Writing, Researching, Bibliography Programs A review and summary of writing utility programs. Corrections or additions would be appreciated. Compiled by Prescott Smith psmith@educ.umass.edu Bibliographic and Notetaking Programs (I've tried to make the following list as complete and accurate as I could, but in working only from demos, shareware versions and sales literature, I may have overlooked some features or gotten others wrong. Some benefits and many shortcomings do not become apparent until an application has been used intensively over a period of time. In addition, new versions and programs, announced and unannounced, come out all the time. So this should be considered merely as a starting point for your own inquiries and testing. See general description of desirable features below.) ProCite Commercial, $395-995+, list $289, base pgm, Univ. Store Personal Bibliographic Software, Inc. 313/996-1580 POB 4250 Fax: 313/996-4672 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Add-Ons: Biblio-Links, $195 ea.; Pro-Search, $495 TSR: No RAM: 320K Capacity: 32,000 records (8.2MB) each file, 16K per record, up to 45 variable length fields per record. Comments: ProCite has the most complete and well-thought out options for style formatting of the group--and charges accordingly. Apparently the sciences, even for educational purposes, have no need or at least no additional style rules to follow in citing films, patents, computer assisted instructional programs, filmstrips, cd-roms, etc.. ProCite not only provides for these needs, but seems to have anticipated many others you hadn't thought about. There are 20 pre-defined "workforms" with fields appropriate to the various media and automatic style rules programmed in for each. 6 further "workforms" and their fields may be designed by you. The MLA looks fondly on it. Yet ProCite lacks several important features, including the resident ability to be popped up for reference while in your word processor or to later merge in citations at points indicated in the text, though it will replace such citations with numbers and automatically create a bibliography for them. But the bibliography must then be printed separately or to an ascii file that must be edited and re-formatted again within your word processor. The program has not been upgraded for a long time and though a new version may be impending, it looks at this point as though the firm has rested too long on its earlier deserved laurels. The editor is full-screen, with cut/paste features, but the abstracts and notes fields are rather cramped, scrollable windows and permit no more than one paragraph, however long. It's difficult to re-organize scattered, quick notes under the circumstances. The optional-cost Pro-Search makes using BRS and Dialog on-line services fast and efficient. Biblio-Links for many other services are available, but at the cost for each, better steer clear of cross-disciplinary subjects. Reference Manager, v5 Commercial $299-499, list Research Information Systems, Inc. 619/438-5526 Camino Corporate Center Fax: 619/438-5573 2355 Camino Vida Roble Carlsbad, CA 92009 Add-Ons: The Splicer, $99; Capture, $99; 100 Jrnl Formats,$59 TSR: Yes, with optional cost Splicer unit. RAM: 384K Capacity: 65,000 records in one master database, additional databases of 200 records each; average record requires about 400 bytes of storage plus abstract or notes. Database of about 3,000 records would require approximately 1.2 MB of disk space. Maximum number/length in fields: authors, 255 possible, each may be up to 255 characters in length; keywords, 255/record, 255 chars each; Journal/Book name, 255 chars; abstract or notes, to 32KB. Availability: University Bookstore (here) will not order since it is not carried by its distributor. Must order direct from company or find another educational outlet that can order. Comments: Defined but ample fields though in only 6 "types:" Book, Chapter, Journal, in-press, abstract, and unpublished. Search speed independent of database size; a single reference or group of references in a collection of 20,000 can be located in 5 seconds. Science oriented, but if you can afford the optional formatting unit, you can get APA and MLA style formatted entries. This doesn't mean you can handle videotape, CAI or other non-print entries ("types/workforms") automatically as in ProCite--but fields are long and with the MLA or APA manual in hand, you can probably get around most problems with added work and forethought. Notes field is better than ProCite's and allows more than one paragraph formatting, but not the place for drastic massaging or re-organizing. Resident splicer unit can be called up by hot key while in word processor for reference to database records which may then be cut/pasted into document or keyed for later automatic insertion of citation at symbolized point and in bibliography, which has a variety of sorts available. Splicer said to work with MS Word 3, 4, 5, W4W; Multimate; Mass-11; Word Perfect 4.2, 5.0, 5.1; WordStar 5.5, 6.0, 2000; VisiWord; Volkswriter; Xywrite. Capture unit will import from wide variety of on-line and cd-rom services. The same firm is the publisher of Grant Accountant, a grant management program. Notebook II, v4 Commercial, $189-330 Pro/Tem Software, Inc. 415/323-4083 3790 El Camino Real, Suite 389 fax 415/323-0611 Palo Alto, CA 94306 Add-ons: Bibliography v4, $80; Convert, $60; nbCitation, $99 TSR: No RAM: 512K Availability: Only from the publisher unless you can find a college bookstore that will order for you at educational discount. University bookstore will not order since its distributor does not carry the item. Comments: Number of records limited only by hard disk, 64K (about 12 pages) and up to 50 variable length, user-defined fields each record. Unlike ProCite and Reference