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'''— JK'''
=The author responds=
Thank you for . . . the opportunity which you have given me to offer my criticisms of the review. I am really delighted with the overall report card which the program has received.
Before explaining the suggestions which I have to offer, let me first say that I hope that you will take my criticism constructively, since that is the way in which it is intended. I know that the Compendium is just as much your "baby" as Companion is mine, so I hope that you will bear with my critique.
Let me first deal with a few technicalities.
:l. I believe that you mean a "type ahead" buffer, not "look ahead". In fact, Companion doesn't use such a buffer at all; the enormous speed of the screen display routine makes this unnecessary. As you have noticed, Companion will never miss a keystroke.<be>
:2. Companion also allows you to delete blocks of text. This seems to be important, since you earlier observed that no single command will delete a line.<be>
:3. The numerical comparison of text
buff er sizes for programs which operate
using different algorithms is sometimes
misleading. In addition to the
18,000 character text buffer, Companion
uses a separate 1,200 byte line
length buff er to keep track of line
lengths, and wil (in the rare case that a
text users more than 1,200 screen
lines) logically synthesize additional
line lengths. TI-Writer may put the
line lengths (and maybe a flag with
each one) into the text buffer. Also,
Companion's left margin declaration
allows the program to avoid storing
spaces to represent the left margin of
each line separately. For TI-Writer
this may amount to at least 4,000 characters
in a large (say, 500 line) text.
Additionally, TI-Writer may place
various extraneous flags in the text
buffer; I don't know.
4. An option: I think that it is worth
mentioning that "G" is easy to
remember since it stands for "graphics,"
and that "H'' stands for
"horizontal tab" (not "T," as one
might reasonably expect).
5. The space bar should not really be
considered a cursor motion key. Also,
all of the cursor motion keys (in fact,
all keystrokes period) repeat automatically,
and the repetition gradually
accelerates.
There are a few things in the review
which I think are worthy of expansion.
I think that calling Companion a
"computerized typewriter" is not
doing the design much justice, particularly
in this age of techno-jargon. I
would argue that Companion is a true
"text processor" or "concept processor,"
while TI-Writer is a line editor
with a reformat command. To me, this
is the crucial design difference. (Try
deleting, moving, or copying a single
word to see the difference.)
If I were in the word processing
market, I think that based upon the
r e v i ew w o u l d p r o b a b l y b u y
TI-Writer.
Allan Swett
Ed: Just to make things perfectly
clear, I have been using Companion
for all my correspondence and review
writing since receiving it. I continue to
use TI-Writer only for form letters.
This is a personal choice dn my part
based essentially on the conclusions
that are drawn in the review regarding
its ease of use as a writing tool.
