This is the second release version; there are probably still some bugs. Use with caution. Let me know if you find any bugs or have any suggestions.
Don Cox
5 Cornfield Rd
Middlesbrough
Cleveland
TS5 5QJ
England
A shareware fee of $15 or equivalent (cash is easiest) will bring you a copy of the latest update. I hope to add some more genies to the collection, including some for Pro Draw.
This document is designed to be printed out through ProPage or Transwrite. Each paragraph is a single line. Do not feed it through Ed or you will lose the ends of some paragraphs.
MAKE BAR GRAPHS
These are debugged versions of the ones supplied by Gold Disk, with the added feature of allowing you to select any font.
Future development - bar charts made of little pictures, as in Adobe Illustrator.
STEP AND REPEAT DELUXE
This starts with a single box, which could contain text or an image, and generates a wide variety of patterns. The default spacing is the size of the box, so if you just set the number of rows and columns you will get a simple tiling arrangement. The boxes in the resulting pattern are grouped so you can move them together (hold down shift).
If you set the X and/or Y scales, the boxes will change size across and/or down the page. Setting the X offset gives a brick wall effect.
The offset angle is meant for patterns such as 60 degree triangular repeats. Only the X spacing is used in this case.
If you set a rotation angle each unit is set to a greater angle than the last. Try this on a straight grid. If the X and Y settings for the centre of rotation are the centre of the original box, each box rotates around its own centre, so you get a straight grid containing boxes at various angles; if not, all the boxes rotate around the same centre, and you get a warped grid. Note that if you pick the "Same Again" option, you will get the same rotation centre as before, which may not be the centre of a new original box - i.e. "Same Again" may give you a warped grid.
Setting both X and Y spacing to zero, with a suitable centre of rotation and rotation angle, will give a circle of units. If you also set either a spiral scale (make this number very nearly 1) or a spiral increment (this might be about the same as the height of the box), you get a spiral. Both these would normally use a single column with lots of rows - but of course you can have sets of circles with X spacing between them.
Spiral scale gives a logarithmic spiral; spiral increment gives an equidistant spiral. Set a negative number for increment to spiral inward. If you get too ambitious you will run out of memory, especially if the units are bitmaps. Things that work immediately after booting the Amiga may not work later.
To get concentric circles, first make a vertical single column at 12 o'clock and then generate a circle from each unit in turn. Use "Same settings" on entry.
All kinds of combination settings will give various unexpected results.
BORDERS FRAMES
This puts frames around boxes and at the same time sets a margin all round the box, so that bitmaps do not cover up the frame.
MARGINS ALL ROUND
To save you having to type the same number in four times when setting a uniform margin.
BORDERS REPEATS
This is for putting decorative borders around boxes. The borders are made from design units (boxes containing clips or bitmaps), which must be visible on the screen so that they can be clicked on.
There is a selection of PDraw clips of fleurons provided for experimentation, and a few bitmaps. You can use up to five different units to make up a repeat pattern; the pattern is specified by typing in letters. The pattern length is limited only by the space available. For instance "abcba" would use the three fleurons selected in the order they were clicked on, followed by the first two in reverse order. Then (provided there is room along the side of the box) the pattern starts over again. If uppercase letters are typed, units will be flipped left-to-right: "abBA". To be able to set "aA" you must click on a single box twice. Flipping only works for structured drawings - PPage will not flip bitmaps or text.
The program will not flip units top-to-bottom. If you want this, clone the box containing the original fleuron and set the Y scale to a negative number; this will invert the image.
It is best to set up your set of boxes containing the original units either in the bottom margin or off the page. You can have corner units only or side units without corners. The original corner unit, unlike the side units, can be rotated to suit if it is facing the wrong way.
BORDERS SIMPLE SHAPES
These draw various borders around boxes, using data built into the genie. Unlike Borders Repeats, you do not have to provide any boxes, except the one that needs a border. Several simple geometrical patterns are provided. The resulting border is in a single box which lies in front of the box you clicked on.
The patterns use the current line and fill colours. You can get some nice effects by superimposing a coloured border on a box with a thick coloured frame, or two different borders over each other. Note that the current line and fill colours can only be changed when you are in Null Pointer mode. If you are in box drawing mode, for instance, they may appear to change but nothing happens.
Try asking for very thick borders - up to almost half the box width.
If the box is at an angle, PPage sometimes has difficulty drawing it on the screen (it may fill in solid), but the printout may be OK. Sometimes the screen is OK and the printout is solid.
Pro Page 4.0A does not show these borders correctly on the screen in 256 colour mode. Later versions may be OK.
MAKE PIE CHART
This generates a plain 2D pie chart from a set of percentages and labels which you enter.
BOOKLET
If you wish to lay out an A5 booklet consisting of a number of sheets of A4 paper stapled in the middle, this genie will arrange the pages for you. You design the work on a series of landscape format A4 pages, each showing a pair of facing pages for the final booklet.
The first A4 page will be the outer cover, i.e. the first and last pages.
When the design work is complete, run this genie. It will save your design and then cut each page in half and rearrange the halves correctly for printing. Of the resulting pages, the first half are for printing on one side of the paper; you then turn the paper over and print the rest of the pages on the other side.
The genie uses .eps files to split the pages, so they will appear as blank grey rectangles, and will only print on a Postscript printer. However, you can save a Postscript file to disk and then print it out on any printer using the P.D. program "Post", if you have the necessary Postscript fonts in the directory CGFonts:ps. A genie is provided to automate this procedure. Remember that the printer page size in "Post" is in dots: multiply your printer's dots-per-inch by the page size to get the right numbers. There is a bug in "Post" which stops it from printing colour bitmaps under WB 2.04; black-and-white bitmaps are OK and so is WB 1.3.
The genie will handle any size, not just A4. For an A4 booklet, you would design on A3 pages (landscape format).
LANDSCAPE PAGE
This converts an existing page from portrait to landscape format or vice versa. It sets the Postscript output parameters accordingly. Useful for working on double-page spreads.
COPY BOX TO PAGES LINKED
STEP AND REPEAT LINKED
These are both just the same as the standard ones but the resulting boxes are in a linked text chain.
REPLACE BOXES ON PAGES
This is useful if you have done "Copy Box to Pages" and then you want to make a change throughout. For instance, you have put a neat little box at the top of every page giving the date of a magazine, and then you realize you have the wrong month. Or you want to change the type size.
The boxes must have their top left corners in exactly the same place on each page.
IMPORT BITMAP 1 to 1
Most useful for owners of PAL Amigas, which have square pixels. If you own ADPro, you can set the exact size of an image b
