Conference hydra::amiga_v1

I may have encountered a nasty bug in the Professional Page V1.3
PostScript compiler. I could not print out the last page of a 10 page
document. I kept receiving a error relating to a rmoveto command in the
PostScript file. Bob Moore at VRO kindly debugged the problem for me. It
turns out that PPgae V1.3 generated a conflicting pair of definitions
using the /rm tag for both "rmoveto" and "rotated matrix" commands. This
resulted in the error message and failure of the page to print.
Similarly, the /m tag was defined as both "moveto" and "matrix"
commands.

Note that the page printed fine when compiled with V1.2 Professional
Page.

Needless to say, CIS mail to Gold Disk remains unanswered, and calls to
their Tech Support line are greeted with a busy signal. The error seems
pretty significant.

Paul

    If I elect to print a postscript file to disk,when the requester
    comes up an I select "disk" the program hangs at the zzzzzzzz.If
    I then click the mouse and type Df1: in the requester box it works
    fine.Anyone else have any problems with this.I agree with Paul it's
    a great program.I printed some labels on a 24 pin printer,and it
    looked great.I believe the only edge Postscript has now is on Gray
    scales.As for text I feel that the output is good enough for finished
    resumes,etc.I was considering a laser printer,now I'm not so sure.
    								bill

I haven't spotted the requester problem yet, but here are a few 
observations that I have made since I got 1.3 two days ago:

WOW!  The fonts on screen are beautiful.  It can display legible 
type down to about 3 points!  

Printed output is really quite startling.  I have an old JUKI 
5510 color printer (an Epson JX-80 rip-off) and the output is 
really beautiful when printing at it's maximum resolution.  This 
is an 8 pin printer with a fabric ribbon, but it is doing a great 
job of printing PPage pages and graphics.  It can even print 6 
point type very cleanly!

You can control the size of the font caches in memory and on 
disk.  Sadly, you can not store these settings.  I called Gold 
Disk about this and they said that they have alreadly heard from 
many people about this already.  They have to be set (if you
don't like the default ones) each time you start PPage.  On a
machine with lots of memory, this is not a problem. I also use an
A1000 with 1.5 megs of memory.  The big problem here is the
available chip ram...only 512K.  This causes problems when you
want to print a page with IFF files in the higher resolution
settings.  Memory management in the new version seems to be
vastly improved.  PPage uses whatever memory it can get it's
hands on to make a printout possible (almost always, there are
limits, but you don't hit them as often as before.) 

PPage breaks up it's output to a printer into strips.  The higher 
the resolution you need, the more strips it will use.  This is 
done to allow you to print hi-res work without running out of 
memory.  It will build a strip in memory, print it, then build 
the next strip.  Pictures seem to be the only thing that push 
this past the limit.  Reducing the output resolution, playing 
with the cache sizes, switching to b+w med-res screen and 
displaying a blank portion of your page (so that PPage doesn't 
have to waste memory trying to display characters) seems to be 
the way to squeeze out complex output when memory is a problem.


You can open PPage 1.3 as a workbench window now.  I have no idea 
why anyone would want to tho.  You are limited to b+w and 
640x200.  Screen updates are excruciatingly slow.  About the only 
advantage is that you can resize the window...but why bother 
making a window smaller if it is too small to begin with.

As for Transcript:  As long as Transcript (or Transedit, the 
smaller version) is running, you just select the text or text box 
in PPage, type Right Amiga / and voila, your text is now in the 
Transcript window.  Edit it, hit Right Amiga / again and you are 
back in PPage with the edited text already in place.  (I did try 
this by using two workbench windows side by side and it is 
interesting to watch the text jump back and forth, but the 
windows are far too small to be practical...I'm sure this will 
change when the larger monitor displays are available.)

There is better handling of IFF pics.  They are automatically 
sized to the width of the box when imported.  Regardless of the 
original IFF resolution, they will appear in the proper aspect 
ratio.  Color output to a printer is very good.

So, now you can get (with the appropriate printer) great looking 
color graphics and high resolution text output with REAL fonts 
(not just printer courier) from a dot matrix printer.

Bottom line:  A vastly improved product.  The new fonts really 
make a difference.  If you only have 1 meg, invest in more.  It 
will really make life easier.  My other machine is an A2000 with 
the super agnus and 3 megs.  I haven't run out of memory once.  
My 1.5meg A1000 hits its limit often.

Randy

more...

The grid is now made of tiny gray dots at the grid intersections only. 
This makes the grid much less distracting, even when working in 
B+W, where they are displayed as tiny black dots.  This really 
helps if you don't like screen flicker when working with the 
640x400 display (and you can't afford FlickerFixer.)

You can now select "Wire Frame" mode for graphics.  This will 
save more memory.

The dreaded "pull down menu that wouldn't go away" effect seems to be 
gone...finally.

As for the new fonts...you get CG Triumvirate (a clone of 
Helvetica) and CG Times (a clone of Times Roman)  Here's the GOOD 
NEWS.  When you create a postscript file using these fonts, it 
refers to them as Helvetica and Times Roman...so you don't have 
to worry about your LN03R never having heard of Triumviriate...it 
will never know.  It will be instructed to use Times Roman which 
it knows quite well.

Another exciting thing: even if you don't have PPage and never 
will...

The new font set from Gold Disk (not out yet, but you can place 
an order for it) which contains several outline fonts, will come 
with a utility to translate them into bit-mapped fonts.  Do you 
realize what this means?  Now you can create jaggy free large 
characters to be used in paint packages...characters of any size.
Neat huh?  It's about time (I've been dreaming about anti-aliased 
fonts for the Amiga since it came out 3 years ago...finally there 
is something that comes close.)

This alone is big news to anyone who does video design work and 
needs good clean fonts but have been dissappointed by the sloppy 
fonts that have been available until now.  Now you can have REAL 
Times Roman, Helvetica, Palatino, Zaph, etc, instead of the junk 
that companies like Zuma have been pumping out...and you can have 
it in any size or resolution.




Whew!

Randy

even more...

There is now a text greeking control.  If you set it to one 
pixel, it will display a full page of 12pt type on the 640x400 
screen, such that it is actually readable.  You can display type 
down to 3pts in the maximum magnification!

Type too small to display is replaced with 'greeking'...a pattern 
that simulates the area the type will take up, saving time and 
memory.  Now with this new control, you can display much smaller 
point sizes on screen than ever before.

BTW:  I was unable to duplicate the requester bug that was 
reported earlier.  My copy seems just fine when the print 
postscript to disk requester comes up.

Randy

There is a bug in the psprlg file in the DATA directory. It may not bite
you immediately when you attempt to print a PostScript file, but it
eventually will. The tags /m and /rm have been redefined incorrectly
as matrix and rotate matrix. You can get around it by editing that file
and changing those references to /w and /rw respectively. DO NOT alter
the definitions of the /m and /rm tag for moveto and rmoveto!

Paul

    After plodding around in this notes file for a while it appears
    the Professional Page V1.3 is the desk top publisher to get for
    the Amiga. 
    
    How does it compared to DECWrite?
    Does it have a build in line drawing set like the drawing tools
    for DECWrite.
    
    Thanks,
    Rich

There is a full set of drawing tools in PPage.  You also have the 
option of working in color with these, or with text.  I don't 
know a lot about DECwrite, but I believe that PPage has more 
sophisticated design and layout tools.

PPage also imports graphics files from Paint, CAD and Draw 
programs.  It works well with Professional Draw (an Adobe 
Illustrator-like product).  You can even import videoscape 
objects.

Randy