ftp.whtech.com/ftp.whtech.com.tar/ftp.whtech.com/Geneve/9640news/CAT01/TPA1.ARK

Text File | 2006-10-19 | 13KB | 389 lines

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 ** THE PRINTER'S APPRENTICE **
    (Version 1.03)

    A Review by Steve Langguth
                Ozark 99'er Users Group


 REPORT CARD
 -----------

 Performance..................A+
 Ease of Use..................B
 Documentation................B
 Value........................A+
 Final Grade..................A-


 Cost: $22.50

 Manufacturer: McCann Software
               P.O.Box 34160
               Omaha, NE, 68134.

 Requirements: console, monitor or TV,
 memory expansion, disk system, RS232
 interface, Epson or Gemini printer,
 Extended Basic or Editor/Assembler.
 (TI-Artist optional but strongly
 recommended.)


      Until recently, users of the TI
 99/4A who wanted to mix text and
 graphics on a single full-size sheet
 of paper had to literally "cut and
 paste" to get the job done.  In the
 past few months, however, several
 programs have been released that allow
 the computer to combine the text and
 graphics portions and then print an
 entire page with one pass of the sheet
 through the printer.  This gives you,
 the 99/4A user, a new tool for
 creating newsletters, advertisements,
 announcements, fancy letters, and
 other projects where both text and
 pictures need to be on the same page.
 One of the most powerful of these new
 packages is The Printer's Apprentice
 from McCann Software.
      The Printer's Apprentice is
 really a set of four separate
 programs, (written in Forth), which
 allows you to convert text files
 created with TI Writer (or other text
 editors that can save text in DF/80
 format) into "text graphics" that can
 be integrated with "picture graphics"
 created by many of the "artist"
 programs currently available.  The
 Character Editor allows creation and
 editing of various type styles (called
 fonts).  The Picture Editor allows you
 to draw pictures or to edit pictures
 created by other programs.  The
 Formatter takes the text, created with
 a text editor, converts it into a font
 of your choosing, and formats it into
 columns of a chosen size.  The files
 created with the Formatter and the
 Picture Editor are then used by the
 Scheduler to put the text and pictures
 anywhere you want them on the page.


 Performance
 -----------

      The Printer's Apprentice package
 comes on a "flippy" diskette.  One
 side of the diskette contains the four
 programs described above.  It uses
 "Forth-style" disk access and
 therefore backup copies must be made
 using TI Disk Manager II or a "bit
 map" or "track" copier.  The disk is
 not copy protected, however, and
 making a backup copy was done easily.
 (I used the bit map "disk copy"
 selection of DM-1000.) The second side
 of the disk contains an assortment of
 font and picture files, some of which
 are used in the examples in the
 documentation.
      The programs autoload from
 Extended Basic or Option 3 (Load and
 Run) of the Editor/Assembler module.
 Upon loading, a menu is displayed that
 allows the user to choose any one of
 the four programs, exit to TI Forth,
 or exit to the TI color bars.  Once a
 program has been loaded, the diskette
 can be removed and replaced with a
 data diskette (for those with a single
 drive).  When you wish to leave a
 program, a prompt to put the program
 disk back in drive one appears, and
 once that is done you are returned to
 the main menu screen.
      The Character Editor is similar
 to many sprite and character editors
 we have all seen.  It allows you to
 create font characters one at a time
 by turning on or off squares in a
 grid.  Text prompts at the bottom of
 the screen remind you of the options
 at all times.  (The prompts are in TI
 Forth's "64-column" characters, and
 might be hard to read on some monitors
 or TV's.) Characters can be quickly
 "reflected" around either a vertical
 or horizontal axis, and can be printed
 out to your printer at any time to see
 how they look on paper.  Fonts that
 have been created earlier can be
 loaded into the Character Editor for
 editing, and text strings can be
 printed out while in the Character
 Editor to see what the font looks like
 in use.
      The Picture Editor is sort of a
 "bare bones" drawing program.  It
 allows you to draw pictures in "bit
 map mode" in beautiful black on gray.
 More importantly, though, it lets you
 edit pictures created with other more
 powerful drawing programs.  The files
 loaded into the Picture Editor must be
 the "_P" portion of a TI Artist
 picture, but since TI Artist (version
 2.0 or greater) can convert pictures
 drawn with other programs, files from
 those programs can be used, also.
 Once a picture file has been loaded
 into the Picture editor, it can be
 "cropped" to the size you need.  This
 means you can use whatever portion of
 a picture you want.  Once again,
 prompts appear at the bottom of the
 screen (in "64-column" type), and once
 again you can print out to a printer
 at any time to get a better idea what
 the picture will look like.  When
 printing, you have several options of
 size and density from which to choose.
 The Picture Editor also has an option,
 called a "Klipper", that lets you save
 characters off the screen into a font
 file.  This makes it easier to convert
 the various fonts available for TI
 Artist and the other drawing programs
 into the form used by The Printer's
 Apprentice.
      The Formatter takes a text file
 and converts it into the font of your
 choice.  The text can be formatted
 into columns of any width.  The right
 margin can be ragged or
 "microjustified".  There is even an
 option that allows you to move through
 the text file, as it is converted a
 line at a time, deciding whether you
 wish to hyphenate the word at the end
 of a line or not.  Output from the
 Formatter can be printed out on a
 printer or saved to disk in a form
 that can be used by the Scheduler.
      The Scheduler, then, takes all
 the various pieces and puts them
 together into the final product.  A
 "schedule" is a sort of data base.
 You enter data into a schedule one
 "record" at a time.  Each "record"
 contains the following pieces of
 information: the name of the file
 containing each "piece" (a picture
 file or a file containing formatted
 text), and the point on the page where
 the upper left-hand corner of that
 particular piece will be printed.
 Using a Gemini 10X printer there are
 120 points per inch horizontally and
 144 points per inch vertically.
 (Epson printers apparently have even
 more points to choose from in both
 directions.) This allows very fine
 control of the placement of each piece
 on the page.  After a "record" is
 entered into the schedule, the program
 figures out for you where the bottom
 and right edge of that piece falls and
 displays those values for you.  This
 helps you keep track of how much space
 is being used by each piece.  The
 schedule (the collection of records)
 can be saved to disk or "run" at any
 time.  When a schedule is "run" the
 Scheduler takes all the pieces from
 the disk as they are needed and prints
 the picture or formatted text out
 exactly where you "told" it to do so.
 Pieces can "overlap", so if you want
 to put a "frame" around a picture, or
 wrap several columns of text around a
 picture, you can easily do it.  And
 because each "piece" is saved
 separately, you can have more than one
 font appearing on the same page.
      Along with the four programs just
 described, you also receive several
 font files of varying sizes.  Two are
 small and appropriate for large
 amounts of text, other fonts are
 larger and can be used for headlines
 or where bolder type styles are
 needed.  This saves you a lot of time
 because it isn't necessary to create
 any fonts from scratch.  A small
 picture file is also included, but
 this is mainly for use in some of the
 examples.  You will have to spend some
 time creating art work or use any of
 the many pictures available in the
 various "companion" sets, if you want
 pictures in your projects.
      After all the graphics and text
 files have been created and the
 schedule has been set up, you get to
 see your creation printed out on your
 printer.  But that step takes quite a
 long time.  The Scheduler program has
 to check each of the various pieces on
 the data disk and figure out which
 files have portions to be printed on
 each line.  This involves a lot of
 computation and disk access.  The
 documentation suggests using a
 RAM-disk to store the data files, but
 so far I have not been able to get the
 program to recognize my Horizon
 RamDisk.  Also, if the page you are
 creating is very complicated, all of
 your data files may not fit on one
 disk.  (Version 1.04 saves formatted
 text in a "compessed" format, which
 may help with this problem, somewhat.)
 With two regular disk drives being
 used, it took me about one hour to
 print out the front page of my users
 group's newsletter.  But the results
 were worth the time it took! (The
 documentation also suggests that a
 print buffer or spooler would help
 speed the printing process.)


