SOFTWARE REVIEW Title: WORDPROCESSOR from Database Software Authors: DATABASE SOFTWARE Cost: #29.95 for a suite of five programs called MINI OFFICE PROFESSIONAL. Reviewed By: Gerry Austin. Here we have a wordprocessor that makes full use of the PCW's keyboard, no installing to do, the program was written solely for the PCW and is selected from the main Mini Office Professional menu after loading the program from the A> prompt of CP/M. Once the novelty of your new PCW has started to wear off and you begin using LocoScript in earnest, that's when the frustrations start. Those of you who have used other computer wordprocessing software will immediately be niggled by LocoScript's snails pace and lack of features that should have been included: - The ability to show WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), and this includes Italics, super and subscripts as well as double width, double height and condensed script. - A word count facility available at a single keystroke. - A mail-merge facility. - FIND/EXCHANGE should be able to accept wildcards (letters) and find all occurrences of a given string regardless of upper or lower case. - Merge Documents into one. Well, DATABASE Software's Wordprocessor can do all of this and much more. The immediate delight you will experience is lightning fast manoeuverability within Edit mode. No more waiting what seems like hours when you want to get from one end to the other or when saving long documents. The speed alone makes this program a pleasure to use. A few more of the many extra delicacies available are: the ability to convert upper case letters to lower (or vice versa) very quickly; regular reminders whilst editing text to easily and quickly save your document to disc; makes use of all parallel printers; merge database module details into wordprocessor for mailmerging etc.; preview your document before printing to see how it will appear on paper; continuous on-screen file size is shown; plus performs most, if not all that LocoScript can. The only thing that is lacking is a spelling checker! The manual is a delight to use and covers 19 pages of text which clearly describes the use of the system. If you use a wordprocessor for a foreign language or mathematics you do not have all the different characters available that LocoScript offers, so if you, like me, can't resist the temptation to upgrade your wordprocessing software, don't throw your LocoScript disc too far away, just in case you need those unusual characters. Unfortunately, until you get used to the new commands you need to refer to the manual all the time to see what keys to press to get the desired effect and printing fully justified text is slow on the PCW printer. However, if you have a limited budget or can't resist a bargain, MINI OFFICE PROFESSIONAL provides features not found on some wordprocessing systems many times more expensive and the other programs bundled in the package are an additional bonus.