Save €20 Euro/$15 USD on TextMaker - Only Until Sunday!

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.softmaker.de/tmp_en.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.softmaker.de/tmp_en.htm</a><br /><br /></div>If you've always wanted to purchase the uber-powerful TextMaker application for your Pocket PC, but have been hesitating due to the price, here's your excuse: until Sunday the 17th, European customers can get it for only €39.95 Euro (€20 off the normal price of 59.95), or $34.95 USD ($15 off the normal price of $49.95). TextMaker is easily the most powerful word-processing tool for the Pocket PC, and at these prices it's a more affordable option. <a href="http://www.softmaker.de/tmpdemo_en.htm">Download the demo today</a>, check it it, and and make your decision before Sunday.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/ppc_afr,en.gif" /> <br /><br />"In an ideal world, you could create a Microsoft Word document on your desktop computer, put it on your Pocket PC, edit and format it on the road, and then send it back to the office as a .DOC file, with content and all formatting still intact. This is what Pocket PC users expect from their mobile computers. Unfortunately, this is not how it works right now. Pocket Word, the "word processor" shipping with all Pocket PCs, is perhaps the biggest disappointment for mobile users: No headers or footers. No tables. No outliner. No on-the-fly spell-checking. Severely limited text formatting. Image support? Barely existent..."

[bbarker]

This is a great product. Highly recommended.

[Don Tolson]

I second that. With Textmaker, I'm able to truly leave the laptop at home when composing reviews, documents, etc.

[SandersP]

When are they going to release the spreadsheet?

[QYV]

Although this is certainly a fully-featured product, I found the demo I tried a few months back to be unbearably slow on a Pocket PC 2002 400Mhz device. Is this any faster on Windows Mobile 2003? I'd sure love to ditch Pocket Word in order to retain simple bullet list formatting, but coughing up $35 and using a ton of RAM to see the "spinning disk" for ten seconds every time I launch it isn't really worth it. :(

[SoftMaker]

Although this is certainly a fully-featured product, I found the demo I tried a few months back to be unbearably slow on a Pocket PC 2002 400Mhz device. Is this any faster on Windows Mobile 2003? I'd sure love to ditch Pocket Word in order to retain simple bullet list formatting, but coughing up $35 and using a ton of RAM to see the "spinning disk" for ten seconds every time I launch it isn't really worth it. :(
If TextMaker needs 10 seconds to start up on such a device, you probably installed to a storage card -- and a very slow one at that, maybe even \Built-In Storage or the iPaq FileStore. Try it again in internal memory or get a faster storage card, and your experience should be vastly different.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[Lday]

My question is- how does it handle embedded documents? My company makes extensive use of there fot Customer Information Bulletins, keeping site names and locations, parts listings, and settings in embedded documents. So far, my only resort has been copying and pasting the embedded document back into the original. Since these CIB's may change several times monthly, and I usually have at least 50 of them, it doesn't always (can you saw "never?") get done.

[SoftMaker]

My question is- how does it handle embedded documents? My company makes extensive use of there fot Customer Information Bulletins, keeping site names and locations, parts listings, and settings in embedded documents. So far, my only resort has been copying and pasting the embedded document back into the original. Since these CIB's may change several times monthly, and I usually have at least 50 of them, it doesn't always (can you saw "never?") get done.
Hmm, what are "embedded documents"? If you mean Excel sheets inserted as OLE objects, that won't work on Pocket PCs because they have no OLE support. If you mean something else, try to explain.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[austingeog]

I downloaded it to a compact flash card (Viking 1GB) and have had no issues using it from there. Looks promising. It also made me realize how spoiled I am. At the Univ of Texas where I am, I can get XP professional for like $20 bucks. Now spending $35 for a word processor....astounding. So far so good with it....I will probably get it.

[austingeog]

Not sure if there are any progams like Endnotes or Procite that would work on the PocketPC but does this software or any other software have the ability to work with a bibliography software on pocketPCs? I have an h2210.

[SoftMaker]

Not sure if there are any progams like Endnotes or Procite that would work on the PocketPC but does this software or any other software have the ability to work with a bibliography software on pocketPCs? I have an h2210.
Apart from the footnotes and endnotes that are already built in to TextMaker, I have never heard of any add-on bibliography software for Pocket PCs.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[QYV]

If TextMaker needs 10 seconds to start up on such a device, you probably installed to a storage card -- and a very slow one at that, maybe even \Built-In Storage or the iPaq FileStore. Try it again in internal memory or get a faster storage card, and your experience should be vastly different.