Manager, has full-screen editor. Block, cut/paste as well as word wrap features permit editing and re-organizing of notes or abstracts fields. Customizable report formats, selective output, works with word processor fonts, formatting capabilities. Bibliographer unit will merge in numerical or "See Jones, Smith, et al, 1988"-type citations and automatically create a bibliography at the end of your document following "%" markers you insert into word processor document. Turabian, Chicago A and B, APA, and MLA or your own style formatting. Optional unit, nbCitation, provides 700 additional formats. Convert unit or new linkNB, which it is claimed will "learn" and adapt to any on-line field structure, provides importation of commercially-searched bibliographic records. Endnote Commercial $99 Street if you can find it. (See below) Endnote Plus v.1 Commercial, $249 list, < $174 street, upgrade from above--$99 Niles and Associates, Inc. 415/655-6666 2000 Hearst Street Berkeley, CA 94709 Add-Ons: End Link, for online capture, $99 list, street $40-79. TSR: Yes RAM: 512K Capacity: up to 32,000 records, 64K per record. Comments: Can paste citations into wp document, automatically create bibliography. Works with Word for Windows, Dos Word Perfect, WP for Windows. Searchable by author, year, keyword, 2 other categories at 1 time; or by any word in each record. Accessible in word proc. in resident mode. Entry forms for whole book, chapter, journal, conference proceedings and design your own. Abstract and Notes fields. Mouseable. End Link, at optional cost, said to work with Dialog, SilverPlatter, PaperChase, DataStar, Knowledge Finder, CAS Online, Computer Database, Psych Info, Inspec, BRS, Medline, Toxline, Biosis, Dimdi, Cancerlit, ABI/Inform, GratefulMed. Like Reference Manager's, EndNotes's publisher also offers a Grant Manager program. PopList Commercial, $85, list 617/926-8163 !Mikro 130 Chestnut Drive Watertown, MA 02172 Add-ons: Litlis formatter (included) TSR: Yes, also alone. RAM: 512K; 120K, but swaps out to only 6K. Comments: Though I haven't had a chance to try this at any length yet, it appears to be a very useful program though of course more limited than more expensive ones--and it's a Massachusetts company. Formatter will output underlined, bold, etc. that can be imported directly into Word Perfect, Word 5, WordStar or to printer, disk. One file will hold up to 999 records, multiple files possible. No automatic merge of citations into document or on-line capture features as yet. Square Note v.3 Commercial, $99, list Union Squareware 617/277-9222 27 St. Mary's Court Brookline, MA 02146 TSR: No RAM: 320K Comments: Oriented around notes, no pre-defined fields but up to 100 searchable keywords per note; notes can have up to 500 lines (about 10 pages) of text and the database can hold as many notes as your hard disk. Notes can be divided into two parts, a header and body. Searches and printout can be confined to the header allowing printout of bibliographic entry with or without abstract, note or quotation. Can enter notes randomly without classification, add later; list of all keywords used can be called up. Can browse through selected notes, five at a screen, but also has full-screen editor with wordwrap, tabs, underlining; for print out notes can be sorted by first line (for bibliographies then, alphabetically by author's last name or numerically if you've thought ahead of time to set up the headers this way, that is, no automatic or variable formatting). Ascii output with underlining and soft carriage returns for importing by popular word processors. Bibtex (Umass mainframe version) Available locally on the Titan Ultrix mainframe. Comments: This is based on LaTeX, which in turn is based on TeX. For those familiar with the mainframe and text formatting or willing to learn, this provides excellent flexibility and control in the formatting and printing of your references. If you're using special symbols most word processors don't have or already using TeX, DosTeX, LaTeX or another permutation for your document, this is the way to go. Not too much documentation yet on Titan, but you can read the LaTeX Guide in A109 or get "LaTeX: A Document Preparation System", by Leslie Lamport, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-15790-X. TSR: Yes, in a sense, as another session or process on the mainframe, or possibly in X-Windows if you know how to run it. Bibtex (PC) with Bibdb Freeware $0 Donald Knuth (TeX); Leslie Lamport (LaTex); Oren Patashnik (BibTeX); J. Demel & Dimitri Vulis (MSDOS port); Eyal Doron (Bibdb) TSR: No RAM: ?; lots. Availability: To start: download BIBDB10.ZIP and BIBTEX99.ARC, by FTP (type=binary [or image]) to WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL or 192.88.110.20, from sub-directory PD1:[MSDOS.TEX]; to your PC by Kermit, setting both mainframe and pc kermit to binary (Set file type binary). One file is compressed and must be uncompressed with PKunzip; the other with ARCE, PKunpak, or other. Follow directions there for downloading supplementary files and consult Lamport's book, listed above. Comments: Untried, but this is similar to its mainframe version above, while giving you the convenience, flexibility and security (if you do regular backups) of working from your own machine. Patashnik has provided a number of entry "types/workforms" that even ProCite doesn't have, and discusses the problems in the docs (BTXDOC.TEX), but you may still have problems with non-book media. Instructions are often cryptic for TeXie novices, but especially if you're already using LaTeX to do math or other special symbols, this is worth looking into. There are other programs available that claim to translate Word Perfect or Word 5 formatted files to BibTeX format. Bib and Tib Shareware? $? Comments: Don't know too much