Belgian PostCards¬ is a program designed to make sending letters and pictures to your friends, colleagues, or customers both simple and fun. Somewhere along the way, we got a little carried away with the whole project and wound up making a program that not only allows sending pictures and text, but one that supports fonts, styled text, sizes (even larger than 127 points if you really mean business), multiple document icons to suit your moods, easy creation of TeachText read only documents with pictures, search and replace (that knows to go to the beginning of a document when convenient), custom text documents for BBS owners, and even sound annotation!
What a Weird Name!
Belgian PostCards¬ got its name for two reasons: one, my friend Karl who did all the real coding, is Belgian. Secondly, the program was really intended to get Mac folks to start using their computers to send and receive pictures and words to friends everywhere (like we used to write real postcards). Why should we suffer through the limitations of GIF when we're corresponding with our fellow Mac users? (GIF is still great for dealing with those other poor souls, of course.) The trouble has always been that many word processors don't seem to be standardized for exchanging words the way we sent them, or it's a nuisance to translate, or we don't know what they'll be using at the receiving end, and TeachText doesn't let us do the styled text or open multiple documents, etc... There are some neat programs for documenting software, of course, but who wants to pay the extra freight each time we send these application/document hybrids over a commercial network like America Online? Add a sound annotation feature (which we did), and you've got a neat way to send a photo of yourself to your friends at Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever, with a little voice message to go with it. Thanks to Apple¿, you can also paste in a QuickTime movie now, and on top of the built-in sound with the QuickTime movie, you can also add your own sound notes. Neat, huh?
If you're a teacher, you can probably already see how useful it would be to attach a sound to a picture of a factory or a jet or the President. Especially when you know that your students can view and hear all this on the free viewer we supply. Who can afford big licensing fees these days in a public (or private for that matter) school?
The same cost effectiveness probably applies to those of you who are in any sort of business. Why spend big bucks when you can spend less and get more - more features and more fun?!
Finally, you can feel good about the fact that 40% of the price supports geography education. We need it, and you can write that much off your taxes, to the limit allowable by law.
How Do I Work This?
If you have ever used a Mac word processor or text editor (you never know), then you know how to use most of the features in Belgian PostCards¬. Choose the fonts and styles that you like and type your text.
Somewhere along the way, you may find that you'd like to add a picture. First, copy a picture from your scrapbook or from another drawing (PICT) or paint application. Here's where there's a minor difference. Instead of using the "Paste" command, you'll use the "Insert Pict╔" command from the "Pictures" menu:
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We do things a little differently for two reasons. One reason is that we started out with a program to add pictures to TeachText documents (so that our users wouldn't have to resort to ResEdit), so we were doing something different to begin with. The second reason is that we wanted to add a couple of options to the pictures that our users place:
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Depending on the kind of picture you have, choose the paint or leave the default "draw" (PICT) set to "on". The checkbox for "Convert to Bitmap" is very useful if you want to create a more quickly scrolling document. The tradeoff is that the print quality will suffer a little in exchange. There are other good reasons to convert a picture to bitmap (that we won't cover here), so the feature is useful in other ways, as well. Once your settings are correct, simply click the "OK" button, and Belgian PostCards¬ will place the picture in the center of your document.
(By the way: if you are placing color PICT, don't select the "Convert to bitmap" option - if you want color.)
You can select your pictures by holding down the command key and clicking on them. Do this if you want to copy or delete the picture (commands available in the "Pictures" menu). You will also need this technique for adding sounds to your Belgian PostCards¬ documents.
Saving your Documents
Now that you have your text and a picture or two, you'll want to save your work. The save options in Belgian PostCards¬ allow you to do several things:
Ñ Save your document as one of fifty different eye-catching Belgian PostCards¬.
Ñ Save your document as a TeachText or TeachText read only document.
Ñ Save your document as a plain text file.
Ñ Save your document as a custom text file (for BBS operators or shareware/commercial software developers who license their own icon/document types - See Software Developer's Section).
We suggest saving your work often (of course), but especially after adding your pictures. You'll get the normal save dialog, with a couple of extras:
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The "extras" here are of course the choice of different icons or file types. In this case above, by naming the document and clicking "Save," you would have a Belgian PostCard¬ with the "T-Rex" icon. If you wanted to change the icon, all you need to do is click on either the displayed icon or the "Icons" button. You'll get another dialog like this:
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Here, I've scrolled through the available icons and clicked on the "memo" icon (and it is now shown under the "Selected icon" section). If I find that in the course of normal use that I use one icon more than others to represent my Belgian PostCards¬ documents, I can click the "Set Default" button in this dialog, and I won't have to keep selecting that icon from the list. Instead, every time I save a document, Belgian PostCards¬ will just assume that I want the "memo" icon, so I'll only need to name the document and click the "Save" button.
Saving Documents as TeachText or CustomText
After you've written your document, you may want to save it as a TeachText document or as a CustomText document (BBS operators and/or software developers). Just click on the "File Type" button in the save dialog (see above), and you'll be presented with this:
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The default setting (the file type that is automatically chosen when you save a document) is initially set as a Belgian PostCard¬. By clicking on the other buttons you can choose TeachText (type text) , TeachText read only (ttro), or CustomText. Remember, to use the icons or styled text, you must save your documents as Belgian PostCards¬, since ordinary text applications will not support these features. You may also set these other file types as the default document type for your Belgian PostCards¬ application.
