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DTP on Acorn Computers ---------------------- Acorn Computers Ltd produce a range of microcomputers which are particularly well suited to Desktop Publishing (DTP). A company called Computer Concepts has developed some DTP software plus a range of DTP hardware which combines to make an extremely efficient and cost-effective solution for anyone needing to do desktop publishing. The aim of this guide is to provide information about the use of Acorn computers for this particular application and also to compare their performance and price with systems based on Apple Macintosh and IBM PC systems (and PC clones). For the benefit of those new to DTP, we will start by explaining some of the terms used and some of the basic principles involved. We will look at the various components that make up a DTP system and see how they can be implemented using Acorn computers. This will include costings so that you can see the sort of budget you would need in order to set up a DTP system for your own particular application. There is also a glossary at the end of the booklet in case there are technical words with which you are not familiar. DTP − The Principles The basic idea is that, on a desktop computer, you can input text and graphics to form a document and can easily manipulate the sizes and positions of the various elements until you have laid out the document to your satisfaction. The document can then be printed out on a desktop printer, whether dot matrix, inkjet or laser. If the document is to be published, you could take it to a printing company in the form of laser printed sheets (which is how this booklet was produced) which they would turn into printing plates using a photographic technique. Some printers, however, can accept the document on a computer disc from which they can produce originals of much higher definition than a laser printer. The book, magazine etc, can then be printed, collated and bound to your specifications. DTP − The Component Parts The basic parts which go together to make up a DTP system are: 1) A computer capable of handling text and graphics with the ability to use different font types and styles 2) A monitor of sufficient size and resolution to provide a workable environment for the user 3) A DTP program including a drawing facility for lines, shapes, curves etc, including shading 4) A printer to print out the documents at as high a quality as possible. You may also wish to add any or all of the following: 5) A scanner to create electronic images of pictures and diagrams and add them into your document 6) A digitiser to take images from a video camera or other video source which you can add to your document 7) Programs to produce more advanced graphics effects or to reproduce complex mathematical equations or to produce graphs and charts to present mathematical or statistical information 8) A library of “clip art” i.e. pictures, drawings, cartoons etc that someone with more time and/or artistic skill than you has produced 9) Extra fonts beyond those provided with the computer and/or the DTP packages. The Computer When desktop publishing was first started, it was only available on the Apple Macintosh computers but there are now DTP programs on many computers including the vast range of IBM and compatible machines. However, if you are looking for a system that will allow you to do DTP work without a great deal of hard work and frustration, you need a computer that is sufficiently fast that you aren’t always having to wait for the computer to catch up with you. Part of the joy of doing DTP is that you can easily change font sizes and styles or play around with the size and position of the graphics. However, that joy is somewhat lost if you have to keep waiting for the changes to take effect on the screen. This is where Acorn’s “RISC” technology (see glossary) comes into its own. It has been used to produce the extremely fast processors which are at the heart of Acorn’s computer systems. These RISC processors are particularly well suited to the kinds of tasks involved in running a DTP system. (Acorn have been producing RISC-based computers for over five years now and several other computer manufacturers are now beginning to realise the power of RISC technology. Indeed, Apple Computers have started work on a joint venture with Acorn Computers to develop a new range of even more powerful RISC processors.) The Monitor The visual display is created on a monitor screen which uses thousands of coloured phosphor dots to create pictures controlled by the computer. The monitor may look a little like a TV screen but it will be able to show much more detail than a domestic television. If you want to see the fine detail of the document you are working on, you need to have as large a screen as possible and as fine a pattern of phosphor dots as possible. However, the balancing factor is the cost. For example, four typical 14" colour monitors have a “dot pitch” (dot-to-dot distance) which decreases as the price increases: Acorn AKF17 0·42 mm £255 Acorn AKF18 0·39 mm £310 Eizo 9060S 0·28 mm £530 Taxan 795 0·26 mm £600 (All prices quoted in this booklet are VAT inclusive and are correct at the time of going to press.) The other way to get better resolution is to keep the dot size the same but increase the monitor size. The Eizo F550i at £890 is a 17" monitor with a 0·28 mm dot pitch. This actually gives more of an improvement in visibility than the dot-pitch / screen-size ratio might suggest; this is because the clarity and ease of use also depends on the ability of your eyes to see fine detail. So the very fact that the display on the F550i is physically bigger makes it easier to see the detail. The DTP Program The three main DTP programs available for the Acorn computer systems are Impression Junior (£90), Ovation (£110) and Impression II (£180). If your budget is strictly limited then you may have to go for the reduced functionality of Impression Junior or Ovation but, in the long run, it is better to go for the program that provides the best facilities. Impression II, which was recently voted the “Best non-PC Business Package” in the Computer Shopper Show Awards, can also be extended by adding the Impression Business Supplement (£53) which offers various advanced features for the professional user. Do not be fooled by the price − Impression, at £180, has facilities which are comparable with, and in some cases superior to, Mac and IBM packages costing £600 and more. See the comparisons later in this booklet or read Dick Pountain’s article in Byte Magazine, March 