Magnetic Pages Article | 1993-07-22 | 13KB | 51 lines
MPARTICLE
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[6";32;41m Revamping Amy PD Review
[0m& With this issue the magazine's been&completely redone which has freed up&about 80k of disk space and hopefully&made it a bit better to look at and
use.& In the first three issues of it the&Contents button in the menu bar which&I've now called Parent was not put to&full use. It's able to take you&backwards and forwards through the&different sections of a magazine but I&thought that having a button called&Contents that takes you to different§ions in the magazine could be&confusing - it's easy to get lost in a&disk magazine. I also didn't fully&understand it's advantages with text&searching until I'd nearly finished&the first issue. You are able to&text-search just a section of a
Magnetic Pages magazine.& This feature has now been fully&implemented. By changing it's name to&Parent and adding the Contents button&at the bottom of the page while still&retaining the Index as in the previous&issues I think it now gives the best&of both worlds. Apart from Parent&being a strange label to have in a&magazine I think this is about as good&as I can get the magazine's feel&considering the way Magnetic Pages is%designed. Let me know what you think.& And so to the look of APDR. I'm not&as happy with it's result as I am with&the interface but it's better than the&old style with all the fractal&patterns. I've also got the shading&consistent. This was mucked up in the&first issue due to changing the&background colours at the last minute&from dark to light so it looked&readable on a TV screen. When I did&the first issue I also forgot to make&the shadows fall in the same direction&as ANSI text shading. All these things&I took into account with this update&and then when I'd finished all the&graphics and the magazine's general&articles I noticed that the Magnetic&Pages system windows such as the one&used for Help were now shaded&incorrectly. Groan. I considered doing&them all again but I can't see any way&to get them right while still using a&pale coloured page and background.
Sigh.& The buttons don't move as well as&the old ones but I think they look&prettier. These need more work on but&that will have to wait until a future&issue. One of the ways I've saved&space with the graphics, other than by&dropping the fractal patterns, is by&only using four colours for all the&magazine's titles and buttons - they&were eight colours in the previous&issues. This may make them load a bit
quicker too.& The fancy shading on the large&text, (actually they're graphics - you&can only use Topaz 8 text in Magnetic&Pages), is achieved by picking up the&text as a brush in Deluxe Paint,&making it white and stamping it down,&changing it to black and stamping it&down again two pixels to the right of&and below the white text and then&changing it again to the colour you&want for the text and placing it in&the middle of the two previous images.& The world on the Contents page by&the way is taken from the first&issue's front page as I liked the way
it looked there.
Producing APDR
& When beginning a new issue of the&magazine I start with a working&version which doesn't contain any&reviews but includes most of the other&articles such as the Submissions&column already done and with ones like&the Editorial set up so that there's&only the text to be added. A palette&is then decided on for all the&non-review articles to give the issue&it's own look. The exception to this&is the Adverts column which has the&same colours for every issue.&Re-colouring is a bit boring as for&each article I first load in the&palette, (a brush made in Deluxe&Paint), choose it as the palette for a&page, copy that page's palette to all&the pages in the article, (it's a&single menu selection happily), delete&the brush as it's not needed now, save&the article and then PowerPack it. I&must seek out a comprehensive macro&program to automate this. Can anyone&suggest a good mouse click and
key-press recorder?& And so to writing a review. Having&seen some software that looks good or&fits into one of the issue's features&I test it as thoroughly as I can - on&the A600 for Workbench 2 compatibility&and on the A500 for 1.3 compatibility&and to see if it runs in a half meg.&and in one meg. For the review's Info&box I try to find out as much as I can&about the software and it's authors&from what's written in the software&and the documentation. Demo's and&music I sometimes video as pausing the&scrolls and credits makes copying down
stuff from them a lot easier.& The percentages are worked out by&first deciding on a value for how&ambitious the software is - typically&this is between 80% and 100%. I then&deduct points from this for poor&implementation. When I feel I've&refined this method enough I'll&include all of it in the reviews so&producers can see where they've lost