about these. Brian Johnson says they are Tex, troff and nroff versions for unix, available by FTP to cs.orst.edu in directory pub/budd. These are in compressed tar format. Less Professional Biblio Programs The following programs are usually less expensive and more limited, but for some uses--medical or science journal articles, undergraduate papers, personal libraries, casual lists--might be an adequate trade-off between cost-complexity-benefit. For undergraduates who might want to begin to keep a record of their college readings for reviewing at reunion time :-) or possible later interpolation into a more advanced program, some of these would be helpful in getting started. For others it may provide a list of programs they can avoid. Articles Freeware $0 Waldo A. Roberts III Psl #0050 or download from net, bbs. Comments: Journals only database; has printout capacity, but too limited for scholarly use. Bib-Perf Shareware, $? Arthur Milholland, MD, PhD Psl #1037 or download from net or bbs Comments: Untried. Psl describes as Word Perfect utility add-on, essentially a "merge" file/function. Will sequentially renumber refs. in paper and bibliography when changes made. Adaptable to different style formats. Can include comments and is WP sortable. Bibl v. 6.30d Shareware, Registration $35 Psl #3083 or 7305 Comments: This is the neatest, easiest to use program I've come across, but its limitations make it unsuitable for scholarly work. It claims to have a capacity of 2 million records; has an on-line capture feature that works well with some of the science services except that it truncates longer fields. It gets 90% of the information and might be adequate for identifying useful works. Its short fields--200 characters for authors, titles; single entry type and unmodifiable style output make it useless for most professional purposes, but it would be neat for informal personal book or other collections, undergraduate papers or cursory searches of science databases. Bibliofile v.3.11 Shareware, registration $40 Dean Mader Psl #1280 or 7305 RAM: 380K TSR: No Comments: Primarily for medical field, journal entries only, little flexibility in formatting. Approach is interesting however in following a subject tree structure. Keyword categories are splittable so that as information is gathered and notes grow, subject entries can be re-defined within the parent category and sorted out under differentiated keywords. Imports from Grateful Med and Medline. Bibliography Maker Commercial, $99, list Right On Programs 516/424-7777 755 New York Avenue, Ste 210 fax 516/424-7207 Huntington, NY 11743 Comments: Not recommended. This is a severely limited program, yet for some reason was copy protected. File-It Shareware, registration $20 Chip Rabinowitz 51 E. Rogues Path Huntington Station, NY 11746 RAM: ? TSR: No Comments: Simple, fast but very light duty database for journals only. Searchable, but no reporting list or file. Not generally suitable for other than casual use. Interactive Bibliography Commercial, $100, list The SourceView Corp. 800/288-0882 POBox 578 415/798-9978 Concord, CA 94522 fax 415/798-4154 Comments: Did not respond to written inquiries so I assume product no longer supported or company out of business. Jeprs Shareware, registration $ Louis M. Miranda Compuserve 73567,471 POB 822894 Dallas, TX 75382 Psl 1782 or 7305 Comments: This program has come a long way thru successive versions and presumably will be carried further. It has many of the bare features of far more expensive programs, though they all require much more manual fiddling. You can design your own formatting style output, including the use of italic, bold and underlined output. Claims to export seamlessly to Word Perfect and PC-Write. Unfortunately, it is mainly oriented toward science and medical fields and a serious drawback is that it will not list authors' first or middle names except as initials. Comments field is too short for long notes or abstracts. Capture feature limited to services using its single, unmodifiable field structure and lengths. Lit Chad Price price@helios.unl.edu Shareware, registration $110+ or ? Comments: Price says it uses runtime Revelation database, has variable length fields, will hold any number of 64K records up to limit of hard disk--one user with 10,000 citations; program included for creating journal style formats which can be imported into any word processor; report forms and built-in query language. If you already have and use the Revelation db program, cost would be modest, negotiable shareware variety. Norman v.0.03 Shareware, registration $29 Joey Robichaux and Chip Mann, ASP Psl #4164 or download from net or bbs TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: This is a trim, but very limited program. Fields are few and short except for Notes. Originally intended as a note organizer for debaters, it has been modified to add features. But any undergraduate who turned in a term paper with its appended bibliography would get back a caustic notation and a poor grade. It not only lacks fields for publisher, place, editor, etc., it adds some irrelevant ones in a fixed format that has no stylistic precedent. The database is free-form with every word indexed and combined with a task-switcher might be useful for quotes and footnoting while in your word processor. No on-line importation. RefBase Shareware, registration $15 C & J Consultants and J. R. Connolly Psl #0050 Comments: untried add-on to PC-File+ (general database, $70 street); template for scientific journal references only, output formats tailored to some professional journal style requirements. RMS or Reference Management System v.2.4h (not to be confused with the commercial Reference Manager program above) Shareware, Registration $45 Paul Douglas Goodell Psl #2725 (2 360K disks) or #7305 