1992 − which is referred to on page 10.) The Printer The three main types of printer available are dot-matrix, inkjet and laser. If your budget will allow, it is better to go for a laser printer because (a) it provides better resolution − 600 d.p.i. (dots per inch) is fairly standard these days for Acorn compatible laser printers, (b) it is much faster, especially when using Computer Concepts’ Laser Direct printers (£1100 and £1595) − in fact, to get a faster laser printer, you will have to spend well over £4,000, and (c) it is much easier in terms of paper handling and registration − getting the material printed at the right place on the paper. If you cannot afford £1100 for a 600 d.p.i. laser printer, the next best is an inkjet printer. The resolution and quality of the output is quite staggering when you consider the cost, e.g. the Deskjet 500 at £395. The output at 300 d.p.i. is virtually as good as a 300 d.p.i. laser though it does depend on the quality of paper used and it is rather slower than a laser printer. If you have an existing dot matrix printer, it can probably be used for DTP on an Acorn system although the results will not be as good as an inkjet printer. They are also a lot more noisy than inkjets. If you are starting from scratch, our advice would be not to bother with dot matrix printers at all and, if you have a limited budget, start with an inkjet. The Scanner For many applications, it is helpful to be able to take diagrams and pictures from other publications, photographs or drawings and add them into your documents. To do this, you can use a device called a scanner which “looks” at the picture and converts it into a dot pattern which can be loaded into the computer and manipulated as required. The effectiveness of this depends on the resolution (measured in d.p.i.) of the scanner, the number of grey levels (see glossary) provided by the scanner (very few pictures are really monochrome i.e. truly black and white), the accuracy of the scanning process and the quality of the software used to manipulate the images and improve the contrast, etc. A number of companies such as Irlam Instruments and Iota Software produces scanners, but the most comprehensive range of scanners for use with Acorn systems is from Computer Concepts. The cheapest is a hand-held A5 scanner which works at up to 400 d.p.i. in monochrome or at reduced resolution in up to 64 grey levels. Being A5 size limits the width of pictures scanned to 105 mm and being hand-held limits the accuracy with which you can scan the picture − this depends on the steadiness of your hand as you drag the scanner across the picture being scanned. This scanner is only £145 so, especially for monchrome use, it would be very cost-effective. Then there is the ScanLight Junior 256 (£245) which again is an A5 scanner but which produces images in up to 256 grey levels. This makes a lot of difference when trying to reproduce photographs. The illustrations on pages 8 and 9 were scanned with a ScanLight Junior 256. If you need to scan larger pictures, the A4 ScanLight Senior (£325) can be used. Although it only works at up to 64 grey levels, it does have the advantage that it can be bought with a sheet-feeder (£165, if bought separately, or £110 if bought with the scanner). Using a sheet-feeder improves the scanning accuracy − which is more critical on A4 scanners than on the smaller A5 scanners. The best quality of all is achieved by the ScanLight Professional (£970). This is an A4 flat-bed scanner − it looks a bit like a photocopier where you put the document to be scanned onto a glass screen and the scanning head moves across automatically under the glass. This mechanism increases the versatility of the scanning process − you can only feed single sheets of paper through the ScanLight Senior with sheet-feeder whereas you can put a complete book onto the flat-bed scanner. You also get an improvement in accuracy with the ScanLight Professional. Firstly, it improves the accuracy of the grey level representation because it uses white fluorescent light and, secondly, its registration is better because the object remains stationary and the scanning head moves past underneath it. Scanners can also be used, with OCR programs (Optical Character Recognition), to take text from a printed page and change it from just a picture into editable text that can be included in your documents. This is an area where Apple Macs are much better served because of the huge amount of development work needed but there a number of OCR programs being developed by different companies for the Acorn systems. The Digitiser A digitiser will enable you to take a video signal, from a camera or video recorder, and turn it into a picture that can be manipulated and placed into a DTP document. This is a very specialised area and so, for more information, it would be best to talk to one of the companies involved such as Wild Vision, Allied Interactive or Pineapple Software. (For addresses, telephone and fax numbers, see page 18.) One exciting new device is the ion camera produced by Canon. In conjunction with a relatively simple digitiser interface which plugs into the computer, the ion camera allows you to take “snap shots” of whatever scene is in front of you. These are turned immediately into electronic images that can be stored and introduced into your DTP documents. The Canon ion camera actually stores 50 pictures on an internal disc and these can be viewed on a TV or transferred to the computer. Other Programs There are many other programs which may be of use to anyone doing DTP work − it depends on the kind of application to which DTP is put. Here are a few examples: DrawBender − allows manipulation of text and Draw files. Includes three decorative fonts. (£17) Equasor − allows you to put complex scientific equations into an Impression document (£53). FontFX − allows text to be manipulated around various shapes such as circles, arcs, etc and can be rotated, scaled, shadowed, etc (£10). Fontasy − similar to FontFX. (£29). Impression Business Supplement − a set of utilities which increase the power and range of applications for Impression II. It includes Expression-PS (for preparing Impression output for printing on PostScript devices such as professional typesetting machines), a sort and mail-merge utility and utilities for loading files from other formats: RTF (as used with Microsoft Word on PC and Mac), WordPerfect, PipeDream and WordStar (£53). Poster − similar to FontFX but with a wider range of facilities and about 20 decorative fonts (£93). Presenter and Graphbox are two packages for