Let's talk about Textmaker

[sublime]

I happened to be one of the many people to purchase textmaker for $11.11. After a little while of using it, I noticed its ups and downs.

Easily said: Textmaker for PPC is infinitely better than Pocket Word, but Textmaker on the Desktop sucks compared to Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word for the desktop gave me a few luxuries that I now feel naked without. Actually, it all boils down to one:

Autocorrect - For those of us that type fast, autocorrect saves us from looking like complete idiots. Many times I would type "teh" instead of "the" and the autocorrect would spare me the embarassment of a red underline and fix it for me. also, I would be able to start a sentence in lower case and it would automatically fix it for me. i can also not worry about whether i capitalized my "I" or not.

I have a minor quibble in that my bullets do not change nor indent along with the indent of my text. That's not a big deal, only aesthetics.

For the PPC, I got Textmaker so that I can work with the footnotes in my essays, something that I could not (or did not know how to) do. But was that worth the $11.11? Nope.

I'm not actually sure what else I could do with the PPC version of Textmaker. The desktop version will not be used over Microsoft Word because of its lack of autocorrect.

I guess my final point is that Textmaker was an impulse buy, and I did it because everyone else was doing it. That reminds me: they should make Lemmings for PPC.

[jmkeuning]

Lemmings for PPC - I'll buy it.

I got textmaker too, I haven't used it but I know It's worth the 11.11 Here's why:

If you make a doc in Word and sync it to your iPAQ, it loses your formatting. Then if you go out (to class, to work) and open the doc and change it, when you return to sync, your desktop copy will have the formatting nuked. RIGHT? I think so.

Anyway, PPC Word SUCKS and I'll throw money at anyone who raises the bar.

[SoftMaker]

I happened to be one of the many people to purchase textmaker for $11.11. After a little while of using it, I noticed its ups and downs.

Easily said: Textmaker for PPC is infinitely better than Pocket Word, but Textmaker on the Desktop sucks compared to Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word for the desktop gave me a few luxuries that I now feel naked without. Actually, it all boils down to one:

Autocorrect - For those of us that type fast, autocorrect saves us from looking like complete idiots. Many times I would type "teh" instead of "the" and the autocorrect would spare me the embarassment of a red underline and fix it for me. also, I would be able to start a sentence in lower case and it would automatically fix it for me. i can also not worry about whether i capitalized my "I" or not.

I have a minor quibble in that my bullets do not change nor indent along with the indent of my text. That's not a big deal, only aesthetics.

For the PPC, I got Textmaker so that I can work with the footnotes in my essays, something that I could not (or did not know how to) do. But was that worth the $11.11? Nope.

I'm not actually sure what else I could do with the PPC version of Textmaker. The desktop version will not be used over Microsoft Word because of its lack of autocorrect.

I guess my final point is that Textmaker was an impulse buy, and I did it because everyone else was doing it. That reminds me: they should make Lemmings for PPC.

First of all, you don't NEED to use TextMaker on the desktop. Many people are happy to work with TextMaker on the Pocket PC and Word on the desktop. TextMaker does authentic conversions of Word files back and forth.

On the other hand, we have many satisfied TextMaker users on the desktop who:

• don't want the clutter that later versions of Word provide. Clippy, anyone?
• like the easy integration of databases for single-address merges and mail merges.
• like TextMaker's intuitive menu arrangement.
• like TextMaker's master pages, deluxe word counter, zoom tool, lists & labels, five-language translation dictionary or any other feature that TextMaker has and Word doesn't have.
• like the fact that they can work in Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, on HPCs, and Pocket PCs with the same word processor.
• have an older notebook as a secondary machine on which the latest version of Word doesn't run fast enough.

If your main nuisance is TextMaker not turning "teh" into "the", that can be easily fixed by creating a SmartText entry.

The next version of TextMaker (sometime in 2004) will have many of the features of Word 2003: AutoShapes, meta file support on the Pocket PC, frames anchored to paragraphs, nested tables (NEW! in Word XP...), repeating table headers, cell rotation, table cells spanning pages etc. etc.

