11543 Need MS Word file compatibility, but prefer not to use Microsoft software if you can avoid it? Check out Papyrus.

Papyrus is an Office suite application from Germany available for Mac OS X for the past couple of years or so, and pitched as an alternative to Microsoft Office. The application has been around in a German language Windows version (as well as TOS and OS/2 Warp variants) for thirteen years, as its version XII (twelve) number attests. Consequently, while relatively new to the Mac, it is mature software. Papyrus OFFICE 12 is the latest English-language release, incorporating all of the new features available in the current German version, and ready to confront the MS Office colossus of on the Mac platform.

The developers' mission statement for Papyrus is to make your work as simple as possible by providing carefully selected, powerful features in a ergonomic package, avoiding useless bells and whistles. "Adding 'more' can quickly become 'too much' - except for those people who earn money on bulky and slow Office-Software (generally, people who offer training seminars or sell expensive new computers)."

As with MS Office, the core application of the Papyrus Office suite is a word processor called "WORD," which in this case also incorporates an integrated spreadsheet function, and there is also a relational database module called Papyrus BASE that could make Papyrus an alternative to Filemaker Pro as well as MS Office.

Papyrus BASE uses XML format to store data, allowing multiple (networked) users to operate on (and change) a single database all at the same time. BASE has powerful search functions, full-text database search and document management via integration with Papyrus WORD, supporting creation of serial (mail merge) letters and reports. Database forms and generated reports are saved as Papyrus WORD documents, and can be re-formatted with ease. Form letters can be generated by combining a Papyrus WORD document with a Papyrus BASE database, a modality that also permits automated literature indices for bibliographies.

Compared to older versions (and especially compared to other word-processor, DTP, and database programs), Papyrus OFFICE 12 offers a number of powerful new features, including PDF output and unlimited Multiple Undo. For a description of the most important additions to Papyrus 12, please read new_v12.htm.

New in version 12:

1. "Multiple Undo" 1.1. Recreating undone changes (Redo) 1.2. Undo with "Seven League Boots" - the Undo-Popup 1.3. Tips and Tricks about Undo
2. Papyrus documents in Portable Document Format (PDF) 2.1. PDF in general and their implementation in Papyrus 12 2.2. PAP / PDF Hybrids - true PDF, but editable in Papyrus (Note that Papyrus 12 can't open or edit standard PDF documents, but only PDF Hybrids created in Papyrus)
3. New features for text processing with Papyrus WORD 3.1. New dictionaries for spell checking 3.2. Converting between typographical and ASCII quotation marks 3.3. Papyrus WORD: Title, Topic, Author, Company, Keywords 3.4. Underlining 3.5. Import and Export of MS-Word .DOC format improved 3.6. Complete Unicode and improved keyboard layout support 3.7. Isolated graphic objects (text reflow) 3.8. Absolute height for table rows 3.9. Dialog for form fields, new "check" fields 3.10. Save all pictures in the document 3.11. Default storage for imported pictures 3.12. Running Papyrus from USB memory sticks
4. New features in the Database section - "Papyrus BASE" 4.1. New "changed" fields, including "User" and "Computer" 4.2. Adjusting database forms to conform to field changes 4.3. Sorting report templates 4.4. Data record number in the data entry window 4.5. Names for stored queries 4.6. Selected data records remain when editing data 4.7. Each record on a new page of tabular reports 4.8. Papyrus BASE: Date export for ASCII and CSV files 4.9. Just for fun (and as an example): Sudoku Database
5. Minor changes and enhancements 5.1. Tip-Dialog 5.2. Improved support for Dual Displays 5.3. Papyrus WORD: Edit / Special Menu 5.4. Papyrus Word: Improvement in the Paragraph and Text Style dialogs 5.5. Papyrus Word: File extension "*.pav" for templates 5.6. Papyrus Word: Ruler marks for drag operations
6. Differences in Papyrus 12 (from V.11) 6.1. Hyphenation after slashes "/" 6.2. Line breaks now with Shift+Return 6.3. Papyrus WORD/BASE: Results of division operations 6.4. Standard font for databases now has Unicode characters 6.5. Deleting and inserting lines in (report) tables with cell references

For an exhaustive and detailed description of these new features, see:
http://www.rom-logicware.com/new_v12.htm

German software is typically efficiently coded, making for small, lean, fast, and responsive applications, and true to form, Papyrus boasts concise and efficient coding that can handle huge documents (even thousands of pages) and/or large numbers of embedded graphics, without requiring a power-user system. How do they do it? The developers say by not including any "garbage" in the programming. Papyrus is the result of over 12 years of continual development, all done by the same experienced people. Their carefully maintained code-library includes only useful code, and not a graveyard of junk that nobody can understand or use. This compactness gives Papyrus its admirable compactness, speed and stability.

