PageStream gives you a blank page on which to mix text and graphics to create a finished page design. Text and graphics can be imported from other sources or created directly in PageStream and then arranged on the page. PageStream allows you to combine text and graphics without restrictions. It has a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get, or WYSIWYG display, so that you will know what your document will look like before it is printed.

This section provides an overview of PageStream's features. It will help you navigate the menus, dialog boxes, palettes, tools and windows. For more detailed instructions on learning PageStream, read the tutorials in the chapter PageStream Lessons.

The Navigator
Creating a New Document
Opening a Document
Saving a Document
The PageStream Screen

The Navigator

When you start PageStream, or whenever all windows are closed, PageStream will display the Navigator. This dialog box provides quick access to the basic features. A different tip is shown in the Navigator each time it appears to help you learn more about the program.

Create a new document; same as New from the File menu.

Open an existing document; same as Open from the File menu.

Set PageStream preferences; same as Preferences from the File menu.

Read the previous tip in the series.

Read the next tip in the series.

Quit the program; same as Quit from the File menu.

Creating a New Document

How to create a new document

1. Click on the New button in the PageStream Navigator or choose New from the File menu.

PageStream will display the New Document dialog box. You can enter a name for your document in the Name text box now, or you can name your document later when you save it for the first time.

2. Set the page size.

Choose a preset page size from the Page Size pop-up menu or enter a custom page size in the Page text boxes.

3. Select the page orientation.

Click Landscape to select landscape (horizontal) orientation. When unselected, the orientation will be portrait (vertical).

4. Select whether the pages will be printed on one or two sides.

Click Double-sided to set inside and outside margins rather than left and right margins. Click Facing Pages to display left and right pages together as an automatic two-page spread rather than as individual pages.

5. Set the guides.

Margin guides are non-printing lines which help you to design your layout. If Double-sided is selected, then the Left and Right margin guides will be renamed to Inside and Outside.

Column guides are non-printing lines which help you design multi-column layouts. Enter the number of columns in the Column text box, and the space between them in the Gutter text box.

6. Click OK.

A window will appear for the new document.

Opening a Document

You can open documents and templates created with PageStream 3 for Amiga, Macintosh and Windows, as well as documents stored in the following formats:

How to open an existing document

1. Choose Open from the File menu.

Select a document from the Open file selector.

Macintosh Users: Only PageStream for Macintosh documents will be listed in the Open dialog box if Show All Files in File Selector is not selected in File Preferences. Select this option if you want to view other types of files, including documents created by PageStream on other computers.

Amiga Users: Only PageStream 3.x documents and other documents that PageStream can open will be listed in the Open dialog box if Show All Files in File Requester is not selected in File Preferences. Select this option if you want to view other types of files. PageStream will not be able to open those other files as documents, but the file selector will display files faster. Some file selector replacements require this option to be selected as they do not properly support custom file filtering.

2. Click Open.

A window will appear for the document.

Documents stored in PageStream 2.2 and Professional Page 3 or 4 formats will be converted when opened. This process takes much longer than opening PageStream 3 documents, and also consumes at least twice the file size in memory. Some formatting may change during the conversion process, so check your documents after opening.

Recent documents

You can save time when opening recently edited files by choosing Open Recent from the File menu. The last eight opened documents will be listed in its submenu. Select a document name to open it.

Font substitution

If PageStream doesn't recognize a font in a document, the Font Substitution dialog box will appear. This is common when opening documents coming from different platforms. If this dialog box appears, you can change the document's fonts not found on your system. Select the unknown font in the list and choose a font from the font pop-up menu. Select Remember to save this substitution for future documents. Select Display As instead of Convert To if you don't want to permanently change the font name in the document. When you are finished, click Done.

Appending a document

PageStream can merge documents together if you decide to combine two projects after creating them separately. One document can be appended to the end of another document. All pages and chapters in the second document will be appended after any pages and chapters in the first document.

To append a document to another document: Open the first document normally. Choose the Append command from the File menu and select a filename from the file selector. The document will be appended to the end of the first document.

Saving a Document

You should save your documents regularly while you work in PageStream. It is recommended that you save opened documents to your hard drive at least once each half hour in case of a power failure or system error, and make backup copies on another disk to avoid data loss in case of a hard drive failure.