If you just do plain-text editing, you don't need TextMaker. Pocket Word will do, although GigaPad will probably be better. You'll need TextMaker if you need footnotes. Or documents larger than 8000 lines (was that Pocket Word's limit?). Or want to save documents more than one level deep. Or don't want to have your documents trashed and formatting removed... :D

Lemmings would be cool, tho...

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[Skoobouy]

http://www.ppc4all.com/appdetail.php?id=346

WHO LOVES YOU??? Yeah, I thought so.

[toxostoma]

I bought Textmaker as an impulse buy too. I like the program okay, but there's a couple of things that concern me.

Here's my first question. Using transcriber, if I make an upstroke to change the case a character, it doesn't work. (In fact, it usually inputs the capital letter J). Also, if I select a word that's been misspelled and do an up-down stroke, I don't get a list of possible words to replace it with. Now, I've heard that this is a known issue (expected behavior). But I must beg, if the makers of Textmaker are listening - please fix this! A lot of what I'll use TextMaker for will be quick and dirty Text Entry. I wanted it so that I could view rich text formatting and so updates on my PPC to my documents wouldn't wipe out the original when synced back to the desktop. It's pretty frustrating that these basic text entry functionality doesn't work. I haven't tried this with Calligrapher yet, but am thinking of buying that program. Will the behavior be any different from Transcriber to Calligrapher?

2nd Question. Does Textmaker run well from a storage card? Does this negatively impact speed or battery life? I'm thinking about reinstalling Textmaker to my storage card to save space. I had orginally installed it to my iPAQ's file store, but this consumed so much space I don't have much left, which brings me to my 3rd question.

3rd Question. How do I uninstall Textmaker. It doesn't show up under the installed programs list. If I wish to take it off (or uninstall it so that I can move it to a storage card) how do I do this?

4th Question. Finally, when you're finished viewing a document and you press the "ok" button in the top right corner, TextMaker closes the document and shuts down. Is there a way to have the document shut down but Textmaker stay open? (Personally I think it should just show a gray screen). It's frustrating to have to go back in and open up TextMaker if I'm not done using it.

Thanks. I'm not trying to sound too negative. I think the program is wonderful for what it does. My biggest issue thus far is the first question. If I can just get that fixed or working, I think I'll love the program.

[Pat Logsdon]

2nd Question. Does Textmaker run well from a storage card? Does this negatively impact speed or battery life?
I've had it installed there in the past with no problems.

4th Question. Finally, when you're finished viewing a document and you press the "ok" button in the top right corner, TextMaker closes the document and shuts down. Is there a way to have the document shut down but Textmaker stay open? (Personally I think it should just show a gray screen). It's frustrating to have to go back in and open up TextMaker if I'm not done using it.
When you're done with the document you're working on, instead of hitting the "Save" icon, hit the "New" or "Open" icon. If you've made changes to the current document, it'll prompt you to save the program, and when you hit the "OK" icon, it'll send you back to a blank doc instead of the Today screen.

[animlmed]

I have mine on the SD card, and it can be a bit slow when opening and closing a file. Do you think it's b/c Ii have an h1935?

[toxostoma]

Yes, the slower processor of the 1935 will definitely slow a large program like Textmaker down. On my 1945, Textmaker is plenty fast enough, but it's noticably slower than most other programs as it starts up. (Most programs are instant - Textmaker takes maybe a second or two).

Thanks for the reply Surgical Snack. I knew about your suggestions for my "Question 4." But I always like it when the program can adapt to the way I do things, not the other way around. :)

[animlmed]

I don't think the slower processor should slow it down as much as it is. It maybe takes 10 seconds to load. lol It's not like i'm running the program on a Jornada 525, but other large programs I have on the PPC ( both from the storage card and the internal memory) don't take that much time to load.

[toxostoma]

Do you also have plenty of main memory available? Since it's a 1935, (lacks the file store of other ipaqs) I assume you've installed programs into your main memory. If you're running short on memory, that could be your problem. Again, this is just a total shot in the dark. Just thought I'd mention it.

Other than that, I can't really think why it would be slow. I guess the only other thing to do would be to install it into the main memory (I know, it's huge at 7 MB) and see if that makes it open faster. If it does, that would indicate that the slow down is coming from having the program installed on your storage card.