In addition, because they use the same code-library for all four operating systems, its development history gives Papyrus the same speed and dependability, no matter which operating system you use, be it Windows, Mac OS X, or even older Papyrus versions running under TOS or OS/2 Warp. Papyrus documents are freely exchangable between all four systems.

Papyrus OFFICE is a self-contained executable, permitting it to run even from (fast) removable media (such as USB-memory sticks).

The compressed download file for Papyrus is only 8.3 MB (twice the size of non Universal Binary Papyrus XI, but still trim by current standards). Unstuffed, the the Papyrus application folder is still a svelte 12.9 MB, and the program's RAM requirements are claimed to be modest as well.

Installing Papyrus is simple. Just drag the unstuffed Papyrus folder to any location on your hard drive - then copy the registration papyrus.key file you receive via e-mail when you purchase the program into the Papyrus folder, and enter the registration code also forwarded by email when prompted during the first startup. Make sure to keep a backup copy of the papyrus.key file. Papyrus starts up satisfyingly quickly on my 1.33 Ghz PowerBook G4.

When you start Papyrus, the documents and/or databases you were working on when Papyrus was last closed will automatically be reopened. If there was no document open when you closed Papyrus, you will be shown the file selector, allowing you to choose a file to open.

Papyrus's user interface is attractive, with icons sensibly arranged and clearly or at least intuitively labeled. You can configure either Aqua or Brushed Metal appearance themes. One interface element I'm not smitten with is the individual page format as you scroll through a document. This motif dates back the the old MacWrite word processor, and has also been used in ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, and Mariner Write, so it's not unique to Papyrus, and is in fact traditionally Mac-like. Personally, I prefer the old MS Word - style convention of a continuous scroll with vestigial page break markers, but that's just my taste. I work mainly with plain text, and find page formatting in my drafts distracting.

Scrolling through documents, which I had found annoyingly slow and jumpy when I testes Papyrus XI last year on my G3 iBook 700 MHz with its modest Radeon 7500 gpu is much improved with this go-round, although I'm not sure how much that is attributable to my faster Mac with its much more powerful video support and nearly twice as fast processor, and how much to coding refinement. Scrolling is still not especially speedy, or 100 percent smooth, but it's reasonable with this setup in version XII.

A particular example of the care and attention to detail that's been put into bringing Papyrus to the Mac is the online Help files, which are comprehensive, clear, and readable, and thoroughly "Macified." It would be nice if Papyrus became popular enough that Pogue Press/0 Reilly would release a "Missing Manual" for it, but in the meantime, the online version should walk you through the workings of the program satisfactorily. My main criticism is that it does not incorporate a search engine, and the program's find and replace dialog isn't a completely adequate substitute. For example, I was looking for where to find the document word count command, but a word search just turned up "word" in the text. The word count, incidentally, is found in the Document Menu's Document Statistics submenu under Text Statistics.

The Help menu, includes a table of contents, general help, and a list of keyboard shortcuts. Important elements of the online help are the hyperlinks provided in each document. By mouse clicking you can jump to a related part of the online help, and always return to where you started from by using the "Back" entry of the contextual menu (right mouse button or Control click). The Help system is designed to make intensive use of hyperlinks. Additional help is provided by the Tutorial and Assistants, which may be opened from the Help folder.

With Papyrus's discontinuous text marks feature, you can mark multiple (separate) regions in your document, and then make parallel changes to them all at once, with "drag & drop" of discontinuous blocks supported.

The program's full-text database search engine supports narrowing the search parameters with each change to the expression (even as you type each letter). Type whatever you remember that matches any field in the record you are looking for. With each typed character Papyrus refines the search result, so that you can find the record you are looking for quickly.

The "phonetic search" option gives you the ability to find names or other text in a database, even if you aren't sure of the correct spelling.

Unlike with most programs, Papyrus dialogs are "non-modal", meaning that the dialog does not need to be "closed" before you return to your text. You can leave a frequently-used dialog open and ready for use while you continue to type. This also makes it possible to switch back and forth between dialogs when changing formatting or settings.

Papyrus is a powerful program with a rich and comprehensive feature set. It would take a very long article just to catalog and briefly describe all of its functions, but here are a few examples that I found particularly interesting.

Contextual Menus and "Mummify Text"

Papyrus makes extensive use of contextual menus. Whenever you want to execute a special operation for a certain element in your document, a right mouse click on the element will open a menu offering a selection of commands corresponding to the chosen element. For example, if you right-click on a graphic, you will see commands for color, fill pattern, line styles, etc.