producing graphs and charts from statistical data. Prices are from £43 depending on the range of facilities you require. Squirrel − a very fast database which can export data into Impression II for mail-merge purposes. (£140) Trace (from David Pilling) and Tracer (Midnight Graphics) are two programs which can take scanned images and “trace” them to create pictures which can be manipulated using a drawing package and can then be reproduced at any magnification without the “jagged edges” associated with scanned images. Clip Art and Fonts There are a number of companies producing clip art, e.g. Micro Studio and Midnight Graphics and there is quite a large body of clip art available in the public domain. (See glossary) Most DTP packages come with a range of standard fonts and the A5000 has three sets of fonts (12 fonts in all) included as part of its ROM based software − in other words, as soon as you switch on the computer, you have a range of fonts available to you, for both the screen and the printer. The PD libraries have a number of alternative fonts but, because of the huge amount of work involved in producing good quality fonts, many are not as good as those produced on a professional basis. The aptly named Electronic Font Foundry has been involved in producing good quality fonts for Acorn systems for a number of years now and has a range of several hundred fonts available. (The Apple Mac world boasts a larger range of fonts although at a rather higher price.) A Acorn, Macintosh or PC? ----------------------- There is still a great deal of pressure to use Apple Macs or PC compatibles (see the articles by Ivor Humphreys and Carol Atack on pages 11 and 12) − the reason generally given is the need to be compatible with other users. Some people write off Acorn systems as being “odd-ball” and therefore not worthy of consideration. We believe that compatibility should taken be into account as one factor but it should not be allowed to obscure the other issues. The questions is, which really is the best DTP system for your particular needs? “You’re biased!” Some people will, quite reasonably, say that an Acorn dealer is not exactly the best person to edit an independent review of the relative merits of three systems, only one of which he sells! When you see the price/performance figures, you will think we are exaggerating the claims and fiddling the figures. In fact, we have done just the reverse. We have been careful to take the lowest price figures we could find for Macs and PCs and quoted list price figures on most of the Acorn equipment and ignored available discount prices. We believe it is more important to buy systems from companies who will give good support than to shop around for the cheapest possible prices. Also, to validate the comparisons, we employed two independent consultants. Steve Nichols, MAIE, DIP, who writes and lectures about DTP on Mac and PC systems helped us to compare Macs and PCs. Because Steve had no experience of the Acorn systems, we also employed Carol Atack, a journalist and author. Carol uses Macs exclusively in her work but works closely with several ardent Acorn system users. Carol is very strongly pro-Mac so, as well as getting her to check the main three-way comparison, we have given her space to explain why she prefers Macs. However, I have taken the opportunity to put some counter arguments alongside her comments. There are, of course, differences of opinion − some things are a matter of taste − but Carol and Steve have been given opportunity to check the facts which, we think, speak for themselves. Other Contributions We have also had considerable help from Rob Sherratt who spends much of his time during the day doing DTP on a Mac IIci. He then comes home in the evening and helps his wife Carole to run her commercial DTP business in which she uses Acorn systems. We are very grateful to Ivor Humphreys of General Gramophone Publications Ltd who uses both Acorn systems and Macs in a professional setting producing both mono and full colour publications. He too checked through the comparison for us and has also contributed an article about his experiences in the commercial environment. The Comparison The comparison was done by starting with a system specification and seeing how well it could be implemented using each of the three types of computer and seeing how much it would cost. The specification was as follows: • easy to use WIMP interface and filing system • line / object oriented graphic drawing • good document preparation system with English spelling checker • display 256 colours at better than 640 by 480 pixel resolution • scalable PostScript compatible fonts for screen and printing (about 5 font families) • fast 600 d.p.i. laser printer • scanning capability of 400 d.p.i. with up to 256 greyscale • ability to create sprite (pixel) graphics in up to 256 colours, capture screen images and edit scanned images • as much compatibility as possible with other file systems and formats to allow transfer of text and graphics. Notes on the System Comparison ------------------------------ In a simple table, it is not really possible to do justice to all the arguments, so here is some more discussion of various issues raised in the comparison on pages 6 and 7. Filing system speed The reason for the speed difference between Mac IIci and A540 is partly due to the way Apple have implemented the SCSI filing system which is acknowledged to limit the speed more than it could. We measured the time taken to load Impression II and a 2.8M document on an A540 and found that they loaded into memory in under 10 seconds. To load PageMaker onto a Mac IIci takes about 30 seconds and to load a large DTP file can take a similar length of time. However, the difference in speed of response is not just the speed of the SCSI filing system but is also partly due to the way the two systems use memory. (See note opposite on memory usage.) Scalable fonts Whilst it is true that the numbers of fonts available for the Apple Macs must run into the thousands, there are one or two other points that should be noted. First of all, the majority of DTP users are unlikely to want more than a small handful of fonts − which are available on the Acorn systems at less than half the cost of Mac fonts. Secondly, the vast majority of the Mac fonts are Latin1 fonts, i.e. if you are dealing purely with western European languages there is no problem. However, the number of Mac fonts available in Latin2, 3, 4 or 5 is much more limited as is the supply of non-Latin alphabets. The Electronic Font Foundry has a list of 285 Latin 1 fonts, modest