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This is a follow-up to the excellent review of Textease Multimedia (henceforth TE) by Anne Parmenter in Archive 13.2 p23. As Paul states at the end, TE was originally targeted at education and so it's that area on which I am concentrating.
To put things in context, to my great regret our school has installed a 16-station PC network as part of the NGFL initiative. The installation was arranged by the LEA and included a range of pre-installed software. I was, however, pleased to discover that TE was included in the package and, saving problems apart (the techies can’t get it to save properly with Windows NT!), everyone is finding it very easy to use.
As well as the network, I still have an A7000 in my classroom plus my own RiscPC (StrongARM + RISC OS 4) at home, and I was interested in trying to integrate things as far as possible. TE seemed the ideal solution and so I jumped at the chance to review the Acorn version.
Installation
Textease comes on a triple format CD, and you need the Serial Number and Key to install it (there are different ones for Windows, Apple and Acorn). I had a few teething problems installing TE, but they may well have been my fault and I was given prompt advice by Eugenie Morley at Softease - thanks Eugenie for your patience - basically, if you have a problem, try reinstalling the CD.
Once it was up and running, the children and I found it very easy to use. There are a few differences between the 'look' for the Windows and Acorn versions, but these are just cosmetic. The only significant differences are in saving and loading, but these are down to the different operating systems and caused few problems.
Cross-platform compatibility
I was particularly keen to try out the cross-platform compatibility and was a little disappointed in that area. Text transfers were fine and, provided you have kept to sensible fonts, keep the same format. Line drawings also convert fine but with regards to pictures, things were not quite so smooth. The first document I tried was a pen portrait of one of my children which included a JPEG file of her photo, taken by another pupil using a Kodak digital camera. The JPEG loaded fine if I transferred it separately, but loading into the Acorn the document that was produced on the PC, I got the error You need RISC OS 3.6 or later! (Who’s stolen my RISC OS 4?) I referred the problem (and the file) to the usually helpful Eugenie, but was disappointed to receive the following reply:
I have managed to recreate the problem here, and came up with the same error message myself. The error 'you need RISC OS 3.6 or later' usually comes up when the JPEG is not recognised. As there are different types of JPEGs available, it could be that those particular ones are progressive JPEGs, which won't, I'm afraid, be recognised by Textease.
As you are able to load in some JPEGs, it seems that this is probably the reason why you are unable to move this file across to the Acorn. Unfortunately, if this is the case, it is a rare instance of Softease being unable to help.
It seems an almost random problem because some of the Kodak pictures will load - I wonder whether it the PC side that is causing the problem?
One further difficulty I had was transferring a heading the other way (Acorn to PC). I have made a drawfile heading which includes three coloured shapes which are sprites. This prints out fine from the Acorn, displays fine on the PC, but when I print it on the same printer from the PC side, the triangle and ellipse are missed out!
While I hope that Softease will be able to improve the product to take account of these difficulties, overall they do not detract from an excellent product, particularly in a dual system school.
The National Curriculum
The Programmes of Study for the National Curriculum in ICT state that pupils should be taught to use IT equipment and software to communicate ideas and information in a variety of forms, incorporating text, graphs, pictures and sound, as appropriate, showing sensitivity to the needs of their audience. In my view, TE is the only program accessible to children that will do all the above, almost without outside help (you have to use separate programs to record sounds and probably draw graphs). In the past, I have got the children to draw a picture on Splosh, write on a word processor and then combine their work with a sound clip and a photo onto Kudlian's excellent Portfolio. Textease however allows you to import what you want, add extra drawings and then write the text around the objects you have imported.
In addition TE can do much more than just combine different media; it can also create slide shows and animations. I was impressed with a display at the RISCOS '99 Show which showed a picture moving round, repelling text as it went. This inspired me to set up, in very short time, the above mentioned Maths heading with the shapes, graph and mathematical signs rotating around their origin, plus the words Welcome and INSET flashing on and off - a bit gaudy, but simple to set up, and the children will love 'playing' with the effects.
Conclusion
Add to the above the ability to convert pages to HTML for publishing on the Web and to easily transfer most documents between platforms, and you undoubtedly have a winning combination. An additional plus for the busy teacher, overburdened with bureaucracy, is TE's ability to click and write anywhere on the page. This means that you can scan in a form, import it into TE, lock it to the page and then 'write' anywhere you need. This alone could save hours of work over a year. My only gripe would be the high cost of using the program on both platforms - we have a 20-user PC licence (we have only 16 machines) but will have to buy a separate, full Acorn licence with just 20% discount allowed, if we are to permanently use TE on our Acorns, which is something I would love.
Rocky Grove, rocky@mercia.demon.co.uk
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