TSR: No RAM: 475+ Comments: Awkward and confusing startup instructions (if you run into problems, call me) but once set up works fairly well for medical and science citations. Comments and abstracts fields. Styles limited, though you can define your own; no option for underline or italic formatting of title or other fields. No on-line capture or wp splicing capabilities. Trilogy v. Freeware $0 B. J. Ball 3304 Glen Rose Drive Austin, TX 78731 Psl # TSR: No RAM: 128K Comments: This public domain program will take notes of paragraphs to pages in length, provide a header and keywords for boolean searches with results being displayed, printed or put in disk file. Capacity of one searchable file is 500 notes, 1500 unique keywords and 2000 records, equivalent to 500 Kilobytes. More than one file can be maintained (but not searched across at the same time). Might be useful for short to medium papers or initial data gathering. dLite Shareware, registration $25 Ward Mundy Psl #1482 TSR: Yes RAM: 160K, or 100K with expanded memory of 64K Comments: up to 10 resident databases fully compatible with db3+ may be loaded. For those who don't end up with a TSR bibliographic program, this might provide a substitute way to check your references as you write in a word processor, though it would require a full 640K or more of RAM to load both. Cut and paste feature would permit patching entries into footnotes, citations. Dbase memo (.dbt) fields may not be used, but you could use a long conventional field for short notes, abstracts. About this list: Bibliographic programs are intended to replace and amplify the 3 x 5 card file as a research tool. A physical card file can be accessed only serially by one keyword or number. Cross-references to or from other subjects--author, period or sub-topic--must be added manually. An electronic database program can potentially be accessed by any keyword or field, permitting great flexibility in search and retrieval of notes. It can also be supplemented quickly and automatically by tapping into other "on-line" bibliographies by keyword combinations. More sophisticated programs can be accessed for reference while you are working on a "manuscript" in your word processor. On printing, some can interpolate the correct citation merely symbolized in your document and provide an automatically alphabetized or enumerated bibliography at the end. I've been looking for a good bibliographic and note-taking program on and off for a year. Finding the programs, let alone evaluating them for your own information gathering routines, takes a lot of time, so I would appreciate any comments, corrections or additions that other users might have. I am indebted to Prof. G. Ernest Anderson for the original impetus for my inquiries and for essential parts of what follows, particularly on the more promising ones--ProCite, EndNotes Plus and PopList. But the opinions and possible garblings of the information are my responsibility. With the exception of the mainframe version of BibTex, all the other programs cited are for IBM-compatible machines, but most of the commercial programs have a somewhat different Mac counterpart. Perhaps someone else would compile a list of these. No Windows programs are included, though such versions exist. The building of a master bibliography or even a special purpose, limited one, is usually a long term project. It seems best for now to stick to character-based DOS versions, which can later be inserted or converted to whatever GUI system becomes standardized in the still distant future. It's seems quite possible that Windows and System 7 are transitional products, slated for quick obsolescence. (For an even more opinionated view, see *footnote, below.) Some programs are included only to avoid your wasting time on ones that clearly don't meet your needs, but there is no "best" program either. Aside from the obvious barrier of cost, what works best for you will probably depend a lot on your former methods of notetaking and bibliography making, also on whether or not the simple "feel" of the program seems congenial or productive. For reasons other than cost, many will prefer a program nearly as simple to use as a card file; others will want the maximum in automation or give priority to some single feature to the near exclusion of the rest. Such preferences are too individual to be satisfied for all by any one program. Yeah, yeah, but what program did I wind up choosing? None. I haven't found one in my price range that provides the most important features I think I need and that will work with Word 5 and the limitations of my 286's speed and memory. Reference Manager probably comes closest but is not available from the University store. I may wind up with some future version of Endnote Plus or PopList, but for the moment, I'm going to continue to use DB3+ interactively, slow and clunky as it is, and export the database whenever the decision seems warranted or unavoidable. (DB3+ will not format in other than ascii; underlining all those titles would be a lot of work, and programming a report form incorporating the complex MLA style rules would, for me, make a card file look attractive. But re-inventing the ProCite wheel shouldn't be necessary. Now that EndNote has broken into the open market, there should be a quick succession of improved and competing versions. My idea of a useful program would start with an improved version of a word processor like Nota Bene incorporating Word 5's smoothness, highlighting and style sheets. It would have *integrated*, *resident* components for a free form database like Agenda for notetaking; a bibliographic database with the formatting variety of ProCite; an indexer, search facility and 10 screen text editor that would combine the best of PC-Index, Qedit, Fgrep, Lookfor, etc.; and of course