¢DTP Atari8¢¢By Eric Bemrose¢¢DIGITAL EDITOR V3.6¢¢ Digital Editor is a page layout type DTP program, the product of Gregor Tielsch and Immo Fietz of Atari Club Celle, Germany. Originally released in September, 1987, version 2.0 of this program is still available in the Public Domain. Digital Editor version 3.6 is modestly described as being a modified and much improved version, which was released by Tom D'Ambrosio in October, 1990. It uses Turbo Basic and therefore will only run on an XL/XE machine with a minimum of 64k memory.¢¢ Supplied on a double sided enhanced density disk, Digital Editor (DE) is a good program with many useful features. A helpful eleven page tutorial is included to assist you to make the most from it.¢¢ On bootup, after an introductory message, you are presented with a title screen, which has been created with DE, and is accompanied by the theme from High Noon (Tom is from Texas). Press START for the main menu, which offers the following selections: Editor, Convertor, Graphics, Mag Maker and Hardcopy.¢¢ Select the Editor and you are presented with a blank GR.8 work screen, inputs are handled from a separate menu screen. The work screen is headed by a single line telling you what font is being used and what size has been selected. Any standard 9-sector Atari font can be loaded (16 are supplied) and used to create normal or double height 40 column text. A built-in 80 column font can also be used in normal or double height. You will need exceptional powers of vision to see the almost invisible cursor even with a clear screen, so a 'homing' command has been provided to enable you to find it in a crowded screen. It marks the upper left corner of the character to be printed.¢¢ Text can also be imported from a word processor (in 80 column mode only) in single or double column formats. Two sample Atari Writer files have been included to show you how this works. Graphics can be included anywhere on the screen in the form of 'photos'. These are icons which have been drawn and then 'cut out' from a GR.8 picture file, 23 ready made .PHO files are supplied. When completed the screen is saved as a 59 sector .PGE file. Depending on what you want to create, at least four PaGE'S will be needed to fill one sheet of paper. Five sample .PGE files have been included for you to examine.¢¢ The Converter program will change the .PGE file into a standard 62 sector Micro Painter format file, ready for printing out, or for use with other programs. It also cuts 'photos' from pictures, which can be any size you like, or can turn 'photos' back into pictures for further editing.¢¢ The Graphics section is a GR.8 drawing facility written in compiled Turbo Basic. It can be used to create 'photos' or full size pictures. It has a good range of features such as Zoom, Mirror, Copy, Erase, Freehand, Lines, Circle, Oval, Fill and Points. Also, 40 column text from any font can be added to the picture.¢¢ The Mag Maker creates a program that will display a collection of .PGE files in succession as an on-disk newsletter. It needs Turbo Basic to run.¢¢ MAGMAKER.62 is a similar program that will do the same as above for the display of 62 sector .PIC files.¢¢ HARDCOPY.TUR is a printer dump provided for 1029 users. This is the only printing facility supplied with V2.0. As I don't own a 1029 printer its capabilities are unknown.¢¢ Selecting Hardcopy will run Billboard, by Chris Wareham, a print utility for Epsons. This is a modified version that supports Turbo Basic and DOS with subdirectories, as does Digital Editor. The completed pages, when converted into .PIC files, can be printed out just as you like, even sideways. Up to eight PIC's can be squeezed on to one sheet to form a page, but it will be hard to read, four PIC's to the sheet is recommended format. However, each picture must be printed out separately, making this a tedious and error prone operation. Other programs will print out your finished PIC's in one operation with much less fuss. I will be looking at some of them later in this series.¢
