Wordwise is a word processing system that has been available for several months and has become very popular with Beebug members. Now, other rivals are emerging to challenge Wordwise, in particular, View from the Acornsoft stable. Before writing this review, I had not used either of these two systems before, although I am familiar with other word processing systems.

Wordwise impressed me very quickly as it was easy to install the chip, the Wordwise manual was straightforward and easy to follow and I had no difficulty in starting to enter some text. All text entry takes place in mode 7 which is easy to read but, of course, gives no feel for the final formatted appearance of the document. The cursor control keys, by themselves, and also in combination with SHIFT and CTRL keys, enable the cursor to be moved very quickly backwards and forwards through the text. Using Wordwise for this is really very nice indeed. The usual tasks of deletion and insertion of text also proved very easy to master. There is no specific command to delete a 1line of text, though CTRL-A seems to cope with deleting blank lines quite well.

There is also a search command using a function key, but this only allows you to search for a single character which is not very useful. However, if you return to the main menu, option 5 allows you to search for a whole string of characters and replace each occurrence with a new character string, which is much more useful. There is also a function key which allows you to delete from the position of the cursor up to a single specified character, which again is rather restricting, and even if you repeat the process till all the appropriate text is deleted, the process does not behave in a logical way. Large areas of text are best deleted by setting markers at the start and end, and using a different function key to delete marked text. Similarly, whole sections of text can either be moved or copied to a new position in the text, all very useful and very easy.

In order to see the formatted appearance of the text, you need to return to the main menu where option 7 displays the formatted text on the screen in mode 3, an 80 column mode. All formatting is controlled by special commands which are embedded in the text of your document but not printed. All such commands are displayed in green when editing text, which is an excellent idea. All the commands have default values, so it is only necessary to include them when you want to format differently. The range of commands is very comprehensive. However, the fact that you can only see the formatted text by returning to the main menu and selecting option 7, I find rather tedious and time consuming and the inability of Wordwise to perform on-screen formatting, the most serious disadvantage of the system. This is particularly true when setting up tables and other critical text layouts.

Having said that, the great virtue of Wordwise is its ability to let you get on with the job and not to stand in your way. Because of this most people will, I am sure, put up with the few disadvantages for the sake of its power and simplicity.

Like Wordwise, View is supplied as firmware - in fact View is in ROM, while Wordwise is in EPROM. Fitting was again quite easy but using the system proved more difficult initially. After some frustration and not a little heart searching I eventually discovered from the manual that View is selected by typing *WORD and not as I had logically expected *VIEW. Unlike Wordwise, you are not presented with an initial menu. Instead you need to know what commands to type in - back to the manual (there are two manuals actually). To start creating a new document requires the command NEW followed by hitting the ESCAPE key.

View differs from Wordwise in that text is formatted on the screen as it is entered, allowing you to see much more clearly how the final pages will appear. You will also see a ruler at the top of the screen. The ruler is a line of characters showing the position of the left and righthand margins and the positions of any tab stops. View allows you to use up to 199 different rulers within any one document. Each ruler controls the formatting of text up to the next ruler. The top line of the screen also contains additional information on which of several options are currently selected.

In View, all the editing functions are carried out by using the function keys, alone and in combination with the SHIFT and CTRL keys giving some 30 functions plus the cursor control keys as well. This avoids the use of any control keys, but the function key layout is not that obvious and takes some getting used to. In general, View will perform all the functions and formatting of Wordwise and some extras as well. View also allows the screen to scroll horizontally covering lines of up to 132 characters. Splitting and joining lines is easy and also line deletion. Markers (up to 6) can be used to mark sections of text for deletion, moving or copying. Using the ruler facility, you can very easily reformat text, with or without justification.

View also uses the equivalent of the embedded commands used by Wordwise but with View the commands are inserted in the left-hand margin of the screen rather than in the text itself. Again the facilities are similar with several extras.

Both View and Wordwise provide a range of more advanced features. However, most word processing users tend to use only a relatively small proportion of the total facilities available, and it is from this point of view that I have tried to sum up the relative merits of these two systems. Wordwise really is easy to use. It positively encourages you as you are using it. For many, these virtues and its lower price will be sufficient reason for purchase. It is ideally suited to the home hobbyist. For those who will need to handle more complex text layouts with documents running into many pages, the on-screen formatting and use of rulers by View will ultimately save much time and provide a more powerful environment for this type of work, once the initial learning difficulties are overcome. For those who are used to sophisticated word processing packages on business micros, View will still leave a lot to be desired.

In conclusion, if I was buying a word processor for myself then I think my choice would be Wordwise; if I was buying for my work, (i.e. not paying for it myself) then I know I would choose View.

Wordwise will work with any printer that works with the BBC micro. You configure Wordwise for your printer directly using *FX commands (if required) , and embedded format commands. These may be incorporated into the function keys, and loaded from tape or disc as explained in Beebug vol. 1 no. 18 p. 41.

View needs to be configured if you want to use the special features of a given printer (e.g underline, emphasised print etc.), and a tape can be purchased at £9.95 for this purpose for the following printers:

Ricoh, Qume, Diablo, Olivetti, Epson and the NEC spinwriter.

We have been using Wordwise to produce the whole of Beebug magazine for several months, and are extremely happy with it. Because of this we are biased in favour of Wordwise - and for this reason we commissioned the impartial comparative review presented here. We feel however that we must add one point regarding Wordwise's use of mode 7 for text entry. This mode was chosen to leave as much memory free for text as possible; but even more important, to enable it to be used with an ordinary TV (monochrome or colour) or with a colour monitor. The full on-screen formatting provided by View requires one of the 8 column modes, and these necessitate the use of a monochrome monitor. Televisions (monochrome or colour) and even normal colour monitors do not give sufficiently high resolution.