PROCESSING WORDS ON THE SPECTRUM

DOMINIC HANDY sets his fingers flying over the keys of his computer and evaluates a trio of wordprocessing packageshat don't actually improve literacy, but make writing on the Spectrum much easier.

Producer: Softechnics
Retail Price: £14.95 (Tape/Microdrive, Kempston/AMX Mouse)
Other disk versions to follow

The Writer comes in a video type cassette box, which contains a very professional-looking manual and a cassette that holds both tape and Microdrive versions of the software. Users of the tape version should notice that you do not get some of the options available on the Microdrive version, like HELP files and the print merging facility. Even so, the tape based software includes all the vital elements of The Writer. After a short time using The Writer it became apparent that this word processor had been based on the word processors available in the CP/M market.

The Writer uses a very attractive method of accessing the options. When you press the EDIT key, the status bar at the top changes to display six options: FILE; EDIT; TEXT; SEARCH; FORMAT and HELP. Options are selected using a pointing device, which may be a mouse, joystick or the keyboard. The option window then appears using the same technique as Art Studio, and subsequent can be accessed from this.

Although The Writer uses windows, most of the text handling operations can be carried out via the keyboard. This mix of controls allows operations to be carried out very easily at speed. All the keyboard operations are accessed by various combinations of SHIFTs.

On entering The Writer you are put straight into INSERT mode as with most CP/M wordprocessors. The layout of this is very professional. You do not miss all the text after the cursor, as in The Last Word, or get the very strained process of all the text after the cursor scrolling forward, as in Tasword III. What you do get is very easy to use and amazingly fast process not that different to 'good old' Spectrum BASIC.

The basic, non-flashing, inversed cursor can be moved around the 22 line text window in a variety of different fashions - all the cursor options found in Tasword III are used, plus the ability to move to special markers in the text, as well as specifying the exact page of text to which you want to jump.

The Writer has two types of marker. The first is a position marker, which can be jumped to at any stage. This is very useful if you want to wander off around the text fiddling with it, but want to leave some kind of marker to return to. The second type of marker is the block marker. One of these can be placed on either side of the text on the Spectrum, thus creating a block which can be moved around at will. All other Spectrum word processors, including Tasword II and The Last Word only allow lines of text to be manipulated in this way.

As well as moving blocks you can save them to a backing store, and at a later date include a saved block into the text you are writing. The uses for this seem endless. I found it useful for all types of work - files can be chopped and changed until you get the right mixture. It's rather like a very flexible MERGEing. Unfortunately cassette based users do not have this operation at their disposal.

As with all professional word processors, The Writer offers TABs. The TAB option is extremely powerful, and can easily give the novice some very business-like results. There are basically three types of TABs: left/right justified; centered and decimal. When the TABulate key is pressed the cursor jumps to the next TAB marker (shown in the RULER line under the status bar) and then carries out the appropriate action when text is entered. If a justification TAB is chosen, then the text is justified to the TAB marker accordingly; text is centered around a Centre TAB marker. If a decimal TAB is used, the text is aligned so that decimal points appear under the TAB marker.

A leader up to a TAB marker may be specified which causes any spaces before a TAB marker to be filled with one of three different characters: dotted lines, dashes or a solid lines. All of these prove useful for clean and neat tables, and once used you wonder how you ever coped without them.

The FIND/CHANGE options on The Writer are again the best of any Spectrum word processor. Basic find and change options are allowed, but 'wild card' characters are also permitted. This means that you can tell The Writer to look for 'begin', and it will find; 'begun', 'begin' and 'began'. Tell it to look for '????' and The Writer finds all the four letter words in your text file! You can also choose to look for bits of words - tell The Writer to look for 'he' and it throws up 'the', 'he', 'hero' and so on. If instructed accordingly, the software looks for any occurrence of 'GRAEME' and changes it to '-ED'. 'graeme' will be changed to '-ed and 'GRAEME' to '-ED': CAPS for CAPS and lower case for lower case.

The DELETE options available are basically the same as in Tasword III but instead of deleting the word the cursor is on, The Writer deletes from the cursor position to the end of the word. Not much difference, but it takes those extra precious micro-seconds to delete a word.

Printer tokens are placed as in Tasword Ill but there are only eight styles that can be defined due to The Writer using GRAPHICS codes to stand for a string of printer codes. When printing, you can choose to use a mail-merge option, which allows data such as names and addresses to be entered into the text during printing. This option is again out of reach for tape-only users. The data can be produced from a database such as The Filer, which SOFTECHNICS is bringing out soon, or data can be input using a simple program which is listed in the manual.

The Writer includes a very simple printer spooling option. You can tell the program to print the text file, and immediately it puts you back into that text file. But you can't alter the existing text, as in Word Manager, but you can add to the end of it. This seemed a bit pointless, as most people only want to print out the text when they've finished it, and not change any errors in the existing text while it's printing!

When printing you can choose to put headers and footers at the beginning of each printed page with the main title and the page number, in Roman numbers, alphabetically or numerically. The heading or footing can be centered or left/right justified, or even printed differently on alternate pages, giving a book-like appearance to the output.

