NEWS STATION¢------------¢¢Reeve Software ¢29 W 150 Old Farm Lane¢Warrenville¢IL 60555¢USA¢¢48K disk, Atari 800/XL/XE¢¢Reviewed by Allan J. Palmer¢¢¢Creative Software¢¢One of the more original non-game software products to appear for the Atari 8-bit range in recent years was Broderbund's Print Shop, which allowed the creative production of greeting cards, signs, banners and the like. Text and graphics were mixed with the art being supplied in the form of icons which were positioned about the page layout. However, even with all its good points, there were still some things which Print Shop did not cater for. Signs, cards, etc created by Print Shop are not saved to disk - once you had printed your masterpiece, that was it, you could not reload it at a later session to tinker with again. Additionally, there was limitation in the fonts used for text - no mixture of upper and lower case, no mixture of fonts (at least not without fiddly printing, repositioning paper then designing and printing again...). If you want to combine lots of text (in various sizes and fonts) with graphics for the production of a newsletter or similar, then Print Shop has its limitations.¢¢¢DeskTop Publishing become one of the "hot" microcomputer buzz words at the end of the 1980s. News Station from Reeve Software attempts to provide owners of Atari 8-bit computers with that capability. If you want to produce a newsletter, or a document which is primarily text with graphics inserted, then News Station is worth considering.¢¢¢Overview¢¢News Station is supplied on disk in a simple clear plastic case - basic packaging, no frills. The instructions are probably the weakest part of the package, comprising of 5 single-sided typed pages stapled together with an additional 1 page addendum for the latest version (3.0). The instructions are presented as a series of descriptions of what the various control-key commands do. It is disappointing that the instructions do not include either an example of output from the package, or a tutorial to explain the features. Clarification of some commands could be provided. One immediately noticeable omission is in regard to the loading instructions - you are told to insert the disk then switch on your computer; you also need to disable BASIC by holding down the Option key if you have built-in BASIC, as on the 130XE. A small point, but it can be irritating.¢¢¢When the disk boots, the Plate Editor program loads. This is one of the two main programs on the disk, the other being the Press. In order to overcome the memory limitations of a 48K machine, to store and manipulate the data which makes up a full page, News Station works on one-eighth of a page at a time. Each eighth is referred to as a plate, thus the Plate Editor is used to add graphics and text to each plate. When you are satisfied with the content of the plate, it may be saved to disk. When you wish to print a page, use [Escape] to exit from the Plate Editor and automatically load the Press. Basically, the Press displays a directory of plate files on a disk and allows you to specify which plate should appear in which position on the page.¢¢¢The Plate Editor¢¢The Plate Editor operates in two modes, either Text or Graphics. [Control-T] or [Control-G] toggles between the modes respectively. In text mode, different fonts may be selected. Besides the standard Atari font, the control-character graphics may be selected, or a font may be loaded from disk by the [Control-F] command. There are 6 sample fonts included on the News Station disk. Unfortunately, these are not named or depicted in the instructions; (they are: Computer, Greek, Block, Cursive, Square and HighQuality). Having loaded a font, you activate it for use with the [Control-U] command. Inverse characters may also be used in any font. Character heights and widths may be adjusted by [Control-H] and [Control-W] commands - sizes range from 1 to 8 giving 64 possible combinationsfor each character. Thus, (with a bit of patience) you may mix fonts and character size on a single line. Additional control over text positioning may be achieved by adjusting the spacing between lines, and the movement up or down the plate in scan line increments. In text mode, you are given a screen on which you can type text where you want. Alternatively, the [Control-V] command allows you to load an ASCII text file (created by a word processor) to a plate - however, if the text goes off the right side or the bottom of the plate, then it is not used in the final product.¢¢In Graphics mode, you are able to use 3 types of graphics, namely Print Shop icons, standard 62 sector picture files produced by art software such as MicroPainter or MicroIllustrator, and direct drawings (by joystick or touch tablet). With the range of Print Shop icons available , your graphics work should know no bounds. Icons may be placed on a plate in one of three sizes - the smallest about one-twelfth of a plate, the largest about one-half width. Picture files require a '.PIC' extender. Only the top 5/6 of a picture fits onto a plate (a plate is 52 sectors long when saved to disk). My initial experimentation with the package leads me to believe the best approach is to use Graphics mode on a blank plate and position your graphic images (from whatever source) before switching to Text mode and adding your words around the artwork.¢¢¢General Points¢¢Plates may be saved to disk with the [Control-S] command, they are reloaded with [Control-R]. To my mind, the disk access commands could be made more user-friendly. There is no facility to get a full directory of a disk in a particular drive. The latest version does include a facility to load plates from either drive 1 or 2, but still only saves to drive 1. If you try to load a plate file from a disk with no plate files, the program locks up and you have to reboot!¢¢If you want to create a banner across two plates, or to flow columns down over the border of two plates, I find the best method is to save your initial plate, then using it as a guide, in type-over mode, add your new text, or graphics.¢¢¢The Press¢¢When you want to print a complete page, load the Press. This program initially asks you to specify your printer type - printer drivers for Star SG-10, ProWriter, Epson RX80 (Panasonic, Citizen), Epson MX80 (Gemini 10X) and Atari XMM801 are included. Version 3.0 of News Station now includes a further option to allow you to build a custom printer driver which may then be saved to your program disk and subsequently used by the selection of "Other" from the Printer menu. Having selected your printer, you will be prompted to insert a plate data disk into drive 1, when the disk is accessed, the names of the plate files on it are displayed down the left hand side of the screen, with a page grid (divided into eighths) appears on the right hand side. Using the up and down arrow keys and [Return], you may move up and down the list of plate files and select the plate you wish to appear in the next available position on the page grid. You may use the same plate as many times as you like on one page, and obviously, you can save a blank plate from the Plate Editor in order to print blank plates in the Press. As yet, I have not been able to determine if there is a means to change the content of the plate grid if you get part way through and realise you have the wrong plate in the wrong place. When you select the final plate on a page, the program automatically begins the printing process without any pause for user acceptance or confirmation.¢¢¢Summary¢¢As noted above, there are some rough patches to News Station, primarily in the area of documentation and examples, with perhaps some improvements necessary in user-interface. Like most American software (e.g. Print Shop), the page size created is 11" x 8.5", i.e. not A4 format. This may or may not be a problem for you. The package does provide for a range of creative output, and if you want to create a newsletter, instruction sheet, or some varied combination of text and graphics, then if you have the patience to compose your plates carefully, News Station will certainly satisfy your requirements. In the short time that I have experimented with the package, I have found it to be quite a powerful piece of software for the 8-bit Atari. Obviously the output is not the same as something produced from a ST with Fleet Street Publisher and a laser printer, but what are your needs? If you have a 48K 8-bit Atari, a disk drive and a printer, then News Station may be all you need to embark on DeskTop Publishing.¢¢*** You may have read the letter from Alan Reeve elsewhere on the News-Disk about his no longer supporting the Atari. I suggest you check with Reevesoft if News Station is still available. If not, you'll have to look for 2nd hand copies. ***¢
