 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Word for Windows 2.0 Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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At Comdex/Fall last October Microsoft Corporation announced Microsoft Word for Windows version 2.0, (W4W2) a major new release of the much acclaimed word processor for its Windows 3x operating system. PC Update Editor Peter Smith and I were privileged to be invited to that launch, although it took over two more months to get my hands on the product. I have borrowed a little from the press release to describe W4W2 but the subjective remarks and the hearty recommendation are all my own.
Designed for Usability
Microsoft has made extensive use of its state-of-the-art Usability Lab to improve the usability of all key features, including a customisable Toolbar, Drag and Drop Envelope Generator, Print Merge Helper, and Help for WordPerfect Users, among many others.
To maximise the usability of W4W2, Microsoft used traditional techniques such as listening to focus group comments gathering feedback from user letters, and analysing product support calls. The company also used innovative "instrumented versions," which record user tasks and keystrokes over time to learn which features are most used and how they are used. From the beginning, the W4W2 development team was encouraged to focus on end-user tasks, than on abstract feature design. The product was extensively tested throughout the development process by real users in the Microsoft Usability Lab that is staffed by professionals trained in the field of cognitive psychology.
International Versions
W4W2 has been localised to meet the language-specific needs of international markets. The English version of W4W2 will be available in mole than 120 countries worldwide. French, German, French-Canadian, Italian, Dutch. Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish versions are scheduled to be available in the first half of 1992. Arabic, Russian, Czech and Hungarian versions are planned. The copy I evaluated is the Australian version, which means that the Houghton Mifflin dictionary caters for "Australian English."
News for WordPerfect Users
To make it easy for DOS WordPerfect users to master W4W2, Microsoft has added Help for WordPerfect Users. With this feature, the user selects a WordPerfect command from a menu, or types in a WordPerfect command, and then watches as W4W2 gives instructions or a demo of the equivalent command in W4W Over time, the former WordPerfect user learns the W4W commands and no longer needs the Help feature. The latter is an extremely cheeky move, and is bound to cause alarm in Orem, Utah (the home of WordPerfect Corp.) WordPerfect for Windows was released several weeks after W4W2, so I wonder if anyone switched allegiances. For another cheeky feature, see the"The Gang Screen" later in the article.
Multilingual Spelling Checker
For users who create documents in multiple languages, W4W2 provides support for multilingual spell checking. You mark the text as written in a foreign language. Then, while the document is being spell checked, W4W automatically uses a foreign language dictionary that corresponds to that text. The switch to the different speller is seamless. Foreign language dictionaries are available separately.
Equation Editor
It is easier than ever to add equations to documents with the new graphical Equation Editor. This feature is especially useful for engineers and scientists.
Toolbar
Ease of learning and use is written all over the program The top of the screen is spanned by a new, customisable Toolbar. The features represented by buttons on the Toolbar were selected as a direct result of usability tests. The most needed features such as indenting a paragraph, spell checking and envelope creation are just a click away. If you don't like the default Toolbar, you can add a macro or command to it and delete the buttons you don't want.
Drag and Drop
With the new Drag and Drop feature, you can move words, sentences and even paragraphs by just clicking on highlighted text and dragging it to its new location. This feature simplifies the cut-and-paste method found in most Windows-based word processors and makes text editing easier.
Envelope Generator
Creating envelopes is a task that most people have done by hand or on a manual typewriter. With the new Envelope Generator addresses are automatically taken from a document, positioned correctly and printed on the envelope.
Print Merge Helper
One of the most often used yet cumbersome word processing tasks is producing form letters for custom mailings. To make this process easier, a new visual Print Merge Helper guides you through the merge process in sequence.
Bullets
With W4W2 it is easy to create and apply bullets to any list. You can select from a bullet palette of more than a hundred bullets, including standard business bullets and more specialised symbols such as hearts and arrows. You can also easily control the amount by which text is indented and see it in a sample box before applying it.
Grammar Checker
A version of CorrecText, a grammar checker licensed from Houghton Mifflin Company has been integrated into W4W v. 2.0.
Graphical File Finder
With the new File Finder you can see long file names, the subject, or contents of a document on screen before opening it. You can also search using other criteria such as the date a file was created or saved.
