For some users, the top-of-the-line word processors are more deadweight than heavyweight — cumbersome, expensive, and stuffed with superfluous features. What these users need is a leaner, less expensive, and easier-to-use word processor. Enter WordMaker, New Hortons Software's low-level to midlevel word processor, which first appeared as ProWrite on the Amiga more than a year ago.
WHAT IT IS MacWrite's upgrade to MacWrite II created a vacuum at the lower end of the Mac word-processing spectrum, so New Horizons rushed in with a package that resembles the original MacWrite. And based on its resemblance to the original Mac word processor, WordMaker is a winner. First, at $124.95, it is the least expensive of any word processor available. Second, it's as easy to use as Apple's MacWrite. Even Macintosh novices should be able to master it without difficulty. Last, it is lean — WordMaker's manual is only about 100 pages long, yet it clearly explains every feature of the program. The application itself is a mere 138K.
Despite this no-frills approach, WordMaker includes several significant enhancements. For starters, it can open up to eight documents simultaneously — beating MacWrite II by one. It can display invisible characters (spaces and return characters), has a mail-merge capability, lists word and character counts, supports color, and can even sort paragraphs alphabetically. It can save documents as “stationery” templates and allows you to customize the default settings for font and style. Finally, it employs a single ruler whose settings shift as the active paragraph changes, something that MacWrite added only with MacWrite II.
WordMaker's hottest and most distinguishing feature is the way it handles graphics. Graphics (whether they be bit-mapped or object-oriented) are pasted into a document as a layer separate from the text, which allows total freedom in their placement, You can even overlay a graphic with text. Because there's no way to send the graphic behind the text, however, your graphic should not contain too many solid-colored areas. Once placed, the graphic moves with the text as lines are added or deleted during editing. By setting separate margins for each tine, you can even get WordMaker to wrap lines of text around an irregularly shaped graphic. This technique admittedly requires more effort than using the automated wraparound feature of more expensive applications — but other programs in WordMaker's price range can't do it at all.
WordMaker includes keyboard command equivalents for most of its menu commands, and it throws in a Command- click combination that calls a pop-up menu containing its menu bar and menus. The WordMaker disk also includes a macro file (compatible with Apple's Macro Maker) that provides an easily editable additional set of keyboard command shortcuts. It isn't necessary to use these macros, but if you are already comfortable with MacroMaker, they arc a worthwhile addition. WordMaker is also compatible with MultiFinder; several of its functions (such as its spelling checker) even operate in the background while you work with another application,
HOW IT WORKS Unfortunately, WordMaker is slow on 68000-based Macs. Even relatively slow typists can frequently get ahead of its display buffer. And its spelling checker is occasionally agonizingly slow at suggesting alternatives to misspelled words.
Overall, WordMaker is impressive and flexible. But to be successful, it must roundly beat its competition, especially T/Maker's WriteNow 2.0 and Claris' MacWrite II (see “Word Wrestlers/August '89). From this perspective, WordMaker offers too little too late.
Both WriteNow and MacWrite have almost all the features of WordMaker, and then some. WordMaker can't format in multiple columns or create footnotes. Compared with MacWrite II, WordMaker also has a much less extensive scarch-and-replace function and a more awkward mail-merge capability. Finally, WordMaker has the most limited file-import and -export capabilities: It can work only with text and MacWrite formats. Despite the added features of WordMaker's competitors, those programs are not significantly harder to learn. And though they are more expensive, they’re still below the top price range of Macintosh word processors.
If you’ve been fairly happy with MacWrite but would like something a bit more powerful, then WordMaker is for you — provided you can put up with its slowness. It overcomes almost all of the original MacWrite’s deficiencies at a bargain-basement price. But for a little extra money, you can get an even more powerful program that’s almost as easy to use (WriteNow, for instance, lists for $70 more than WordMaker, but the difference in actual street price is more likely to be $25 or so), WordMaker is a good program — a year or two ago, I might have said it was a great program. Unfortunately, the current competition offers better values.
Landau, Ted. (November 1989). WordMaker. MacUser. (pgs. 67-68).
James Bayless
Applications
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WordMaker_Disk.image_.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