have a universal on-line importation facility. But then I don't have a 64-bit machine anyway. Features to look for: Availability - Part of the problem in finding and purchasing commercial bibliography programs is that distribution of these specialized programs is frequently controlled by the producer. They never get to the discount dealers. Of the leading programs, only Endnote Plus is available from mail order firms. Although there are special, off-list prices for students and educators on some programs, these are not always distributed by the University outlets meant exclusively to carry them. For instance, of the commercial bibliography programs only ProCite and now possibly EndNote are available from our University book store at any price. Their distributor, for whatever reasons, will not carry or order other programs even where these are available to it in student or full-priced editions. Shareware and public domain programs on the other hand are available for downloading from Internet sites, Compuserve, BBS's, or from shareware distributors like Public Software Library. In the latter instance you pay less than $10 for a trial version of the program. If there is a registration fee, you pay this to continue using the program after you determine that it will meet your needs. You can determine where on the net a program can be downloaded from by checking the "Archie" sites. Usually, this is the least expensive way to try out the programs--at least in money. But though it may take more time to find where and how to download from the net, the knowledge will serve you well in the future. If you want to keep it simple at first, the Public Software Library disk number is given, mainly as a convenience to me since I don't have the time to look them all up on Archie or access to other distributor lists. Always also include the name of the program you want as well as the number. You can order from Psl whether a member or not. The second number is for a set of disks or a 3.5" disk with a number of related programs--cheaper if they contain several you want to try. There are other such services, but Psl is the best I've tried, though the owner may have enthusiasms not everyone will share. Address is: POB 35705, Houston, TX 77235-5705. Tel: 1-800-242-4775. (I have of course no connection with this firm). Capacity - the number of records or megabytes of data the program can hold in one database. I haven't indicated this information generally because different means of measuring or stating these can be misleading. But it is something to check for early if you want one large database of all references or intend to do broad on-line searches. The student edition of Reference Manager, for instance, is limited to 400 records, though the regular is virtually unlimited. This would probably not be enough for most searching purposes though it might be for the final culling. A series of databases would then have to be used at greater inconvenience. WP Compatibility - Where these programs are intended to work with your word processor in plugging in citations and sorting/formatting the bibliography, they usually work with only a few types, usually through the merge feature. Most claim to work with Word Perfect, a few with MS Word 5. I've indicated such claims where made, but have not checked any. If such a "splicing" feature is important to you, confirm with the manufacturer that it will indeed work with your version or try it out yourself first or check with another user. Some of the commercial firms have a 30-day try-out period, also some of the mail order firms, but ask if there is a "re-stocking" or "re-shelving" fee on returns. This can amount to 15% of the price. TSR - (Terminate-and-stay-resident) This indicates the ability of a program to stay resident in memory or disk while running other programs. That is, you can call up the program to search for or check a reference while working in your word processor on the intended document. Very useful if you have enough RAM memory (See below) to load both the bibliography program and your word processor. RAM - (Random Access Memory--your computer's temporary memory, as opposed to the storage memory of the various disks attached.) Where possible, I've indicated the amount of RAM required to run the program stand-alone or "popped-up", if resident, in K (kilobytes). With those that can be used in TSR form, the amount shown usually can be reduced by switching most of the program to expanded memory--if you have it--or your hard disk. (A hard disk of ample capacity is virtually a requirement with any of these programs). The amount of RAM that you need then depends upon the resident requirements, plus the RAM required to run your word processing program, Dos and any other TSRs, drivers, mouse, etc. you may be using. Microsoft Word 5 and most other full-featured Dos word processors often require 384K or more, so even with a full 640K, there is usually not much left for programs with popped-up requirements greater than 100K. If the TSR feature is important to you and it looks as though it may be a tight fit, check further with a user who has a similar setup or you may find yourself adding additional memory to a nearly obsolescent machine. This may be justifiable depending on your situation, but AT or XT expansion boards with 4 meg still run about $400, about one-third the price of a new 386 machine. Notetaking - In general the better bibliographic programs are not well-suited to initial note-taking, review or massaging. Most have both note and abstract fields of sufficient length, but are best suited to arrangement and composition elsewhere. The better notetakers are weak in at least some of the best features of the bibliographic programs. Notebook II with the Bibliographer add-on probably comes closest to the best