marks.& I then try to rip out the graphics&I want to use in the review. The&easiest to get are those where the&producer of the software has&conveniently placed them in IFF format&in a drawer called pics. The hardest&are those using multiple graphic&formats on the same screen. Assuming I&get something suitable I usually cut&them down to a little bit less than&quarter size and if possible into&eight colours or less, else it's&sixteen colours. This is both to save&space and also so that the graphics&are only an indication of what the&software looks like as I don't want to&spoil your appreciation of the real&thing should you see it. The exception&to this is the icons which I always&try and include if the software comes&with them. These are to jog your&memory - you may already have the&software but have forgotten about it.&I betcha can't find it again though.&From this issue onwards all the icons&shown will be in the default Workbench&2 colours of black, white, grey and
page.& There's one other consideration&when using graphics as palettes and&that's the menu colours. I use the&following convention - at least I will&be from this issue onwards. If some of&the previous issue's menus were a bit&hard to read it was because I hadn't
& The other colour registers are not&used in the menus. If I was using a&dark colour 0 I would have to switch&all the above around. To get a&picture's palette correct I load it in&as a brush, swap the colours around&until they look right on the monitor&(and the TV), re-map the brush and&save it. The only other thing to do&with graphics is to create the
review's large text heading.& With the graphics ripped and&converted and the review written it's&just a case of putting them all&together in Magnetic Pages - the&quickest part by far of the whole&exercise. I have two pages already set&up for the reviews. The first one has&the info box on plus a column ready to&take text and the second page is set&up with two columns of text. If I need&more pages of text I just make a copy&of this second page. The Contents and&Index buttons are already there too -&they're graphic buttons - not part of the text.& Text and all the graphics are then&loaded in and the review's heading is&placed on the first page and copied to&the second. Then the number of pages&in the article is expanded until&there's room for everything. The&graphics are then placed where I want&them after reducing the text boxes to
make room for them.& Then the text is formatted. This&usually means "re-formatting" a lot of¶graphs to fix up KindWords' habit&(or ASCII's?) of putting a carriage&return every 256 characters. All the¶graphs are then justified and any&text centred if it needs to be. Then&the palettes for the pages are chosen.&If there's a picture on a page then&the palette is taken from that. For&text only pages it's taken from the&best looking page in the article that&has an eight colour picture on. I&would like to have the same text and&paper colours throughout a review&though getting this right could be&very time consuming. I may try to do"it from this issue onwards anyway.& Finally the text for the menu-bar&is added, copied to all the pages, and&then the page numbers are added. The&finished article is then saved and
PowerPacked.& Repeat the above until it fills a&disk. Then the Index and Review pages&are fixed up so their buttons (the&arrow ones) take you where they&should. More buttons than are needed&are already in place here as it's&easier to delete the ones you don't&want than to create a new one for each
article or review.& Hopefully by this time I've already&knocked up a picture in Turbo Silver&suitable for the front page and ripped&an (old) tune from somewhere that's&suitable as background music and&doesn't take up huge amounts of disk&space. I use old PD music from a music&disk reviewed in the magazine as using&new stuff hardly seems fair to the&composer. And if any New Zealand Amiga&composers are reading this then please
check the Adverts column.& And that dear readers is a rather&simplified description of how Amy PD&and Shareware Review is put together.&If you are thinking of producing a&disk magazine or something similar&just make sure you know how much work&is involved. It's the collection of&the text, graphics and sounds that's&the hard part, not the compiling of&the magazine. Never underestimate how&much time you can spend on getting&these things right. It's fun and very&satisfying if you're happy with the&end product, but it's a whole lot of&work. Even so I expect I'll still be&producing the magazine in a year or&so. It could be a lot better that it&is now so look forward to continuing"improvements in style and content.& And enjoy the reviews of the
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