¢A NEW FUTURA COLUMN - DTP Atari8¢¢by Eric Bemrose¢¢ Welcome to the first in a series of articles discussing Desktop Publishing programs for the Atari 8-bit computer.¢¢ First of all, what is Desktop Publishing? Simply put, this is the creation and printing of text and graphics in order to produce anything, from the simplest greeting card up to a complete novel. And all from the comfort of your own computer desk.¢¢ The programs available to do this fall into three main categories.¢¢ Firstly there are the word processors, of which there are many. These can produce multiple pages of text very easily. You are usually restricted to using the fonts provided by your printer, and graphics can only be created with standard graphics characters. However some printers do offer the facility to create new ram based fonts and characters. The First XLent Word Processor, for example, directly supports the loading of alternative fonts. And some other programs, such as Paperclip and Mini Office II, offer the capability of inserting graphic dumps into text files.¢¢ Secondly there are the programs of the text processor variety. Multiple pages are created on any word processor, saved and then printed out with the processing program. These create high quality text with special fonts which use the dot image graphic mode of your printer. Multiple fonts can be used in various sizes and print densities. Graphics are added by a straight dump of a file, or when converted into a font format.¢¢ Thirdly there are the page layout type programs, which create single pages of text and graphics. The pages are made up from varying numbers of 'plates' created on a Graphics 8 screen. Text can be any size and shape, graphics can be drawn or imported as 'icons'. Completed plates are saved and then printed out with the program that combines the various plates into a single page. There are also several programs that offer only a printing facility for plates created with other utilities.¢¢ Needless to say these programs require a printer capable of producing dot image graphics and all of them support the Epson standard as well as some other types of printer.¢¢ There are many DTP programs available for the Atari, a selection of which are listed below. In future columns I will be examining some of them individually, before moving on to discuss the construction of a newsletter using a variety of programs. ¢¢DTP PROGRAMS FOR THE ATARI 8 BIT¢¢Antic Publisher - Billboard - Digital Editor - Daisy Dot I/II/III - Dot Magic - Hi Res Dump - Letterhead Designer - Newsroom - News Station - Page Designer - Page Editor - Page Layout - Publishing Pro - Page Marshall - Print Shop - Print Power - Print Filer - Print Lab - Rubber Stamp - R Draw - The Small Printery - Typesetter - The Works.¢
