Taste (software)
Taste is a
Originally expected to retail for $99 in the low-end of the word processing market, Taste included a graphical page layout with an integrated drawing package and an address book with the capability of mail-merging.[2] The product was available in 1991 for $149 with a scope of features found in many typical word processing packages, such as spelling checking, graphs and contents page generation.[1] Like a word processor, Taste allowed the user to simply start typing and continue doing so until they were finished. There was no need, as in a typical page layout program, to create a box to hold the text, or manually add pages or link columns as the document grew. Like a page layout program, Taste also allowed the user to add these boxes if needed, as well as adjust the distance between characters (kerning) or between lines in a paragraph. Fairly complex graphics can be created within this program.
Oddly Taste also lacks a number of features of MindWrite, although it appears to have been written by an entirely different programming team. For instance, Taste does not have a built-in outliner, the "killer feature" of MindWrite which made it a favorite for many years. Nor does Taste include features like sorting or list generation.
Reception
Taste was released in early 1991.[3]
Ted Landau of
Macworld magazine gave version 1.02 two stars out of five, with reviewer Michael Miley calling Taste well-priced for its feature set and its interface clearly laid out and easy to use. Ultimately he found it a slow performer and prone to crashes when importing large Word files.[5]
Journalists for Byte reviewed the same version and found it flexible as a word processor with "strong" page layout features that are easy to configure but disliked the separation of the text and graphics functions, and, like Landau, they encountered some difficulty with word wrapping. They concluded that "If the material you write often gets poured into a page-layout program, you can save some time, effort, and money with Taste".[6]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Delta Point Gives Users a Low-Cost Taste". InfoWorld. January 14, 1991. p. 28. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
- ^ "Delta Point Eyes Low-End Word Processor Market". InfoWorld. June 26, 1989. p. 35. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
- ^ Spezzano, Charles; Kelli Wiseth (January 1991). "On the Horizon". MacUser. 7 (1): 168 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ Landau, Ted (July 1991). "Reviews: Word Processing: Taste". MacUser: 70–72 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ Miley, Michael (May 1992). "Reviews: Word Processor with Page Layout – Taste 1.02". Macworld: 192 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ Barker, D; David L. Edwards; Stan Wszola (June 1992). "Writing in Style: Taste 1.02C". Byte: 313 – via the Internet Archive.
External links
- Taste brochure at the Internet Archive