| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ PAO/PRESSE ★ SCREEN MASTER (KDS ELECTRONICS) ★ |
| SCREEN MASTER (KDS ELECTRONICS) (Amstrad Cent Pour Cent) | Wysiwyg Printing (Amstrad Action) | SCREEN MASTER (KDS ELECTRONICS) (Computing with the Amstrad) |
DAVE DORN draws some conclusions on a new display package ALMOST as soon as a computer reaches the market art poster packages are available for it. These are usually either like Rainbird's Art Studio - a straightforward on-screen canvas - or follow the Tas-Sign approach to producing text-only output. With Screen Master, KDS Electronics has attempted to combine the two approaches in one program. Unusually, it is disc only, so owners of unexpanded CPC464s are not catered for. They may not be missing much. Screen Master is described on the front of the thin and poorly produced manual as a poster and document creator, and inside as not being designed for one particular function. This is true, and I can't think of another program with the potential Screen Master has for producing lively and interesting poster-sized printouts. Utilities are available which will dump pre-prepared screen files to the printer in large sizes - they're not too difficult to write in Basic - and the Advanced Art Studio type packages will produce the screens in the first place. Dumps from the latter tend to be on the small side, and so aren't really suitable for big eye-catching displays. So how does Screen Master combine the two jobs? The process of producing your poster or document is simple enough. The screen comprises a work area across the bottom of which is a menu bar. Keying 2 pops up a menu box from which to choose the function you require. Nutty numerics You may enter text in a 25 character field, with no processing functions beyond the Delete key, draw freehand, draw a box (they mean a square), draw an oblong, and edit either the graphics fonts or the screen. Entering text is easy, but very limited in application. For instance, there are two upper case alpha fonts, and one numeric. The latter is associated with alphabetical keys, so to type 1 you press A (must be upper case) for 2 press B, 3 is C, and so on. This is incredible! There are 20 numeric keys on my CPC6128, and not one of them is utilised for the numeric font. How silly can you get? Likewise, the fonts do not produce lower case characters in the same style, but instead print in the standard Amstrad typeface we all know and love. However, all is not lost, as there is a facility to redefine the characters, which is why Edit Graphics exists at the bottom of the Work menu. I don't understand why more fonts aren't supplied, nor why their organisation isn't simpler and more intuitive. Screen Master itself takes around the 14K mark, leaving plenty of room for fancy character sets. On the plus side, the text can be made virtually any size by a system whereby you define the size of a box on the screen, and Screen Master expands or compresses the text to fit the defined size. Unfortunately no attempt is made to smooth slopes and corners, and the bigger the text, the chunkier it becomes. If you want smooth edges, you will have to tidy the screen up yourself. Freehand drawing is done with graphics characters. You place the cursor where you want it, and scroll through the character set using f2 and f3. Pressing Control and one of the cursor keys then prints the selected graphic in the desired direction. I can't help thinking that this is a wee bit agricultural, but it is nonetheless quite effective if you have edited the graphics characters into something useful. Magnified view Screen editing is a pixel-by-pixel affair, using function keys to move the cursor a character cell at a time. The arrow keys act inside the current cell, and the pixel under the cursor can be set or unset with the Control or Shift keys respectively. Thankfully, there is a magnified display of the current position, but it only shows one character cell, making editing across boundaries a bit awkward. Other functions accessible from the various menus are fairly standard block handling (rotate, flip, invert, copy, move, and so on) and screen printing mode (opaque, transparent, inverse) commands which mimic their counterparts in other art packages. The filing command menu is comprehensive, allowing saving, loading, and merging of saved files, both Screen Master format and others, as well as saving and loading of user-defined graphics characters. There are also Erase File and Erase Backups options, as well as a Save Program for saving your customised version. That's very civilised and useful, so you should never need to use your master disc after first installing the program on a working disc. Priorities Screen Designer is straightforward in operation as long as you remember a few simple rules. Always place any pictures first, then text, insert foreground texturing, then background texturing, and finish off with any boxes and borders you wish to incorporate. That way, you won't suffer from text erasing any area of background or borders if it has either to be moved or re-sized. I speak from bitter experience. At some time during the creation of your work you may wish to rotate a portion of the screen through 90 degrees. Indeed you can dc it, but because of the way the screen pixels are organised in Mode 2, any text in the block which is small and narrow will be rendered illegible. The only way to avoid the problem is to make sure the text is fairly wide. The texturing effects are something unique in my experience. Both background (paper) and foreground (ink) textures are applied in the same manner. After selecting either foreground or background, you are prompted to open a window on the part of the screen to which the texture is to be applied. After that you choose the texture pattern, and it is done, washing only the ink in foreground mode, and only the paper in background mode. I was quite impressed with this, having had textured fills run amok in various art packages. Screen Master handles this admirably. It is very easy to go overboard, so exercise restraint and remember that there is no undo function - in my opinion a serious omission. And so to the printout. Having finished your design and saved the screen to disc, keying 8 takes you into the printer menu. Now, it seems reasonable to assume that it would be possible to dump to a standard A4-sized sheet, and in portrait mode, in other words like a book with the top and bottom of the document on the short sides of the paper. The default mode is landscape -down the page - and the unfortunate fact is that, should you wish to print on just one sheet of A4 paper, you will have to print this way, not across. So unless you judge things very finely, particularly with regard to the problem with rotating text, you're not going to be able to produce that super dooper cover for the club newsletter. Selecting the set-up printer option, four choices have to be made: Across/down, height (x1, x2, x4, x8), strips (how many sheets side by side), and either 8 or 7 bit port. Juggling with the height and strip options can give rise to some interesting and weird effects. However, once you have hit on the right combination the results are reasonable for the larger sizes - which are read from a distance - but a little coarse for smaller pieces. The overall look is very much computer-produced, being more or less a straight blow-up of the pixels on the screen, zig-zag diagonals and all. KDS has got the right idea, and has very nearly managed to implement a good package. There is great potential in the concept, but some very serious omissions and design faults let Screen Master down. In my opinion it does not have the look or feel of something for which the asking price is nearly £30 - under half that would be nearer the mark. It is quite good for larger posters, although the screen design section is not what it could be. Preparing a screen with one of the more powerful art packages certainly overcomes that drawback, but rather defeats the object of the program. Likewise, for posters composed mostly of alphanumerics, you would get more pleasing output with a Tas-Sign/Signwriter type program. CWTA |
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