The basic text can be controlled exactly as in Tasword III, and even with some of the same control keys! You can centre, left/right justify lines and justify the paragraph and use other jollities that appear in Tasword III.

The Writer also includes some extra features like only printing the text if a certain condition occurs in the print merge file - the price of a product being less than a hundred pounds for instance - and working out the actual value of an expression so '100-12/3' (no brackets) would be printed in the text as '104'. A communication program allows the user to LOAD/SAVE Writer files, ASCII files, and Word Star files, and even send and receive data via a RS232 serial port. Compatibility with printer interfaces is a bit less flexible and giving Softechnics a ring before you purchase is a good idea.

A 'proper' keyboard buffer has been included, which allows a sequence of keys to be pressed after an option has been selected: the program flicks through the chosen option without waiting for the prompts to be answered if the keys have been pressed in advance. The keyboard buffer isn't cleared after any option so care is needed - mind the keys you press after an option.

Overall I found The Writer amazingly fast and extremely powerful. It is the most powerful word processor I've seen on the Spectrum, and most CP/M word processor writers would do well to look at it. The main attraction points are the very powerful FIND and REPLACE commands, mail-merge, block handling and TABs, but with all these options I found The Writer extremely easy to use.

I didn't find using the mouse any quicker, because you have to take your hands off the keyboard and the keyboard buffer was effective enough to make the use of keys as good if not better than the mouse. Any self-respecting Spectrum owner who wants a word processor should definitely go out and get The Writer. Softechnics plan to launch a database, a spellchecker and The Artist II, all of which are designed for use with The Writer very soon. The only thing that was missing was a word count facility - very useful when it comes to writing articles such as this, but most users shouldn't find this omission too dismaying.

FACILITIES
Screen Line (chars): 64
Printer Line (chars): 127
Word Count: No

WORD WRAP

Tasword II is the undisputed king of Speccy word-processing. Now it's got serious rivals courtesy of Softechnics The Writer and OCP's Word Manager. Max Phillips tries the challengers...

Bit of a turn up for the books this - two new Speccy wordpros both claiming to be so good, users will junk their faithful Taswords and pay out for the upgrade. Tasword has been the top Speccy word processor since it came out and, since its given away in the Sinclair microdrive kits, most microdrive owners already have a cop. But Tasword is far from perfect - it operates at near comatose speeds and simple things like inserting text are quite awkward! So the opportunity to do something better has always been there and Softechnics and OCP's challengers have been a long time coming.

THE WRITE APPROACH

Let's look at The Writer first, simply because I like talking about well written, professional programs - and this is, quite simply, one of the most professionally produced business programs ever to load into a Spectrum. The Writer's writer has taken a serious look at wordpros on business micros and brought a lot of their features and style to the Spectrum. In particular, it owes a lot to the number one wordprocessor in the world - WordStar, a long-running package, for CP/M and MS DOS micros, that'll set you back more than the price of a Spectrum with Interface 1 and two microdrives!

The Writer uses a quite pleasant 64 column display with a status line at the top which tells you your document name, the page, line and column you're on and whether you're in insert or overtype mode. Underneath this is a 'ruler line'showing the current margins and tab stops. As you enter text, it's formatted according to your current settings - justified, centred or whatever. If you edit a paragraph, it'll remain untidy until you use the reform key (Symbol-Shift/Y) to replay it out according to the current settings. If that ain't straight out of WordStar, what is?

While most common editing commands are on Symbol-Shift and Extend mode keys, all the complex editing functions are called up by pressing EDIT. A menu appears at the top line and you can move a little arrow using the cursor keys to select the item you want. A 'dialog box' will pop up over your text where you can choose the commands you want or enter new settings using the little arrow and the Enter key. This system is a doddle - you hardly need the complete help screens that can be called up off microdirve while you're editing! However, once you know the package, there's no quick way to execute the commands. The little arrow always reappears where it was last time you finished with a menu, so you spend a lot of your time driving it around the screen!

All these programs have around 20K free for text - about 3000 words. The Writer manages to keep its speed up admirably with all but the longest documents. One nice touch is a proper keyboard buffer - the Speccy remembers your keys-strokes even while the program is busy so it doesn't matter if things slow down a bit.

PRINTS AND THE ROYAL MAIL

But The Writer really gets good when you come to print your document. If offers a superb mail-merge facility - you can generate personalised mailshots by combining a form document with names, addresses or whatever hedl in a data file. For example, you could mail all the members of your club with a standard letter that begins Dear what-ever-your-name-is, and so on. The Writer lets you SET variables in the document so that, for example, you only have to enter today's date and all the letters will have the current date on them. You can do calculations so that, say, each letter you send has the correct charges at the bottom depending on which items each person in the data file has ordered. Finally, you can do 'conditional printing'so that certain sections of text only appear if certain conditions are true - you could use this, for example, to add to a warning paragraph onto letters for club members who haven't paid their subs.

