Lotus Word Pro 96 for joint editing

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.