I stand corrected. I just installed the demo again and timed it, and it takes between five and six seconds to launch (and several additional seconds to open a file). This is on an Axim with a 400MHz PXA 250 processor running Pocket PC 2002, with TextMaker installed to internal memory.

That said, I still find that to be very slow. According to many reports, Windows Mobile 2003 improves performance over Pocket PC 2002, so I'm interested if someone with a 2003 device who has also used TextMaker on a 2002 device could let me know what kind of performance differences they've seen. Thanks!

[austingeog]

It takes me about 3 seconds to have the screen with welcome to text maker come up and files open almost at once. This is with an h2210 and the program is installed on a memory card. I did have a couple of questions though since someone from the company seems to be posting here.
The font I use most commonly in word is Times New Roman which I didn't see it as an option? Also I noticed for line spacing you use something auto instead of the single, 1.5, and 2. I am used to. The default was 100. I changed it to 150 and that did space out the lines. My question would be if I created a document on my pocketpc would I put 150 in if I wanted 1.5 spacing on lines and would full word take that document and read it as being formatted as 1.5 line spacing?

[SoftMaker]

It takes me about 3 seconds to have the screen with welcome to text maker come up and files open almost at once. This is with an h2210 and the program is installed on a memory card. I did have a couple of questions though since someone from the company seems to be posting here.
The font I use most commonly in word is Times New Roman which I didn't see it as an option? Also I noticed for line spacing you use something auto instead of the single, 1.5, and 2. I am used to. The default was 100. I changed it to 150 and that did space out the lines. My question would be if I created a document on my pocketpc would I put 150 in if I wanted 1.5 spacing on lines and would full word take that document and read it as being formatted as 1.5 line spacing?
Providing fonts is the job of the operating system, not of individual applications. Copy time*.ttf from your desktop PC's c:\Windows\Fonts folder to \Windows\Fonts on your Pocket PC and reset your Pocket PC. After that, Times New Roman is available to any Pocket PC app.

Yes, 100% line spacing is single. 200% is double spacing etc., and they are correctly imported and exported from/to Microsoft Word.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[jnunn]

I seriously wanted to tryout TextMaker before the Sunday deadline but TextMaker will not run on my PPC. I have PPC 2000 OS on an iPAQ 3600 with CF (SS2) and TextMaker will not run on either CF or main memory. I did not see on the website that program will not work on PPC2000 devices.

When TextMaker starts, the start page of "Welcomeo TextMaker 2002" loads but when I hit 'Continue' to get past the trial version indicator I receive a "Fatal Application Error" which indicates
Program: tmp.exe
Exception: 0x80000002
Address: 01be5b20
Fatal Application Error

I removed the program, did a soft reset, and reloaded both into CF and main memory but error persists. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks,

John

[jnunn]

I neglected to indicate that I have used 15.9MB of memory with TextMaker installed in main memory leaving 4.01MB for storage and 7.77MB for Program.

[SoftMaker]

I seriously wanted to tryout TextMaker before the Sunday deadline but TextMaker will not run on my PPC. I have PPC 2000 OS on an iPAQ 3600 with CF (SS2) and TextMaker will not run on either CF or main memory. I did not see on the website that program will not work on PPC2000 devices.

When TextMaker starts, the start page of "Welcomeo TextMaker 2002" loads but when I hit 'Continue' to get past the trial version indicator I receive a "Fatal Application Error" which indicates
Program: tmp.exe
Exception: 0x80000002
Address: 01be5b20
Fatal Application Error

I removed the program, did a soft reset, and reloaded both into CF and main memory but error persists. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks,

John
That's weird. Launch TextMaker once more, and it will detect that it crashed during the previous invocation. It will create a log file called tmp.log in the folder where TM is installed. Mail me that file for diagnosis.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[jnunn]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the help. I just launched TextMaker a couple of times with the same error. Here is the content of TMP.LOG:

[ 0s]: Date 16.08.2003, 10:15
[ 0s]: Windows CE 3.0, Build 9348
[ 0s]: TextMaker 2002, Revision 391 (PPC)
[ 0s]: File: \Program Files\SoftMaker\tmp.exe
[ 0s]: Init: Main
[ 0s]: Init: SIP
[ 0s]: Init: Controls
[ 0s]: Init: CmdLine &lt;>
[ 0s]: Init: OleAutomation
[ 1s]: Init: DDE
[ 1s]: Init: Net
[ 1s]: Init: Register
[ 1s]: Init: MainWindow
[ 1s]: Init: CtlStrips
[ 2s]: Init: Size
[ 2s]: Init: Treeview
[ 2s]: Init: Colors
[ 2s]: Init: WPData
[ 2s]: wpInit: Brushes
[ 2s]: wpInit: Format
[ 2s]: wpInit: Cursors&Icons
[ 2s]: WPInit: Register
[ 6s]: WPInit: SE
[ 6s]: WPInit: Menus
[ 6s]: WPInit: Borders
[ 6s]: WPInit: Bitmaps
[ 6s]: WPInit: Buffer
[ 6s]: WPInit: Fonts
[ 6s]: WPInit: Accelerators
[ 6s]: WPInit: Printer
[ 6s]: WPInit: Quickpath

I will stay home most of the day :-( just so that I can see if this can be resolved. Thanks again,

John

[SoftMaker]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the help. I just launched TextMaker a couple of times with the same error. Here is the content of TMP.LOG:

.....

John

John:

OK, here we go: Download http://www.softmaker.com/down/tmptest.zip and unzip the contents over your existing installation of TextMaker on the Pocket PC. The archive contains tmp.exe, tmp.awr, and tmp.dwr.

Then, launch this TextMaker and you'll see a couple of message boxes. Questions:

1. Does TextMaker launch properly now?
2. If not, what is the last message you can see?

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[jnunn]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the help. I installed the three files like you instructed over the existing files on my iPAQ. TextMaker still did not load properly and experienced a fatal application error after the second dialog box. Here are the events:
1. Welcome to TextMaker 2002!
&lt;Continue>
2. dwInitQuickPath
&lt;OK>
3. Fatal Application Error
Program: temp.exe
Exception: 0x80000002
Address: 01be5b20
Fatal Application Error

Over the weekend I did try the original files that I downloaded on my friend's iPAQ5450 by copying the files from my iPAQ3600 to CF and then running from the CF on my friend's iPAQ. TextMaker worked fine on his iPAQ so I am led to believe that my difficulty lies either with my particular piece of hardware or with my OS.

In either case, I am holding out on upgrading until a superior screen resolution comes up. So far, only Sony and the Tungsten T3 are candidates but I see that TextMaker is available for the Palm OS too.

Thanks for your help, Martin, but my problem here looks device or OS dependent. Also, I have decided not to purchase further PPC software since I will be changing over the superior Palm screen (hence OS) unless the PPC OS can increase the screen resolution midway through 2004. Best regards,

John

[SoftMaker]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the help. I installed the three files like you instructed over the existing files on my iPAQ. TextMaker still did not load properly and experienced a fatal application error after the second dialog box. Here are the events:

....

Over the weekend I did try the original files that I downloaded on my friend's iPAQ5450 by copying the files from my iPAQ3600 to CF and then running from the CF on my friend's iPAQ. TextMaker worked fine on his iPAQ so I am led to believe that my difficulty lies either with my particular piece of hardware or with my OS.

In either case, I am holding out on upgrading until a superior screen resolution comes up. So far, only Sony and the Tungsten T3 are candidates but I see that TextMaker is available for the Palm OS too.

Thanks for your help, Martin, but my problem here looks device or OS dependent. Also, I have decided not to purchase further PPC software since I will be changing over the superior Palm screen (hence OS) unless the PPC OS can increase the screen resolution midway through 2004. Best regards,

John

That's too bad 'cause we found the bug... in the iPaq 36xx series, one operating system function crashes even though it's called with the correct parameters. Must be the exact PPC 2000 build for the iPaq 36xx. We are circumventing the OS bug by calling another function instead.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[jnunn]

Martin,

I am glad that my old, trusted iPAQ3600 was able help you find that function so that other faithful 3600 users can use TextMaker.

For me, though, tragedy has just happened. My beloved iPAQ has died. The dust filled screen has finally become unresponsive to my stylus even after hard reset. My friend is now perpetually stuck in "align screen" mode waiting for the stylus touch it cannot feel. This is truly a sad day for me.

After mourning is over I will dutifully purchase a 2210. For now, though, I must be alone. Thank you for all your help.

John