Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: mantisspider on November 02, 2003, 04:15:48 AM
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Hi Guys,
For someone who is comming back to full Amiga usage, im pretty confused as to where the software has developed to. Back in the old days it was simple, for best graphics was DPaint and best word processor was WordWorth. but now what?
if people could list their favorite apps that would be really helpful:
Wordprocessing:
DeskTop Publishing App:
Image Editing apps:
Spreadsheet:
Database:
Scanning software:
CDwriting:
EMail app:
WebBrowser:
Video Player:
:-D im sure everyone have their own favourites. and why they feel some stuff is better than others.
I can hear the FinalWriter vs WordWorth debates starting already
cheers
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found an unfavourable review of WordWorth 7. eeek
http://www.amigapage.it/recensioni/worde.htm (http://www.amigapage.it/recensioni/worde.htm)
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Can't help with all of them, but here's what I use:
Wordprocessing: AmigaWriter (A little unstable, but it saves in rtf format)
Scanning software: FxScan
CDwriting: MakeCD
EMail app: Yam
WebBrowser: IBrowse 2.3
Video Player: Frogger
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Wordprocessing: AmigaWriter
Image Editing apps: ImageFX
Spreadsheet: TurboCalc
CDwriting: MakeCD
EMail app: YAM (MOS version)
WebBrowser: IBrowse 2.3
Video Player: MPlayer (MOS only)
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Wordprocessing: FinalWriter
DeskTop Publishing App: PageStream
Image Editing apps: ImageFX
Spreadsheet: TurboCalc
Database: XBaze
Scanning software: fxScan
CDwriting: BurnIT
EMail app: Micrdot2 (threading of email rulez!)
WebBrowser: It's a tie. Voyager + Ibrowse.
Video Player: FroggerNG [we all know why I think this, now don't we ;-)]
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cool this is really helpfull, its great to see people using different apps.
Whats the differences between AmigaWriter and FinalWriter? does noone love wordworth anymore?
what version of pagestream are we up to? I used to love PageStream on my A500+
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Graphics wise, you're spoilt for choice. I have Photogenics, TV Paint, Perfect Paint, and Personal Paint installed here. Perfect Paint and Personal Paint are both free.
Other commercial apps include fxSTUDIO, and Art Effect. On the whole, Amiga graphics apps are very good.
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Cheers, shame Deluxe Paint stopped being so great DPaint V was the big let down I suppose.
Any of these apps have the features used in apps like Photoshop and Corel? Layers fancy brushes, filters etc?
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Graphics wise, you're spoilt for choice. I have Photogenics, TV Paint, Perfect Paint, and Personal Paint installed here. Perfect Paint and Personal Paint are both free.
Tvpaint is freely downloadable aswell :-)
Tvpaint 3.6 (http://www.amigau.com/c-graphics/TVPaint.lha)
and the tutorial (http://docs.nwamiga.org/TVPaint/index.html)
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Wordprocessing: Wordworth7 (it rocks, but a little slow)
DeskTop Publishing App: PageStream (its unrivaled on the amiga)
Image Editing apps: for me its PerfectPaint mainly, with a bit of ImageFX
Spreadsheet: TurboCalc (though I rarely use it)
Database: Never needed one
Scanning software: ScanQuix5 here
CDwriting: MakeCD (best on the amiga imo)
EMail app: YAM naturally :-)
WebBrowser: IBrowse2.3, youll never regret registering
Video Player: AMP2 here, I must get round to registering MooVid or sommat...
Other apps I use a lot...
AmigaTradeCenter for my FTP client needs
RC-FTPd for my FTP server
tHTTPd for my webserver
Jabberwocky for MSN etc
AmIRC for IRC
MP3 player AmigaAMP
Thats about all the apps I can think of that I use regulally... there is LOADS more though
and then theres the games, oh the games :-)
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What's with the devil and satan stuff, Halloween is over right?
I find Softwood's suite the most useful, any version of Finalwriter or Finalcopy is resource freindly and has great output. I catalog a huge music collection in Finaldata. If you have a Palm device (the older serial palms work great with Amigas), Ralph Torchia's Spitfire has an excellent suit of databases for addresses and datebook. It's good even without a Palm. NoteIt! is also a great desktop accessory.
Yam and Ibrowse2.3 are great. I think you can print from Aweb.
MooVid (avi & mov) and Riva (mpeg) are very resource efficient. The registered versions play more varieties of files.