compromise. On-Line Linking - Most programs claim to be able to quickly and automatically import from on-line bibliographic services like ERIC, BRS, etc. Since on-line commercial and library systems or CD-ROM formats vary in the number, order, length and coding of their information "fields", a number of different import linking programs are usually necessary if some information isn't to be truncated or wind up in the wrong order in your database fields. Any program that claims to be able to import from a large number of services with one add-on is either a very sophisticated program--hence, expensive--or a compromise that may cost more time in editing than it saves. Format Styles - Most programs offer several format styles for automating bibliographical output to meet the requirements of various journals or standards. On some, you can design your own style or modify theirs; on others, you *must* design your own style. Some programs are oriented toward medical and scientific styles; others toward more conventional ones. It's best to know or decide which styles are required by your department for theses or dissertations or followed in the journals or fields in which you intend to publish. Record Types - Only ProCite supports a wide variety of "workforms" or "types" of entry for unconventional media. If you want to cite and include relevant information about museum holdings, music manuscripts, videotapes, computer programs, etc., you will have to somehow fudge the data into the "workforms" intended for books or journals or pay ProCite's cost in money and other features. Such "workforms" are actually separate databases with fields that match the types of information necessary to identify, locate and use the special medium, since a single database with all the necessary fields would require huge amounts of storage space for only occasional data. These separate databases are later linked together to search or print out an integrated list. Such programming adds complexity and size. Only the top programs offer more types of entry than books and journals. As with format styles, if you want an inexpensive program, you'll have to do more manual work in the editing process, but you can minimize the problem by checking to see that the arrangement, number and size of the fields in the standard entry types provides the length and flexibility your media requires. * In my Dos-bigoted opinion, I think Windows and System 7 are outrageous scams for selling new generations of soft and hard ware, and academics should have nothing to do with encouraging their use by students already pushed to come up with tuition and fee raises. GUI's may have an attraction in desk-top publishing, graphics, or games and eventually to provide a simplified approach for the beginner, but for the foreseeable future they merely compound the costs and problems of compatibility and instruction for everyone, especially the beginner. Nor is there a great enough improvement in multi-tasking or memory management to justify Windows 3.0 or 3.1. Perhaps in the context of the industry struggle between IBM and MicroSoft, etc., there's a certain long-term rationale for this latest billion-dollar throwaway. The budgets of corporate or entertainment users can no doubt bear the expense of such a shakeout process in new, nearly annual software and hardware upgrades, but students and academics generally cannot afford these unnecessary re-tooling cycles. Writer's Word Processors Nota Bene v.3 Commercial, $495, list; $275 graduate students Dragonfly Software 212/334-0445 285 West Broadway New York, NY 10013 RAM: 256K minimum, 384K recommended, 512K maximum Comments: Fast handling of very long documents with automatic cross referencing to pages, figures and notes. Keyboard layouts and charcters can be easily switched to a number of foreign standards and languages--hebrew characters can be entered right to left; Greek, math or Slavic characters can be combined on the same screen with English, etc. Special character sets available--Cyrillic, etc. Up to 9 windows in which you can load calendars, communications and other programs for your own PIM, as well as other text files for reference or massaging; scroll in 2 windows to compare files; built-in outliner; integrated textbase indexing each word for fast free-form search and reference; up to 3 sets of footnotes and endnotes for each file; customizable pre-defined formats and style sheets; Chicago and MLA style manuals; variously sorted bibliographies. Wordbench Commercial $189, list Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc. 617/944-3700 Route 128 Reading, MA 01867 256K Ram Comments: Combines "a writer's word processor" with an electronically indexed note card file, an outliner and a manager to keep track of the various parts of one opus. The outliner is integrated with the note card file and word processor so that a change in one can be linked and incorporated with the other and both merged into the word processor document; a window on either of the other two units can be opened in any of the three. But only one file can be loaded. There is a system for automatic entry of footnotes and bibliography, but how much better it is than those on other word processors is unclear. A Brainstormer unit is included as a "creativity aid". Free-form Databases These are useful for scratching down quick notes in random order. In most, each word is indexed so that whether using category words or just text, related types of material can be quickly searched for and retrieved. There are many of these types of programs as well as the related "PIMs" (Personal Information Managers) like Agenda that are well known and listed in most software ads. I've only worked with MemoryMate and list here only some of the simpler and less expensive ones. MemoryMate Commercial, c. $45 