Page 86 - PCWorld (September 2019)

FEATURE 5 ANCIENT PROGRAMS
Lotus 1-2-3 & dBase III+ legacy software.
• Familiarity with the software.
• Easier to configure and customize.
• Uses less system resources (memory,
disk space, virtual, etc.) and therefore,
processes faster.
• The macros and programming are
modeled after the actual commands.
For example, in Lotus, /FS is the
command equivalent to File > Save, and the
macro command for File > Save. You can
easily write macros in Lotus if you know the
menu commands, no programming
experience needed—and all the menu
commands are right there on the screen.
Lotus also has a macro recorder, which placed
the macro in an “out-of-the-way location” on
the same spreadsheet to simplify editing.
Macros in Excel are not so easy. You can
use the macro recorder for the basic stuff, but
84 PCWorld SEPTEMBER 2019
you must know Visual Basic to do anything
complex or to even edit the macro. This is no
problem for programmers, but everyday users
just want the software to work without the
hassle of learning a programming language.
Note: While researching information for
this article, I recently learned that you can
configure dBase III+ to work on the 32-bit
versions of Windows 8 and 10 by making a
few adjustments through the Control Panel
and Command Prompt.
GRAPHICS: COREL DRAW
AND PAINTSHOP PRO
Corel Draw and PaintShop Pro (formerly
spelled Paint Shop Pro) are still active
programs, of course, but some users hold
onto their legacy programs to retain specific
features and benefits.
Corel Draw, for example, offers hundreds
of fonts and thousands of clip art images in all
of its versions. Many of the older ones are no
longer available, however. Meanwhile, some
of the older features have disappeared—or
been replaced by similar features that don’t
work quite as well.
PaintShop Pro has similar issues with the
newer versions beyond 5 and 7. A big loss is the
animation program, which seems to have
disappeared completely from most of the newer
versions. In versions 5 and 7, you could create
an animation from a single image using a variety
of animation effects. It was a simple program,
but effective for some applications.