Tables
The creation and manipulation of tables is much easier now. You simply click on the table button on the Toolbar, visually highlight the number of rows and columns appropriate for the table being created, and a table appears on screen. You can easily change the column width by clicking and dragging. To move rows and columns you simply drag and drop them in the new location.
WordArt
WordArt enables you to manipulate teat and fonts. You can create interesting text effects, such as curved, rotated or even upside down text
Columns
With the new column button you can easily change one-column documents into multicolumn documents.
Borders and Shading
Adding borders and shading is now easy. You can choose from a variety of options to get the effects you want
Drawing
The new drawing feature enables you to create vector drawings and embed them in your document
Charting
The new charting capabilities in W4W2 are the same as in Microsoft Excel, so you can present data using graphs, including 3-D formats.
File Conversion
You can convert to and from all major word processors, including WordPerfect for DOS, Word for DOS, MultiMate and WordStar. Graphics conversions include PCX, BMP, TIF, EPS and Others.
Object Linking and Embedding
New object linking and embedding (OLE) capabilities enable you to embed information from any Windows application that supports OLE. For example, if you embed a worksheet from Excel into a Word for Windows document, you can double-click on the worksheet to access Excel.
Requirements
You need a copy of Windows 3.x, a minimum of an! 80286 processor, EGA monitor, and 2 MB memory. That means you will really enjoy using it on a 4 MB, VGA-equipped 80386/33 such as the one I use at home. A mouse is highly advisable. You need a hard disk with 5 MB to 15 MB free, depending on how many options you choose to install.
Packaging
The retail package contains both 1.2 MB (5.25 inch) and 1.44 MB (3.5 inch) diskettes in sets of eight each. The upgrade contains only the size you specify and the outer packaging is designed to be discarded. The retail version comes in a shelf-destined slipcase, so your manuals and disks have a convenient home; the upgrade tempts fate. I am not sure if this economy is appreciated by loyal users of the previous versions. Microsoft, (and many others) please consider providing a slipcase for upgrades even if it is made of recycled cardboard. The use of biodegradable plastic to wrap the diskettes was noted and appreciated.
Other goodies in the box are a single-sided function-key template; paperback Users Guides for W4W2 itself, for Graph, Equation Editor, and Draw; a Jump Start guide for those who want to install and use W4W quickly; a Getting Started guide; an order form for 720 kB or 360 kB PC diskettes or an 800 kB Macintosh set.
If you have the Users Reference for W4W version 1.x, sigh reverently and retire it to your library shelf. That was a work of art and was probably designed to tempt users to this program The new 848-page version is a cheaper production but the content is still excellent. It has been structured as a user guide, which means the contents are organised in logical order, not in alphabetical order. I wish to write more about the documentation separately.
An enclosed card advises about two options you can purchase separately. The Supplemental File Conversions Disk adds MultiMate, Works for DOS and Windows, and Multiplan to the existing set of converters. The Using WordBasic manual is essential for those wishing to explore the supplied macro language. That deserves an article of its own.
I picked up an interesting tip on Usenet In the US, Microsoft supplies fre of charge a "WordBasic Manual", part number 059050839. This has also been described as "Using WordBasic", 170 pages and was written by Wextech Systems, part # 19426.
Sensible Licensing
The licence for a single-user copy specifies that you may "use" the program on only one computer at a time. "Use" is defined to mean that a copy resides on a hard disk or in RAM. If you use that computer for more than 80 percent of the time then you may use the software on a portable or home computer. That is a very enlightened approach - something not done by some other leading vendors. If you are in such a single-user situation then you can apparently use a copy at home legally.
Installation
Installation of the full package took about 45 minutes. I chose to install from a backup copy of the 5.25 inch set because the process records your name and company name on the floppy disk. I do not like risking a power outage while the computer is writing on an original disk. The installation program is not as boring as some others, because it provides you with a summary of the program features while you feed your PC with floppies. Good use of graphics throughout the package has even reached this oft-used program-you get a glimpse of some icons you will be using. You are also reminded to register the package. The installation process creates a \WINWORD directory and a \WINDOWS\MSAPPS directory. Subdirectories are also created as required by the chosen options.