This kind of powerful word processing is an everyday thing in business computing but since there aren't many office-bound Speccys, its appeal will be limited to people with such pastimes as running a business from home, running a club and so on. More useful for most of us is true background printing - you can continue to work (at full speed) while printing out a finished document.

The Writer also has a communication program to allow files to be moved between tape, microdrive and other computers connected to Interface 1 RS232. The files can be in The Writer format, plain ACII text or in WordStar format. This'll let you move documents between other word processors and micros. Unfortunately, the program is more awkward to use than The Writer and the so-called 'WordStar compatible' option is a bit of a con.

Although it handles the basic conversion, it doesn't translate formatting information into the relevant The Writer codes. And if you follow Softechnic's manual and use CP/M's PIP program to send the Wordstar file to the Speccy, you can get the conversion done anyway by adding [Z to the PIP command (read your manuals guys!). Going the other way, The Writer send the wrong sort of carriage return to the WordStar machine. So, either way, you've got to re-edit the file once it's been transmitted. You might as well do the job yourself using ordinary microdrive commands - The Writer is about as WordStar compatible as Tasword and Word Manager!

The other utility you get is a program to convert Tasword II files to The Writer formatt - it's about as awkward as the communication program although it does do its job.

The Writer is damn impressive - our pre-release version shows only one serious bug - if you hold the down arrow down all the way to the end of the document and keep it down, the keyboard buffer packs up and you'll have to switch off. There are others - try replacing 'a' with 'aaaaa' - but nothing you can't work around. However, for all its features, it has one major flaw - you can't alter the line spacing of your text! Softechnics swears blind that you'll be able to before it's releaesed - so it might be a while before it hits the streets!

THE LAST WORD?

Meanwhile, OCP must be kicking itself over Word Manager. True, it has some welcome features - it's the only one of the three that doesn't seem to slow down at all with very long documents and there's a word count and a 'swap words over' command. But, even ignoring the bugs in the review version, it just doesn't compare with Softechnic's offering. It gets off to a bad start with a poorly designed 64 column character set and a flaky keyboard reading routine. There's no on-screen info apart from symbols in the left margin which indicate the formatting of the text on that line - although the border changes when you set Caps Lock or whatever. Unlike The Writer, which gracefully scrolls sideways to show you line up to 127 characters in length, Word Manager wraps lines round onto the screen, making the first 64 characters brighter than the rest of the line. Yuk!

All the commands are either the top key row (there's a Figs Lock so you don't have to hold Caps Shift down to use the cursor keys and so on), Symbol-Shift keys or Extend Mode keys. Their layout is confusing and you have to leave your text and return to the main menu to see the help screens! Word Manager's menus are fussy about capital and lower case letters even though you can't tell if Caps Lock is on or off and so on.

Text formatting is peculiar to say the least - paragraphs aren't formatted until you press Return at the end. To reformat after editing, you have to reformat the whole document from the main menu. If you don't want particular bits reformatted, you have to enter 'T' at the start of the paragraph you want left alone before you 'justify' the text. And while we're talking about silly things, the word count is only reliable if your first 'de-justify' the text from the menu, look at the word count and the 'justify' it again!

When it comes to printing, Word Manager can manage page numbers but not headers and footers like WordStar. There's a limited mail-merger option that works with OCP's Mailing List Manager and Address Manager. You can also 'slow print' text while you're editing another document. This will only work if you're printing a short document (it's kept in memory along with whatever else you're working on) although it failed to work at all on our version.

FINAL WORD

The best thing about these two new packages is seeing properly presented business programs on the Speccy. Both of them have all the basic facilities of real word processors and, like Tasword, can be installed for virtually any interface/printer combination. Both have proper length manuals although the copies we saw needed a fair bit of work before they were easy to read an use. If anything, the only thing that let them down is that they've not been completely designed from the point of view of being easy and quick to use in anger. The Writer is very good but it isn't quite there yet!

When it comes to choosing, I've no doubt that The Writer will take over from Tasword as the best Speccy wordpro. Indeed, some of you old Tasworders should wander down to your dealer and take it for a test drive. However, since it needs a bit of sorting out, it may be a while before you have the opportunity. Word Manager has little appeal in comparison unless you already use OCP's database products. So, sorry about the claim guys, but for the meantime at least, Tasword II is King!

Publisher: Softechnics
Price: £17.95
Memory: 128K

If you despise the QL but are envious of the Quill word processor bundled with the machine, you can have the last laugh with your 128. QL owners can't use The Writer on their machines.

Softechnics has made its word processor one of the easiest to use but has made no concessions to features. It supports just about every action you would want to perform on a text document.

The Writer is supplied on cassette but it can be transferred to microdrive. If you're going to use it as a business too, microdrives or discs are a necessity. The drives reduce significantly the time taken for loading and saving text files, and when using the microdrive directory you can tell which files are available on a particular cartridge - a job which is almost impossible using the serial medium of cassette tape.

Once loaded the word processor goes automatically into insert mode. A status line at the top of the screen shows the optional microdrive number, the number of the page you are on, followed by the line and column positions of the cursor.

