GraphicWriter III, Version 2.0
Reviewed by Gareth Jones
Copyright (c) 1996 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
Reprinted from Apples BC News
GraphicWriter, a desktop publishing program, was one of the first programs written specifically for the Apple IIgs. It evolved through several iterations to GraphicWriter III, version 1.1, where it stayed for a couple of years. However, at last, version 2.0 has been released. Since I rely on GraphicWriter for everything from my letters to a self-published book, I was eager to see the new version.
An Overview of GraphicWriter
Like other desktop publishing programs, GraphicWriter III allows you to create and arrange painting, drawing, and text objects on a page. The painting tools are simple, reflecting the fact that they are meant for touching up imported art rather than creating it from scratch. The drawing tools are fine for creating simple lines and polygons in your choice of colour and line thickness. The text tools are equivalent to a word processor. In addition to the usual font, size, style, and selection commands, it includes a spell-checker with an 80,000 word dictionary. It also supports kerning and leading control, three kinds of text wrap, custom tab leaders, 'snap-to' guides, and a few other typographic controls not likely to be in a typical word processor.
New and Improved
The changes to GraphicWriter are extensive (the new version is over a third larger than the previous one), but easily summarized. I'd like to discuss the new features in GraphicWriter III 2.0 in two categories: Standardizing and New. Standardizing features replace some ideosyncracy with Apple's preferred way of doing things. New features add new capabilities to the program. As it turns out, the two categories overlap, but there you go.
Standardizing
There are many small, but appreciated, changes: the watch cursor is now the standard one, so the Twilight II screen saver won't interrupt a print job; the sounds you select in the 'Sounds' Control Panel will play at the appropriate times; GraphicWriter III now tells the printer driver the name of the file that it is printing, which is useful for users of the 'Express' printer spooler; the 'Auto-Save' preference has been removed, and double-clicking a GraphicWriter document in the Finder will now load the document, as well as launching the program.
Finally, version 2.0 has adopted separate Font and Size menus instead of a combining them. The combined menu frustrated people who used a large number of fonts, and it did not work with the 'TypeSet' Control Panel. One standardizing feature is probably more important than any other change in the program: The Cut, Copy, and Paste operations now use the System Clipboard instead of a private one. This means that you can cut or copy something in another GS/OS program and paste it into GraphicWriter III, or vice versa. Best of all, if the object you paste into GraphicWriter III is a QuickDraw PICT, then it will print at the best resolution your printer can provide. A useful technique is to turn a painting or text into a PICT by opening it in another program (such as AppleWorks GS or Platinum Paint), copying it to the clipboard, and pasting it into GraphicWriter instead of importing it directly into GraphicWriter. In this way, for example, I was able to place artwork and screen shots into GraphicWriter that could be smoothly reduced to one quarter their original size and still print sharply.
New Features
Dialogue boxes have mostly turned into either windoids (think of them as dialogue boxes that can be moved around the screen) or actual windows. For example 'Find/Change' is now a window, meaning that you can leave it open on your desktop and click on it whenever you wish to use it. Speaking of dialogues, one of the three new menu items in GraphicWriter III is 'Object Specs...'. (The others are 'Help...' and 'Copy Master Guides'). Selecting this brings up a windoid that lets you see and change the size and location of a selected object by typing new values for them. One feature of the new GraphicWriter will not be apparent for a while. An 'Extras' menu will appear on the menu bar only when Extras are installed. None have yet been written.
Depending on what Extras are written, the Extras menu may be-come the most powerful feature of the program. In order to get a sense of what is possible, spend some time with the Additions menu in Page-Maker or the Extras menu in Quark Express and let your imagination soar.
The Journey is the Reward?
As much as I like this update, there are certainly more changes that I'd like to see. For example, I was a little disappointed that the text editing commands don't include the standard Control-F and Control-Y commands (except in the dialogue boxes), smart quotes, smart cut-and-paste, and smart delete. The ability to create white text on a black background would also be useful.
Although it is nice to be able to launch a document from the Finder, there are other messages from other programs that GraphicWriter ignores: it won't print a document directly from the Finder, nor Open or Print one under command from HyperCard IIgs.
And, while we're at it, the Help window in the Finder lets you copy help text to the Clipboard. Is there any reason that you can't do that in GraphicWriter. (Quibble, quibble).
More importantly, I'd urge Seven Hills to consider redesigning the Toolbar as a floating palette resembling the tool palettes in HyperCard IIgs and HyperStudio. This would allow the user to read the entire width of text on a page without scrolling horizontally.
There is a bug left over from the old version that causes squares and circles to be not-square or not-circular when you create them by holding down the shift key as you drag the appropriate tool. The resulting shape is about a tenth higher than it is wide. This can now be corrected with the Object Specifications dialogue, but should be squashed.
Seven Hills has several file translators that have been in beta testing for a while, including AppleWorks GS, WordPerfect, BeagleWrite and Thunderscan. I presume that these will be released eventually.
Conclusion
The previous version of GraphicWriter III was one of my staple programs. This version is better. In my opinion, the four greatest deficiencies in the previous version were:
% No standard clipboard
% No way to precisely place or size objects
% You can't see all the way across the page when you are typing
% There is no text-wrap allowed around text objects.
The first two of these four have been corrected. The last one hasn't been but, as I mentioned, the standard clipboard offers a workaround to the problem. (More on that in another article).
Anyone who owns an earlier version of GraphicWriter should dig US$25 from their pockets for the upgrade. That amount is minuscule compared to the benefits.
People who don't own GraphicWriter III have to justify a cost of US$65. However, if they do any page layout, they will do it faster, better, and easier in GraphicWriter III. For example, to wrap text around a graphic takes a menu selection and a mouse click in GraphicWriter; in AppleWorks GS the user has to create several linked text objects and fit them carefully around the graphic. Although Publish It!4 is an excellent program, GraphicWriter's access to the System Clipboard and standard desk accessories, to high quality TrueType fonts via the "Pointless" Control Panel, and to a spell checker are all big advantages. In addition, its publishers are still in business. It is to our benefit to support them.
GraphicWriter III is published by Seven Hills Software and is available from Jeff Schuurman at II Series Software (02)606-9343.
A detailed list of differences between GraphicWriter III v1.1 and v2.0 released by Seven Hills software is available for downloading from the [O]pen Information area in the [F]iling Cabinet of the Apple II BBS.

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