[animlmed]

Yeah, thought about doing that. I have about 20 or so Mbs of free program memory. I was just wondering if anyone else had a similar problem from the storage card. Thanks for the suggestion. I will try putting it in main memory and seeing if it gets faster. Thanks!

[SoftMaker]

Yeah, thought about doing that. I have about 20 or so Mbs of free program memory. I was just wondering if anyone else had a similar problem from the storage card. Thanks for the suggestion. I will try putting it in main memory and seeing if it gets faster. Thanks!
There are vast differences in the speed of storage cards. If I install into main memory, TextMaker launches in 1 or 2 seconds, if I install to a Toshiba CF card, it takes 3 to 5 seconds to start up - not much of a difference. But I also have reports about storage cards (some SanDisks seem to be slow) where you would 8 to 10 seconds for TextMaker to start, and that can be blamed on slow cards.

TextMaker is about 10 times as large as your typical PPC app (and also one-tenth the size of Microsoft Word...), so it will definitely profit from fast memory cards.

Why don't you just copy the complete \Storage Card\SoftMaker folder to internal memory and run TextMaker from there, just to see if there is a noticeable speed difference? You don't have to do a full install, just copy the folder and then launch TMC.EXE from Explorer.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[toxostoma]

Martin,

If I could be so bold, could you or somebody else from Softmaker comment on my questions about Textmaker? (See my previous post, on the first page of this thread).

I would be most appreciative!

[animlmed]

Thanks for the suggestion Martin. I did that, but i think i was being a bit slow myself. It wasn't an issue of program load time as mush as it was an issue of file load time. The file i was trying to open was a file that had a number of text boxes, etc (it was a template file of a resume from word) that made it "bulky". I tried a normal word file, just paragraphs of words, no boxes, and it opened much faster.


Does this sound a bit better?:)

And I must say thank you and :werenotworthy: to you for the great responses regarding your great product!!!!

[SoftMaker]

Thanks for the suggestion Martin. I did that, but i think i was being a bit slow myself. It wasn't an issue of program load time as mush as it was an issue of file load time. The file i was trying to open was a file that had a number of text boxes, etc (it was a template file of a resume from word) that made it "bulky". I tried a normal word file, just paragraphs of words, no boxes, and it opened much faster.


Does this sound a bit better?:)

And I must say thank you and :werenotworthy: to you for the great responses regarding your great product!!!!
Yeah, it does sound better ... :D

TextMaker's Word import slows down when the .doc file has lots of tables and lots of anchored frames because TextMaker has to calculate the exact position of these objects. Short-term solution: use .tmd format instead which doesn't have this limitation, and only convert to .doc when you need MS Word to process the file. The next version of TextMaker (some time in 2004) will be much faster in this regard because it will support anchored frames directly (in addition to absolute-positioned objects).

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[upplepop]

I have a minor quibble in that my bullets do not change nor indent along with the indent of my text. That's not a big deal, only aesthetics.

For the longest time, this was the reason why I didn't purchase TextMaker. I type a lot of notes in Outline and Bulleted lists and the fact that I can't just Tab over and have the bullet indent along with my text kept me from buying TextMaker (btw, Pocket Word can't do this either).

That being said, I finally did buy TextMaker because the $11.11 was too good of a deal to pass up but I haven't gotten around to installing it because it's missing that feature.

[SoftMaker]

I bought Textmaker as an impulse buy too. I like the program okay, but there's a couple of things that concern me.

Here's my first question. Using transcriber, if I make an upstroke to change the case a character, it doesn't work. (In fact, it usually inputs the capital letter J). Also, if I select a word that's been misspelled and do an up-down stroke, I don't get a list of possible words to replace it with. Now, I've heard that this is a known issue (expected behavior). But I must beg, if the makers of Textmaker are listening - please fix this! A lot of what I'll use TextMaker for will be quick and dirty Text Entry. I wanted it so that I could view rich text formatting and so updates on my PPC to my documents wouldn't wipe out the original when synced back to the desktop. It's pretty frustrating that these basic text entry functionality doesn't work. I haven't tried this with Calligrapher yet, but am thinking of buying that program. Will the behavior be any different from Transcriber to Calligrapher?