The main part of the screen contains the paper on which you write and the cursor blinks away at line zero, column zero. The page width is 63 characters but, if you own a printer which can print 80 or 100 characters per line, you can change the default and the screen will scroll across as you type.

The appeal of The Writer is mainly due to its drop down menus from which you can select most of the options available from the word processor. Selection is made using an arrow cursor and confirmed by pressing Enter. New commands can be given to The Writer in a few seconds while on other word processors finding the control keys may take up to half a minute.

Categories of sub-menu include: File, Edit, Text, Search, Format, Help.

The File menu allows you to manipulate external storage devices - cassette, microdrive and disc - change the name of a document, monitor the text as it is printed, change the storage medium and use mail-merge.

Five documents can be held in memory at the same time using the 128 RAM disc facility, so choosing a name for each using the File menu is important. If you do not set up names or values when required by The Writer, the program always puts its own default values into operation.

The Edit menu affects the way in which text is typed onto the screen and the way in which The Writer responds.

The Edit menu displays operations which can be performed on blocks of text. The block commands include Copy, Delete, and Write/Include. To Copy a block of text to another point of a document, mark the start and end points of the block with a graphics 'M' and invoke the command on the menu.

Delete is performed in a similar way and takes a block out of the document. You must be careful what you delete as - unlike The Last Word from Saga Systems - you will not be able to recover the text unless you have a back-up copy already saved.

Write/Include is used when you want to move text from one file to another. You could, for instance, create a number of separate files containing addresses using the Write option, produce a standard letter to send to a number of people, and then use the include option to place their names and addresses from backing storage, or RAM disc, into your current document.

The Write/Include option is more flexible than mail merge. You may have an almost standard letter, to be sent to several people, but with a different paragraph in each document. Just put the paragraphs into separate files and use the include option to print different versions of the letter.

The Text menu defines the way in which text is put on the screen, together with margin and tabulation settings. Text can be centred, ranged or justified. Most text is ranged to the left which means that each line starts flush with the left margin. If you set 'range right', however, each line is set flush with the right margin.

Alternatively, you could justify the text in your document. Spaces are introduced into each line of text so that it fills the space between the left and right margins.

On some occasions, the computer is unable to place a word at the end of a line and a decision is required from you The word can either be split in two or you can invoke word wrap. If that word cannot be split, it is wrapped onto the next line and the previous line spaced to take in the gap.

The final option on the Text menu is Tabs which makes tables and columns of figures easier to design. A tabulation mark is a point to which you can move the cursor on a line of text. For instance, if you are typing out columns of figures, you can set The Writer to skip to the start of each column.

There are three types of tab setting; left, right and centred. The default tab setting is left. The tab marks are shown by an 'L' inserted in a line at the top of the screen. Pressing Break will send the cursor to the first tab setting on a line.

Right tabulation is different only in the way in which text is put onto the screen. When you start typing, the cursor remains over the tab mark and text moves towards the left margin, making each column right-justified. Central tabulation is, again, similar but the cursor stays where it is, and text moves out left and right to centre the heading or figures in the column.

The Search and Replace facility - which takes the cursor to a specified part of a document - finds the start of any word or phrase you want to locate within that document.

You may call a member of your staff Mr Lewis but want to change every reference to him to Andrew Lewis. Just type 'Mr Lewis' when asked what the search key is and the text with which you want to replace it.

The Format menu allows you to set up page numbers at the top or bottom of each page. You can print them in numeric, roman and alphabetic form but the default is numeric.

The Help facility is one of the most comprehensive of any Spectrum word processor, and works in a similar way to that provided with Quill on the QL.

You can obtain information on control keys, options which are available on a pull-down menus, control characters, installation, mail merge and communications. Each Help block is loaded independently from microdrive and usually contains two or three pages of information.

The main criticism of Help is that you must page all the way through a block of information. The only way to break out of the Help system when it's providing information is to crash the program and type RUN - that will get you back to the file you are editing.

The Writer can handle documents from several sources, for instance, text files from Wordstar - a word processor which is compatible with the IBM PC, and computers which run the CP/M operating system - even the QL.

The package contains a separate routine with which you can set up communication channels. You can send and receive ASCII. The Writer and Wordstar files from tape, microdrive, disc or RS232. The RS232 link means you can link up several computers and share files between them. That gives The Writer a leading edge over all the Spectrum word processors available.

The communications routine, with its drop-down menu control system, is easy to use and you do not have to fumble around with program code to get printers and interfaces to work together.

A printer configuration package is also included with The Writer which makes the program compatible with Interface 1, Kempston, Hilderbay and Euroelectronics printer interfaces.

A wide range of type faces - including italic, bold, and double-sized - can be incorporated within your documents, and printed using Epson, Custom, Diablo and H80 printers. You can also build your own printer driver by answering a series of questions posed by the computer - all very easy to follow.

The Writer is one of the most complex word processors on the market for any machine, but the use of pull-down menus and the extensive Help facility makes it one of the easiest to use.

