Technical
notes indexABANDONING APPLEWORKS
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CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. WORD PROCESSING
3. DRAWING
4. SPREADSHEET, PRESENTATION
& PAINT
5. DATABASE
6. FILEMAKER PRO
7. RESOURCES
It's a remarkable
piece of programming: a reasonable size, and quite
fast, but also very powerful and flexible. Each module stands up well
on its own (though the Paint module is now well outdated) but they can
also integrate well, allowing you for example to copy fields out from a
database into a Word Processing document while retaining text
formatting, or copy objects from a Draw document into a Word Processing
document.
Unless you need advanced Word Processing capabilities - for example if you are writing a textbook and need footnotes and indexing - the Word Processing module is likely to fill all your needs: you can also add draw objects and pictures to it in a far easier and controlled manner than many other word processors. You can have text boxes (which can be linked to carry the text from one to the next), wrap body text round draw objects, and have multiple columns, headers and footers, spell checking, and word count.
The Draw module is in effect the same as the Word Processing module without the word processing layer: it's possible to do complex magazine-style layouts or involved technical drawings with relative ease.
The Database has an easy to understand graphical format, and can have multiple layouts, field formats including date, number and calculation, and do complex searches.
The Spreadsheet module is not as powerful as Excel, but has a good range of calculation functions: spreadsheet frames can be embedded in Draw or Word Processing documents while retaining calculation abilities.
Why would anyone want to abandon such a useful program? It does have a few faults - its display of small font sizes is unsatisfactory as it can't take advantage of OSX font smoothing, and attempts to use Unicode input will crash it; but it's still capable of more than almost any other single program.
However it's a very old piece of programming, originally intended for OS7 and up, and later reworked for OSX. It can't run directly on Intel Macs, and requires Rosetta (in effect a PPC emulator built into OSX). I understand that for technical and practical reasons it's not possible to upgrade the coding: and it has been officially 'end-of-lifed' by Apple: it's no longer sold by them, nor is it supported. So far it works fine on Leopard on Intel Macs: but if at a later stage Rosetta is not provided as part of a future version of OSX, or some upgrade to the System or hardware causes a conflict with it, then it will stop working on newer machines. However it's worth emphasising that it's not going to stop working suddenly on its own: it will only happen if you upgrade your System or machine to a version which won't support it.
For people with a long-standing investment in it the prospect of its possible demise is extremely annoying. In some cases it is possible to open Appleworks documents in other programs: but in others it isn't, and it will be necessary to do any conversions before making changes which may disable Appleworks.
To summarize the position:
However, I repeat that this can only happen if you yourself apply an upgrade: AppleWorks will continue to work fine on existing, and probably some future, setups.
Subsequent pages in this essay will examine possible alternatives to the various modules in more detail. The next page deals with the Word Processing module.
1. INTRODUCTION
2. WORD PROCESSING
3. DRAWING
4. SPREADSHEET, PRESENTATION
& PAINT
5. DATABASE
6. FILEMAKER PRO
7. RESOURCES
What is Appleworks?
AppleWorks, originally called ClarisWorks, is an office program which was bundled with new Macs from the early 1990s until the move to Intel Macs. It was also available for purchase separately, and was not particularly expensive. It has a number of modules: Word Processing, Draw, Paint, Database, Spreadsheet, and originally a Terminal application (dating back the the pre-internet days when one would log directly into remote computers over the phone line) which was later replaced by a Presentation module.It's a remarkable
piece of programming: a reasonable size, and quite
fast, but also very powerful and flexible. Each module stands up well
on its own (though the Paint module is now well outdated) but they can
also integrate well, allowing you for example to copy fields out from a
database into a Word Processing document while retaining text
formatting, or copy objects from a Draw document into a Word Processing
document.Unless you need advanced Word Processing capabilities - for example if you are writing a textbook and need footnotes and indexing - the Word Processing module is likely to fill all your needs: you can also add draw objects and pictures to it in a far easier and controlled manner than many other word processors. You can have text boxes (which can be linked to carry the text from one to the next), wrap body text round draw objects, and have multiple columns, headers and footers, spell checking, and word count.
The Draw module is in effect the same as the Word Processing module without the word processing layer: it's possible to do complex magazine-style layouts or involved technical drawings with relative ease.
The Database has an easy to understand graphical format, and can have multiple layouts, field formats including date, number and calculation, and do complex searches.
The Spreadsheet module is not as powerful as Excel, but has a good range of calculation functions: spreadsheet frames can be embedded in Draw or Word Processing documents while retaining calculation abilities.
Why abandon it?
Why would anyone want to abandon such a useful program? It does have a few faults - its display of small font sizes is unsatisfactory as it can't take advantage of OSX font smoothing, and attempts to use Unicode input will crash it; but it's still capable of more than almost any other single program.
However it's a very old piece of programming, originally intended for OS7 and up, and later reworked for OSX. It can't run directly on Intel Macs, and requires Rosetta (in effect a PPC emulator built into OSX). I understand that for technical and practical reasons it's not possible to upgrade the coding: and it has been officially 'end-of-lifed' by Apple: it's no longer sold by them, nor is it supported. So far it works fine on Leopard on Intel Macs: but if at a later stage Rosetta is not provided as part of a future version of OSX, or some upgrade to the System or hardware causes a conflict with it, then it will stop working on newer machines. However it's worth emphasising that it's not going to stop working suddenly on its own: it will only happen if you upgrade your System or machine to a version which won't support it.
For people with a long-standing investment in it the prospect of its possible demise is extremely annoying. In some cases it is possible to open Appleworks documents in other programs: but in others it isn't, and it will be necessary to do any conversions before making changes which may disable Appleworks.
To summarize the position:
- Word Processing documents can be opened directly only in Pages.
- Draw Documents can be opened directly only in EazyDraw.
- Spreadsheets can be opened directly only in Numbers.
- Presentations can be opened directly only in Keynote.
However, I repeat that this can only happen if you yourself apply an upgrade: AppleWorks will continue to work fine on existing, and probably some future, setups.
Subsequent pages in this essay will examine possible alternatives to the various modules in more detail. The next page deals with the Word Processing module.