Recent AmigaOS 3.1 Word Processor Experiments

 

Recently I have been experimenting with word processing programs under AmigaOS 3. Years ago, back in the 90's, I used my A1200 with Final Writer to create term papers for college.

Before I bought my A1200; however, I was using a Gateway 2000 computer running Windows 3.1 on an Intel 386DX/33 processor. For my old Gateway computer, I had landed on a word processor called Breeze. It was a simple, DOS based word processor that was free (shareware), which is the right price for a college student, and did everything that I need. None of my term papers needed graphics or clip art, so a basic word processor was all that I required.

I still used Breeze on MSDOS even after I bought my A1200. A year or so after purchasing my A1200, I finally decided on buying Final Writer 5. It did word processing along with graphics, and it worked with my, at that time, high quality Epson dot-matrix printer.

Final Writer did quite well for me. Along with my A1200, I was able to create documents that were formatted with MLA and even Turabian styles.

For the past several months, even up to a year, I have been wanting to start working with Final Writer again. It's probably merely nostalgia, but I wanted to use my Amiga to write and to create. I tried to resurrect my A1200, but the hard drive failed, and I lost a lot of my Final Writer documents. I have the Final Writer 5 3.5" disks, but my A1200 wouldn't read them, so apparently my A1200 floppy disk is no longer working either.

So I searched the Interwebs and happened upon Final Writer 5. I found it in ClassicWB P96, at http://classicwb.abime.net/. So I downloaded the ClassicWB P96 pack and installed it into FSUAE on my Linux Mint desktop. I have a legal copy of AmigaForever 2016, so I used the Workbench 3.1 ADF files from AF and had ClassicWB P96 installed and running quickly.

Once setup and installed, the first program I ran in ClassicWB was Final Writer. And I discovered it was version 5, which was a bonus. The same version for which I have the disks.

As I was starting to type and experiment with Final Writer, I noticed something that bugged me and started driving me crazy. When I used my A1200, it was attached to a Commodore 1084 monitor. Something that I did not realize was how well the C1084 monitor hid the pixelation (my new word) of Final Writer and other programs as well.

It may have been a WYSIWYG word processor, but Final Writer was very blocky and pixelated on a modern flatscreen monitor! I tried all the fonts that were available in Final Writer, but I couldn't find one that was clear to read at 12 or 13 point sizes. The Quebec font at 13 points seemed to be the cleanest, but it was not always clean and easy to read. If anyone knows of a clean, clear font to use in Final Writer, please let me know.

I should mention here that I also have a copy of AmigaWriter 2.0 from an Amithlon CDROM that I had acquired back in the early 2000s. Although it too is blocky on a modern monitor, it has a font that is not as pixelated. I have used AmigaWriter to create several documents, and I may continue using it more regularly in the future. Also, AmigaWriter is still available for purchase by its current owner at https://www.alinea-computer.de/.

So I was a little disappointed in my modern experiment of Final Writer. I will keep trying to determine a way to make Final Writer less pixelated.

During my search for Final Writer, I had read an article on Amigalove.com (https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=117) that someone wrote about his recent use of WordPerfect 4.1 on AmigaOS. I didn't realize that WordPerfect had released an Amiga version of their word processor. So during the period of my disappointment and letdown of Final Writer, I decided to test drive WordPerfect on Amiga.

In my younger years, notably in high school, we used WordPerfect 4.3 for MSDOS in our Business Applications class. We used it for enhancing our typing skills and for modern (at that time) word processing on a computer. 

After downloading and installing WordPerfect 4.1 for AmigaOS, which is available in the amigalove.com article as well as at https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/41-amiga, I started experimenting with it. And I noticed straightaway that even though the font was pixelated, the font was not as blocky as Final Writer and it was, more importantly for me, easier to read.

So I typed a few short thoughts into WordPerfect to try it out, and then I decided to write an article with it.

This article, by the way, was written in WordPerfect 4.1 on my emulated Amiga. WordPerfect has an export to IBM WP format which allows me to copy it to a directory drive in the emulator. From the directory drive, I load the file into LibreOffice, which can open WordPerfect files. From LibreOffice it's a simple CopyPaste into a web form via Firefox. I could very well use AWeb on my emulated Amiga to get the article to a web form, but my current emulation instance does not have network setup.

Come to think about it, I can merely use another emulation instance, which does have network connectivity, and get the article into a web form via AWeb in that method. Whatever works.

So that is my most recent Amiga experiment: trying out various word processors on Amiga. There aren't many and they are dated, but it came be done. Although they are dated, I did find it easier to focus while I was writing in WordPerfect 4.1. I wasn't distracted as much since the only thing on the screen was the WordPerfect window. This is helpful to me as I am, unfortunately, easily distracted.

My next Amiga experiment will probably be doing some coding (programming) in the Amiga and perhaps in Aros using C/C++. I have a short 33 room adventure game written in PureBasic that I want to convert into C. And I might as well get it working on Amiga because, as I reason, if it works on Amiga it should work on Linux and the others, too. If there are still any Amiga artists out there who are interested in creating scenes for my project, then PM me, and I'll get the current iteration of the software to you and maybe some hand-drawn maps to aid your work.

Sorry for the long article, but I was wanting to give WordPerfect for Amiga a good test run.

I wrote a follow-up article on another word processor that I found for Amiga after writing this article.

Cheers.