WPCP  
      2       B    Z   R                3| x          PTWP HP LaserJet 4                   PTHPLA4.PRS  x 
   @    \amX@   Њ    < <   9   d d d dK d d  @   d d d d$ dH d
  @  9                         Figure 1                                           Figure 1                              Courier Courier Italic  2      X        N                      l ? x x x ,   x 6X   @ `7X@ ? x x x ,  1xx 6N h ez7XHPPPP  Pvv
vv ԋFF?FP~ t^&% FPFPvv
vv~ tFN~ t/^F&F<uF PP~ t^&% 돋F)F=
 u                            The Bad News
                on Hardware and Software Products

4 A Special Issue on Ventura Publisher 4.1 (Windows)
 with Some Sections Applying to Earlier Versions

                          October 1993

                        by Jay Dougherty

NOTE: Opinions contained in this newsletter are my own or those
of the authors of the pieces contained in this newsletter. They
are based upon personal experiences with the products mentioned
and are provided as a public service.

This is a special issue of TBN. This online newsletter has come
into being to fill a gap left by many computer publications
today. As PC Magazine columnist Jim Seymour recently said to me
via E-Mail, "far too many computer-magazine reviews focus only on
the what's-new and what's-great aspects of new products." This
may not be entirely the magazines' fault, however, since many
reviewers are working under time contrainsts that prohibit them
from digging deeply enough into the hardware or software they're
reviewing to find the pitfalls and glitches. I intend with TBN to
focus on those pitfalls and glitches. It's not that I won't make
space for the great new features of products, but I will
concentrate most on the problems I encounter or hear about.

You'll probably want to scan this newsletter each month to see
whether there are any problems reported about concerning computer
products you own or plan to buy.

I welcome the contribution of others out there who are active in
the computer field. Send me E-Mail to 73114,151 on CompuServe.
The November issue should prove to be much larger than this one.

=================================================================
VENTURA PUBLISHER 4.1 for Windows

The initial release of VP 4.1 for Windows was fairly bug ridden,
as were most of the earlier Windows releases. There is now a
4.1.1 version, and this fixes many of the problems discussed in
this newsletter, but not all of the problems. Here are some of
the problems I and my acquaintances have uncovered.

CTRLESC PROBLEMS
Sometimes while running Ventura with other programs, the Windows
CTRLESC Task Switch box will no longer pop up. This problem
disappears when Ventura is unloaded from memory.

RAM PROBLEMS   n(        0*0*0*  ԌEven on a system with 32 Megabytes of RAM, if Ventura is started
first in Windows and then the user starts three or four other
programs, eventually, even though there might be 20 Megabytes of
RAM and 60% of system resources left, Windows will tell the user
that there is not enough memory left to run another program. If
the user quits Ventura and then loads the programs, everything
works fine. If the user then loads Ventura after loading all
these program, she will receive the same General Protection fault
mentioned above.

DISPLAY PROBLEM
The display of the Fit Sides view of the page shows a ragged
right margin on the screen (not a ragged right text margin, but
the Ventura screen itself between the right hand margin of the
page and the scroll bar). 

PROGRAM LOCKUP BUG
When one opens Ventura, hits ALTF, then L to open the file load
menu, then, when the File Load menu is open, hits L again by
accident, the machine locks up. Cold reboots are normally
required.

FOOTNOTE WOES CONTINUE
This section applies to all versions of Ventura from 3.0 to
4.1.1.

One cannot apply more than one paragraph tag to footnote text.
This fact precludes, for instance, setting off a quotation within
a footnote from the rest of the footnote text. Footnotes, it is
true, are usually short, but certainly not always. I have also
often seen footnotes that contain a quotation that should be set
off clearly from the body of the footnote text, and that should
be formatted differently from the normal footnote body text.

Footnotes that break across pages incorrectly retain a first-line
indent if a first-line indent is, as it should be in many
footnote styles, applied to the beginning of the footnote text.
If this feature were implemented properly in Ventura, footnote
text that broke over onto a new page would be flush left,
   ?  including the first line. Only new footnotes should have a
first-line indent.

Endnoting: I would like to see automatic generation of endnotes
in Ventura as well. I would also like to see automatic conversion
of footnotes to endnotes, and vice versa. Scholarly journals, for
example, sometimes require endnotes, sometimes footnotes. A
program that automatically converted footnotes to endnotes would
allow a client to submit the same article to different journals
without manually changing all footnotes to endnotes.

FRAME ANCHORING   n(        0*0*0*  ԌThere is no way to anchor a frame other than above, below, or
within a specified line. One cannot, for example, anchor a frame
so that the top of the frame is positioned along the left-hand
margin, flush with the top of the paragraph.

INSTALLATION WOES
I first installed Ventura 4.1 with the Full Install option. Upon
loading, the program gave me a series of errors messages: it
wouldn't recognize my ScanJet IIP driver; the program could not
find "GPIB.DLL." I had all the necessary drivers loaded. The
scanner was not turned on, though. Then Ventura caused a General
Protection Fault and registered the following message:


 VPWIN caused a General Protection Fault
 in module VPWINLIB.DLL at
& 0001:6ACE

I then read the README.TXT file in the Ventura directory and
learned that error messages would result if the user installs the
Scan module. To play it safe, I therefore deleted my Ventura
directory and reinstalled the program without Scan and Separator.

The next time I started Ventura, the program loaded. I then saved
my WID table under a new name and saved the stylesheet so that it
loaded the new width table. I quit the program. But the next time
I loaded, I received the following error message:


 VPWIN caused a General Protection Fault
 in module VPWINLIB.DLL at
& 0001:6ACE

The program then threw me back out to the Windows desktop and
refused to load anymore. I received the same error message each
time I tried to load the program. For the longest time, I simply
could not start Ventura. Then I figured out that if I deleted the
HASH.FID file in the Ventura directory, the program would start
again. Then I figured out that if I commented out the True Type
fonts that Corel Draw 3.0 installs in Windows, the HASH.FID file
did not need to be deleted. Thus, Ventura 4.1 is INCOMPATIBLE
with the True Type fonts supplied with Corel Draw 3.0.

COLOR PROBLEMS
When the user chooses Save Style Sheet As..., the dialogue box
does not list style sheets that already exist in the TYPESET
directory if the user has chosen gray as the grayout text color
in the Windows Setup box and has also chosen gray as the Window
Background color in the Windows setup box. Ventura is the only
program that is not smart enough to display these grayedout
files anyway. The same problem occurs when one chooses Save
As...: chapters that already exist in the target directory are
not listed. Thus, in order to save over a stylesheet that already
exists, or a chapter that already exists, the user must retype   =)        0*0*0*  the name of the stylesheet or chapter and then respond to the
Overwrite prompt.

=================================================================
VENTURA SOLD TO COREL
For those who haven't heard yet, Ventura Publisher has been sold
to Corel Corporation, makers of CorelDRAW. No one yet knows, of
course, whether this is good news or bad news, for Corel
Corporation is not generally known for its reliability when it
comes to releasing relatively bugfree software. Also, Corel
Corporation has fielded numerous complaints in recent months
about its technical support.