PRODUCT NAME Wordworth 7 BRIEF DESCRIPTION Word processor for the Amiga. COMPANY INFORMATION Digita International Rolle Street Exmouth EX8 1HE PRICE Wordworth 7 CD £40 Wordworth 7 Floppy £40 Manual can be bought seperately. LH Publishing provide manuals as well. HARDWARE & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS Workbench 2.04 or better. 4MB of memory Hard drive recommended CD Drive for CD version. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 1200 Blizzard 1230-IV 16MB Fast RAM 1.1Gb Hard Disk 1 x DD/DS Floppy drive (DF1) 1 x HD/DS Floppy drive (DF2) Kickstart/Workbench 3.1 SCSI CD ROM 12x DEMO VERSION There are demo versions available to try it out. See Magazine coverdisks and Aminet and Digitas web site (www.digita.com) COPY PROTECTION None SOFTWARE INSTALLATION Software comes on one CD or multiple floppy disks. Installation is via a standard Installer script to a directory of your choice. Installation includes versions for English, French and German. On the CD version an Amiga Format demo is also included in a AFCD drawer as well as Clipart, Fonts and Spell files. REVIEW I have used Wordworth since version 2, I have also used 3SE and 6 before this version. Wordworth steadily improved over the years and includes features from industry standard word processors such as Word which makes this Word Processor one of the best available. Final Writer is the only alternative available and was available from Softwood. It seems that development on Final Writer has ceased since the last version 97 and there are no distributors available any more. I bought the CD version of Wordworth so I get more than just the Program unlike the floppy version. There is 85.9MB of data on the CD. Wordworth is a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) type word processor or word publisher as some people like to call it. It uses a standard page layout and uses Compugraphic fonts for text. Printed output is noramally done in graphics mode which makes output look better but tends to be a lot slower as well. When you start up Wordworth you get a Wordworth screen with a new document ready for you to enter your text. At the top there is the usual menus to access all the features for Wordworth: Project, Edit, View, Format, Object, Tools, Settings, Help Then there is the ruker toolbar for access to common formatting features such as Plain, Bold, Italic, Underline, justification and so on with a ruler underneath. On the left there is a button bat with access to other features such as Open Save, Print, Spell Check and so on. Most of the features are customerisable with the Change Settings... feature. The bottom includes a status bar giving location in the document. Wordworth saves in its own IFF format WTXT and can also save in ASCII, WordPerfect 5.1, RTF, Template or the older Wordworth 3 format. It cannot save in MS Word format due to Microsoft's insistance on keeping the Word format to itself and changing the format everytime a new version appears. I have heard that MS are using HTML as its next default document format and hopefully Digita will follow suit as this format is widely used and would make document sharing much easier! Wordworth can also load in a number of different formats such as Wordworth, RTF, Wordperfect for DOS, Word for DOS, Works for Windows, Windows Write, Wordstar, Final Copy II, Final Writer and ASCII. Having Final Writer supports allows owners of Final Writer to easier port their FW documents over to wordworth quite easily now that Softwood have ceased development. Additional features of Wordworth include the following: * Insertion of objects into documents inc. Clipart, Bitmap pictures, tables * Text frames * Spell check with autocorrect * Thesaurus * Librarian. To store commonly used phrases. * Statistics. Produce stats on your document or selected text. * Sort paragraphs and perform simple calculations * Creating a list of tables and diagrams and Table of Contents * Creating an Index * Speech for speaking a document or selected text or while you type * Playtime. A simple puzzle game * Access to Arexx macros for complex features. * Setting passwords for documents * Mail Merge * Style Sheets * Substantial on line help in AmigaGuide format DOCUMENTATION You do not normally get a manual with Wordworth although you can get one if you ask. I have never needed one as the On Line help has enough detail to explain to me how to use Wordworth. New users may be advised to get the manual anyway. The manual comes as a 98 page A5 stapled booklet with plenty of explanitary text, diagrams and screen dumps to explain every detail of wordworth. Includes a table of contents and index to find those features would want to know about. SUPPORT Support is provided for registered owners by the customer service department by telephone or by letter. BUGS No major bugs have been found as yet. GOOD POINTS Easy to use and powerful Word Processor worthy of the Amiga. Includes most commonly used features required for a Word Processor. BAD POINTS Poor import facilities from other word processors especially the PC which most people would use at work. RTF is provided although it doesn't cover everything though which appears in a full Document such as Word. Better HTML support would be highly useful. Still provides outdated Workbench printer drivers, so no built in support for modern laser and inkjet printers. Upto owner to provide their own drivers. TurboPrint recommended for speedy and quality output on modern printers. Output can be slow but lowering the dpi setting can signifcantly speed things up! ALTERNATIVES WordWorth Office Final Writer Mini Office Personal Suite (Personal Write) CygnusEd EdWordPro (Shareware) GoldEd (Shareware) CONCLUSION If you don't have a word processor or have an old word processor, then I recommend this at the top of your list. There aren't that many word processors around these days with the same level of support and features.