Attaching Sound to your Belgian PostCards¬ Documents
Adding sounds to a document is a neat idea, really, but one that hasn't ever gone very far. Most people have thought it would be cute, but not necessarily useful. Of course, how you make use of sound is entirely up to you. The examples given in the beginning of this document might give you some idea of where sound might come in handy (such as in education, where a picture of a barn owl might have a barn owl's call attached).
Sounds in Belgian PostCards¬ are associated with pictures. This seems the best place to put them since your readers need some sort of reference - and because you aren't limited to only one sound per document. This is also why we covered saving your documents first - you can't add sounds to a document until it has been saved. There are a couple of memory management problems this helps us avoid.
Once you've added and saved your picture, and you're ready to attach a sound, hold down the command key and select your picture. If you have a recording device for your Mac, you can record a note directly from Belgian PostCards¬. Otherwise, you can import sounds from other files (such as system beeps or HyperCard stacks). Recording can be done at "Good"(6:1 compression), "Better"(3:1 compression), or "Best" (1:1) settings. As the settings name implies, the quality of the sound you record is determined by your selection. The tradeoffs are in overall sound quality vs. the amount of memory/storage space your sound will use. The Record dialog is fairly simple:
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After you've recorded a sound, you'll be asked to save that sound and given the opportunity to give it a name (this is useful if you use a Belgian PostCards¬ document as a sound library, for instance):
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Simply type in a descriptive name and click "Ok."
Ñ By the way, when a sound is attached to a picture, the cursor changes to a loudspeaker so that your reader knows there is a sound note. The picture above has a sound attached. To play the sound, press the command and option keys down and click on the picture, or select the picture and choose "Play" from the sound menu. You may have only one sound per picture, although the number of pictures and sounds is not limited to the 32k text size limit.
If you want to use a prerecorded sound for your picture, simply select your picture and choose "Import Sound" from your "Sound" menu. You'll get a dialog box like this:
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Locate a file that you know has sounds in it (the example file is a HyperCard stack that my kids and a friend made). Then click on the file name and select open (or double click the name). If the file has sounds that you can use, these will in turn be displayed in the lower scrolling field. To sample the sounds, highlight the sound name and choose "Play Sound" (see why giving the sound a name is useful?). If you're satisfied, then click the "Import Sound" button to attach the sound to your picture. You can permanently delete a sound by selecting the picture a sound is attached to and choosing "Delete Sound" from the "Sound" menu.
Miscellaneous Amazing Features
Belgian PostCards¬ will allow you to set a default font and font size. Choose "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu to select this option:
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You'll also notice the "Load color icons" check box. These are the icons that appear in the scrolling field when you want to choose what kind of icon you want you Belgian PostCards document to display in the Finder. (By the way, the setting here does not affect the icon as it appears in the Finder. Even if you leave the color setting "off," you'll still have color Finder icons [ic type resources] if you have a color Mac, or b/w icons if you have a b/w Mac display.) The color icons use quite a bit of memory under systems < 7, and also serve no purpose for b/w screens. I always have this option set to "On" because I use system 7.x, and because I have a color monitor. I also tend to use Belgian PostCards¬ for sending large color pictures, so I have the memory partition set at a full megabyte of memory - you don't have to have that much for normal use, but why be normal? The optimal amount of memory varies, so you'll have to play with the settings to find what amount of RAM suits you best. If you haven't ever changed the amount of memory that an application gets (?), then from the Finder select your application, choose "Get Info" from the "File" menu. This is the place to add more memory. Just for the heck of it, I've allocated as much as 12 megabytes to Belgian PostCards¬, but this is only a reflection on my weird uses for the program rather than what it ever needs.
Font Substitution
Ever had a friend who makes a habit of sending you documents with fonts that you've never heard of (much less bothered to use)? Belgian PostCards¬ and the Belgian PostCards Viewer¬ will both alert you to the presence of such monsters, and bring up a dialog that allows you to display the document in a civilized font such as Palatino. This is fairly unique as far as I can tell.
The BP Viewer¬ will also let you view plain text files in a decent font in case you're tired of Geneva. I like this feature quite a bit, and others seem to agree that this feature was past due in text readers.
Editing TeachText Read Only Documents
The title says it all. Open a ttro document with Belgian PostCards¬ and you can edit it to your heart's desire. All changes are saveable, and the document remains what it was: ttro.
Out of Text Space Warning
If you try to type in more than the 32k text limit you'll get an apologetic alert that tells you that you can't add any more text to a particular document.
About the Demo - or - Where Can I buy the Real Thing???!!!
The Belgian PostCards¬ Demo does a lot. It has all the features of previous shareware applications such as TeachTextMaker, and none of the price. It will allow you to use a small subset of the Belgian PostCards¬ icons, add pictures, create and edit TeachText documents, etc... but:
To get real style and sound╔
complete the order form and mail it to us. We'll get the full application sent off to you right away, along with our interactive tutorial on using and modifying your icons.
Software Developers
Why pay exorbitant annual licensing fees? We require a one time fee, and we continue to provide you with upgrades through the next major version change without added costs! By buying our product, you will be entitled to have your own icons included with the viewers that you distribute, reinforcing your company name instead of some third party! All of our file types are registered, so you don't have to worry about desktop disasters or file conflicts. We can even design a custom icon for you. Feel free to write to us or give us a call at:
(501) 569-3059. This is a message line, but we will promptly answer your questions!!! Or send e-mail requests to MarkClark on America Online.
Shareware authors: We offer a discount plan for you for use with any verifiable shareware product (as opposed to a commercial product). Simply fill out the order form and list the name of at least one shareware product that you are shipping or plan to ship!