W4W2 in Use
Using W4W2 is a pleasure on my 80386/33 PC. I would not enjoy it as much on a slower 80286, such as the one I use at work with W4W1.1. I am not a typist, so speed during text entry is not a concern; it is a concern when I want to do a spelling check or a global replace operation. W4W2 is fast enough for me on the 80386, although in a year or two I might not think so. (There was a time when the old CP/M WordStar was "fast enough" for me.)
What makes this program good? After all. any old word processor can be used to produce a business letter - can't it? Perhaps, but some of us want to write reports, internal documents, and the like. Some even want to write books.
What does your good old word processor do? Most (including W4W2) do the following:
- Opening and closing a document
- Selecting, moving and copying text
- Text and page formatting
- Changing fonts
- File Insertion
- Mail merging
- Printing
- Document templates
- Outlining
- Customisable user interface
- Bookmarks and cross-references
- Fields and macros
- Bulleted or numbered lists
- Indexes and tables of contents
- Footnotes, annotations and revision marks
- Checking spelling and grammar
- Sorting and calculating
- Tables, columns, borders and shading
- Graphics
- Forms
- Equations
- Print preview
The Toolbar is an interesting new concept that has started appearing on Windows applications under various copyrighted names. It is a horizontal display of buttons at the top of the screen and it contains the the most frequently used commands, such as Save, Print, Spell Check, Undo, etc. You can place your own macros there instead of the ones supplied: for instance, you can have buttons for memos, letters, newsletters etc, which will invoke the respective macros when pressed.
Document creation in W4W2 is for most a matter of choosing a "template" that has the "look and feel" you want. For example, you can use a template supplied with W4W2, or modify it, or create a new one. A template for a magazine article would have definitions (tags) for paragraph headings, for captions, title, the text, etc. To apply a tag you place the cursor anywhere in the paragraph (or heading), and select a tag from a drop-down list. The text changes its appearance immediately, which can include the amount of space before and after it, whether it needs to be kept with the following text etc. By comparison, an older package might require you to define a block and change the font but it might not have precise controls for positioning.
W4W2 is a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) product, although that term is always taken with a grain of salt. That is an improvement over old word processors that had no WYSIWYG mode. W4W2 has a "Draft viewing mode where you don't see font changes, and is recommended for those with slow PCs.
Macros are stored sequences for procedures you use often. You turn on a macro "recorder" and perform the sequence manually. For example, you might always place a Caution (in a technical manual) with the heading in capitals, centred, and the text enclosed in a box A macro would automate the placement of the word, the changing of the font, the creation of the box, and place the cursor ready for your input of the caution text. The macro language is very similar to BASIC and is called WordBasic. It has powerful Windows-type features such as list boxes, scroll bars, etc, and programming features such as arrays, variables etc. It truly deserves a separate article, and is a feature that the office guru should learn and make a task easier for other users.
To apply a bullet to the first line of each paragraph, which includes indenting subsequent lines, just select them and click on the bullet icon on the Toolbar.
Creating a table is as easy as clicking on the Table icon and dragging the mouse until the table button grid shows the number of rows and columns you want
A Very Usable Product
If I had to use a single word to describe W4W2, it would be "usable." At Unisys we take that concept seriously, to the point of renting a usability laboratory where we can videotape the test participants and record their comments. It is easy for software designers and technical authors to forget that they are too close to the product and that they need to ask potential users for their comments.
Throughout the product - be it in the tutorial, the program itself, the manuals - you constantly feel that everything "hangs together" and that the product has been well planned.
An example of intuitive design is the undocumented way to go to a specific page: click on any part of the status bar (such as the page number). That will invoke a dialog box asking you where you want to go. If you have the template, the manual, or use the online help you will learn that the F5 key also achieves this purpose.
Missing Features
Something is always left for the next release, it would seem As a subeditor of PC Update I sometimes need to delete entire columns in an ASCII (ie. text) file. Some writers can only supply articles in ASCII by printing to disk, which means each line has several leading spaces that need to be deleted. Sometimes I need to move columns. I have to use WordStar 2000 to do that. I cant do that in W4W2 except if tabs are used to indent the text.