street Broderbund (Michael Fremont) (cf. shareware Instant Recall, below) TSR: Yes, may also be used non-resident RAM: 80K; 10K with Swap Utilities (psl #1797,$25) Comments: Each entry will take up to 120 (80 char) lines of text, 32,000 such, and 32MB capacity for the entire database; multiple databases possible. Easy, fast, reliable, few bugs or conflicts. Can make "forms" with keyword, template and ditto feature to create a more "structured" appearing database if desired. Also has a kind of hypertext linkage, but cannot include graphics. Tornado v. 1.8 Commercial, c. $-40 street Micro Logic Corp. 201/342-6518 89 Leuning Street 800/342-5930 Hackensack, NJ 07606 TSR: Yes RAM: 256K; 57K non-resident mode Comments: 64,000 notes possible but an overall 55K limit. Probably superseded by its greater capacity re-write, Info Select, below. Info Select v. 1.1 Commercial $99.95 list, c. $85? street Micro Logic Corp. 201/342-6518 89 Leuning Street 800/342-5930 Hackensack, NJ 07606 TSR: Yes RAM: 256K; 7K non-resident mode Comments: 10MB capacity as opposed to Tornado's 55K; less ram required when not popped-up. Good in random scratch mode, but with patience to learn more of program, some structured capacity though not as straightforward as simple, fixed databases. Instant Recall v. 1.2 Commercial $99.95 list, $c. 75? street Chronologic Corp. 602/293-3100 5151 N. Oracle Road 800/848-4970 Tuscon, AZ 85704 TSR: Yes RAM: 512K; 32K non-resident mode Comments: 64K per entry. Still relatively simple but has some calendar, address, to-do desktop features as well. This does not appear to be related to the Instant Recall shareware program below. Findex Freeware $0 Psl #0050 TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: untried IdeaList v.2.0 Shareware, registration $39 Michael R. Sleeter Psl #2794 or 7478 TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: untried. EGA required. Information Please v. 2.08 Shareware registration $53 TexaSoft, ASP Psl #2618 or 7478 TSR: No RAM: 320K Comments: untried Instant Recall v. 1.64f Shareware registration $? Michael Fremont (see MemoryMate above) Psl #0518 or 7024 TSR: Yes RAM: ? Comments: This program appears to be similar to the same author's MemoryMate above but with an 80K database capacity. Untried. Memo Master v. 2.01 Shareware registration $30 John G. Kacmarck, Jr. Psl #3432 or 7651 TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: untried. free-form data manager, multiple databases. My-Desk Shareware registration $25 Nelson Ford, ASP Psl #1406 or 7380 TSR: Yes; also stand-alone RAM: ?; about 7K swapped to disk or EMS Comments: Unlike most of the other programs here, this is not a free-form database, but a kind of batch-file menu program with text editor that lets you instantly pull-up 40 short (up to 8 page) files anywhere on your disk, each of which can be a menu for pulling up another 40 files, etc. Cut/paste and good text-editor lets you keep "bulletin board" files on topics, as well as files of related quotations or notes that can be popped up for reference while in your word processor. Disk file or print output. Other features include calendar, calculator, alarms, though these are fairly primitive. ReSearch v.5.9 Shareware registration $50 R. A. Kelly Psl #1236 or 7129 TSR: No RAM: 512K Comments: A simple ramdom, but not quite free-form database. Formerly named Litigex, the program is intended for keeping track of evidence and legal research, but it might be useful in historical research as well, particularly where there is a mix of sources--transcripts, tapes, interviews, artifacts. Fields are given for source, page and line numbers where noted item may be found. An 11-line summary may be entered with note, dates, current location, persons involved, as a subject field. Printouts can then be made by subject or chronologically to re-construct a sequence of events, links, or just to manage data gathering and use. (Seems overpriced as do some of the other shareware programs relative to the street prices of their higher volume commercial counterparts.) SemWare 404/641-9002 UNo - Useful Notes v. 1.3 Shareware registration $20 Useful Software Psl #3727 TSR: Yes; also stand-alone. RAM: ?; 50-70K in non-resident mode Comments: untried. Described as random notekeeper. Datebase smaller than 100K can be searched, copied, moved, sized, ordered. Notes can be linked. Word-wrap, cut/paste, indention, file importing. TEXT MASSAGERS GrandView v.2 Commercial $99 direct from Symantec (was $305 list, $205 street; must be new v. coming, or dropping support.) Symantec Corp. 408/253-9600 10201 Torre Ave. Cupertino, CA 95014-2132 TSR: Yes RAM: Comments: A more powerful and flexible outliner than the ones incorporated in some word processors. Useful for organizing writing if you're following Peter Elbow's or Sanford Kaye's methods. But its 8 tileable screens and cut/paste features make it useful as well for parsing and organizing long passages of notes or quotations as might be obtained in scanning in whole articles or book sections with OCR programs. Files hold up to 64K. Using the outliner and "find" features, files could be made searchable by keyword headings with the passages or notes themselves "hidden" in sub-headlines. Mouse capability is useful here in calling up one of the 8 files tiled on one screen. Though this is sometimes sold as a project or personal information manager and has categories that can be used as keywords for retrieval purposes, it is cumbersome as a PIM and not much of a project manager. (Come to think of it though, in historical research, biographies, archaeology, etc. GrandView's "categories" links, views, might be better for following a sequence of events or chain of evidence than the shareware ReSearch program above, as might MemoryMate's hyper links. Other PIMs like Agenda or