NEWKEY/PROKEY
			    EVALUATION/COMPARISON


I have been playing around with NEWKEY and now feel that I can make a
decent evaluation of the program in comparison to PROKEY.

Firstly, the operation of NEWKEY is extremely similar to that of PROKEY, and
considering the copyright date of NEWKEY, the author may have had a good look
at PROKEY before writing his program.  Curiously, though, the author states
in his documentation that he began writing this program when only DOS 1.1
was available, and therefore, a couple of features will not work with
DOS 2.0.  Maybe David Rose saw NEWKEY and wrote first!	I do not mean to imply
infringement on the either's part, only that the keystroke usage is somewhat
similar, such as the selection of the primary key to begin macro definition.
To be sure, NEWKEY is very good and accomplishes its goals of easily
redefining keys to replace boilerplate input, redundant combinations of
keystrokes, and unwieldly combinations of keystrokes.  If a user is not
familiar with PROKEY, then he, or she, would probably think that NEWKEY is the
greatest program in the world, a definite "must have".  However, PROKEY being
a commercial product, it seems quite a bit more polished and user friendly as
I shall describe shortly.  NEWKEY may still be the best program in the world
considering its price.

The following is an evaluation and direct comparison of the techniques and
features of NEWKEY and PROKEY:

1.  Both programs use "ALT-=" to begin definition and the next keystroke
is the key, or key combination, to be redefined.  You then type the
keystrokes you want.  Both programs can accept literal keystrokes, variable
length keystroke fields, and fixed length keystroke fields as input.  Whereas
NEWKEY makes you depend on the reliability of the program that you are, in
fact, inputting to a macro, PROKEY puts up a nice prompt line that tells you
"inputting text", etc.  This prompt line, as well as the command line which
is explained later, can be relocated on the screen in any position that you
prefer via the command line.  Both programs can accept input from within
another program and are interactive so that what you see is what you get in
your application.

2.  Both programs are resident and use their own buffers to store macros.
These macros can be saved to file and later recalled when needed.  The
buffers are adjustable in size.  Any macro in memory, and not saved to disk,
is lost at reboot.  Both programs have a merge function to combine memory
macros with macros loaded from file.

3.  Both programs have a "toggle" switch which will ON/OFF the program while
remaining resident.  For NEWKEY, this must be done from DOS, whereas with
PROKEY you can also do it from within the application via a command processor
and prompt line.  PROKEY's command line from within an application can control
the toggle switch, a help line, the "typing speed" of PROKEY (to accomodate
the type of keyboard buffer the application uses), a "disk wait" function
(disables PROKEY while the disk is spinning), one-finger operation (for
the handicapped in using combination keystroke redefinition such as Wordstar
control key combos), and very importantly, the location of the command and
prompt lines.

3. A difference in the programs is the way in which you can view your macros
on the screen when not actually using them in an application.  NEWKEY saves
the macros to file in hex and then "translates" them on the screen with the
NEWKEY1 utility.  PROKEY, on the other hand, saves them to file in ASCII
format,  but will not put them on the screen.  In order to see the macros
you must use a text editor or TYPE, LIST, MORE, etc. The advantage in PROKEY
is that you can edit without having to key-in the whole macro again (I have
a couple of 150-200 character macros for Lotus).  This method also allows
you to put in remarks for your personal use which are not read into PROKEY.
NEWKEY has the edge if you just want to see the macro.

That wraps up my evaluation/comparison.  I'm still pro-PROKEY because of its
added user friendly features, but I may switch depending on how Philippe Kahn
handles PROKEY.  He implies that PROKEY is written "dirty", but it sure
works with more programs than does SK.	He says that he will make SK
compatible with PROKEY.  If so I will definitely stick with PROKEY; if not
then I will have to do some soul-searching since I love both programs dearly.

I'm sorry to have rambled on so, but I felt it necessary to compare the
programs decently.  The real strength of this type of program for a lazy
person like myself is, on my HD, the ability to call my subdirectories and
sub-subdirectories with single key input. My AUTOEXEC.BAT installs my macro
that redefines the F-keys to call my main subdirectories on the root.  The
ALT, CTRL, and SHIFT-F-keys call the subdirectories of the subdirectories.
My applications programs are called up from batch files which clear the
current PROKEY macro, install any macros needed for the application, run
the application, clear these macros, and finally, reinstalls the F-keys
macro.	Minimal keystrokes to be in an application, out, and back where I
started.  Try it, EITHER one you'll like it!!!....Connie