Softechnics can be justifiably proud of itself. The Writer not only has the standard features but many extras. Reviewing this program was like taking part in an exploration of the many ways you can present the printed word. It was an education.

Label: Softechnics
Price: £14.956
Memory: 48K
Reviewer: Tony Kendle

The 48K version of The Writer is at last available after a considerable delay.

How does it match up to Tasword Three and Last Word?

Certainly The Writer is the fastest and most compact Spectrum word processor around and the 48K version can hold a respectable ten pages of A4 text in memory.

Options are easily set up from pop-up menus using a smooth sprite arrow controlled by cursor, joystick, or even Kempston mouse. I'm rather a Luddite when it come to Macintosh-like pointers - numbered menu system would be as friendly, and faster to use but it's progress and it does all look very flash.

Like Tasword the screen displays 64 columns (although it can scroll to 127 characters wide) but you need a good TV or good eyes to read the text. If you don't have the former you won't keep the latter. I prefer the way The Last Word works - you write in 40-column mode and use 80-column to preview the page prior to printing.

Strong points of The Writer are a printer spooler that lets you continue to type as you print a document, the ability to return to Basic (eg to get a tape directory) and the ability to customise the program to work with any printer and interface.

Text editing features contain everything you would want, fast cursor movement, Block Move or Copy, line, word or block deletion, foreign characters and a superb Find and Replace that can handle phrases, wild-card letters, and can match the upper/lower case letters of the replaced word with the original, thereby coping with the beginning of sentences etc.

Pagination is very easy and much better than on the Last Word and you can set all the margins for different page sizes, have alternate headers and footers for opposite pages.

You can convert files from or to Tasword, Quill ascii, or Wordstar format (and thereby a huge number of compatible CP/M programs such as dBase). The resulting text can be sent down the Interface 1/RS232 using a supplied comms facility.

Full integration is promised with The Spreadsheet, The Database Softechnic's (dBase-style database) and The Filer (simple database) programs when they arrive.

Some points of The Writer definitely didn't impress me though. Notable omission are a word count facility or any indication of how much memory room there is left.

Line spacing can only be changed globally, all or nothing, and once you have set it to say double, any further text entry reverts to a single spacing and all the previous text has to be first re-set to single before setting everything back to double - very awkward.

The Microdrive version of the 48K program allows on-screen help messages. Block Write/Include (blocks as small as a common phrase or your address can be written to cartridge or the printer or merged at the cursor position) as well as powerful mail-merge features (full floating-point calculation on the data, conditional block include based on If... Then... Else tests of the data - perfect for invoicing work). Last Word has something similar, even in its tape version, though it is more complicated to use. I can live without mail-merge on tape (if you have serious work to do buy an Opus disc drive) but leaving out the Block Write/Include is a significant, and surely unnecessary flaw. Without it there seems to be no way of merging two files.

Your own requirements will dictate whether you find The Writer is the very best program available. It struck me as possibly too concerned with technical wizardry at the expense of some more useful features that would have really left the competition floundering.

A WORD IN YOUR SPECTRUM

The Spectrum is under-estimated as a word processing machine, says John Wase. Here he reviews eight programs in support of his argument.

Word processing does not require much computer power. PipeDream on the new Z-88 uses exactly the same Z-80 chip as all versions of the venerable Spectrum. Thus the Spectrum, too, should, in theory, provide good word processing facilities, although in practice there are limitations like memory. A 48K Spectrum has around 41K for both program and text file, around 110K for the 128K version, and the screen display at only 32 columns.

Nevertheless, I found eight readily-available packages, plus variants for various models, of assorted prices, features, sophistication and complexity. Each has been written with some particular purpose in mind and all have virtues and vices associated with what is, after all, a compromise, for no word processing program suits everyone or all applications.

The constraints of the 32-column screen are overcome in a variety of ways. In some programs text lines continue along a second or third display line and end with some recognisable symbol, while in others the screen is re-defined to up to 80 characters per line, further augmented by multiple lines or sideways scrolling, giving as many as 148 characters per printer line.

While it is possible to provide a good deal of the information about the packages in tabular form, it really gives little feeling for the strong and weak points, the aims and the overall success of each package. Therefore I have chosen a combination of tables and comment to provide sufficient information to guide you in choosing packages suitable for your needs. The packages are Mini-Office, a suite of programs for younger children; Ramprint, an add-on printer interface with integral word processor; Spectral Writer, bundled with Wafadrive; WordMaster; Word Manager; The Last Word; The Writer and finally, the Tasword family. They are listed in table one, along with the outstanding features of each package, the cost and supplier.

The easiest thing to do is to take them in groups. First, Mini-Office, which has a very simple set of instructions on a cassette-sized book; interpretation by an adult will be necessary. There is a simple test piece to be typed-in; it appeared in big letters an inch or more high in yellow on a black background on my old TV; it is very easy for a child to write a simple letter but with very little more scope.

The normal mode is insert and there is also a crude copy, so letters or lines can be added or deleted; crude tabs complete the features. The main menu offers the usual save, verify, load or options with a further choice of double height, double width, margin setting and characters per line.

