PowerPage v1.2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ by Richard Fairhurst (c) Robot PD Library 1991 Introduction to PowerPage ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1.0 WHAT IS POWERPAGE? PowerPage is a DTP system for the Amstrad CPC. It has more features than any other program in its price range, yet unlike other programs, it works even with 64k CPCs. What is more, you can freely copy it (see copyright details). PowerPage lets you edit an A5 page with full graphics capabilities. It is WYSIWYG - i.e. what you see on the screen is what's printed out. No other program in a similar price range lets you create a professional page so easily. 2.0 FIRST STEPS Insert your PowerPage disc and type RUN"DISC". A copyright screen will appear on the screen: press any key for the main menu. A whole host of options will appear: these are all programs you can run. The programs from "2" onwards are described in the utilities instructions. We are interested in option 1, the main PowerPage program, so press 1. After a while, the screen will clear, a menu bar will be displayed at the bottom, and a cross-hair cursor will be visible at the top left. PowerPage is now ready. 2.1 USING POWERPAGE The page, which is A5 in size when printed out, is 70 lines deep and 80 columns across. You can see all 80 columns at once, but only 24 lines. Your cross-hair cursor is moved around the screen with the cursor keys. Hold down SHIFT, and it will move more quickly. If you go off the top or the bottom of the screen, the screen will scroll and a bit more of the page will come into view, unless of course you are already at the top or bottom of the whole page! You start off at the top of the page. You can just type in anything you like and it will be displayed on the page. You can use the DEL and ENTER keys as normal, too. At the bottom of the page is a menu bar, reading: (c) Robot PD Block Text Import Options File Page Style One of the options will be highlighted. You can move the highlight by holding down CTRL and moving cursor left or right. To select an option, hold down CTRL and press COPY. When you have done this, you can't move the cursor around etc. until the option has finished. 2.2 DRAWING FACILITIES If you want to draw something, you can use PowerPage's built-in drawing facilities. Try moving the cursor somewhere and pressing COPY (without SHIFT or CTRL). Then move the cursor around - a line will follow you. To fix it down, press COPY again. You can do the same with a rectangle - just press SHIFT with COPY. Or, if you want to draw an ellipse, press SHIFT and TAB (a rectangle will be shown until you press SHIFT+TAB a second time, when the ellipse will be drawn). TAB on its own just plots a point. Finally, to fill in an area, press CTRL-TAB. Make sure that there aren't any gaps in the shape you want to fill in! 2.3 BLOCK GRAPHICS You can use block graphics as well as normal text. Just type any letter from A to P while holding down CTRL and the block graphic will appear. (You can change the graphics selection from Options on the menu bar - details in the Advanced Instructions). 3.0 THE MENU BAR This section deals with the options accessed from the menu bar. To select an option, just move the highlight left/right with CTRL+cursor left/right, and press CTRL/COPY. Note that you should keep the PowerPage disc in the drive at all times, unless you need to load or save something (in which case put it in when you are asked for the filename and replace it after the operation), otherwise the program will probably stop! 3.1 THE BLOCK MENU You must have drawn a rectangle around an area using SHIFT and COPY first, but not fixed it down by pressing SHIFT+COPY a second time. Instead select this option. You will be given the choice of Reverse (reverse the area's colours), Wipe (clear it), X-flip (flip it horizontally) or Y-flip (flip it vertically). Just press the initial letter of the option you want (which will be in capitals) to select it. Details of "Cut" are in the Advanced Instructions. 3.2 THE TEXT MENU Details of this are in the Advanced Instructions. 3.3 THE IMPORT MENU You can choose between Font, Text, Clip art, and Picture (press the initial letter). Font lets you load a new font from the disc (Advanced Art Studio fonts are ok, as are those created with most character designers), and Picture lets you load in a 17k standard MODE 2 screen created with an art package. Just type in the filenames when prompted to do so, inserting the disc with the files on at the same time and replacing it afterwards. If you want to load a MODE 1 screen, a conversion utility is supplied (details in the Utilities helpfile). Clip art and Text are covered in the Advanced Instructions. 3.4 THE OPTIONS MENU Details of this are in the Advanced Instructions. 3.5 THE FILE MENU This menu lets you load or save pages, as well as catalogue the disc and save standard 17k screen files for loading into an art package. A list of options will come up, which you can choose by pressing the initial letter. PowerPage pages are 46k in length, and two files totalling this length will be saved if you choose the "Quick save" option. You will have to enter the filename of the page you want to save. However, if you want to save disc space, select the "Save" option. This automatically compresses the page into a file of around 30k in size, so you can get five or six on each side of a disc. It takes a few seconds longer to save a compressed page, but not much. Enter the filename and insert the disc to save onto, then replace the PowerPage disc when you are prompted to. To load a previously saved page (either compressed or uncompressed) press L for load. You will be asked to enter the filename (insert the disc to load from) of the page. If you need a disc catalogue, just press A or B to catalogue drive A: or B:. As PowerPage uses most of the screen for storing page data (so that it will work on a 464), the catalogue is displayed in the menu bar area. Just press any key to see the next line of the catalogue. Finally on this menu, you can save a 17k screen file (press P for "save Picture") to disc, to be loaded by an art package. Enter the filename and insert the disc to save onto when asked. Note: be very careful when entering filenames! If you try to load a filename that does not exist, then the computer will object strongly and the program will grind to a halt. However, you should be able to solve this by inserting the PowerPage disc and typing LOAD"pp.bin":GOTO 90 3.6 THE PAGE MENU Pressing U or D will move up or down the page by a whole screen, so you can quickly move to a different part of the page. T or B will move to the top or bottom of the page. The other option, Print, is covered in the Advanced Instructions. 3.7 THE STYLE MENU You are not limited to just one style of text - you can choose italic, bold, underline or thin text, or any combination of those. Just select the style option and press B, T, I or U to select each style (a tick will appear next to the selected ones) - then ENTER/RETURN to exit. When you start to type again, it will be in that style. 4.0 OTHER FEATURES The other features of PowerPage are detailed in the Advanced Instructions, which are on this disc. 4.1 THAT'S ALL FOLKS! Once you've mastered these functions, move onto the more advanced ones detailed in the Advanced Instructions. You will then be able to create impressive pages easily - no matter what CPC you have. Remember you are entitled to make copies of PowerPage for your friends, just so long as it remains unaltered. If you want to distribute it on a commercial or semi-commercial scale (e.g. in a PD library) then you will need the author's permission. Read the copyright helpfile for more info. Good luck with the program! Richard Fairhurst Robot PD Library 28th September 1991 |