by Mac standards, perhaps, but these same fonts are also available in Latin2, 3, 4 and 5. They also have 8 Cyrilic fonts, 6 Greek fonts, a Hebrew font and 48 Indian fonts as well as several symbol fonts. So, for the vast majority of users, the limited number of scalable fonts is not a significant factor in the comparison. Laser printer speed and cost The reason that the Laser Direct printers are so fast and so cheap is that they use a different technique from most laser printers. If you are using a conventional PostScript laser printer, the computer “describes” the page − i.e. what words in what sizes and fonts, and what lines, shapes, shades etc go where on the page. This page description is sent down to the printer which has its own micro-processor and memory. The printer’s processor then works out what dots go where on the page and then prints the page. With the Laser Direct, the computer does all the calculation of what dots go where on the page and that information is then sent down to the printer. This represents a lot of data to transmit, so Computer Concepts have implemented a high speed parallel “video” interface to the printer. The first reason that the Laser Direct printers are so fast is that the RISC processors in the Acorn computers are ideally suited to the task of working out the dot patterns on the paper and do it very quickly. However, this is not where the main gain in speed is experienced. When you want to print pixel graphics (scanned images, for example) on a PostScript printer, the whole of the scanned image data has to be sent down to the printer as it cannot be “described” by PostScript. As the link to the printer is not a fast parallel link, this can take quite a long time which slows down the printing process even further. This can mean waiting minutes for a printout instead of seconds. One other result of using the Laser Direct technique is that the printer does not have to have a powerful processor with lots of memory − the computer’s own processor and memory is more than adequate. This therefore reduces the price of the printer. Also, because the fonts are described by the computer, the printer manufacturer does not have to pay royalties to Adobe for using PostScript, which again reduces the price. Memory usage When comparing systems, it is important to be aware of the amount of memory used by the different applications. For example, on a Mac IIci, even with 5M of RAM, it is not possible to have PageMaker and FreeHand and Word all loaded at the same time. However, on a 4M A540, you can run Impression DTP, Edit, Paint, Draw and PipeDream (a spreadsheet/WP/dbase package) all at the same time and still have nearly 1M of RAM available as a “font cache” to speed up the display of the fonts on the screen. The reason for this very economical use of memory is that the Acorn operating system, RISC-OS, (see glossary) is in ROM. This also means that switching the system on is faster as these routines don’t have to be loaded from disc. (The other advantage of having the operating system in ROM is that it makes the computer less vulnerable to viruses. On Macs and PCs, viruses can modify parts of the operating system with unfortunate consequences. The Acorn operating system, being in ROM, cannot be changed so the viruses have to be somewhat ‘smarter’ if they are to do any real damage.) The new operating system, RISC-OS 3 (currently only available on the A5000 but soon to come to the A540 as well) is held in 2M of ROM. This is means that even more RAM space is saved because Draw, Paint and Edit plus five other smaller applications as well as three complete families of fonts (12 fonts altogether) are held in ROM. This again speeds up the system and reduces memory usage even further. The other advantage of the Acorn system is that it is very easy, if you do run short of memory, to reallocate its usage. In the review article referred to overleaf, Dick Pountain says of the operating system, “RISC-OS provides an excellent interactive memory manager in its Task Display window (streets ahead of anything on the PC or the Macintosh) that allows you to free and reallocate memory on the fly without quitting any of the programs.” A An Independent Review --------------------- A detailed and independent review of the Acorn system that we used for the comparison on pages 6 and 7 was published recently in Byte magazine. (March 1992, pp5ff). The author, Dick Pountain, is a Contributing Editor of Byte Magazine and the Consultant Editor of Personal Computer World. The conclusion of Dick’s four page review is that the combination of the A540, Impression II, A4 ScanLight Professional and Laser Direct is... “a tremendously capable and likeable DTP system that I would rate as being comfortably ahead of Ventura Publisher and Aldus PageMaker and breathing down the neck of QuarkXpress”. Dick seems to think that the A540 is faster than its rivals and says, that... “Impression feels faster than any of these rival packages in the way it updates the screen, scrolls, accepts text entry and, most notably, prints on the Laser Direct”. Comparing again with Mac systems, he adds that, “Impression is almost as good as QuarkXpress and the complete system that I reviewed costs £5476 (+VAT), only about half the price of a sensible (i.e. Mac IIfx based) Quark system.” (N.B. The Mac IIfx is more powerful than the IIci but has now been replaced by the Quadra range starting at over £4,500 +VAT.) His final comment is that “Impression II is good enough for professional magazine layout; in fact, several Acorn users’ magazines are already produced this way.” (and that includes our own monthly Archive magazine.) Dick Pountain certainly does not have a reputation, from his previous writings, of being “pro-Acorn”, so the accolades he gives in this article are praise indeed. A A Professional User’s View -------------------------- Ivor Humphreys of General Gramophone Publications Ltd, publishers of “Gramophone” magazine. I work in a commercial environment where Acorn, Mac and PC systems are used. We publish two monthly magazines, several catalogues and one or two books. We have been using Impression on an Acorn system to produce one complete section of our main magazine plus a whole raft of other editorial and advertising pages for some 18 months now and, last autumn, we published a 680-page full colour book using the same Acorn system. With some reluctance, we are going to standardise on Macintosh and DEC computers and, in due course, the Archimedes will fall by the wayside. There are overwhelming commercial reasons for choosing Macs, but the decision