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Pagesetter
From: MIDNIT on DELPHI
Good morning!
I have Gold Disk's Pagesetter for the Amiga. It really is pretty nice.
The main thing is that it does work, and it does do what it promises, even
though it has a couple of glitches.
Pagesetter will allow you to enter/edit text, create/edit graphics, and
import either one from current popular programs. Graphics should be
black/white or very simple grey scale (I don't believe that color printers
are supported). Then, you can put the text and graphics in boxes on a
page. You can move, link, and resize these boxes; each box is independently
formatted (borders, font, leading, background, justif- ication, etc).
It is a little bit slow, and a little bit cumbersome for large projects,
but it is a very nice tool for several high quality pages.
The main glitch is in the Pagesetter's print routine. It does not
always work correctly. Another utility, provided on the disk, is a viable
and almost painless workaround. Printing, however, is slow.
The other glitch has to do with grey scales - apparently it uses its own
patterns, which can make some color or grey scaled pictures look quite odd.
Line drawings are no problem at all.
In sum, I use it, and I like it. As the first real page-layout software
for the Amiga, it is not only promising, but it does set a real standard by
which others might be compared.
Tim Siebert
(MIDNIT on DELPHI)
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PageSetter Printing
Some people have asked about the use of PageSetter with an HP
LaserJet or a 24 pin printer. As the program stands now (V1.0) it will
output print at resolutions up to 120 DPI horizontally, and 72 DPI
vertically. If you use a printer with higher resolutions the DumpRPort
routine will expand the pixels on the printer, but it'll still look
"chunky" although a bit better than "Epson" resolution. The problem is
that since we do use DumpRPort, it's limited to a RastPort of 1008x1024
pixels. So, if we wanted to dump to a hi-res printer at full
resolution (say 240 DPI for quad density) we'd need a RastPort of 1920
pixels for an 8" page! The only real way around this would be to go
the route a la PClones where you have separate specific printer drivers
and the program would have to be "configured" for each printer.
Another problem is that you'd need screen fonts in all of the
resolution corresponding to these printer pixels (to preserve WYSIWYG).
Fear not though!
In the works we have a version of PageSetter that will give
PostScript output so you can dump a PageSetter document to printers
(such as the Apple LaserWriter) which support the PostScript page
definition language. In fact this version was demo'd at the CES in
Vegas. It can produce full (300 DPI) laser printer resolution. We're
also planning to release a PagePostScript module (like PagePrint) for
PageSetter V1.0 so that current users will have an easy upgrade path.
This will include a set of Amiga format fonts corresponding to the ones
built into PostScript (Times, Helvetica, and Courier), and in the
future, we'll try to supply the other fonts that Adobe currently offers
for PostScript. Also in the pipes is a module that will allow printing
on the HP LaserJet and the 24 pin printer, although the screen display
will not be WYSIWYG at full resolution (it'll show a Lower Res Version
Of What You Get - LRVOWYG!) So, you can see that if you have access to
a PostScript printer you could soon be totally independent of the Mac!
Gold Disk will be coming out with a PostScript driver for
PageSetter next month. It'll be in the style of PagePrint and will
output PostScript sources code to a disk file or directly to the
printer. This will allow any document made with PageSetter to be
printed on a PostScript laser printer provided that you use the
PostScript fonts (these will be supplied with the driver). All
registered owners of PageSetter will receive the notice in a mailing to
be sent shortly.
Rno (Arno Krautter) for Gold Disk
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For anyone who has the update to Pagesetter....
I have been working with pageIFF, the pagesetter to IFF picture
utility that comes with Pagesetter. I just got DPAINT II and wanted
to try the full page mode of DPAINT II. To generate a picture I
used pageIFF to make a IFF file and found that only the top screen
full of the picture is correct ( the rest is junk ). I guessed that
DPAINT II had a bug, but then I checked the IFF file and found that
the IFF file was the right length but had junk in the lower part.
Can someone try the updated pagesetter. I called Gold Disk and
have the update comming, but will take a while to get here.
Steve Peters
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