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Amiga Collections: MegaDisc
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MegaDisc 27 (1992-03)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)(Disk 2 of 2).zip
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MegaDisc 27 (1992-03)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)(Disk 2 of 2).adf
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DTP_&_Fonts
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PageStream2.2
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PageStream2.2
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Text File
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1992-03-30
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7KB
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133 lines
PAGESTREAM 2.2 UPDATE
A review by Peter Goed
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With the release of the update of this program in Australia during the
second week of March, 1992, users of Pagestream have entered a new world of
Desktop Publishing.
The update comes on a single disk and contains PageStream2.2, a new icon
for the program, new screen fonts to help speed up CSTimes, Triumvirate and
Garamond fonts screen output. Also on the disk are many new and improved
import and export modules (although more export modules are urgently
needed) and printer drivers.
The INSTRUCTIONS to update from 2.1 to 2.2 are contained in a small
booklet that is written as though all users are at expert level, something
that is definitely not true, judging by the number of people who called me
because they had problems of one sort or another in getting the program
fully functional (and I had a few problems too). All of the problems that
I have encountered were due to a lack of reading either the 2.1 instruction
manual or the 2.2 update manual, and generally sorted out fairly quickly.
On running the program for the first time you will need to update your
font directory and any sub-directories you may have. This has been vastly
improved over previous versions and by saving the updated information using
the DEFAULT gadget now functio ns as one would expect it to.
New Look...
The first thing one notices on running the program is the improvement in
the appearance of the screen interface layout. This feature was enhanced
to comply with the DOS 2.0 operating system, but looks much improved under
DOS 1.3. The TOOLBOX can now r eside either on the right or left hand side
of the document and has two new tools, Magnify and magnification size of
current document. The tool gadget to alter bezier curves has changed in
looks but does the same job as before. Lines, boxes and the polygon tools
now draw in freehand mode unless you hold down the shift key, which makes
them go at 90, 45 or 180 degrees, a vast improvement over the old methods.
...old Feel
Many, in fact nearly all of the annoying bugs in 2.1 seem to have been
fixed, but there appear to be a couple of new minor bugs that we did not
have before, but they are pretty minor and can be gotten around.
IMPORT and EXPORT MODULES seem vastly improved, but there is room for a
lot more export modules, as these seem a bit thin on it and doesn't really
give much scope for any fair dinkum use.
PRINTING to PostScript printers is enhanced by a completely new driver.
The prologue part of the driver is now in a separate program, thus allowing
easier updates to the PostScript printer driver module. It is slower at
printing graphics than previously, but the difference is worth the extra
time. Text printing using the inbuilt fonts on the printer is very much
faster and using downloaded fonts the improvement can be up to 70% when
using Adobe Type 1 fonts in large character sizes, a maths co-processor
(such as a 68881 in a Phoenix Board) will give you an even better result
when printing to a PostScript device.
PRINTING to a Dot Matrix printer on my system seemed faster and gave
better results, but as I don't use this very often, other people may get
different results depending on the printer and driver used. The
Preferences Printer Driver is certainly much e nhanced and is quicker than
before.
COLOUR SEPARATIONS, which have been a problem since version 1.6, appear to
be vastly improved. On separating a very complex Interlace Ham picture,
the results were far superior to any that I have seen on Amiga, IBM or
Macintosh computers and could be described as almost as good as, if not
better than some of the lower quality professional colour separations that
I have seen. This is an area that PageStream needed a vast improvement in,
and we most certainly got it.
FONT HANDLING has been vastly improved in both speed of accessing the
fonts directory (2 seconds for 235 fonts) and in screen updating, although
this is still fairly slow if you don't have a sped-up processor or a
68020/30/40 board. One feature I still cry out for is to be able to turn
screen updates off altogether, until you call for an update, a very useful
feature if you are doing fixes to various parts of a page that don't alter
the appearance of the screen enough to worry about whilst you are working
on it.
SCREEN COLOURS: I certainly had some fun finding screen colours that
suited me and were capable of handling the display of grey in light, medium
and dark, in the end I compromised on colours that were easy and virtually
flicker free, but gave a limited range of display colours (in 8 colour
mode). This may be a problem that puts the novice user off PageStream,
because the standard colour when you first run the program uses white and
black as the text display colours in Hi Res, this nearly pulls your eyes
out of the sockets but a bit of playing with the screen colours soon fixes
this problem.
MANY OTHER FEATURES are improved and now work as you would expect them to.
Basically PageStream 2.2 has all the features that you will need to do
Desktop Publishing on the Amiga, simpler and faster than either IBM or Mac.
If I was to say much more about the program, you would probably all start
wondering what Soft-L ogic had paid me, but credit is certainly due to them
for this excellent update to a very good program, which is very reasonably
priced.
The policy of Soft-Logic to send FREE UPDATES to each original purchaser
for each revision of a version is to be applauded. Since the release of
version 1.5, I have lost count of the number of updates sent, but they were
many and must have cost Soft-Logic many hundreds of thousands of dollars in
trying to keep a quality product in the hands of you the end user. It is a
pity that not all software manufacturers have the same policy, though most
of the Australian ones do adhere to the above religiously.
I noticed that on the release version of 2.2 (but not on the update - due
to space restrictions), there is a cute template that allows you to print
out what each character in a font will print as well as some sample text in
different sizes. This template uses the TAG facility to enable the
printout to be used and although not that easy to use is a very worthwhile
addition to PageStream that has let me see what characters are available in
every font that I possess; the only drawback is the length of time it
takes to print out 200+ fonts - in excess of 10 hours.
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