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Written by Tim Herzog
Produced by Two Bits Worth
778 Hague Avenue
Saint Paul, MN 55104
(612) 227-2920
Email: herzo005@gold.tc.umn.edu
Shareware: $20.00
Make checks payable to Two Bits Worth
Background
It seems that traditionally printed letterheads are fast becoming cumbersome and too expensive. In my case, I’ve got a great-looking two-color letterhead on nice paper, and I’ve used it about six times in the past year. Why? Everything I write these days is FAXed. There’s little point in using my expensive letterhead for faxes since the recipient can’t enjoy my wonderful two-color printing or my nice paper. And since the FAX reduces everything to about 216 DPI anyway, even my nice Linotronic output gets lost.
So my solution has been to keep my logo and letterhead in a scrapbook file. When I type a new memo, I just go to the ScrapBook, copy my letterhead, and paste it in at the top of the memo. Presto! No more wasted letterhead! But woe is me, for instead I waste precious disk space. Since I save all my correspondence on disk, and my letterhead graphic is about 45K, I instantly add 45K to each piece of correspondence. Multiply that by about 200 memos, and I've quickly chewed up about 9 Meg just to get my letterhead on the page--the same graphic over and over. There HAS to be a better way.
And now there is. LetterHeader lets you keep a collection of letterheads in the Control Panel. Then when you print a document, you get two extra popup menus in the Print Job dialog box. You can print your letterhead on the first page and/or on the rest of the pages. The popup menu lets you choose which letterhead you want to print. Then, as the document prints, LetterHeader pops your letterhead on to the hard copy. Quick, easy, simple, and fast. You’ll wonder how you did without.
Possible Uses
You can use LetterHeader for all sorts of things in addition to letterheads. Your imagination is the limit. Some possible uses:
LetterHeads, obviously
Automatic Fax information, like a Fax PostIt note.
Placing ornaments and other decorations in the margins.
Draft copies, where the word DRAFT appears diagonally in gray under the text
Installation
Install LetterHeader by dragging it to your System Folder and restarting your machine. System 7.0+ users should put LetterHeader in the Control Panels folder in the System Folder; drag LetterHeader ON TO your System Folder's icon, not INTO your System Folder. If you use an INIT manager such as NOW Startup Manager, you may have to inform it that there’s a new control panel out there. In any case, you did everything correctly if you see the LetterHeader logo appear on startup.
If you bypass LetterHeader (see below), or if LetterHeader couldn’t install itself (for instance, it ran out of memory or you are not running System 6.0.4 or earlier), LetterHeader displays its error icon.
Directions
Whenever you get the print dialog box (the one that comes up just before printing), LetterHeader will add some extra popup menus and graphics that let you specify a letterhead to print on your document. If you haven’t created any LetterHeads, you won’t have any to choose from, so the first thing you should do is create a letterhead or two. You do this by opening the Control Panel desk accessory and clicking on LetterHeader (scroll down to it if necessary). If you are using System 7.0+, open the Control Panels folder and double-click on LetterHeader.
The On/Off buttons control whether LetterHeader is active or not. If it is off, you get no extra options in the Print dialog box, and your letterheads won’t print. You can still use the Control Panel, though.
If Show Startup Icon is selected, the cute icon will display itself when your Macintosh starts up. If you already have too many cute icons displaying themselves, you can turn this off.
If Remember Print Settings is selected, LetterHeader will remember which letterheads you specified last time you printed and use them as defaults the next time you print. If this checkbox is not selected, LetterHeader will default to ‘None’ or no letterheads, and you must respecify a letterhead each time.
Startup bypass keys lets you hold down a key combination while your machine starts to prevent LetterHeader from installing itself. Click the checkboxes of the keys you want to hold down. If you hold down that key combination while LetterHeader tries to load itself, it will abort, and you will get the error icon shown above. If you don’t turn on any keys, you can’t bypass LetterHeader.
The About button displays the credits page.
The list below shows the letterheads you have created. A letterhead consists of the PICT file along with placement and scaling information. Click on the add button to create your first letterhead. LetterHeader asks you to select the PICT file that will be your letterhead. Select a PICT file to get to the letterhead designer dialog box. Note that you don’t have to have a PICT as part of the letterhead, but you must have either a PICT or a text file. You get a mockup of the page along with your letterhead (if you have selected one) in the upper-left corner.