Dopus is, of course, great. On a low spec machine, however, Ordering has a few quirks but is much faster, especially reading long directories. Ordering is one of the programs that never got the attention it deserved.
MizerPrint is a great marriage to Hp printers. It can condense printout upto 8 to 1!
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mantisspider wrote:
found an unfavourable review of WordWorth 7. eeek
http://www.amigapage.it/recensioni/worde.htm (http://www.amigapage.it/recensioni/worde.htm)
Ehm... I was hardly able to understand what was meant in the text of the review... I understand it has been translated from the original text. Maybe it would have been better to have left it in the original language. Some parts are totally incomprehensible...
Apart from that, I use Wordworth 7 every now and then and I like the program.
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My ALL TIME FAVOURITE APP
wich I use a 1000 times a day
is Dirwork 2.1 by Chris Hames.
Best filemanager I ever used
because it is super configurable
and easy to use.
Programming:
Amiblitz2
Gfx:
PPaint
Imagefx 2 and 4.
TileModify
Net:
Miami
Ibrowse 2.3
Yam 2.0
Amirc 3.5
Music:
Delitracker 2 (with 14bit noteplayer)
PlaySid
Hippo
SampleE
Workbench addon:
Tinymeter
BackClock
Freemouse
Entertainment:
watchNplay
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my favs are:
Wordperfect 4.1 (finalwriter crashed :()
directory works 2.1
miami deluxe
aweb
imagefx
tinymeter
evenmore
amirc
dont use database or ftp currently
blacks editor (absolutely love it)
:-?
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oh, I forgot GoldED on my list of great apps I use almost daily :-)
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whats GoldEd? whats it for?
can i be a pain in the ass and ask if ppl could put little comments next to the apps they use to say why they use them (why they like them) it helps a lot, cheers :-D
better wordworth review: http://www.amigamccc.org/journal/9809word.htm
Pagestream4.1 and AmigaWriter review found issue 11 total amiga: http://www.totalamiga.org/pdf/totalamiga_11.pdf
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eeeee, why dont you google :-)
GoldED is the best text editor there is imo... i use it exclusivly for website creation, its hightlighting makes writing html a breeze :-). The single function I miss is an undo feature, im forever deleteing too much...
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is GoldED still in development? one thing i hated about my amiga was the poor txt editors. However I do remember one that had an undo feature. I cant remember what it was though... not very helpful am i?
google is good, but google wont give the actual user feedback, me and others (guys coming back to amiga and new to amiga) are trying to learn about.
my cousin asked me today whether its worth him using his Atari ST so he can use it as a computer.
I asked him what about his Amiga 600 sitting in the cupboard. So im setting up his HardDrive too. :-D sweet
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it is indeed, as I said google for it, im sure theres a downloadable demo from the homepage, be prepared to change the settings around to suit your preference though :-)
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I have Professional Calc 2.0, if you're looking to buy software. Still in box with manuals and such.
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The_Beast wrote:
blacks editor (absolutely love it)
Agreed on that one, but it has to be the old 1.0 release (since the updates are unstable). I much prefer it to GoldED. Its small, its simple, but it is still powerful and uber-configurable. A perfect balance, imho. The only thing i'd take from GoldED and add to Blacks Editor would be syntax colouring, but I can live without that.
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Mantisspider:
IMHO one impostant thing is to remember is how future proof these softwares are? .. I'm quite sure that a lot of those people coming back rather spend their $$$ to new hardware instead of purchasing 7 year old computer...
So what's needed is information of what programs are in actual development and how many of them will work without any UAE-like kludgery.
Of course. It woudl also be nice to be able to tell future users where those programs can be purchased/downloaded.. Some of those softwares mentioned on this thread are no longer on active development and also hard to find as a new.
Some programs..
ImageFX, active. available from http://www.novadesign.com/
Personal Paint, Essentially dead., comes with Amigaforever http://www.amigaforever.com/
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Why does a program need to be in development??
Quality is quality, no matter how unsupported.
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The favourites I use are:
Wordprocessing: Final Writer
DeskTop Publishing App: Pagestream
Image Editing apps: Photogenics
Spreadsheet: Turbocalc
Database: Fiasco
Scanning software: ScanQuix
CDwriting: MakeCD
EMail app: Simplemail
WebBrowser: IBrowse
Video Player: FroggerNG
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Ib>bE .. Assumingly program is available as a free stuff from net and it works cleanly, like TVPaint, it's not much of an issue. BUT if there are problems on future machine compatibility it'll become an issue. Unless of course you are planing to use those programs on UAE for the eternity.
