Lotus Word Pro 96 for joint editing

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP0: Can you think of any novel and useful features that could -- and maybe should -- be incorporated in the already feature-laden word processors of the current generation? Well, perhaps it is a bit hard to come up with some truly, extraordinarily useful ideas. As we all know, today's word processors have almost all the tools and facilities we might need in accomplishing our tasks: On-the-go spell checking, fit-to-one- page printing, automatic formatting -- you name it, the list goes on and on. Perhaps, jokingly, we could say that just about the only thing still on our wish list is the one thing that could automatically extract all the ideas bouncing around in our heads, organize them in a perfectly intelligible order, and present them in a highly polished textual form -- all at the tap of one single key. However, that would be a bit too much to expect, wouldn't it?

Nonetheless, it turned out that there was still a handful of useful features the people at Lotus Development Corporation could think of without actually going beyond the technologically possible into the realm of wishful thinking. And, perhaps knowing too well that it would be hard to beat Microsoft's Winword 95, Lotus has focused its efforts on meeting the needs of a niche market comprising groups of people who work together on the same document.

These people may be working on the draft of a report, or a manual, or any kind of document. Each of them is supposed to review it, add a paragraph or two if necessary, change some of the words to make it more reader-friendly, as well as add comments and suggestions. At the end of the exercise, all or some of the comments and suggestions may be permanently incorporated into the document by the chief editor who is responsible for the final product.

Since, by definition, collaborative editing involves more than one editor, files need to be shared across the network or even on the Internet, and versions should be managed in an orderly manner so that people always know which one contains the latest revisions and they can compare it to the original. Word Pro 96 is the word processor that Lotus has specifically written for those with these requirements. It has the right tools for such an environment.

Courtesy of Sistech Kharisma, I was able to have a look at this reincarnation of Lotus Ami Pro, my most favorite word processor. Well, in case you wonder why I am such a big fan of Ami Pro, let me briefly explain again that, despite its limited number of features by the current standard, it is still the snappiest word processor in Windows. It is also the best word processor to use in Windows 3.x if you have only 4 MB of RAM. And it has one of the most comprehensive collections of conversion filters that you can use to convert its file into any other file format.

Cool features

Word Pro 96 for Windows 95 is a member of the latest SmartSuite family from Lotus Corp. Intended for use on a Windows 95 machine, this particular version is a 32-bit application. It has a sibling for those who still work in Windows 3.x. Its close relationship to Ami Pro is still very obvious in its user interface, although when I installed the new program on a Toshiba Satellite 100CS which only had 8 MB of RAM, it proclaimed its requirement for more RAM for full OLE support. This is not an upgrade, actually, as Lotus has rewritten every code from the ground up.

Important new features are TeamMail, TeamReview, TeamConsolidate, TeamSecurity and Version manager. In addition, there are Internet tools and on-the-fly spell checking like the one we have in Winword 95.

TeamMail enables us to share a Word Pro document by attaching a copy to our e-mail. In the e-mail, the chief editor can pass around editing instructions for the others to follow.

TeamReview makes it possible for us to set up access for each of our co-workers to work on one document, with an access level for each person possible. For instance, some co-workers may be allowed to make changes, while others may only be allowed to read the document. We can also prevent the document -- if it happens to be a highly confidential one, for instance -- from being printed or saved at the other end of the network.

TeamConsolidate lets the originator view all the suggested changes made by other editors in one single document. Using different colors, highlighting pens, and electronic sticky notes, the other editors may offer changes that he can accept or reject. If he accepts the suggestions, they will be incorporated into the document.

TeamSecurity enables us to password-protect our documents, so that only those with the right password will have access to it. We can also set up other kinds of protection. Each of these team tools have their own Assistant and plenty of hints so that we can easily and immediately use them in our job.

Version control enables us to keep multiple versions of the same document in the same file. We can move from one version to another very easily, and each has its own identification. We can name each version, and place remarks where we wish.

Among the things that I like most about Word Pro is its modeless bars. These are basically dialog boxes that we can leave open while working on the document. In the past, we had to close most of the dialog boxes before going back to the document, but with the modeless bar activated this is no longer necessary. So, for instance, we can stop in the middle of spell checking, revise an entire sentence, and resume spell checking without closing the spell-check dialog box. The modeless bar behaves just the same as any of the context sensitive icon bars.

Downsides

In Ami Pro, moving from any current view mode to a full page display requires only the pressing of Ctrl and D. It's so easy. Even Winword 95 doesn't have a ready-to-use shortcut for changing the view mode. Unfortunately, in Word Pro, this Ctrl-D switch is glaringly absent. Changing the view mode takes a couple of steps now that the menu offers various zoom levels.

To change the font style to bold, for example, we don't have to select the entire word. We can just place the insertion point inside the word and click on the bold tool icon. But, strangely, the familiar Ctrl-Shift and arrow keys that we always use to highlight one or more words doesn't work in Word Pro. The insertion point simply moves one character at a time to the left or to the right, but after the entire word is highlighted it then highlights one word at a time.

Word Pro power users are equipped with LotusScript, which is different from the one that Ami Pro uses. This script language is shared among all SmartSuite 96 applications. Unfortunately, we cannot simply record keystrokes and assign macros to shortcut keys as we can in Ami Pro.

Final word

Quite recently, two colleagues and I worked on the draft of a book that we had to edit together -- I was involved basically because they needed some help in moving text and tables around. We finished the entire job in three long days of work. Had we been working using Word Pro on a network, I believe we could have finished it in less than one day.

Apart from the good and bad things about Word Pro that I mentioned above, the rest of the program is perfectly up to snuff. There are also dozens of other new features that I simply don't have the space to elaborate on here. The Assistants, for instance, performs at least equally well compared to Winword's Wizards or WordPerfect's Experts. The on-line help facility, with its attempted natural language approach, is more than what you need as far as getting assistance is concerned. A few words of caution though: As with all other Win95 applications, you have to have fast hardware to run this program. If you run it on anything lower than a Pentium 90 MHz, you'll be bogged down by its sluggishness.

As I mentioned earlier, Lotus designed this word processor for a collaborative working environment. It even dubs the software "The Team Word Processor". For individual users, therefore, there isn't much in Word Pro that might compel users of other word processors to migrate to it. But for organizations that constantly churn out documents created by teams, Word Pro is definitely the best choice.