right edge of the column would look ragged. To compensate, most cheap word processors just distribute extra spaces between the words to fill the line. With proportional spacing that extra space is evenly distributed between the characters in a word and those interword spaces.
At around £300 the Epson RX-80 is probably the best investment you could make if you are considering getting down to some home word processing. One particular good feature is that the printer has a double-strike mode where a character is printed twice with the print-head just slightly displaced to get a better character.
Back-up memory is a vexing problem to the home computer user, and even more so to the home word processor. For a long time we have been waiting for a cheap, reliable and fast memory-backing medium to replace cassette tapes, which amongst other problems are slow. For most purposes cassette tape is the only option open to the home user.
Microdrives and microfloppy disc drives will be a great help because a lot of word processing is to do with pulling phrases from one document and sending them to another, a task eminently suited to disc.
You will need at least 16K of RAM before you can even think of word processing. A character takes up a minimum of one byte, so even if there are no overheads in terms of memory use, and the word-processing software takes no RAM, the maximum size document would be around 16,000 characters or 2,500 words.
The three packages for the Spectrum all require a minimum of 48K RAM. Wordcraft for the Vic-20 is in ROM but it still requires an additional 8K of RAM - which is supplied - to run. Typically Wordcraft allows about 1,000 words and the Spectrum programs allow around 5,000 words. View, the BBC word-processor allows around 4,000 when in mode 7 and 1,500 in mode 3. The cheaper Gemini word-processing package allows about 1,000 words to be typed into the BBC Micro.
Some micro displays are net capable of handling lower-case and capital letters, though you may want to use both in your document. In that case capitals are usually indicated on the screen by reversing that character space to black on white, or perhaps some other colour.
On other systems the reversed characters might indicate that the characters are to be printed in a different size, or that they are different typefaces. The resolution of the screen - that is, the total number of pixels available to make up the various characters - is also important. On the Spectrum each character cell is eight by eight pixels. On the Oric it is merely six by eight. This means that the characters on the Spectrum look clearer.
If the character cell is too small then descenders are not possible. These are the parts of a character that go below the character line, for example the tail of g and y. If descenders are not possible then the text can be very difficult to read.
it is best to use a television that can be easily moved to the most comfortable viewing position, because backache and neck-strain are just as serious problems as eye-strain. It is important not to sit too near a television set for a long time. The minimum safety margin is to take half an hour off for every one and a half hours working and never work for more than six hours at a stretch.
Choosing a suitable printer for your word processor is one of the most difficult decisions to make. The quality and look of your printed output will in many cases make more of an impression on those you wish to communicate with than what you write. Just imagine if Chamberlain had come back from Munich with a scrap of ZX printout declaring "peace- in our time", or if Shakespeare only had a copy of Julius Caesar printed without real descenders when he was trying to raise the production capital.
There are a number of possible choices of printer but for the most part you will be restricted by cost and compatibility. In most cases a good quality printer will cost substantially more than the micro that drives it. The compatibility is important, for example the Sinclair printer only works with Sinclair micros and Sinclair micros will not work with other printers without extra hardware.
ZX SPECTRUM
The biggest-selling micro in Britain is the Sinclair Spectrum. As a word processor it has a number of limitations, but if you already own 8 Spectrum, a tape recorder and a printer, than paying a few pounds for a word- processing package is not going to break the bank.
The video output of the Spectrum, especially when white on black is more than adequate. It allows only 32 characters across, which is about the minimum useful width of a word-processor screen. The big let-down of the Spectrum is its keyboard, which simply is not suitable for touch-typing. The problem is not just the feel of the keys but also the lack of a space-bar. You could buy a separate moving-key board but this adds to the expense.
Like most home computers the Spectrum has an adequate tape-operating system which can be used to store prepared documents. It has the advantage of being reliable and faster than the tape-operating systems on most other home computers. Microdrives will give the Spectrum access to fast, reliable and relatively large files.
Unfortunately the Spectrum needs a special interface to be able to use a proper printer. The ZX Printer is not suitable for word processing. The ZX LPrint from Euroelectronics interfaces the Spectrum to any Centronics-type printer for about £35. There is also a £45 unit available from Kempston Electronics.
The Quicksilva word-processing package for the Spectrum is written in Basic. The advantage of this is that it allows the user to customise the program fairly easily. Such customisation will really come into its own when Microdrives become available. Unfortunately it also means that the response is slower than that of the keyboard.
Tasword is written in machine-code and is consequently faster. The author of the package has so much faith in his software that he used the package, together with the ZX printer to produce the useful manual. It is an impressive word-processing package when you take into account its low price and the limitations of the machine.
The Microl word-processing package is better organised and consequently more expensive than the other two Spectrum packages. At times it almost seems pompous. Unlike the other two packages it allows graphics characters to be used freely.
DRAGON 32
The home computer that seems to have been neglected by software houses is the Dragon 32. Its 6809 processor seems to have been too much of a challenge for programmers. Probably the best piece of Dragon software is a word processor called Telewriter. Telewriter was originally written in the U.S.A. for the Tandy Colour Computer, which is very similar to the Dragon.