Who-What-When-Where, or project managers and hypertext programs might be still better. Has anyone used any of these to design, manage or analyze complex statistical studies, surveys or other research projects?) PC-Outline Shareware $25-60 registration Brown Bag Software File #41719, POB 60000 San Francisco, CA 94160-1719 TSR: Yes RAM: ? Comments: Almost identical in detail to GrandView, but without the complications of a project manager. Currently lacks gv's mouse support, however, which is quite useful in manipulating the 8 windows. (Users have recently had trouble reaching Brown Bag and the shareware version is too limited to use without registered features.) Qedit v 2.15 Shareware, $55 registration (Student discount available) 4343 Shallowford Road, Suite C3A fax 404/640-6213 Marietta, GA 30062-5022 (BBS) 404/641-8968 (Compuserve 71520,67) TSR: (resident) version available at undetermined higher cost RAM: 128K (but will use a full 640K depending on the number and length of files loaded). Comments: This is a text editor beloved by many programmers, but it also has the capacity of loading 8 windows of the same or different files and up to 99 scratch buffers as well, making it, like GrandView, useful for parsing, massaging and organizing large amounts of text. File lengths are limited only by the amount of your machine's available RAM. There are drop-down menus, but commands are also available for speed, following WordStar-like key combinations. These fortunately are re-programmable, as you might want to get or keep in practice for the Titan gnu-emacs mail editor. (Compuserve 71520,67) Ravitz Editor 1.10 Shareware registration $25 Cary Ravitz Psl #2377 or 7073 TSR: Yes RAM: XMS upper memory blocks, 42K XMS high mem, and 64K EMS Comments: untried. Outliner, text-editor. Said to be Desqview compatible, programmable, view 2 files at once. INDEXERS These are useful for more than book indices; they allow text searches, analysis and concordances. With some of these you could create your own dictionary of quotations on related topics across several files. An entire book could be scanned in, indexed and chains of ideas followed (possibly the only way to trace Dewey's thought on various threads in under a lifetime). Answers v.4 Shareware, registration $25 Brian Corll Ten B. C. Microsystems, Inc. Psl #0050 Comments: parses large text files indexing words that can be quickly searched through and relevant passages located, but you lose the indexing on doing another file. Anyword Shareware registration $35 Eric Balkan Psl #1238 or 7024 TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: untried. Psl describes as a general text indexing and retrieval program similar to ZyIndex and MemoryMate, but with external files. Limits are about 1 million characters of text and up to 254 files. Searches on words or word combination; (And - OR - Not) with wild cards. Concord and Indexer Shareware registration $16 Skyline Publishing Co. POB 30 Tacoma, WA 98401-0030 Psl #0760 Comments: indexer, somewhat limited in the number of indexable words, often not a problem in short files. Produces a list of the indexed words. Fgrep v. 1.71 Freeware $0 Christopher J. Dunford Psl #0274 Comments: This is a small program that does very fast searches for any word in a file--without indexing. Can handle multiple files by specifying a file with a list of file names to search. On the same Psl disk is Lookfor v.3.2, by David L. Trafton ($15), not quite as fast, but said to show surrounding text when match is found, and allow viewing of whole file. Index Shareware registration $? Greg Haley TSR: No RAM: 128K Comments: makes an index of any text file using a list of keywords you provide. PC-Index v.4.01 Shareware, registration $48 Help Software Psl #1838 RAM: 384K TSR: No Comments: better packaged than other specialized index programs, menu-driven and also will handle some non-ascii files in popular word processor formats--Word, Word Perfect, WordStar, etc. d:Search v.1.11 Shareware registration $59 DT Software, Inc., ASP Psl #3254 TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: untried. Described as performing indexed and unindexed searches of ascii and many word processor files. Also date, filename searches, network support, applications launch menu and Dos shell. PC_Text_Is v.1.0 Shareware registration $35 Terrific Software Co. Psl #3990, 2 360K disks, or #7630 TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: untried, described as having sophisticated search techniques for indexing, retrieving multiple documents. TOM v 1.02 Shareware registration $45-60 Psl #4165 Polysoft, ASP TSR: No RAM: ? Comments: untried. Psl describes as free-form text retrieval program with menus, windows and full-screen editor. Indexes every word in multiple files; boolean and wildcard searches. WordCruncher Share v. 4.5 Shareware registration $20 Johnston & Co. Psl # 4074, 2 360K disks, or #7697 TSR: No RAM: 640K Comments: untried. Described as a text indexing and retrieval program extensive enough to construct electronic books for distributing; sophisticated search results displayed in windows with as much surrounding text as needed; will index in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Arabic as well. Cribbed and patched together from many non-book sources that, as explained, cannot yet be credited in the proper style. But thanks are due to Prof. G. Ernest Anderson, Umass-Amherst; Hauke Jungnitz, Chimei Shui, Jason, Chad Price, Keith Petersen, Brian L. Johnson, Seth Schindler, Ian Roberts and Timo Salmi on Usenet's comp.os.msdos.apps; Marcie Wallace and David Kurzman on Bitnet's Psychgrad;, Nelson Ford and his Psl "Source Book"; "PC Magazine"; the Boston Computer Society's, "PC Report", and Charles Moran, English Dept., Umass-Amherst. Prescott Smith, Umass/Amherst psmith@educ.umass.edu