Letterheads can be made up of a PICT graphic and/or text. You can change either one by clicking the PICT and Text buttons. Once you have chosen a PICT graphic and/or text, you can move either of them around on the page by clicking and dragging them, or by clicking them and using the arrow keys while holding down Option.
Clicking Print lets you print a sample of your letterhead. Page Setup lets you change the size and orientation of the page. This is just for use in this dialog box: the actual page size is set by the application's Page Setup command.
Overlay and Underlay control when the letterhead is printed: before or after the program prints each page. Underlay means that the letterhead prints ‘under’ the rest of the page, that is, the letterhead gets printed before the application gets to print. Overlay means that LetterHeader prints your letterhead after the program has finished printing the page. This is important because some programs erase parts of the page as they print, in which case, your letterhead might be 'whited out' if you don't select Overlay. On the other hand, if your letter covers a good part of the page, it might print on top of what the program prints, unless you select Underlay. Use your best judgement and some experimentation to determine which setting works best.
You can set options for your PICT graphic by clicking the PICT button. The PICT setup dialog box appears:
Select a PICT file with the Select button and LetterHeader displays it in the space provided. (If the image is too large to fit in the dialog box, it will be cropped, but will print in full from your application.) You can enlarge and reduce the graphic (which will affect printed size) by setting a different Enlargement/Reduction setting: numbers less than 100 reduce the graphic and numbers larger than 100 enlarge it. Click Clear to remove the PICT from your letterhead.
You can set Text options by clicking the Text button. The Text setup dialog box appears:
Select a text file with the Select button and LetterHeader displays it as it will eventually appear on paper. You can choose a display font with the popup menu and enter a display size. Click Frame if you want a frame drawn around the text. Click Clear to remove the text from your letterhead.
When you're done designing your letterhead, click OK to return to the Control Panel, or Cancel to forget your changes. You will notice that your new letterhead has been added to the list.
To edit a letterhead, double-click its name in the list or select it and click the Edit button.
To delete a letterhead, click the delete button.
To change the order of letterheads in the list, hold down the option key and drag a letterhead to a new location in the list.
Text Files in LetterHeader
The ability to use Text in a Letterhead is a new feature in 1.5. It is NOT meant as a convenience for creating a letterhead that is text only! (If you have a text only letterhead, create it in a drawing program and save it as a PICT.) Rather, text that you add to a letterhead becomes the template for adding information to your letterhead as the job is being printed: "on the fly" information such as fax destination and so forth.
Whatever text file you choose, Letterheader expects it to contain one line for each field of information you want requested during the print job. Each line constitutes the "field name" for the information you want requested. For example, if your text file looks like this:
First Name:
Last Name:
Title:
LetterHeader will ask you for the following fields:
As you compose your text template file, you can provide default information for any field by adding a TAB after the field name and typing the default field value. This is useful for information that never or seldom changes, like your name and your company's name (hopefully your employer doesn't change THAT often). If you want the date, time, or file name to be added by default, enter $D, $T or $F after the tab, as shown in the Text setup dialog box above. Finally, if the first line of the text file begins with a carat (^, shift-6), then the first line is taken to be a title for the entire text. The line "Delivery Information" was set up this way in the example above.
Included with LetterHeader is a sample text file called "LetterHeader Text Template" that demonstrates how to set up a text file for "on the fly" processing. I suggest that you use the sample file as the basis for your own. In any case, the quickest way to see what your template will produce is to use the Select button in the Text setup dialog box and let LetterHeader display how it plans to use it.
Printing With LetterHeader
When you print a document, you will see some additions to your Print dialog box. Two popup menus let you specify letterheads to be added to the print job. The first menu (as indicated by the icon to the left) specifies the letterhead for the first page. The second menu (as indicated by its icon) specifies the letterhead for the second and following pages.
If you don’t want any letterhead printed on either the first or subsequent pages, just choose None from the appropriate menu. Click OK when you have chosen your letterhead and made any other settings that you would normally make in the Print dialog box.