It could have been an excellent program to introduce a child to an integrated suite had it been revamped but there are no facilities to use a printer other than the obsolete Sinclair gadget or compatibles, and the other options integrate badly into the word processor. You would need a suitable printer for your child to make the most of it.

The next pair are proper programs, both intended for the serious user, and both released relatively early. Tasword 2, a development of Tasword on the ZX-81, provides a 64-character line, a fixed text length of 320 lines - 10-and-a-bit pages of double-spaced A4. Spectral Writer is similar but with squarer letters some say much more legible. In both programs insertion is by opening a word or a line and then re-justifying; there is no auto insert mode.

LINE AND COLUMN

Line and column are given on-screen but there is no word count. The cursor will move by line, character, or to the start or finish of the text; in Tasword 2 it is very slow. Word wrap is automatic, characters and lines can be deleted, blocks can be moved and copied and there is a crude search and replace.

Text can be justified with smooth or ragged right margin and centred and margins can be set for tables but there are no tabs in Tasword 2 and no headers, footers or auto-page numbering, no mail-merge, conditional printing or macros; just start and finish lines, one copy only. You can put eight printer codes in the program at once and change them whenever you like.

Both programs are good, straightforward, very simple word processors. You can achieve professional results very quickly Spectral Writer scores by having tabs, a line-end bell and is a little slicker but it normally is only bundled with Wafadrive, Tasword 2 is ubiquitous and bundled with Microdrives.

The chief advantage of both programs is that they are very simple; much is in Basic and is easily user-adapted. The major disadvantage is that printer control codes in the text destroys WYSIWYG concept unless you adopt low cunning or a patch. For simple letters of only a few pages they are easy and adequate.

The other processors are, in general, more sophisticated and it is probably easier to deal with their main features in a large table and just comment briefly on their strengths and weaknesses. The simplest is probably Ramprint, a printer interface and joystick port with a built-in word processor on ROM. I found the documentation brief but the gadget easy to use.

Although it contains most features one needs, there are disadvantages. It will work only with tape or Microdrives, for instance, and it will display only 32 columns when you are entering text, making complex work almost impossible, although it will display a 64-column screen to show you what the work will be like at the end.

That apart, having the works in an EPROM means that there is no software to load; plug it in, type one command and go. For straightforward documents, also those needing underlining, italics and other such fancy bits, even page numbering, it works and works well.

Word-Master again is for the Spectrum owner who has no discs. It works well with tape or Microdrive and an EPROM-driven interface. Within limitations I found a program which was specifically aimed at crude desk-top publishing. The documentation could be improved and I did not particularly like its 64-column character set. A further problem is that right justification could not be implemented on-screen, although was satisfactory when printed; that does not help DTP layout.

Against that, several files can be held in memory at once, page numbers, headers and footers are catered for and printer control codes are handled beautifully, either in a command line which does not print but affects the text below or as special characters for the more common sorts, so that H2O can be printed readily without upsetting justification.

PICTURES

Pictures can be incorporated with the graphic commands and text can be printed either to the right or to the left of it; again, instructions are a little sparse. Graphmate, a separate, stand-alone program, produces bar charts or pie charts easily but with provision for labelling axes left to Word-Master. The programs are independent and the products of Graphmate have to be saved before incorporation.

Cardex also supplied Headliner on a separate tape. It will produce headlines in a variety of styles for subsequent incorporation. This is a useful suite as it stands; further development and the production of disc/128K versions using more interfaces would make it still better.

Word Manager 4 is aimed at a different end-user, evident from its being bundled with Mail and Address Manager II. The review version 4.2 has a number of improvements over earlier issues, including a completely re-written Address Manager II. All saves and loads are in Basic and I liked particularly the single keypress to modify and transfer everything to disc. The 64-column character set looked almost like script, unlike any of the others; I liked it. The normal screen is bright. Lines longer than 64 characters are wrapped round and shown on the line below - not bright.

The instruction book was adequate. Some features were easy to use but I did not like the constant switching between modes to use cursors and delete, the lack of on-screen prompts - particularly caps - or the way in which paragraphs were completed before on-screen justification took place.

Page numbering is there but not headers or footers. Address Manager II is a database specific for Word Manager; Mail Manager takes the text from Word Manager and the names and addresses from Mail Manager and integrates them. There are conditional indices for Mr. Mrs. M/s or Miss but no real conditional printing is available.

For circulation of simple club letters or even, at a pinch, a short club magazine, this would do the trick satisfactorily if you get used to the vagaries involved in editing and, at the price which includes all three programs, it is unbeatable.

In contrast, The Last Word has a very well-produced and extensive manual. I found it very easy to use. Again, all the loads and saves are in Basic but you will have to type-in some new lines - supplied - to get it working from Microdrive or disc; a novice might not like this.

The screen display is changeable from 40, 48, 60 or 80 characters per line - not too good on a monitor, better on a large television set where the slight fuzz causes the eye to assume a good deal. It has most of the features one might expect, like headers, footers, page numbers, selected printing from Basic and mail-merge, with its own data files.

