| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ PAO/PRESSE ★ PAGE PUBLISHER ★ |
| PAGE PUBLISHER (c) MICROSYSTEMS (CPC Infos) | PAGE PUBLISHER (Amstrad Action) |
All the serious software worth buying came out years ago - didn't it? That's what PAT McDONALD thought, too. Any 'home' computer worth its sal: must be able to perform genuinely useful tasks as well as play games. The CPC is well served for the traditional computer tasks of word-processing. databases and spreadsheets. But some tasks. such as desk top publishing, are not so readily available. Stuart McColl of Glasgow has been work-ing on a DTP program for the CPC for two years. It has been designed to edit and printout an A4 page, and uses icons ana pull down menus to best effect. Although here at A A we've had glimpes of the program since late last year, it is only now that the final program is going on sale. What you get It must be said at once that the contents of the envelope you receive are meagre. One flimsy manual consisting of stapled together A4 sheets (I understand that it's being revised at present), and a solitary disk doesn't constitute heavyweight documentation. On the disk are just two files, a boot, program and the main machine code program. But a good feature of this Spartan arrangement is that the loading time for the program is minimal, merely a couple of seconds. Once the Page Publisher is up and running you are presented with the only screen used. Everything is performed from the same 'canvas' area This can make the program a little tedious to work with, but again the overall effect is to enhance the speed, because the Page Publisher does not have to continually wipe out and redraw screens.
Pressing keys or using a joystick moves cursor around the canvas, which can be set to move at three different speeds. It is Intelligent,' which means ;f it is continuously pushed in a direction, then it accelerates. I must admit that even the very fast was easily controllable (bet we have arcade freaks writing in to complain! - ed.). Size matters DTP deals with two different media: text and graphics. Taking the text first, throe different fonts are available at once for your immediate use. Two of these look very attractive, while the other is the standard Amstrad one. No doubt you will want some different ones though, for which eventuality a font editor is provided. This can handle characters of up to 17X17 area, which is easily better than the standard CPC 8X8 font and gives Qualitas a brisk jog for its money. The only problem lies in the fact that because the program uses mode two. pixels are half the size in their x axis compared to their y axis (see accompanying illus tration). While we're on the subject of size, it's probably worth noting that text can be printed either in 'standard' 1 X1 size (which means whatever size it was designed to), any square from 2 X 2 to 5 X 5, or variable. Variable means you could could have say a 1 X 5 text size, or 5 X 1, or any variation. This really squeezes some performance out of the three fonts. My final word on the text usages of the program are to do with the 'column theory. Rather than having to mark up boxed areas and filling them with text, you simply select a right and left margin, and start as far down the page as you want. Text is slapped down where you have indicated, saving lots of messing about with shrinking or enlarging a box to the right size. Loading text into a column is handled competently, though overflowing text looks a bit messy. Pictures with your text? Page Publisher is designed to be able to be used to design electronic circuits. As a result of this, various electronic module icons are preloaded into the program. Alongside them are the more usual pattern shading, used for filling in large areas of blank space with stipples and effects that are easier on the eye than pure white or black. There are 50 preset patterns in all. Editing them is simple enough, and the pain: option to slap them down onto the page is no great task. There are ten different sizes of paintbrush. Of similar purpose and use is the spraycan option. The purpose for using this is to paint in a similar fashion to an aerosol-producing random splattered dots of ink onto the screen wherever you might want them. The thickness of the nozzle has three settings, as does the paint factor (lots of, not much and virtually none). Most of the more basic kind of illustration is supplied by the Page Publisher. This comprises everything from line drawing, through drawing regular polygons, circles, and elipses. Rectangles are also no problem. There are a total of ten different pen widths available, which should be enough for most, people. Only weak feature There is a facility for loading in screens from outside the program - lor instance, from the Advanced Art Studio. This can be accomplished in all three screen modes, but is not without it's snags. For a start, approximately the bottom third of the screen is not loaded. And what is loaded is slightly compressed in the y axis, so circles don't look like circles anymore. It's a pity really, and it's the only weak feature of the Page Publisher's graphics handling. As a final note. Til just say that the resolution of the program is 814 in the x axis, and 576 in the y axis. Printouts can be done in A5 as well as A4, which should convince you that this resolution can produce some very effective results. Using it It must be said that when you actually sit down and use the program, its way of working is very easy to understand. After pulling down a menu option from the top of the screen, you can either use the movement keys to select the item you want, or alternatively select it menu-fashion by pressing the letter displayed at the side of it. Rather than having always to go to the menu bar at the top, certain very commonly used commands are held in a special menu, which is pulled down onto the screen when esc is pressed. The program works with a joystick, and both the numeric keypad and the cursor keys. However, the former are much better, because you can get diagonals. The f5 key is the "fire button or Execute key. This can be locked on if needed. I can see this program becoming one of the standard software packages on the CPC. This is not because it is the best: Step Press has many more features. The reason is a) the extremely attractive price, and b) the far. that it is up to a reasonable standard and is capable or producing worthwhile pages. If you want to learn about DTP and be able to design some professional looking pages without too much fuss or too much expenditure, look no further. Page Publisher is a true budget offering, offering fair performance for little cash outlay. AA |
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