Saving a document for the first time

1. Choose Save from the File menu.

Enter a name in the Save file selector.

2. Click Save.

To save a document with a different name: Choose Save As from the File menu. Enter a name in the Save dialog box and click Save.

Saving as a template

Templates are documents that open into untitled windows, rather than in named windows. This prevents you from accidentally saving over a document that you want to use as the basis for future documents. Templates are opened in the same way as normal documents.

To save a document as a template: Choose Save As Template from the File menu. Enter a name in the Save dialog box and click Save.

AutoSave

PageStream can automatically save your documents at regular intervals. It will attempt to save during a period of non-activity so as not to interrupt your work.

To save your document at regular intervals: Choose Preferences from the File menu and click on the General tab. Select AutoSave. Enter the interval in minutes at which to save and select the directory path for AutoSave and AutoBackup.

AutoBackup

PageStream can make a backup copy of your document each time you save it. The title of each backup copy is the document name plus a suffix of bak and the backup number. For example, Report.bak17.

To create backup copies of your document: Choose Preferences from the File menu and click on the General tab. Select AutoBackup. Enter the number of copies to keep and select the directory path for AutoSave and AutoBackup. In the case of multiple backups, the most recent backup will be numbered 1. Older backups will have higher numbers.

Revision history

You may want to keep a log of changes made to a document so that you can determine later what changes were made. The revision log can be read at any time by choosing Reports from the Layout menu.

To save a revision log with your documents: Choose Preferences from the File menu and click on the General tab. Select Keep History. Everytime you save the document, the Revision History dialog box will be displayed so that you can enter what changes were made and have them recorded with the document.

By default, the minor revision number will be incremented by one (Bump Minor). You can change that by using the Version pop-up menu. Choose Bump Major to reset the minor revision number to zero, and increment the major revision number by one. Click OK to add the changes to the revision log. Click Skip if you don't want to record any changes to the revision log.

Revert

If you make a number of errors and it would be easier to reopen the last saved version instead of undoing all the changes, you can close your current document and reopen the original. PageStream can do this for you automatically.

To revert to the previous version of a document: Choose Revert from the File menu. You will be prompted to close the existing document and lose your changes.

The PageStream Screen

The components of a PageStream screen

When you create a document, PageStream opens a document window containing an empty page. The location of some controls may differ depending on the computer you have, but the functionality is identical.

A The toolbar allows you to select commonly used commands. It is shown when Show Toolbar is selected from the Window menu. It can be configured via toolbar preferences.

B The document and view name is shown at the top of the document window.

C The rulers help you lay out your pages. They are shown when Show Rulers is selected from the Layout menu.

D The toolbox contains tools to change modes and to draw and manipulate objects. It is shown when Show Toolbox is selected from the Window menu.

E The page borders are shown in the window.

F Margin guides on all sides of the page show the area in which you normally place text frames and objects.

G Column guides divide your page into a columnar grid to help you design your page. Margin and column guides are shown when Show Guides is selected from the Layout menu.

H These controls set the magnification and change pages.

I The Edit palette shows object coordinates and sets text attributes. It is shown when Show Edit Palette is selected from the Window menu.

Customizing your screen

You can position the Toolbox, Edit palette and document window anywhere on your screen. To keep the current setup as your default, choose Remember Window Positions from the Window menu. If more than one document window is open, the position and size of the active window will be remembered.

Indeterminate state of controls

If you select a red box and a green box and then open the Line & Fill dialog box, PageStream cannot show red or green in the fill color pop-up menu, because neither properly reflects the attributes of the boxes. If it showed one or the other, clicking on OK would change them both to that color. The same is true for text: if you select a block of text and some of it is bold and the rest of it is not bold, the bold icon in the Edit palette cannot be on and off at the same time.

PageStream sets controls to an indeterminate (or mixed) state when attributes conflict. This informs you that some of the selected text or objects have attributes different than other selected text or objects. You can reset the control to a different state to change all the selected text or objects to that setting, or you can ignore the control. If you leave a dialog box control as indeterminate, the attribute will not be changed when you close the dialog box.

