Software Reviews

Software Reviews evaluates operating systems, applications, and utility software in widespread use throughout industry and academia. It points out the benefits and shortcomings of available software products, and contrasts the products with competitors. The products are critically examined as is-reviews are not influenced by promises of upgrades, enhancements, andfixes. Our goal is to give you a fair review ofsoftware on hand written by a reviewer with experience in the problem and application domains. We welcome your reviews and comments. expense (in money and time) is worth Now that desktop publishing has mouse. the effort. come out of the Apple Macintosh closet I used the article by Rudolph Seviora and into the world of MS-DOS, it is Criteria. What should a desktop pub-on p. 20 as my test file. This is a good being touted as the big thing in personal lishing program do? It should: benchmark because it is straightforward, computing. This technology eclipsed * Lay out text in a rich variety of free from obscure math symbols, and everything at Comdex last November fonts, sizes, and widths on several page uses basic magazine elements like a and computing magazines have given it sizes accurately-what I see had better headline, deck, large initial capital letter saturated coverage. be what I get.Everyone, it seems, wants to get on * Hyphenate and justify text accurately. ware uses basic fonts: English Times board. Several colleagues who work in * Insert, move, size, and crop art (similar to Palatino), Souvenir, and diverse places-a CAD software firm, elements. Helios (a Helvetica clone). a government agency, a manufacturing * Wrap and flow text. firm, and a publicity office-report * Handle mundane details like page Pagemaker that their firms are committing to desk-numbers (folios) and assure proper After six months of hoopla and a top publishing, sight unseen. They are margins. two-month delay in shipping, I was dis-asking not "Should we explore this * Accept formatting from my word appointed with Aldus Corps Pagemaker. technology?" but " Which program processor. It has many nice functions, but trips should we buy? Should we get an IBM * Edit text and back-annotate so my over its abilities. The more exotic func-or a Mac? " master version is updated. tions make the straightforward func-I spent nearly a month experimenting * Quickly move, delete, and add ele-tions harder to use. with the three top MS-DOS programs, ments. I want the freedom …