If you chose a letterhead for your first page that had text (see Text Files in LetterHeader above), LetterHeader will ask you for the "on the fly" fields that you requested with a dialog box similar to the one above. Note that this ONLY happens if text is in the letterhead for the first page; nothing will happen if you chose such a letterhead for the second page.
Memory Considerations
Depending on the size of your logo, LetterHeader may run out of memory trying to print it. If this happens, it will beep to let you know that something went wrong. If you are running under System 7.0 or are running MultiFinder, you simply need to give your application more memory. To do this, select the application’s icon and choose Get Info from the File menu. Then raise the application memory size by typing a new number in the Application Memory Size text box. The amount you need to raise it depends on the size of your logo.
EPS Files
A lot of you probably wish that LetterHeader supported EPS files, since your logo was designed in Illustrator or FreeHand. Fortunately, there's a cure for that. It's called PICTuresque, and it's a DA that converts EPS graphics (as well as MacPaint files) to PICT format, leaving all your high-resolution PostScript intact. Two Bits Worth happens to make that one too. If you would like a copy, check your bulletin board service or drop me a note (and an additional check for $20.00) at the address listed above.
Compatibility
LetterHeader works by patching the Print Manager in Apple's toolbox. The difficulty arises in that every program, not to mention every print driver, has its own peculiarities. Additionally, whenever Apple comes out with a new protocol or print technology or something, everyone has to scramble to maintain compatibility.
I've tried my best to make LetterHeader as universally compatible as possible. However, there are some programs and system environments for which it is simply impossible to achieve compatibility. PLEASE TRY LETTERHEADER WITH ALL YOUR FAVORITE PROGRAMS TO MAKE SURE IT WORKS BEFORE PAYING FOR IT! I can't guarantee compatibility with your programs or future releases of your programs, and I don't want anyone to be disappointed. If you do experience a problem that I haven't noted below, please drop me a line and perhaps I can work on a fix.
In particular, I've been informed of the following problems:
General: With many programs, the letterhead doesn't print. Many of these programs "erase" the blank page before they start to print on it (which a program isn't supposed to do). If LetterHeader has already printed its graphic (i.e., if Underlay is selected), the graphic gets erased. Selecting Overlay is the best workaround. I'm not aware of any program for which this solution doesn't work. If you find one, let me know.
Disappearing Popup Menus in Print dialog box: With some programs and print drivers, the Print dialog box would expand to hold LetterHeader's popup menus, but the menus wouldn't appear. However, you could click where they were supposed to be, and the menus would "pop up." This used to be a more wide spread problem than it is now. As of 1.5.4, LetterHeader does not have this problem with any print drivers that I know of, including the Apple Fax Modem drivers 1.5.5 and later. The only applications that still have this problem are those in the 4D product family from ACI US. For some unknown and frustratingly stupid reason, 4D removes LetterHeader's Event Manager trap, which it needs to draw its menus properly. I wrote to ACI US asking assistance and never got a response. Sorry, 4D users; if something patches a System trap, an application is supposed to leave it there. There's very little I can do. If anyone has this problem with any other program or print driver, let me know.
Tiny logos: With some programs, the logo prints, but prints very small, perhaps at 25% of its intended size. I know that some versions of Excel have this problem, and I think I remember some similar reports about a few others. This is because the program is artificially adjusting the page reduction to achieve higher resolution printing. Unfortunately, there is no way for LetterHeader to detect if the program or the user has altered the page reduction. The best workaround is to compensate for the smaller size by enlarging the logo in LetterHeader with the Enlargement/Reduction option. You might want to make two otherwise identical letterheads; one for programs with this problem and one for those without.
Non-standard print drivers: Some programs print by bypassing all or part of the Print Manager. These programs may or may not use the standard toolbox routine for displaying the Print dialog box; they may instead display their own Print dialog box. In the latter case, LetterHeader can't display its popup menus since the program isn't using the standard Print Manager interface. Again, there's very little that can be done if programs don't follow Apple's conventions. Certain versions of PageMaker will have this problem if you're using the Aldus print driver and not the Apple print driver. I've also heard that Word 6 uses its own print dialog box to maintain interface compatibility with Windows, but I'm not sure if this can be overriden by a Preference setting some place. I steadfastly refuse to succumb to Microsoft's demeaning marketing strategy, so I'm sticking with Word 5.