Examples of controls in an indeterminate state are shown below. Note that these examples come from the Mac version of PageStream, so your version might have slightly different controls. However, the controls behave in exactly the same way from one version of PageStream to another.

View and page controls

These controls set the view magnification and change the displayed page.

View
Select a preset view magnification or choose Other to see the Custom Scale dialog box.

Custom Scale
Click to see the Custom Scale dialog box. Shift click to set the previous custom scale value.

Zoom Out
Click to decrease the view magnification.

Zoom In
Click to increase the view magnification.

Go to Page
Click to see the Go to Page dialog box. Shift click to go to the previously viewed page.

Previous Page
Click to go to the previous page. Shift click to go to the first page.

Next Page
Click to go to the next page. Shift click to go to the last page.

Toolbox

The toolbox allows you to change program modes and to draw and manipulate objects. Click on a tool to select it. Only one tool may be selected at once. Some tools are combined in flyout tool groups and may be hidden. To select these on the Amiga or Macintosh, click on the tool flyout group and drag out. On Windows, select the tool flyout group to rotate to the next tool in the group.

     Object group

Object
Select, move, scale and manipulate objects.

Reshape
Move, add, delete and edit points in paths and masks; reshape arcs; insert and delete rows and columns and edit cells in tables; reshape grids.

Crop
Crop pictures, drawings and EPS illustrations.

Rotate
Free-rotate objects from any rotation point.

Lasso
Freehand select, move, scale and manipulate objects.

Text
Enter, select and manipulate text.

Magnify
Increase and decrease the view magnification.

Eyedropper
Copy and paste object or text attributes for fast formatting.

   Column Group
Draw 1, 2 or 3 text column frames and note frames.

Line
Draw diagonal, horizontal and vertical lines.

    Box Group
Draw rectangles, rounded rectangles, scallop, bevel and inset rectangles.

  Ellipse Group
Draw ellipses, arcs and pie slices.

    Polygon Group
Draw normal, star, scallop, puffy and wavy polygons.

 Path Group

Pen
Draw connected paths of lines and curves.

Freehand
Draw connected paths by sketching.

 Table/Grid Group

Table
Draw tables.

Grid
Draw grids.

Border
Draw a border. The Borders extension will allow you to draw many more border shapes than the shipping version of PageStream.

Toolbar

You can select common PageStream features by clicking on toolbar buttons. Click on a button to select it. Some buttons may be dimmed or unavailable depending on the current selection and document status. The contents of the toolbar can be configured via the Toolbar panel in Preferences. Below are the default settings for the toolbar and their functions:

New
Starts a new document. This is the same as choosing New from the File menu.

Open
Opens an existing document. This is the same as choosing Open from the File menu.

Save
Saves the current document. This is the same as choosing Save from the File menu.

Print
Prints the current document. This is the same as choosing Print from the File menu.

Cut
Cuts the selected text or object(s). This is the same as choosing Cut from the Edit menu.

Copy
Copies the selected text or object(s) to the clipboard. This is the same as choosing Copy from the Edit menu.

Paste
Pastes the clipboard contents into the current document. This is the same as choosing Paste from the Edit menu.

Clear
Deletes the selected text or object(s). This is the same as choosing Clear from the Edit menu.

Undo
Undoes the last action. This is the same as choosing Undo from the Edit menu.

Redo
Redoes the last action. This is the same as choosing Redo from the Edit menu.

Link
To link text frames. This is the same as choosing Link Text Frames from the Layout menu.

Unlink
To break the link between text frames. This is the same as choosing Unlink Text Frames from the Layout menu.

Decrease Indent
Decreases the left indent of text. This is the same as decreasing the left indent by the tab spacing.

Increase Indent
Increases the left indent of text. This is the same as increasing the left indent by the tab spacing.

Hanging Indent
Sets or clears a hanging indent. This is the same as decreasing the first line indent by the tab spacing.

Play Script
Executes an external script. This is the same as choosing Play External Script from the Scripts menu.

Preferences
Sets the general PageStream preferences. This is the same as choosing Preferences from the File menu.

Go to Common Questions

Next section: Using Objects

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