WPC_% 2BVgW?3|Kman 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW) aeWA,,}}Wo> PA"^ L8TD$$0T  8888888888 TTT4d PA,,0#o2 \3|W"^(08Tx,@DT$8(,TTTTTTTTTT0,Ltlt|pd<@pp|dp\hxltdpH,DT(XTHTH0HX,,T,XXTT8@0XLpD@@TTT"^,40\p(88T,4,4\\\\\\\\\\00Xllxtl`x(ThXxhpl`thddd<4 PA,,0#o"^(88T(@@T(8(,TTTTTTTTTT,,Pptth(,s}q}S `> XiASwiss Roman 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Swiss Roman 8pt (HP Roman 8) (Port) (FW)Dutch Roman 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Dutch Italic 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Swiss Italic 6pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Swiss Roman 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Swiss Roman 8pt (HP Roman 8) (Port) (FW)Dutch Roman 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Dutch Italic 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Swiss Italic 6pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Dutch Roman 6pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Dutch Roman 8pt (HP Roman 8) (Port) (FW)>(,s}q}S `> XiAh :=3&,3t> XA2  Z<"5P^ (,hD|`$44Dp, $DDDDDDDDDD$$ppp<\T\dXPlh04XXxdhPhXHT`Xt\PX8(8D DD PA b?F5$,%Fo> PfQZ^hVA(,N}d}V [ PA aeS>(,s}q}S `> XiAh :=3&,3t> XA8?3&,,3 [ PA_BG5 ,_!G [ PfQ25JSwiss Roman 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Swiss Roman 8pt (HP Roman 8) (Port) (FW)Dutch Roman 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Dutch Italic 10pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Swiss Italic 6pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Dutch Roman 6pt (ASCII) (Port) (FW)Dutch Roman 8pt (HP Roman 8) (Port) (FW)Dutch Italic 8pt (HP Roman 8) (Port) (FW) aeWA,,}E}Wo> PA b?F5$,%Fo> PfQZ^hVA(,N}d}V [ PA aeS>(,s}q}S `> XiAh :=3&,3t> XA8?3&,,3 [ PA>_BG5 ,_!G [ PfQb?D3 , 3ˁD `> XifQ@h yj4@@@@@@@@@@@@@ D8iwpwpwwpwwwwFwwpHwwIwwpJwwKwwFwwGww%  ww&  ww&  ww& ww&ww& ww% ww* ww)wwKww?ww?ww@wwwwAwwAww@wwKww 8ww 9ww 9ww 9ww 9ww 9ww 9ww 8wwKwwpJwwIwwpHwwEwwpwwwpwwpwi6:v14TTTTTTTTTTTTT ?2Y02f/, )('k&x%/$&%'(((8'yR%X" " L!?a  - f ^ @^ )xxE E#,~1368- 9P 5:f41^.+%+ c+<#,8'a(x%'$&$f%<#"& .(() ],"//> h" " ! u!z = !  c  0 2  @ f [ *V J J WZ JZ 8N? f|~K "t~!_>| @?v*c?c> < ^t (@1~  ]1!(  *x8tR>66t z5   nnpT!v139f' O O w& QKt t 9[kx9.  Ec   "- f  t Y ' a xx6 p2x "a$a%+a0%+J$ 1J**k+L+f- /~1~11/1;20 .fz/ . - -_*81a)^#(w&(F)('A&0 % )&&&`f%W'#f%$'#c &"h" $#B"& .("&G%#&$&!`' B( )B"( (c)+,+@]-$^.,$+**$--_*)`_*))TF)+. ,'+!c+ +a)!*x%)"* %+#+%+8'& A&/$'b#>'u!(X$+&+'(&`'$&$"<.1v3u89[4;2\0@& 9J 9' 8Y 77M61368c 9 nL*2r2PpL!"p$-"&%P/$$"!u!u!h"! "p$%k&'('&R%6 //MY0of/ ,j))()2, @/00u1/& .H---,+D*(jw):+, -:+(*+--,"/ ,()!,:.(&j%L$Lh"cI"l$l$$X$L$La'(&'.(!k& '"$N c jn33) n3l $ u! m v"+n!+l4l | 4 TB"g!g! *Z `U$wvV|vr6 %V([((W((w)R(Q(.(9(T(1%. R "v<#5R%5&9a''%&%$O#* L!b#$$%U%wx%R%X$<#& u!{B"{"R/$t#$$1$"$'Q&Q&%R%##wB"&x = =  t  & 9  _   - [  [    \ -[   _h&>Z    ~ 8  t  h N< " c  r N [ V   G (%%*"kkHtX*"J$e$#=" HP - c g!= #c f% & `' ' '3#'Of&LG%#< hI6+~+ "e$X* +,+ ^^ ~Mq!J!u"5#$"14" [42j~171 1~1&;2y3955:6_5h5r423335677x7x7R6k95[4W3>2k|2 223N4* \1;2N3v44-4J 5 43 1* ;2`34k5666~4W32 <<d    ,,  Fo> PfQ IYM Software Review "3,4 4" Page 3 y%,dddy   8%҇ }V [ PAd XYou ought to. ToolBook is, as its public relations and ah  advertising loudly triumph, a way for almost anyone to create useful Windows applications without writing a single line of ah  programming code. No kidding! Personnel Managers who want to lay out a short introductory piece on their companies, MIS Directors looking to rough out prototypes of inhouse applications for approval by executive staff, students looking to impress instructors, in fact, nearly anybody can use ToolBook to create full fledged Windows programs quickly and ah  easily. Honestly, anybody with a modicum of computer literacy and a couple of hours can now call themselves, if not a programmer, a designer. Is there a catch? Nope, there are several. y!a .yjddPROFILEy U 1  1 G!A(0 DDddq>( 3t> XA  Product Name  3 [ PA,  :=  Toolbook $395 Asymetrix Corporation 110 110th Avenue NE Suite 717 Bellevue, WA 98004 (206)4620501GXOriginally, we planned to review "Windows Development ah  Tools" from two other companies in this article; by name, Actor, from The Whitewater Group, and KnowledgePro/Win ah  from Knowledge Garden. We withdrew those two products from full consideration due to their respective natures versus $888 ! 7$ToolBook (see sidebar). ah  ! 7ToolBook, a product that ah  ! 7when fully installed oc! 7Ԛcupies over six megabytes of ! 7!0 7hard disk (including a raft ! 7!0 7of sample applications; you ! 7!0 7can reduce space usage to ! 7!0 7something just over 1 MB), ! 7!0 7is the only one that pro! 7!0 7vides true codeless devel! 7!0 7opment. The power comes ! 7!0 7at considerable expense, ! 7however. Not only does ! 7ToolBook truly require an ah  ! 780286 or higher equipped ! 