saddens me because of two major drawbacks of the Mac system. These are the significant reduction in processing speed and the relatively poor rendering of fonts on the screen. Screen display speed From the user’s point of view, the ‘feel’ of a system is important and one of the major factors for someone who has become used to Acorn systems is that Macs and PCs are very slow in comparison. Waiting for the screen to update can be extremely tiresome. Users of Macs or PCs tend not to notice the differences very much (or, in my experience, refuse to see them). However, going back to Macs from Acorn systems can be very frustrating − as I am currently finding with having to use a Mac IIci. On-screen rendering of fonts The Acorn systems employ a technique called anti-aliasing which uses grey edges to enhance the appearance of characters. It makes the screen display much clearer and avoids the somewhat distorted, jagged look which is a penalty of the simple black and white rendering used for fonts on the Mac screens. Apart from being easier on the eye, Acorn’s display enables you to judge the relative positions of characters within the text much more accurately. So, for example, if two words are separated by two spaces (sic) instead of one, you can spot it easily on-screen rather than waiting for the printout before you pick up the error. On the Mac, Adobe Type Manager or Apple’s new font technology, True Type, must be used in order to make the display usable at all but, in our experience, it still does not approach the standard of the Acorn system. Customisation of screens Another factor is the customisation of screens. With Acorn systems, you can switch between any of a couple of dozen, or more, different screen configurations. You can choose the most appropriate mode for the memory available, the number of colours to be displayed, the resolution of the monitor, the visual acuity of the user and the type of job in hand. You might want to use a different mode when working on a large spreadsheet from the one you use for laying out a large document with DTP. It may just be a matter of personal preference − you may simply find that you ‘like’ some modes more than others. You can change mode on an Acorn system at the click of a mouse button even whilst in the middle of running applications programs. Overall My overall view is that a ‘stand-alone’ user would certainly be well advised to choose an Acorn system, although the greater range of fonts for the Mac is certainly attractive. It is really only the more established ‘compatibility’ factor (both in terms of new DTP-aware staff and incoming page-ready software) which shifts the balance towards the Mac for those involved in professional publishing. Indeed, it really is only this last point which is causing us to abandon the Acorn systems. A Mac versus Acorn: What price excellence? ---------------------------------------- Carol Atack Carol has written an article for us about the relative merits of Macs and Acorn systems. As you will see, she strongly prefers Macs. We have taken the opportunity to put the other side of some of the arguments. Where there is no comment, it means that we agree with Carol. We have only put comments where our views differ or there is a further point which perhaps should be taken into account. The game of comparing different kinds of computers is old and invidious. However, to would-be purchasers looking for the right equipment for their business, it’s a game which has to be played and the cost of losing can be high. Traditionally there hasn’t been much question about the right kind of computer for desktop publishing. The concept was, if not invented, at least most vigorously marketed by the triumvirate of Apple, Adobe and Aldus. There was a time when an Apple Macintosh, a printer fitted with Adobe PostScript and Aldus PageMaker was just about all there was. Even now that there is more competition, Apple has kept a firm grip on the graphics and publishing markets. In the corporate world of occasional newsletters, reports and memos, IBM compatibles equipped with clones of the Mac-based software − or the same program, translated to the other platform − have also done well. Acorn’s A-series computers are a relative newcomer to the DTP world. What must they do to gain acceptance? Most Acorn fans trumpet the quality of the hardware and the operating system. It’s true that on paper the Acorn systems offer good performance, but processor speed is by no means everything. It’s the combination of processor, system, operating environment and application software which makes a computer acceptably fast or unpleasant to use. System hardware The Mac and the Acorn systems are similar in that you can only buy your computer from one supplier. This tends to limit the options available. However there are a great many more Macs available, from the entry-level Classic which can be bought for under £1000 including high-res mono screen and inkjet printer, to the high-powered Quadras which can handle large graphic and DTP files very effectively. My gut feeling, after using 68030-based Macs (IIci and IIsi) and the A540’s is that the Mac has a slight performance edge. Display options The display options available for the Mac are numerous. Many DTP operators prefer a high resolution mono or grey-scale screen and these are available in everything from the 9" Classic screen to 21" screens, ideal for laying out A4 magazine spreads. The Acorn systems can’t compete here; third parties seem only to offer medium sized colour screens which are not really ideal for DTP. Operating environment The Archimedes’ built-in software includes some pleasant surprises. !Draw is indeed an excellent application, although it doesn’t offer quite the depth of features of some of the more powerful Mac applications. The built-in scalable fonts were an Acorn first, but Macs have them now in the form of TrueType and within a year or so Adobe’s ATM technology is going to be built into the Mac operating system. However, I remain totally puzzled by the people who tell me that the Archimedes is easy to use because of RISC-OS. The Acorn operating system includes some good features, such as the ability to drop document icons on to a printer icon to print. However, compared with the Mac’s clean and classy interface, the Acorn display is hopelessly cluttered. The lack of a fixed menu bar is one major shortcoming. In fact, the different roles for different buttons, disappearing side menus and so on are a major irritation. Also, the drill for saving a document is truly mind-boggling. Of course there are irritations to