★ APPLICATIONS ★ BUREAUTIQUE ★ PRINT ENHANCER|Amstrad Action) ★ |
| Print Enhancer | Applications Bureautique |
Protype has been branded as the best utility a nine-pin printer owner could buy. That's as maybe, but £30? A bit steep isn't it? With the more modest price of 75p, Print Enhancer can do everything that Protype can (almost). Print Enhancer is a suite of three programs, all tied up under one main menu. These are: Word Processor, Font Designer and Print File. Each those options uses speak for themselves, but there's more to them than meets the eye (like Transformers). Word processor I wouldn't call it a word processor, more of a text editor. It allows most of the things that a normal word-processor can do except word wrap and justification. Because it's a print enhancing package, a second and third character set is built in. The second set is merely the use of characters 127-255 while the third is for graphics such as pretty boxes, etc. Embedded control codes can be used to set the font, the justify style, margin size and column width. With the use of these, a page can be printed with two or three columns. The best bit is, no 8-bit printer port is needed to print the graphics! Font designer The main menu has six options: Edit font, Global change, Edit info, Edit options, Load/Save font.
The font designer itself works more or less like a character set designer, except you can define characters upto 28 pins in size (the normal draft font is eighteen pins). Characters can even be italicized or emboldened. Print file The final and most important bit. ASCII files can be printed, mixing upto five RAM-based fonts. The printing does take a while, but the finished results can look stunning. An options menu lets you change the page length and width (in inches) so a large file can be left printing with continuous paper while you take the dog for a walk. Print Enhancer was written to overcome the 'awful NLQ typeface' in Geoff's DMP2000 printer. Not only has the DMP2000 NLQ font been overcome, but every NLQ font on any 9-pin printer. I had planned to buy Pro type, I don't think I'll bother now.
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