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MegaDisc 02 (1987)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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MegaDisc 02 (1987)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf
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DeskTopPub
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1987-04-21
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158 lines
DESKTOP PUBLISHING AND PAGESETTER
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Nobody can escape Desktop Publishing these days - it's a buzzword, it's
a marketing concept, it's a way of life, it seems. But within the hype
and the big buck chasing, there is a useful concept now served by some
excellent software.
The Mac in its evolution as the friendly machine seems to have made the
concept its own, by a combination of corporate far-sightedness and being
in the right place at the right time. It's possible to configure an IBM
with the necessary expensive cards for speed and graphics to do a
reasonable job, and likewise any clone. But why bother with the expense
of the Mac and IBM alternatives, when the Amiga is available - and
designed for the job from the ground up. The Amiga's capabilities really
come into play in the area of desktop video ( another imminent
buzzword), so DTP is child's play in comparison.
The only problem has been the availability of the software, and the
necessary linkages to laser printers and laser typesetters for the best
"camera-ready" results, and the chain is now complete. This chain goes
as follows:
1. DTP software - PageSetter or Publisher or ProWrite.
2. Laser printer with printer "driver" in Preferences - at
present the Hewlett Packard LaserJet and LaserJet Plus are
handled by Preferences (on 1.2). However numerous other laser
laser printers can be driven by these same drivers, and it
is also possible to link up an Apple Laserwriter. Commodore
is about to release an OKI laser printer under their own
label which will be competitively priced and able to handle
POSTSCRIPT (see below). The necessary drivers are being
devised right now.
3. Compatibility of the software and the laser printer with the
Adobe PostScript language. This is a proprietary language of
escape codes which allows a great flexibility in the use of
the laser printer - ie, it can make a large library of fonts
fonts available; allows for all kinds of graphic
enhancements; and is generally most desirable. Just recently
PageSetter has announced such compatibility, and likewise the
Hewlett Packard laser printer range.
4. If you're really serious, or rich, or just like to go over
the top, you can also link up with a Laser Phototypesetter,
the best known of which currently available are the
Linotronic 100 and 300 series. The 300 retails at about
$70,000 and gives a resolution of 2500 dpi (dots per inch),
which can be compared with the average laser printer's 300
dpi. Certain bureaus in town already have this fabled
machine, and it's possible to hand them your DTP pages on
disc to be printed, at a price.
The reason why I'm interested in all this, apart from the undeniable
pleasure of creating a well-designed page, is that a friend of mine is
in the process of starting up a local magazine - she has all the
necessary ideas, contacts, and energy, but up to 6 weeks ago when I
showed her PageSetter and other useful Amiga programs in operation, she
had been quite computer-illiterate. Now she sees the magazine office
with a fully computerized design and layout system, rather than the
conventional cut-and-paste setup which almost all magazines are still
using. She also sees a great scope for cutting costs traditionally
associated with all the manual and time-consuming jobs which previously
had to be paid for. In fact, she's discovered Desktop Publishing and
she's over the moon. And if/when the magazine gets off the ground, she's
going to have the most efficient operation available.
Getting back to specifics: what is PageSetter like? My experiences over
the last two months tell me it's a wonderful program. Just as the
computer is a wonderful tool for processing text (and if it's an Amiga,
graphics), so PageSetter brings these two functions together in one
useful application. As someone said, "He who owns the press is the one
who has freedom of the press", and this is the tool placed in our hands
now. You can write a series of text pieces in Scribble or Textcraft or
any Text Editor like Ed (in AmigaDos) or in PageSetter's Text Editor -
then you simply "pour" the text into boxes on your main page, which can
be single or linked together. Similarly you can create a graphic in
DPaint or in PageSetter's Graphic Editor and place it wherever you wish
on the page. Having got the basic elements together (text and graphics),
you then proceed to design, rearrange, resize boxes and generally edit
the entire page until it is to your liking. You can change fonts at will
and can import a rapidly growing range of them from specialist font
discs, such as ZUMA fonts, or from the Public Domain. [ Have a look at
the article on FONTS in this issue for details of how to get these, and
how to use them in a number of Amiga packages.]
Other editing features include being able to use borders of all kinds
for your work; grey-scale backgrounds in any box; drop-shadows on any
boxes; overlapping or "transparent" boxes; changing the justification of
text (ragged, flush or centred); changing the spacing between words and
letters; linking up boxes for one piece of text through a page and over
to subsequent pages (the text pours like water through a series of
tanks); and the list goes on. You can zoom in to parts of your document,
and you can change the size of your page when you wish.
I have printed output from PageSetter to an Okimate 20 with excellent
results - it's possible to see slight "jaggies" but was quite sufficient
for fliers and news releases. I'm itching however to get my hands on a
laser printer to see the difference. One small cavil - if you print your
document from within Pagesetter (from the menu) on an Okimate 20 you'll
find a blank space printed about every 10 lines. However, there is a
Print Utility on the main window which works fine, and also allows you
to carry on with another task while printing - necessary because it does
take its time to print out, since it prints as a graphic, not as text.
The size of the document is limited by the memory available, and it is
advisable to save your document by the page, in case a crash occurs -
and also because the Print Utility starts always from page 1 for any
series of linked pages in a document. The system fonts tend to be a
shade boring, but you can get around that quite easily - see the Fonts
article in this issue. The size of graphics imported from the graphic
editor is limited, but it is possible to link graphics if required. The
program contains some examples of Clip Art which can be used, and I'm
sure there will be more available - of course you can use your own
graphics, and they should be clear black, white and greyscale and done
in medium-res mode rather than low or high res, for best results. The
graphic editor is fine for most of the usual graphic/painting functions.
To sum up, PageSetter takes advantage of the capabilities of the Amiga -
its multi-tasking, speed, colour, standardized file format for importing
files, and its graphics capability. With PostScript and Laser printers
now available, the Amiga can boast full Desktop Publishing
capabilities and compares fawn with anything that's available in
the Mac or IBM world, in both price and quality. In fact, such a DTP
configuration would be substantially lower in price, faster in
operation, and prettier to look at than any alternative, not to mention
the multi-tasking bonus. And then of course, you could fit the 68020
Motorola chip, with a maths co-processor...Perhaps the only lack that
could be mentioned is a "Megascreen", as is now available for the Mac,
allowing a full A-4 page to be viewed full-size at one time. At a cost
of some $4000 or so, however, I will be able to tolerate that lack for a
while at least.
So if you find yourself involved in putting out newsletters or fliers,
or preparing presentation documents of any kind, or even a magazine,
you can do it on your Amiga without too much cost.
COST - approximately $400
AVAILABILITY - any good dealer.
Note: If you'd like to have a really good look at PageSetter, contact us
at MEGADISC, and we'll send you out a DEMO version of PageSetter -
that is, it is the full program with a couple of features disabled
so that you feel compelled to go and buy the complete version.
END OF "DESKTOPPUB"
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