WordSmith was the first, and
for many years, the only real word processor for Palm OS. It
gained notoriety by besting even Microsoft's Pocket Word on
their PDAs. This heritage certainly shows in its design. However,
time moves on and this review provided a good opportunity to
see how WordSmith has kept up with the competition.
WordSmith boasts a couple of basic capabilities
unique to it. First, it handles your memos and documents.
In fact, after the expiration of its trial period, you can
continue to use it as a memo program. A simple tabbed interface
allows one-tap swapping between lists of memos and docs.
This brings full editing capability and sophisticated undo
to memo editing. If you format beyond Memo pad's native ability,
WordSmith will warn you and ask if you want to convert the
memo to a doc. The document list distinguished between Palm
doc files and WordSmith-specific ones using common sense
icons. So, even if you don't do a lot of word processing
work, you can still get a lot of use from WordSmith if you
use memos or Palm docs regularly. Also, WordSmith continues
as a Palm doc reader after its expiration.
WordSmith supports complete text formatting
relative to MS Word. Bulleted/numbered lists and complex
indenting come with that. The bottom toolbar accesses major
font and paragraph formatting functions with one tap. It
also sports multi-paste capability and reflowing the formatting
in case things got out of sync somehow. Double-tapping selects
the word, triple-tapping the line, and quad-tapping the paragraph
similar to MS Word.
In addition to spell checking, WordSmith
also includes a thesaurus. WS breaks the alternate words
presented into parts of speech for ease in narrowing them
down. Selecting a word and tapping Lookup brings up a list
of synonyms for that word.
WordSmith does not support tables or embedded
graphics, though it will put placeholders in their location.
It does provide powerful capability with bookmarks and foot/endnotes.
These furnish the core of traditional word processing power-tables
of contents and reference citations. WordSmith marks foot/endnote
locations with a symbol. Tapping on that symbol in edit mode
brings up the underlying footnote where you can read or edit
it-a very powerful implementation.
There are two major display modes in WordSmith.
In edit mode, indicated by the word Edit in the bottom toolbar,
all capabilities to edit and create documents become active.
Tapping on that button changes the word and function to View.
No changes can be made to the document at this point. Tools
change to supporting jumps to bookmarks or paragraphs, and
for reading by stylus dragging, auto scrolling, or teleprompter
mode. At its core, the view mode allows the free viewing
of rich text references without the danger of inadvertent
changes to them. Inability to expand footnotes stands as
the only serious limitation of view mode.
WordSmith possesses a large variety of
preference settings and MS Word-like formatting possibilities.
Display settings include scrolling method, text sizes, use
of FineType fonts, display text weight, tag appearances,
and highlighting color. You can even invert the screen. Its
own Find/Replace functions in place of the Palm OS Find,
furnishing a more powerful alternative-again, a core word
processing capability. WordSmith also has special support
for a variety of keyboard hardware, something those who write
for a living will appreciate.
A MS Word menu addition integrates WordSmith
into Word. This provides seamless access to documents in
both directions. The user sets the target directory on the
PC. HotSyncing documents with unsupported features will retain
them on syncing them back, and markers will take the place
of those features on the Palm. The sync tool is both simple
and effective.
WordSmith uses TrueType fonts by converting
them for the Palm through its supplied FineType program.
Just select the TT fonts that you want and let FineType do
the rest. The handheld part of FineType provides for font
management on your Palm. WordSmith even includes capabilities
to fine tune the display for those that don't show fine type
very well. The results were spectacular when this capability
first hit the market a couple of years ago, especially on
the first 320x320 Sony screens, but now both Word To Go and
Mobile Word include some level of TrueType capability. As
someone who's been around since the 160x160 monochrome days,
my heart still flutters when I see these fonts on a high
density screen.
Blue Nomad & Quik Sense offer WordSmith
for $29.95, with free lifetime upgrades. They have dominated
the Palm word processing market for years. With the new crop
in this review proving very capable, they might want to put
renewed effort into keeping WordSmith competitive in this
volatile market.
Pros:
Virtually full MS Word text and paragraph formatting
Excellent spell checker and thesaurus
Bookmark/Table of Contents and foot/endnote support
Memo editor and Doc reader capabilities remain after trial period
Excellent keyboard support
Cons:
No table or image support on the PDA
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