be found within the Finder (Mac’s filing system), but Apple’s commitment to HCI (human computer interface) research and development, and the resources already expended on operating system development, mean that one can have confidence in more improvements being made. Application software Application software is one area where the Archimedes is at a serious disadvantage. Impression remains the only serious DTP package. Its development has been assisted by input from professional users, and it does include a lot of important features. However, many users don’t need those features and would find a mid-range Mac word processor such as MacWrite offered plenty of power for the same price. Aldus also does an entry-level DTP package, Personal Press, intended for occasional and beginning DTP users and this has a competitive street price of around £200. For serious DTP, Impression remains usable but I have some serious reservations about it overall. One of the fastest-growing areas in high-end DTP is full colour repro, and all the major Mac applications are well-equipped to handle, separate and match 32-bit colour. Whatever features the software offers, the Archimedes’ colour handling is dated and I would not recommend it for anyone interested in serious colour work. However good Impression is, it can’t hope to answer the needs of everyone who needs to produce a document. The variety of software available is one of the Mac’s great strengths. You can use PageMaker for magazines, books and leaflets, QuarkXPress or DesignStudio where design considerations are paramount, FrameMaker for technical documentation and so on. Of course, you’d have to learn and buy any of these programs which you needed, but there is a specialist tool for most types of work. Fonts While the Archimedes offers excellent built-in font technology, one simply can’t say the same about the fonts available to utilise it. There are more than there were, it’s true, but they are not the entire Monotype, Linotype and Adobe libraries. There are also some extremely sophisticated typographical tools available on the Mac for the creation of new fonts. I’m not sure how many fonts come with the Mac, but my PostScript printer cost £1,750 and came with 45 Adobe PostScript fonts in ROM. Output devices Cheap fast printers are an area where the Archimedes scores highly. My main reservation is that the buyer is then committed to a non-standard device. Of course, LaserDirects are standard printers under the lid, but I’d rather have the comfort of knowing that I was using a standard PostScript device which was guaranteed to render fonts and graphics correctly. And I wouldn’t like to be so reliant on a single company − though that’s an argument against the Mac as well! There are many companies competing to offer ever cheaper, faster and higher quality output on the Mac from laser printers. Imagesetting and slide production are also easier than from the Archimedes, with many bureaux offering expertise in PostScript and major Mac applications. Interoperability The Mac is much better integrated into the mainstream computer world than the Acorn systems. Both can read and write PC discs, but with the Mac you can save files in PC and other Mac application formats from many programs. There’s also much better access to a wider range of networking standards although the advent of Ethernet on the Acorn computers may change things. Conclusions I won’t say ‘The Mac beats the pants off the Acorn systems for publishing’. It might not always be true, although in my opinion it usually is. At the high-end, design-oriented end of the market, there isn’t much question that the Mac reigns supreme. However, for an individual wanting to spend around £5,000 to DTP reasonably simple documents which don’t use a lot of fonts, the Archimedes is a competitive option. However, I’d still go for the Mac for the better software, fonts, colour and operating system. For around £7,500 I would suggest: Mac IIsi 5/40 £2850 Radius Pivot £830 (colour) £1290 QMS PS-410 £1750 Aldus PageMaker £580 MacDraw Pro £350 Dayna DosMounter £70 MacPaint £115 MacWrite II £175 Lightning Scan £470 This comes to £7,600 with colour and £7,200 without. I don’t think, personally, that 600 d.p.i. is worth it, although 600 d.p.i. printers are available for the Mac at around £2,900. A What about PCs? --------------- It may seem that, apart from the three way comparison table, we are virtually ignoring PCs for doing DTP and only really considering Macs and Acorn systems. Part of the reason for this is that it is so difficult to find expertise in this area of doing DTP on PCs and part of it is that, when you find someone who knows about it, there is not much enthusiasm for it anyway. We thought that our experiences in trying to find someone to help us assess the effectiveness of PCs for DTP might be illuminating... Finding DTP expertise for PCs Finding out about using PC systems for DTP, proved to be extremely difficult. We tried a few local dealers from the Yellow Pages but none of them seemed to know anything about DTP on PCs apart from the names “PageMaker” and “Ventura Publisher”. They would happily sell us copies of either even though they didn’t actually know much about how to use them. We then contacted IBM and asked for their recommendation about the best PC consultants in the Norfolk area. The first of the two companies they referred us to said that, quite frankly, if someone wanted to do DTP, they would advise them to go and see the local Apple Mac dealer and not use PCs at all! The second company were much more positive at first but eventually admitted that they really didn’t have anyone who could demonstrate DTP on a PC. In the meantime, I was ringing round contacts in the computer industry with the same request, “Is there anybody out there who can demonstrate DTP on a PC?” One lead after another drew blanks. Then I discovered that the biggest user base of DTP on PCs is in the big “corporates” − they often have huge installed bases of PCs which they use for DTP. So I rang one of my contacts in a large Norwich company who put me in touch with Steve Nichols who, thankfully, turned out to be extremely knowledgeable about both PCs and Macs although he had never seen Acorn systems in action. The lesson is that if you are thinking of using PCs for DTP, be sure that you can find someone who is able to provide the necessary expertise to help you set it up and use it. A Buying an Acorn DTP System -------------------------- When you decide that it is time to take the plunge and buy a DTP system, you presumably want to get the best value for money. So it may seem that the best bet is to go to one of the suppliers who offers Acorn systems at very low discount prices. However, there are one or two other factors that are worth considering because it’s not just the actual cost in pounds and pence that determines the value of a system. Go to your local Acorn dealer Firstly it is best, if possible, to go to your local Acorn dealer even if he doesn’t offer as much discount as some of the mail order companies. This is partly because it is easier to choose the system that best suits your needs if you can actually see it in action.