7system to run (we've talked ! 7before about other Windows ah   j88applications that made such claims but didn't really need anything more than an 8088), but even on a midline '386 with 6 MB of available extended memory, the single word that best describes ToolBook is SLOW. Even if you happen to be one ah  of the fortunate few who can afford to run ToolBook and it's ah  applications entirely from a RAM disk, plan on waiting around a lot, particularly if your applications get large. Since either the integration of many objects on individual "pages" or the inclusion of numerous pages in your "books" will quickly lead to great size, this will happen more often than not for users making serious business use of the product. XThe idea behind ToolBook is beautiful in its simplicity. ah  Windows is very modular, consisting of a continuous series of ah  individual objects , such as boxes containing text, graphic images, dialog boxes and scroll bars to encourage easy interaction, etc. ToolBook enables you to tie these elements ah  together quickly and easily to create the electronic equivalent of books. You can make books that read linearly (page one leads to page two (and/or three, four, or higher, but never back), choose to allow for returns through previously read pages, or enable readers to skip all over in what can almost appear to be as unencumbered as flipping through pages of a bound volume. The environment in which you work can be customized to a surprisingly high level, and control over the5 C0! f7!0 D7k!5 colors, attributes, and placement of your objects is nearly limitless; you can even assign passwords and restrict access rights. If you need to create an object such as a graphic image, ToolBook also provides a respectable set of tools with ah  which to work. FHGee, this sounds neat, right? Well, it is, but there are problems besides the notatallincidental speed issue. (Asymetrix promises they're working feverishly to address that, and the first of the following.) Art that you import to ToolBook from other applications can come in only via ah  Windows's Clipboard, so if you have a library of vector based ah  images in a proprietary format, you probably can forget them, and even if you can convert them to an appropriate format, there's a size limit of 64 kilobytes that imported color images cannot exceed. Images you create in ToolBook are completely ah  captive there. Learning to use ToolBook is frustrating, because ah  the documentation is disjointed and leaves many holes for you to fill in (the graphic image size limitation, for example, is ! 7undocumented, and the error message generated is mislead! 7ing). ! 7FHFinally, there are a couple of things that we perceive as ! 7attitude problems. The installation program automatically and ! 7without first asking approval creates a separate program ! 7!0 7group for Toolbook and its applications (meanwhile installing ah  ! 7!0 7only a few of the included samples therein), and the docu! 7!0 7mentation makes a point that we find incongruous with the ! 7!0 7promoted purpose of the product. In the volume devoted to ! 7!0 7explaining ToolBook's Englishlike programming language, ah  ! 7!0 7targeted at those who choose to write code manually, you are ! 7!0 7told, flatly, to "look elsewhere" for an explanation of writing ! 7Windows dynamic link libraries. To their credit, the people at ah  ! 7Asymetrix have put helpful information on the subject on! 7line on their electronic bulletin board, making themselves one ! 7of the elsewheres to look. Perhaps what this implies is that ! 7ToolBook is targeted at "real" programmers, after all. ah   1 ! U 1 !AAX \  dd˩ FLW KnowledgePro/Win and Actor  G [ PfQ_! у ah  FHWe originally intended to include these two products as part of this review; in spite of vast differences between them (versus each other and ToolBook), bB  the three are all marketed as "Windows Development Tools". bB  FHWe see them as intermediate or successive steps toward the end goal of breeding full fledged Windows programmers, with the anointed parties bB  progressing from ToolBook to KnowledgePro to Actor. KnowledgePro is a great bB  set of tools, in the tradition of such products as Paul Mace Software's Grasp bB  graphics language (IYMSR March 1990). It includes a few routines that will bB  come in handy, including wellannotated source code. Actor, while also a fine bB  source of ready to implement pieces of code and intermediary routines, is a fullfledged development environment and language, and only very experienced programmers will be comfortable using it; it does what it promises, though: much of the drudgery of repetitive recoding of the most primitive routines is eliminated by the strongly objectoriented, well documented system.$%%0%%& A%$  Figure 1 ! Figure 1 yA PHH.6:v1ddMONEYHy IT'S YOUR MONEY!