2nd Question. Does Textmaker run well from a storage card? Does this negatively impact speed or battery life? I'm thinking about reinstalling Textmaker to my storage card to save space. I had orginally installed it to my iPAQ's file store, but this consumed so much space I don't have much left, which brings me to my 3rd question.

3rd Question. How do I uninstall Textmaker. It doesn't show up under the installed programs list. If I wish to take it off (or uninstall it so that I can move it to a storage card) how do I do this?

4th Question. Finally, when you're finished viewing a document and you press the "ok" button in the top right corner, TextMaker closes the document and shuts down. Is there a way to have the document shut down but Textmaker stay open? (Personally I think it should just show a gray screen). It's frustrating to have to go back in and open up TextMaker if I'm not done using it.

Thanks. I'm not trying to sound too negative. I think the program is wonderful for what it does. My biggest issue thus far is the first question. If I can just get that fixed or working, I think I'll love the program.

1. Transcriber is a problem because d**n Microsoft doesn't release an API for it. Basically, Transcriber will only work well with Pocket PC's edit controls and nothing else. There is no programming interface to it, things are just "done to you". So, you are torn between Scylla and Charybdis: If an application programmer wants nice Transcriber support, they can only use MS edit controls, but if they use them, they will be just as limited as Pocket Word (a giant edit control). If they roll their own (as we did), Transcriber will work for basic typing and editing, but not for advanced gestures. This sucks. One of these days, I gotta look into Calligrapher's developer tools more closely and then check if they are more interested in working with developers than Microsoft.

2. TextMaker does run from storage cards just as well. It will be slower to launch because Flash ROM simply is slower than regular RAM, but not unbearably slow. This said, there are vast speed differences in storage cards. Some make TextMaker launch in 3 to 5 instead of 1 to 2 seconds, some make TextMaker launch in 10 seconds. iPaq File Store and Dell's flash area are slower than regular storage cards.

3. The uninstaller resides on the desktop PC. Go to Control Panel, then Add/Remove Programs and uninstall like any Windows app. TextMaker is very well-behaved, though. If you just want to move it to a storage card, just cut-n-paste the folder and fix the shortcuts in the Start Menu. No need to go through the whole uninstall-reinstall rigamarole.

4. Clicking OK closes TextMaker. If you just want to proceed to another document, use File/New (Ctrl+N), File/Open (Ctrl+O) or File/Close (Ctrl+W).

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[dh]

One of these days, I gotta look into Calligrapher's developer tools more closely and then check if they are more interested in working with developers than Microsoft.
That would be a super idea. Since you and Phatware have two of the best PPC applications, it would really make sense if the two of you could work so that Calligrapher and Textmaker were really well integrated.

[CTSLICK]

So far I am very pleased with the format retention with my Word documents. Roundtripping is much easier. I had so many docs with tables...it is sooooo nice to be able to view/edit them in their proper format. $11.11 was a STEAL.

[jmkeuning]

I'm using TM but ran into a problem. First, let me say that during set up I did not associate any file types w/ TM, I left tham as is.

If I create a doc in TM on the desktop, save it as a Word XP doc into my Sync folder, it totally HANGS ActiveSync. I have to manually shut down ActiveSync in order to delete the offensive file. What's the deal?

Also, let's say I create a doc in TM on the desk top, and save it as a Word XP doc, then open it and save it as a TM doc both files appear on my desktop Explorer but upon syncing, only the TM doc syncs, the Word Doc does not sync. Does that make sense?

Mike

[jmkeuning]

EDIT - it did not show up bc it hung my ActiveSync and I did not notice. It was the same problem, Word Doc created in TM does not sync.

I have not experimented bc it's such a pain in the ass but what does this mean. If I create a word doc and on the desktop, then sync and edit it on the PPC it trys to save as a TM doc. I have to switch it back to Word if I want it to stay as word.

Is there a known problem switching back and forth between file types and applications used for changing and saving?