* Also, if you have any problems with your system after you have bought it, you can get it sorted out much more easily if you have a local contact. If you do decide to buy by mail order, check whether the company can give you help over the phone in diagnosing problems − there are some companies who have virtually no technical support personnel − which is partly why they can offer such cheap prices! Often, when a customer thinks there is a problem with the hardware or software, it turns out that the problem is just a lack of experience on the part of the user, possibly due to bad documentation. If this happens with a mail order company, you could end up sending all the equipment back to them, and being without it for several days, only to find that it is working perfectly and has to be sent back again. (*Some people might be tempted to go to a local dealer in order to see the systems in operation and then buy it from a mail order company. If this sort of thing happens, it could contribute to putting the local dealer out of business. Part of the reason he has to charge higher prices than the mail order company is that he has to pay his demonstration staff. Then, if local dealers go out of business, the level of support available drops and everyone suffers.) However, having said all that, not all Acorn dealers are equally knowledgeable about DTP. Norwich Computer Services has produced a list of some Acorn dealers who say that they have knowledge and expertise in this area and are prepared to demonstrate DTP systems to potential customers. This list is published as an advertising supplement to this booklet. Use mail order if you must What if your local dealer is not able to give the kind of support you need? Well, we would urge you to choose a mail order company that really knows about DTP. Basically, you want to find someone who will provide you with guidance in choosing the system that best suits your needs; they must provide help and advice in getting the system installed and working effectively and they must also be skilled at trouble-shooting, both software and hardware, if things go wrong later. What about N.C.S.? You will not be surprised to hear that we, at Norwich Computer Services, believe that we meet the criteria in the paragraph above! We publish a monthly magazine about Acorn computer systems, applications and hardware. This means that we have access to all the latest information on hardware and software. The magazine is produced on an A540 using Impression, so we are actually using DTP on Acorn systems on a every day basis. We have over four years’ experience of operating a telephone technical support service and we have considerable knowledge and expertise on the hardware side. We also undertake repairs of computers and peripherals. Conclusion Our advice then is to buy from your local Acorn dealer but if you really want to use mail order, why not give us a ring on 0603−766592? A Pride & Prejudice ----------------- Here are three reasons not to buy Acorn systems. • Acorn systems are too cheap − If you have a choice of two systems, Acorn at £5,900 and Mac at £12,100, you somehow feel that the Mac must be better − just because it costs more. • Acorn systems are used in schools − More Acorn computers have been sold into schools in the last 9 months than any others − but imagine the scenario... You have just bought your beautiful new Acorn DTP system and a colleague (or worst still one of your rivals) walks into your office and says, “New computer, I see. Oh yes, my kids use those at school!”. Ouch!! • Macs MUST be better − No Mac owner likes to think that he paid twice as much as he needed to have done when he bought his first system, so the Acorn systems CAN’T be as good. Pride and prejudice are not the most sensible criteria to use when choosing a DTP system. A Some Useful Addresses If you want specialist information about DTP and associated products, the following list of companies may also be of help. (The numbers in italics are fax numbers.) 4mation (DTP book, fonts & borders) 11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon EX32 8PA. (0271−25353) (0271−22974) Acorn Computers Ltd Fulbourn Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (0223−210685) ALSystems (ion camera & digitiser) 47 Winchester Road, Four Marks, Alton, Hampshire GU34 5HG. (0420−561111) Capsoft (fonts & borders) 8 Old Gate Avenue, Weston on Trent, Derbyshire DE7 2BZ. Computer Concepts (DTP hardware & software) Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (0442−231632) Dalmation Publications (fonts) 37 Manor Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 8AA. Data Store (utilities) 6 Chatterton Road, Bromley, Kent. (081−460−8991) (081−313−0400) David Pilling (trace program + clip art) P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool FY5 1LR. Design Concepts (fonts) 30 South Oswald Road, Edinburgh EH9 2HG. Digital Services (Squirrel database) 9 Wayte Street, Cosham, Portsmouth PO6 3BS. (0705−210600) (0705−210705) Electronic Font Foundry (fonts) Granville House, 50-52 Upper Village Road, Ascot, SL5 7AQ. (0344−28698) (0344−872923) G.A.Herdman (clip art) 43 Saint Johns Drive, Clarborough, Retford, Notts DN22 9NN. (0777−700918) (fax on same number) Hampshire Microtech Centre (fonts) Connaught Lane, Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, Hants PO6 4SJ. (0705−378266.) Ian Copestake Software (DTP utilities) 1 Kington Road, West Kirby, Wirral, L48 5ET. (051−625−1006) (051−6251007) Iota Software Ltd (Scanner & OCR) St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 4WS. (0223−421542) (0223−421543) Irlam Instruments (OCR) 133 London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4HN. (0895−811401) Longman-Logotron (fonts, art programs) 124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 4ZS. (0223−425558) (0223−425349) Micro Studio Ltd (clip art) 22 Churchgate Street, Soham, Ely, Cambridgeshire. (0353−720433) Midnight Graphics (clip art) 5 Victoria Lane, Whitefield, Manchester M25 