Because lines are terminated by a carriage return symbol there is no insert mode; you have to split a line to insert letters or words. Screen refresh is a trifle slow and the program is 48K, although the author says that there is the possibility of a 128K program in the future.

That said, everything else is good. Control codes do not disturb justification; by screen wrap-around you can get up to 148 characters per line; formatting is very flexible, exiting into Basic to insert your own routines is encouraged and examples given.

Tutor files loaded from tape help you to learn to manipulate text and load and save mail-merge information. Although I had never used it previously and am very familiar with another processor, I found the keys logical and liked the program.

NO COLOURS

The Writer is in two versions, 48K and 128K. Although Softek was very helpful on the telephone and promised to send both programs, plus The Artist, plus a pre-release version of The Filer, they did not arrive in time for this review. Fortunately I was able to borrow a 48K version of The Writer. It is well-presented with a good instruction book. No colours are used; the screen is uniformly white letters on a black background and looks very smart.

The 64 characters a line lettering is clear, square rather like Spectral Writer - and easy to read. The normal text manipulations are on symbol or extended mode and the program starts in insert mode. Press "Edit" and move the arrow over the top-line menu; up comes an overlay menu with obvious choices for all the things like file handling, saving and so on.

Printing includes mail-merge, conditional printing and can include calculations. All in all, a very impressive package. I found it easy to use, too, and liked it. The 128K version contains a pagemaker facility which imports pictures from The Artist. I had hoped to be able to look at this, too, and compare it to the Word-Master DTP facilities.

Finally, the Tasword series. Tasword 3 uses the same black on white character set as Tasword 2 - adequate and readable but scarcely exciting - but there the similarity ends. Because, unlike several of the other programs, all loads and saves are in machine code, there are a number of versions to fit various machines and devices, including Microdrive. Opus and Disciple discs, but there is no tape version, because to fit in all the features and still keep a respectable length file, the main menu is fed in as an overlay; it is frustrating to have to wait seven seconds for it to load from Microdrive or Opus.

All the standard features are present; mail-merge from Masterfile or from its own address lists produced from within the program, headers, footers, pagination, plenty of control codes to send, print several text files sequentially, print multiple copies, customise program, overtype - standard - or insert mode, word count, space remaining - do not fill it too tightly, though.

The main menu is, like all the Spectrum Taswords, accessed by symbol shift and A; the rest is easy. The manual is well-printed and laid-out and a tutor file is included. The 128K versions are almost exactly the same, except for the control key for insertion and some tidying as the Amstrad Spectrums no longer have symbols on the keys.

The main menu appears instantly and the text file is large, between 40 and 50 pages of double-spaced A4, which is a tremendous advantage if you write complicated documents and need to keep referring to what has gone before. The new +3 version appears similar to the user but contains code enabling a spellchecker to work and the extended mode bug which locks the main menu has been fixed.

The biggest disadvantage is the lack of justification when control codes are inserted - redeemed by a patch from Seven Stars Software; against this is the ease of use and the fact that Tasword and Masterfile are both available on a range of machines, even PC compatibles. Again, I liked Tasword; it works well and is good value.

Compared to most other machines, the choice of word processors on the Spectrum is wide and some are technically very good. There is no need to buy that new Amstrad or PC-compatible if all you want is a word processor, particularly if you have a +2 or a +3 with their good keyboards. After all, Tasword is very similar on the PC. Moreover, the PC will not play budget games as well when you are not using it.

IT LOOKS LIKE TASWORD HAS FINALLY MET IT'S MATCH. CAROL BROOKSBANK SPREADS THE WORD.

There are so many Spectrum word processors around these days that a new one needs to be something really special if it is to make an impression on the market. The Writer will meet the challenge.

Two versions are supplied on the tape. One installs the full program, packed with facilities, on Microdrive. The other, tape based, lacks some of the features of the Microdrive version but is still streets ahead of any other tape based Spectrum wordpro I have met. It is very easy to use. It relies heavily on pull-down menus - arrow keys move the pointer, or it can be customised for the Kempston mouse or joystick - so there are only a handful of control keys to be memorised, and these are chosen to be as logical as possible. For example, = and = move the cursor to the start or end of a line. Most programs with a lot of options have me rummaging about in the handbook for weeks, but after an hour or so with The Writer it was as if I had been using it for years. The only irritant I found was that you can often only use one option from a menu and are then returned to the text entering mode. The menu must be fetched again if you want another option - maddening if it is header and footer, or Save and Verify.

INTERFACES

The Writer can be customised to drive any of half a dozen popular interfaces, but, surprisingly, not Kempston "S" or Tasman. The Epson printer control codes can be changed to suit any Spectrum compatible printer. If there is anyone around who wants to use a word processor like this with a ZX printer, it can drive one of those too. If your printer uses non-ASCII codes, all the printable character codes are redefinable. The installation program modifies the Microdrive version, but a separate customised copy must be saved if you are using the tape version.