As a word processing micro the Dragon is a little disappointing. Its so-called real keyboard does not appear to be up to taking the kind of beating that a hard-working word processor can expect. When using it I found that the machine's case tended to wander about all over the table. This is because it is so light. After weighing it down with books I found that it worked satisfactorily, but the keyboard just did not feel quite right.
Telewriter is a marvellous piece of software, and well documented too. It is excellent. Like all the other packages I looked at, the quality of the software was higher than that of the hardware. The Dragon has an awkward screen and is downright difficult to use with a tape recorder.
I particularly like the Demonstration program - always a good idea - supplied with Telewriter. Also praiseworthy is the way a number of different formats are available, matching the package to different printers. There is even a program to convert files from ASCII to the Telewriter format.
VIC-20
The Commodore Vic-20 has the best keyboard in its price range. It is solid and robust, there are four function keys, and it is the right size, shape and weight. I could type on it all day. Despite this the Vic is not exactly an ideal micro to use as a word processor.
For a kick-off, the screen width is a mere 23 characters. That is about four words. After a while you begin to get hopelessly lost, because you cannot realistically read through a document when only 22 lines of 23 characters each are visible. The other big black mark against the Vic is its tiny memory - less than 3K is available to play with.
Wordcraft-20 gets around the memory problems by supplying some of its own. This is done easily because the package comes in a plug-in cartridge that has both ROM and RAM. Even with the extra 8K supplied, there is only room for around a thousand words, which is not a very long document. If Tolstoy had had a Vic-20, the War and Peace might only have been a pamphlet.
The Wordcraft-20 package has the advantage of being switchable. This means that you can return to Basic, and use the 8K of RAM for other purposes. It does of course work with the disc unit. It is an ideal unit for someone who already has a Vic-20.
BBC
The BBC Micro, which has an excellent ROM-based word processor called View. The BBC Micro is the best home computer for word processing, but it also happens to be the most expensive. View has a number of features which can only be found on word processors for the more expensive micros.
View costs £60 and lives in 16K of ROM. Although it can be used on its own with a cassette player, it is better suited to a disc-based system which makes it fairly expensive. To use it with a printer also requires a special driver program which will set you back a further £10. View can be used with the BBC Micro in a number of modes, which affects radically the number of characters seen on the screen at any moment and the amount of text that can be held in memory.
The BBC Micro is well-suited to word processing, having a real keyboard with a whole raft of function keys. It also has a real typewriter feel, which makes touch-typing not only possible, but easy. The 80-column screen display available in mode 3 is an excellent bonus, but it does have associated disadvantages. It only leaves you with 10K of memory space to play with, which is not a lot of text. Furthermore, to use the 80-column screen without causing permanent eye-strain requires the extra expense of a good monitor. Luckily a monochrome one will do the job.
View allows continuous processing, when used with discs. This allows the user to continuously update a file held on that disc, leaving both the original copy and the final copy on that disc. It also allows the user to create macros. These are effectively multiple instructions which allow the user to define a whole group of instructions by a single instruction.
LYNX, ORIC AND ATOM
The Lynx is eminently suited to word processing and in fact that could become its main usage when the disc unit and CP/M become available on the micro. The world's biggest-selling word-processor is Wordstar and that should be up and running on the Lynx before long. An interesting feature of the Lynx that may enhance its ability as a word processor is its soft screen. However, the return key is in the wrong place and there have been troubles with the printer interface.
ORIC
The 48K Oric is better suited to word processing than the Spectrum, mainly because of its keyboard. The keys are harder than those of the Spectrum which gives it a better feel, though it is still not as good as a proper keyboard as found on the BBC or the Vic-20. However the Oric does have an ersatz space-bar which together with the audio feedback given by the micro does enable an approximation of touch-typing.
The separate Cursor keys are again helpful for moving around the screen. The 40- character screen width is a plus, but the characters are of lower resolution than the Spectrum. The worst feature of the Oric as a word processor is that it is difficult to get a high-quality image on the screen. Your Computer contributor Dr John Dawson explains on page 26 how he is writing an Oric word processor called Author.
ACORN ATOM
The Acorn Atom was the first cheap computer to have a word processor. At only £30 the Atom Wordpack was ahead of its time. It is based in ROM rather than on tape and simply fits into the main board of the Atom. The package is very good, and is helped by the Atom's good keyboard.
CONCLUSIONS
When looking for a word processor for your micro remember the following points.
Interfacing your micro to a suitable printer is not always easy. Investigate the possibilities before spending money on software.
Before buying a package let someone demonstrate it to you. Check that you really do find it easy to use, ask awkward questions.
If you do not have a micro already, but want word processing, look for a real keyboard, a wide screen display, and a Centronics-type printer interface.
If you intend to do a lot of serious word- processing then the hardware you purchase must take this into account.
All information in this page is provided by ZXSR instead of ZXDB