6AL. (061−766−8423) (061−766−8425) Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich NR2 2SD. (0603−766592) (0603−764011) Pineapple Software (digitisers) 39 Brownlea Gardens, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG3 9NL. (081−599−1476) Risc Developments Ltd (Ovation DTP) 117 Hatfield Road, St Albans, Herts AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (0727−60263) Sigma Press (DTP book) 1 South Oak Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 6AR. Southern Printers (clip art) 47 Drake Road, Willesborough, Ashford, Kent TN24 0UZ. (0233−633919) Wild Vision (digitisers) 15 Witney Way, Boldon Colliery, Tyne & Wear NE35 9PE. (091−519−1455) (091−519−1929) Word Processing (DTP guides) 65 Milldale Crescent, Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, W Midlands WV10 6LR. Further Sources of Information ------------------------------ • Archive Magazine is published by N.C.S. and is available by subscription only. (£17 for twelve monthly issues from N.C.S.) It has a 64 pages each month, providing news, views, latest products, reviews and technical articles. There is a small amount of advertising, but most of the magazine is filled useful information. It carries a regular DTP column, occupying about 9 or 10 pages each month, which is produced by a team of four voluntary sub-editors who all use DTP in a professional setting. Membership of Archive entitles you to special discounts on hardware and software bought through Norwich Computer Services. • Budget DTP − is a book by Roger Amos, published by Dabs Press. It shows how you can use Draw and Edit to do DTP on Acorn computer systems without going to the expense of buying a DTP package. It costs £13 inc p&p from N.C.S. • “Creating the Right Impression” is a review article by Dick Pountain in Byte magazine, March 1992, page 5 ff. This covers the A540, Impression II, ScanLight Professional scanner and Laser Direct HiRes 8 printer. • DTP For All − Bruce Goatly’s book, published by Sigma Press, contains information about all aspects of DTP on the Acorn range of computers. (ISBN 1-85058-248-3) It costs £13 inc p&p from N.C.S. • DTP Seeds is a book of ideas for DTP − £8.45 from 4mation or £8 inc p&p for Archive members from N.C.S. This book has 100 pages of sample DTP output to show what can be done using the DTP facilities available on Acorn computer systems. • First Impression − a tutorial package for Impression II. It consists of 250 pages in a ring binder and contains thirteen tutorial chapters and eleven appendix chapters plus a couple of floppy discs with sample documents and templates. First Impression contains reminders, hints & tips and self-assessment tasks. The cost is £29.95 from “Word Processing” or £28 for Archive members from N.C.S. • Good Impression − a 207 page book of layouts, designs and graphics which can be created with Impression. All the ideas illustrated are presented on three floppy discs which are included in the package. It costs £26.95 from ‘Word Processing’ or £25 for Archive members from N.C.S. A Glossary -------- d.p.i. − dots per inch. On a desktop printer, the text and graphics are reproduced by rows and rows of tiny dots. The smaller the dots, the better the definition of the resulting printout. This is defined by the number of dots per inch that the printer can lay onto the paper. The same idea is used for scanning. When scanning a picture or diagram, the grey level (see below) of rows of tiny areas of the picture are assessed by the scanner. The closeness of the areas being differentiated is measured in dots per inch. Fonts − Characters on the screen and on the printed page can take on all sorts of different shapes. A font is a set of characters that have been designed so that all the letters of the alphabet and a whole range of other special characters (200 or more in a complete set) have the same style. There are also sets of related fonts using the same basic style but with the characters angled (italic) or made heavier (bold) or both (bold italic). Grey levels − A photograph may have some areas completely white and some completely black. Most areas, however, will be somewhere in between. If you wish to represent that picture electronically, you have to judge the ‘greyness’ of each part of the picture. If you represent this on a scale of 0 to 15 (16 grey levels), it will not give such a faithful representation of the picture as if 64 or 256 grey levels are used. However, the more grey levels used to represent each point on the picture, the more data is being used. For example, a full A4 picture scanned at 400 d.p.i. could occupy as much as 12 Mbytes! Operating system − This is the set of “house-keeping” programs within a computer that look after screen display, filing systems, etc. Outline fonts − These are fonts that are described mathematically by using equations to define the curves that make up the outline of the character’s shape. Using these equations, it is relatively simple to work out how to display any font at any size, either on the screen or on a printer where the shape has to be reproduced as a series of dots. Public Domain (PD) − There are a number of enthusiastic people who produce programs and clip art which they want to make freely available for other people to use − rather than trying to make money by selling them. The material is distributed at cost by various individuals and agencies. There are quite a number of PD libraries dealing with material for Acorn computers. (Norwich Computer Services runs one such library, part of which raises money for charity − over £15,000 a year, in fact.) RISC − This is an acronym for Reduced Instruction Set Computer. Companies like Acorn realised that the trend to more and more complex computer processors wasn’t necessarily the best way to increase the overall speed of computer processing. These complex processors were spending the majority of their time doing simple tasks anyway. What Acorn did was to make the processors simpler, which meant they could work much faster doing the simple jobs like pushing text around and drawing dots on the screen. This is partly why RISC processors are so well suited to DTP applications − though the explanation is grossly over-simplified! RISC-OS − This is the operating system (see above) used on Acorn’s RISC-based computers. WP (Word-Processing) − In the early days of microcomputers, all they could do was allow you to handle text to create documents, i.e. to process words. These days, however, many of the programs that are referred to as word-processors can also handle pictures, so the distinction between WP and DTP is becoming less clear. A