On loading, the program goes straight into text entering mode. With Microdrive, the first operation is to select the Open option, which calls for a file name and drive number. If a file of that name is found on the drive it is loaded, otherwise the program assigns the name to your new text. Thereafter, whenever you use the Save option, the program is automatically saved on the specified drive under the tile name. If an old file is loaded and modified. Save will delete the old copy and save the new under the same name. But don't give a new file a name already on the cartridge or the Open option will load the old one and your new text will be lost. Tape copies can also be saved and loaded.

TEXT

The text entering and editing facilities are superb, and all are present in both versions. All the usual cursor movement keys are available, as are letter, word, line and block deletion. You can switch freely between insert and overwrite modes. 64 columns are visible on the screen - and the small type face is crystal clear - but if your printer can take it, up to 127 columns per line can be used, with the screen scrolling horizontally as you type.

Text can be left or right aligned with the other edge ragged, centred, justified, with or without wordwrap. Margins are adjustable and paragraph indents, if any, can be specified. If you want a group of words to be on the same line, special spaces can be entered which prevent a line break, so that the whole phrase wilt be transferred to the next line if necessary.

Three ways of entering a 'newline' are available: one, rarely needed because of the wordwrap, simply starts a new line; one marks end of paragraph and moves the cursor to the indent position; the third acts like the end of paragraph marker, but also sends a printer control to start a new page. If graphics printer controls are entered in the text, the justification takes care of them automatically by entering extra spaces. The on-screen text is out of line, but the justification is preserved in the printed copy. For multi-line spacing, each press of E-mode/s respaces the whole text instantly. Change your mind, and E-mode/x removes a line from the spacing globally. Four types of user-definable tab are available, left aligning, right aligning, centring text round the tab point, and aligning columns at the decimal point. The space between text and the next tab can be blank, or filled with solid lines, dots or dashes. The ruler showing the tab points can be displayed at the top of the screen or not as you wish. Text capacity is nine pages, 483 lines.

Sophisticated Search and Replace facilities are offered. A letter, word or phrase can be searched for, and you can specify whether letters are to be found only it they form a whole word, or also include those forming parts of other words, and whether every occurrence is to be found regardless of type case, or only those with upper/lower case exactly as you typed them. You may elect to have every occurrence replaced by another word or phrase. In which case each paragraph will be automatically re-formed, or you can stop at each one and choose whether to change if.

The printing format allows numeric, upper or lower case roman, or upper or lower case alphabetic page numbering. Headers and footers can be centred, left or right aligned, or alternating, and can include the page number or not as required. Page breaks can be defined in the text, or can occur after a specified number of lines. The type style can be the one currently selected in the printer, or one of four other global styles offered if your printer can produce them. Printing is continuous unless the cut paper option is chosen, when it will pause at the end of each page for paper change. Multiple copies can be printed, and the screen can show the copy and page number reached. All or part of the document can be printed. While the printing is going on. you can add text at the end or start to type another document.

All these facilities are available to both tape and Microdrive users. The one absent feature is a wordcount. It is an astonishing omission in a program as sophisticated as this, and we can only hope it will be remedied in future enhancements. The publishers plan to produce modifications to allow the use of a wider range of mice and joysticks, and a disc version.

MICRODRIVING

For the Microdrive user, there is more A series of help pages put almost all of the handbook on screen. A communication program allows text to be transmitted, via RS232, not only to and from other computers, but also other word processors, like Wordstar. Also, the text can be converted to an ASCII file for transmission or for saving on tape, and an ASCII file can be received and converted to a Writer microdrive file (For Tasword Two files, there is a special conversion program, available also to tape version users, to allow the files to be loaded into The Writer.)

Microdrive users can also save sections of documents separately, and text blocks can be transferred between documents or files merged. Frequently used text, like your own address, can be kept as a file and merged into all your letters.

The Microdrive version offers a splendid mail merge facility. The text and the file from which information is to be taken must both be on the Microdrive. The fiel can be a simple one created using a BASIC program given in the handbook, but Softek are planning to bring out a compatible program, called The Filer. In addition to simply entering file data into the text, this mailmerge allows calculations to be performed - file can be a simple one created using a BASIC program perhaps taking a nett price from a file, adding VAT, deducting a discount and printing the total arrived at in the letter. Conditional printing is allowed - a letter could be written only to those customers who have made a purchase in the last five years. String variables can be added, either globally for something like the date, or individually if you wish to put some personal note in each letter.

The 128 version can hold five documents in memory simultaneously, and text blocks can be transferred freely between them.

THE WINNER...

Inevitably, The Writer will be compared with Tasword 3. For my money, The Writer wins. Its text editing features are better, and the on-screen typeface clearer. The tape version makes it available to a wider market, and is cheaper than Tasword. In addition, there is the exciting news that it is the first of a series of compatible business programs to include a file program and a spreadsheet. It should also be compatible with The Artist II, and a database program is planned to allow page layout planning for the production of illustrated reports magazines etc. The whole suite will make the Spectrum a business computer able to handle the requirements of any small, and many not so small, businesses. While software like this is being produced, don't let anyone tell you the Spectrum is only a games machine...