¢DTP Atari8¢¢Part 3¢¢By Eric Bemrose¢¢¢ Dot Magic is a text processing program written by 'The Cryptic Wizard', and is heavily based on Daisy Dot II by Roy Goldman. Like DDII, Dot Magic produces high quality proportional text using the same special NLQ fonts. However printing does seem to be noticeably slower than DDII, which is not fast to begin with.¢¢ It is a compiled Turbo Basic program that needs a minimum 64k to run. It supports the Epson EX/FX/JX/LX/RX/MX and compatibles, the Star Gemini SG/NL/NP/NX, and the NEC Prowriter.¢¢ The program is in the public domain and is available from most PD libraries. Further Dot Magic documentation and utilities (not in the public domain) are available direct from the author.¢¢ The disk contains the text processor and printer configuration files, NLQ fonts, two picture files used in the documents, a font sampler listing and six pages of basic documentation in Dot Magic format. The fonts have been created with the Daisy Dot editor and so can be used by both programs.¢¢ Like Daisy Dot, Dot Magic requires a pre-formatted text file (printed to disk) created with any word processor. Dot Magic also has its own commands that must begin and end with a period (.).¢¢ The font/format command allows the font selection to be changed, boldface or centered printing to be selected, or to change the character spacing or density in any combination as required.¢¢ The heading command will underline, boldface or centre the text, seperately or all at once. Inverse text will be printed with underlining, this is the only way to underline less than a whole line of text.¢¢ The link file command will join text files together to create a long document.¢¢ The include picture command will load standard or compressed files in Graphics 7.5/8/9/10. The picture will be printed as a positive centred image in size two unless these default values are altered. The picture can be blocked left or right in three sizes and negative if required.¢¢ From the main menu, the print option allows selection of font and text file. Print density and character spacing can also be changed. The boldface selection is in fact double width print as on DDII. The centre command centres all text. All these commands can be overridden by local commands in the text file.¢¢ Three page lengths can be selected: 18 lines to suit 3 x 5 inch index cards; 66 lines for 8.5 x 11 inch paper; and 84 lines for 8.5 x 14 inch paper. The output is fixed at 6 lines per inch.¢¢ Page width can be set in inches, this determines the page centre and line length.¢¢ All pages, a selection of pages, or odd and even pages may be selected for printing, with up to 99 copies at a time.¢¢ The main menu also offers a typewriter mode, where text can be entered and edited, before being sent out to the printer a line at a time. Ideal for experimentation.¢¢ A labelling mode is also provided for creating up to five lines of text on 1 x 3 inch labels¢¢ And finally, there is the picdump mode, which will print a picture to the same parameters previously mentioned.¢¢ As you can see Dot Magic has its advantages and disadvantages when compared to Daisy Dot II, and therefore it forms a useful adjunct to, but is not a replacement of the original program. Another point against it is that, with my copy at least, it suffers from a tendency to 'hang up' during printing for no apparent reason.¢¢¢-----¢¢¢Ed: Dot-Magic! is available from the NOSAUG PD Library as Disk U39.¢