Before sending our articles to other user groups for reprinting, I have to strip out Ventura Publisher tags and substitute certain characters such as bullets. These tags are of varying length, eg "@HEAD PARA = ", "@BODY BULLET = " so I cannot delete all of them in one operation, except if I use XyWrite. The latter has a replace mode where I can specify the first ("@") and last few characters (" = ") in the search pattern irrespective of the characters in between. I would like to see that feature in W4W.
Problems
I had noted some spelling errors in the British English lexicon supplied with version 1.1. The American English lexicon did not have those errors. The Australian lexicon supplied with this version has at least one dubious set of words based on "usable", which W4W2 prefers to spell as "useable".
A few users on Usenet have reported problems with the various conversion filters. Microsoft is aware of that and reports that Windows 3.1 will solve those problems. I was unable to import a TIFF image that I could with the previous version. A temporary solution for some is to use the smaller TIFF filter supplied with PowerPoint Some have had trouble printing equations. One user found that the Microsoft Windows 3.0 PostScript driver dated 31 Oct 90 would not print his equation but the Micrografx driver did. Another user found that PageMaker 4.0 will not recognise an RTF file created by W4W2 or a file saved in 1.1 format.
Users of Adobe Type Manager such as myself ham been disappointed that the new feature that slant: the insertion point over italic text does not work with that program It seems to work if the font is bitmapped; for scalable fonts it does not. The supplied file NEWMACRO.DOC has a bug in the InsertTableOfAuthEnt macro. It is supposed to enable you to revise an existing entry in a table of authorities, or insert an existing entry at another point in the document. If you try it, the list of existing entries always comes up empty. Microsoft is looking into that one too.
The Gang Screen
Our Vice-President Charles Wright beat me to this scoop in his weekly Green Guide column, but that's journalism. For those who still don't know this trick, try the following:
- From the Tools menu, choose Record Macro. (Alt O R)
- Under Record Macro Name, type "spifl".
- Choose OK.
- From the Tools menu, choose Stop Recorder. (Alt O R)
- From the Tools menu, choose Macro. (Alt O M)
- Choose the macro you just saved (called "spiff")
- Delete everything in the macro code.
- From the File menu, choose Close.
- You will be asked if you want to save the changes. Choose Yes.
- From the Help menu, choose About.
- Click on the large Word icon in the upper left, and enjoy.
Hearty Recommendation
W4W 2.0 is truly the word processing program that will set the standard for others to follow. Business users will appreciate its obvious features and the more subtle ones that are spread across the program and the supporting material. My department has largely migrated from
XyWrite to W4W1 and the company has decided to supply nearly every employee with a copy of W4W2 or an upgrade thereto. Some of the added bonuses come from the appendages of
W4W2 - the inbuilt grammar checker, the chart tool, and the drawing tool obviate the need to buy copies of advanced stand-alone programs for each employee.
Yes, there is a problem with the amount of disk space the program takes, particularly for the person who wants to install everything. Many businesses probably have 40 MB drives on their
PCs - that is certainly the case with us. People scoff when I say that 80 MB is the minimum size to get these days, but next year I'll probably be doubling that figure. I probably will delete some extras once this review is finished, because I prefer some
standalone, third-party programs for specialised tasks. Once they support DDE I will be, to use a local expression, home and hosed.
Some people still ridicule Windows - you will like it eventually. Those who are interested in GUI design and know about CUA will be dismayed to see Microsoft take a lead with its own user interface
trend. The Toolbar is now cropping up in many Windows applications under different names, and is an example of extensive, independent usability testing.
Microsoft has excelled itself with this one. (I wish I had used that line for an Excel review.)
Pricing
Current street price is around $550.
About the Author
Ash Nallawalla is a senior editor at Unisys Corporation and was the editor of PC Update for 2.5 years. He is now the Reviews Editor of this magazine. His professional interests include hypertext, technical communication standards, usability testing, and quality metrics. He is a member of the Management Committee of Melbourne PC User Group Inc and is the Vice-Chairman, Board of User Group Advisors, of the Washington, DC-based Association of PC User Groups.
The Review Continues
Such an important package deserves more space than one issue of PC Update can provide. In a second article I will cover some W4W2 features in detail.
Reprinted from the March 1992 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
