[HANASHIR:15835] RE: Davka Writer

[Adrian Durlester <adrian...>]

I have to second Marsha's comments. I used Dagesh through all of it's
incarnations. It went through a period where the program was morphing into
other programs, then being un-morphed, etc. About the same time as all that
was happening (anybody else out there unhappy with their wasted investment
in various version of "Accent Pro"?) DavkaWriter was first introduced. From
the outset, the program integrated better with MS Word (and with MS Windows
in general), had fewer bugs, far less bloat. Davka's tech support has been
consistently better, and the product has improved steadily. They do listen
to their customers.

Dagesh/Accent and all it's various incarnations has always been more of a
Swiss Army knife program--designed for people who work in environments
requiring the use of multiple languages, not just primarily Hebrew and
English. Thus Dagesh is bloated, with too many features, too much buggy code
left over from all the various pieces of software they acquired and simply
infused the program with, etc. And it became far too expensive. The new
Dagesh looks good on paper, but in practice, if it doesn't beat its less
than stellar track record, I'd steer away from it.

I, too, have no affiliation with Davka Corp.

Adrian

Adrian A. Durlester, MTS
E-mail: adrian (at) durlester(dot)com  www.durlester.com
Director of Education & Congregational Life, Bethesda Jewish Congregation,
Bethesda, MD
www.bethesdajewish.com
Co-Director, Hazamir/JTAI Choir of Greater DC
Past Conf Chair, CAJE 27, August 4-8, 2002, Trinity University, San Antonio,
TX
List Owner, hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org; Jewish Songleaders/Performers List
www.ehavanashira.org
Co-Owner, l-torah (at) shamash(dot)org; Liberal Torah Discussion List




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org [mailto:owner-hanashir (at) 
shamash(dot)org] On
Behalf Of Marsha Fensin
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 12:35 PM
To: hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org
Subject: [HANASHIR:15830] RE: Davka Writer


    Davka Writer also has a rabbinic/educational discount which you 
might want to ask them for.  That brings the cost down to about $100. 
 It also interfaces with Microsoft Word very well. Daagesh does not.  If 
you want to add the graphic capability of Word, just copy and paste into 
Word once your document is complete.  ( You cannot edit the Hebrew in 
Word)  Then you can put in all those nice graphic features that Word offers.
    I used to use Dagesh ( and still do for certain things) but switched 
over to Davka Writer when Dagesh's latest upgrade, Dagesh Pro became 
very expensive at $89 ( even for an upgrade) and came with so many 
glitches which required more patches than I cared to deal with.  I sent 
it back.  All my Dagesh files copy into Davka format very nicely with a 
little reformatting.
    Davka Writes continues to improve, with regular upgrades, and is 
becoming more and more useful as I use it.  I love the Tanach and Siddur 
features, where you can just copy sections from Torah, and make 
personalized portions for students.  Then, you can remove the Nikud and 
Tropes and put it into a Stam font and you don't have to copy and paste 
from a Tikkun.  Saves a lot of "patchkeing."
    One more thing, Davka corporation is much more technological and 
service friendly. The program is written in Chicago as opposed to Israel.
    And, no, I don't work for them.
Marsha





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