In the end.. there will be time to move on future generation machhines. And they make much more strict requirements on OS/system compatibility than these years old A1200+hacks people are still using.
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@mantisspider
Your question has started an interesting thread, here's my list:
Wordprocessing: Final Writer 5 - Powerful and easy to use for basic WP although it lacks some fancier features like tables.
DeskTop Publishing App: PageStream 4.1 - Fantastic app, powerful yet pretty simple to use. We use PageStream to layout Total Amiga magazine so I spend a lot of time using it :)
Image Editing apps: I use ImageFX more than any other, it's very powerful, with great layers features. I find IFX best for image processing and composition rather than "painting". It takes a while to learn but is well worth the effort. I also use Photogenics 5 and Personal Paint on a regular basis.
Spreadsheet: Final Calc
Database: Fiasco - It's a neat little shareware DB.
Scanning software: fxScan
CDwriting: MakeCD
EMail app: Thor - I like Thor because it combines E-mail and newsgroups in one program.
WebBrowser: IBrowse 2.3
Video Player: FroggerNG
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I completely agree with Joanna, and not because she has a female name and from finland and im really focussing on her not being a rather overweight and sweaty man pretending to be a woman to talk to boys on the internet.
If wordworth was still under the amount of development that it has been familiar to in the past, then all the features that are missing and have problems with would be ironed out.
The same with Final Writer.
The best thing that M$ did was to create an office package that is able to maintain the same user interface, feeling and short cut keys for all of its office applications (okay access sort of is a bit off compaired to the others).
From what i gather Amiga Writer is the only wordprocessor in development (thanks Total Amiga, tastey review), which gives them the edge indeed. Hopefully will be able to find all the best bits from the other WP out there and also improve on and make new innovations themselves.
from the posts in this thread, looks like there is a nice mix of CD buring apps and people are also not using the same webbrowser, which does suggest that each browser has something special to offer.
i dont think that any app that is not under constant development or an app that is never gonna get updated, is not of any use and should be forgotten?
Its just that anything that has the chance to improve and evolve has to be a good thing.
I mean if FinalWriter is better than the latest version of AmigaWriter, then its still better to use that app, i spose.
Luckily it seems that graphic apps seem to be more in dev than wordprocessors.
Hopefully the list of apps people are using goes to show that the Amiga can be used as a replacement for the current super PC machines sold by Dixons etc. for home office use and graphic designers.
these last few years I have been told by printers, "supply it as a PDF please", so as soon as my amiga is able to convert DTP and Graphic files perfectly into flawless PDF files then i dont need to keep playing with my PC.
Dual G5 powered amiga anytime soon?
oh and Joanna, (in my best Joey voice) "How you doin'?"
wooooohooo my longest post ever... how much is gibberish?
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The_Beast wrote:
blacks editor (absolutely love it)
Agreed on that one, but it has to be the old 1.0 release (since the updates are unstable).
Black Editor 1.3 throws hits in startup but that is all... worked like
a charm on my A1200. Absolutely worth of try.
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Isn't a very recent version of Ghost Script available for Amiga? This would handle PDFs perfectly (not sure what formats it can import though).
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My killer Amiga app=
Video Toaster Flyer
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This is such a useful thread - being a returning user myself, it has got some really great info. Since I got back into Amigas in February, I must confess, I haven't really got into the software in a big way (just games and WB tinkering), which kind of defeats the object of having a computer in the first place!
Cheers
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Hi Cyberus,
yeah its a thread that has saved my amiga, and brought it back as a real working machine :-)
what apps have u been using so far? what WB mods you been using?
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@mantisspider
these last few years I have been told by printers, "supply it as a PDF please", so as soon as my amiga is able to convert DTP and Graphic files perfectly into flawless PDF files then i dont need to keep playing with my PC.
As Jeffimix mentioned, there are a number of recent ports of GhostScript to the Amiga that do an excellent job of converting Postscript output (many Amiga applications including PageStream, FinalWriter and WordWorth can output Postscript) to PDF.
We use this method to create PDFs of Total Amiga for our printer (who are not Amiga-aware BTW) and have never had any problems.
Here is a link to the port of GS 8 I use. (http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/)
HTH
Robert
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Hi Robert,
thanks for the link,
I was worried about the output of PDF for pagestream after reading the pagestream review from ur Total Amiga and its said about it not being able to print natively to PDF, and 3rd party apps are needed and you need to convert it a couple of times.
i never used ghost script, about time i did :-)
thanks