 Ease of Use
 -----------

      Usually, the more powerful a
 program is, the longer it takes to
 learn how to use all the possible
 options.  Well, The Printer's
 Apprentice is no exception to this
 "rule".  Each of the four separate
 sections has several layers of menus
 and prompts, and although some choices
 are easy to understand, others are at
 first a bit vague.  After using the
 programs for a while it became much
 easier to get them to do what I
 wanted, but this isn't a program that
 you can just sit down and use without
 even having to think about what you
 are doing.
      Page layout programs such as this
 for other systems such as the
 Macintosh or the various IBM
 compatibles are usually
 "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" setups.
 In other words, you design a page on
 the monitor screen and what you see on
 the monitor is what gets printed out
 on the page.  The Printer's
 Apprentice, on the other hand, is a
 "what-you-get-is-what-you-get" type
 setup.  You don't really know what the
 page is going to look like until it
 gets printed.  Even when you plan the
 page layout ahead of time on graph
 paper, some fine adjustments in the
 placement of some pieces will probably
 need to be done.  This adjusting is
 not difficult but because it is a
 "trial and error" process, it can take
 a lot of time and use up a lot of
 paper.


 Documentation
 -------------

      The set of programs comes with 36
 pages of documentation, but what is
 included in the first thirty pages or
 so is similar in content to what you
 find in the Editor/Assembler manual
 (and we know how useful THAT is as an
 instructional tool!).  It describes
 each possible menu or prompt choice,
 but doesn't really explain how to USE
 each function.  When trying the
 package out for the first time the
 author recommends that you go through
 the four "scripts" found in the back
 of the instruction book.  I would
 consider this an absolute necessity!
 There is one "script", a sort of
 guided tour, for each of the four
 programs included in the package.  By
 following each script along, you get
 shown how most of the functions
 available for each of the four
 sections works.  But moving from using
 the scripts to creating on your own is
 a big step and will require a lot of
 referring to both the scripts and the
 rest of the documentation frequently
 at first.  Unfortunately, it's
 sometimes difficult to find the
 description of the function you wish
 to use.
      The other thing that is not
 addressed in the documentation is page
 layout "theory".  There are whole
 books written on the subject of layout
 and design, and the author of The
 Printer's Apprentice couldn't be
 expected to cover the subject in his
 documentation.  But, if you are really
 serious about creating pages that look
 "professional" (and this set of
 programs gives you the power to do
 just that), you will want to do a
 little outside reading on the subject,
 too.  Luckily, "desktop publishing" is
 a rapidly growing use for personal
 computers, so there are a lot of "how
 to" books available in computer
 bookstores these days that contain
 information on layout and design and
 lots more.


 Value
 -----

      At $22.50, this set of programs
 is a real bargain.  I am not aware of
 any other program for the 99/4A on the
 market today that allows such complete
 control of the mixing of text and
 graphics.  Combine The Printer's
 Apprentice with TI Artist and several
 of the "companion" disk sets
 available, and you have an extremely
 powerful "desktop publishing" system.
 It takes a bit of time and effort to
 become comfortable with working with
 The Printer's Apprentice, but if you
 want to create pages that combine text
 and graphics, it will be time very
 well spent.

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