To aid in editing your (or someone else's) text, Papyrus makes it possible to delete text passages provisionally, allowing you to recover the text later. Mark text you want to delete and (from the contextual menu) and select the option "mummify text". This will remove the text into a holder, which the developers call a "mummy" (partly because of the Egyptian history of the word "Papyrus"). A symbol appears as a small red flag with a black plus sign. The text within the "mummy" is displayed as tooltip-help when you hold the mouse over the symbol. The mummy saves text only - no formatting or text styles are saved. If you recover the text contents, they are restored to the document with the attributes that apply to the mummy's location. By double-clicking on the symbol, you may display and even edit the mummy contents in their "deleted" condition.

Master Pages

A master page is a template that organizes regularly reappearing elements of the page layout like columns, page numbers, captions in header/footer areas, so that the layout is consistent and reusable. You can add background pictures to master pages (which makes a difference to global, document-wide background pictures which are possible, too, by using the Background Picture page of the Document Properties notebook). Multiple master pages with different layouts may be used within one document.
Integrated Spreadsheet

Papyrus offers true "WYSIWYG" tables including calculation functions so that you can include spreadsheet functionality in the document directly.

Papyrus has no dedicated spreadsheet mode - all spreadsheet/calculation features are embedded in the word processor. Papyrus allows a maximum paper size of 9 x 9 meters (about 354 inches, or 29.5 feet in each direction), which should be enough for most users' needs. Papyrus's poster printing feature makes it easy to print huge tables even on normal legal, letter, or A4 size printers.

Selecting the table icon from the toolbar creates a basic table with all hidden calculation functions activated (simple and higher math, statistics, trigonometry, string operations, time and date functions, references to table cells, etc.)

HTML Features

The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) concept applies to Papyrus documents saved as HTML. Just compose the document in Papyrus and then save them as HTML pages.

With Papyrus' HTML features, it is possible to keep your Papyrus documents optimized both as text and as HTML without tedious reformatting, and you can import and process existing HTML documents in Papyrus. Existing code will be changed only if absolutely necessary, and unknown tags will be left untouched.

I tried converting a heavily formatted MS Word file to HTML, and Papyrus did a pretty decent job of it, including maintaining the graphic content.

Sticky Notes

Papyrus WORD's Sticky Notes feature lets you create notes or remarks in your documents. You can paste these labels anywhere in a document, automatically be marked as non-printable in default yellow.

Text Styles

The Text Styles dialog page allows you to save frequently used text style settings so that you can re-use them without having to set every attribute manually each time.

Spell Checker

The Spell Checker Options dialog contains settings for Papyrus' IntelliView spell checking and correction system.

You can assign up to 16 dictionaries (American and British English are included by default). Papyrus automatically saves additional words that you recognize in the Check spelling dialog, and saves words which are "ignored" in a local exceptions list contained within the document.

Frankly, I was a bit disappointed with the spellchecker, since it is proudly featured as something special. It worked OK, but I actually prefer the built-in OS X spellchecker I use with Tex Edit Plus, which is not supported by Papyrus, even though OS X Services commendably are.

As noted above Papyrus opened the MS Word documents I tested with formatting intact, and managed a 3.1 MB .DOC file of formatted tables gracefully, although it took a minute or so to open. Documents can be saved in its native (*.PAP) format, as well as RTF, DOC, and HTML files.

Papyrus OFFICE is a self-contained executable, permitting it to run even from (fast) removable media (such as USB-memory sticks) - a feature that reminds me a bit of the old "minimal install" option with old MS Word 5.1. You can take Papyrus (and your data) with you, and use it on any Mac (or Windows) computer. Remove the memory stick, and leave the system untouched.

If Papyrus sounds appealing, and I think it's a very interesting and attractive piece of software, you can download a free demo to check it out before committing any cash. Since it's so small, this poses no hardship, and Papyrus may turn out the be the MS Office alternative you've been looking for, or just a great productivity app. in its own right.

System requirements: Papyrus OFFICE Version 12 can be ordered for the following operating systems:All versions of Windows (9x up to XP) Apple Macintosh (Mac OS X, version 10.2.x to 10.4.x)

Papyrus OFFICE 12 (English) - Word processing, spreadsheet, desktop publishing, and relational database software, including online help and English-language example files sells for $99.00. Everything you need to install Papyrus can be delivered via Internet. The Papyrus package includes the complete online help and a tutorial, a license key file and your personal installation key code. All you need is an e-mail account and an Internet browser.

The Papyrus Demo Version has a few minor limitations (more info here: http://www.rom-logicware.com/demos.htm ), but still allows you to give the software a thorough checkout before you decide to buy

For more information, visit:
http://www.rom-logicware.com/features.htm

For my full review of papyrus (version 11) see:
http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/print/4938/


Charles W. Moore

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