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________________________________________ \_____ \____/ ___________ ____ \ __ | | \ \ \ \ \/ | _ \ | \ _____ _ ____ _ /\ _____ ___ / +------\/--\/-----\/--\/--\/-------\/RtX!\/+ PROFESSIONAL PAGE V4 ==================== TYPED BY SHARD - DTL Part 1 1. ABOUT THIS MANUAL.... ------------------------ This manual is divided into the following sections: GETTING STARTED: ---------------- This section outlines the steps needed to back up Professional Page, what you need to use it, and how to start up the progrann. It also includes a list of conventions used in this manual. INTRODUCTION: ------------- This section explains the fundamental concepts behind the design of Professional Page TUTORIAL: --------- This section takes you through the production of a simple two page newsletter, from importing the various elements, editing them, and creating new ones, to getting the final output. When you complete the tutorial, which we strongly suggest even for seasoned computer users, you should have a good "feel" for the progran, and be able to go straight to work without referring too much to the manual. USING PROFESIONAL PAGE: ----------------------- This section is the heart of the manual. It describes all aspects of using and manipulating boxes from importing text and graphics to final output. COLOR: ------ This section outlines the steps necessary to include and maintain color in Professional Page documents. The color information will be used by Gold Disk's Professional Color separator to produce four color and mechanical separatAons. DESIGN: ------- This section discusses typographical and layout considerations. General rules for successful page layout are outlined, as well as a discussion of what to avoid. TECHNICAL REFERENCE: -------------------- Refer to this section for explanations on specifc features in Professional Page. In addition to these sections, we also provide a complete set ot appendices. Of particular interest are: the technical support information appendix, the troubleshooting guide, and an appendix how to best use Professional Page with other Amiga software. There is also a glossary and comprehensive index at the end of the manual. UPGRADES: --------- There will be constant improvements in the Professional Page system, and information about additions, revisions and other developlents will be vital to allow you to make best use of the product. Please fill out and mail your registration card without delay, so that we can keep you up to date. Also, there is a bug/suggestion form at the very end of the manual. In the Professional Page window, there is a Read_Me icon. Double clicking on this icon will display notes of interest about your particular release of Professional Page. 2. GETTING STARTED... --------------------- CONTENTS OF THE PACKAGE ----------------------- Please check to be sure that you have received a complete unit of Professional Page, consisting of the following: This manual The Quick Reference Guide A Registration card The Program Licence Agreement Envelope containing: A Professional Page Program Disk A Professional Page Fonts & Utilities Disk Program Identification/Serial Number stickers REGISTRATION ------------ Professional Page is a 'professional" product, as the name suggests. With this in mind, we understand the importance of good after-sales support. We can only give you this type of service if we know who you are. Please fill in your registation card and return it to us promptly. As a registered Professional Page owner, you will receive infofmation on upgrades and bulletins about our products, as well as three months of free access to our technical support phone number. (See Appendix I: Technical Support Infomation.) SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ------------------- Computer: --------- Professional Page is designed to work on any properly configured Amiga 500, 1000, or 2000. Operating System: ----------------- Kickstart 1.2 or higher. Workbench 1.2 or higher. Memory Requirements: -------------------- A minimum of one megabyte of memory is required. If you have an Amiga 500 or 1000 with only 512K or RAM, for example, Professional Page will not load. For large complicated documents, especially those usig lots of bitapped graphics, more than one megabyte of memory is recommended. Display Monitor: ---------------- Any Amiga compatible monitor. Since Professional Page uses the interlaced high resolution mode (which produces an annoying flicker), a high persistence monitor is ideal. Flicker reducing tinted screens are available for standard Amiga monitors at a nominal cost (see Appendix G:Using Professional Page with Other Amiga Products.) Disk Drives: ------------ One Amige 3.5" floppy disk drive is required. A dual drive or hard drive configuration is recommended. Output Device: -------------- Professional Page outputs to PostScript compatible printers and typesetters (see Appendix D: Connecting Your Amiga to a Printer.) Disk Contents: -------------- There are two disks contained in the Professional Page package. One disk is labelled "Program". It contains the actual Professional Page program and all of ahe data that the program uses. The other disk is labelled "Fonts and Utilities". This disk includes all of the files used in the Tutorial section plus all of the sample page layouts used in the Design section. You will also find samples of bit-mapped graphics and structured drawings. In addition, there are some grids or page templates for your use. These templates are examples of some common design fomats for different types of documents. The disk also contains special Professional Page screen fonts. These fonts are in the standard Amiga format, and are specially designed to show on screen what the actual laser printer or typesetting machine output will look like. A utility called MakeFont is also included. It will allow you to create any point size of any font included on the disk. (See Appendix C:Utilities for a complete list of the utilities and their uses.) CONVENTIONS USED IN THIS MANUAL ------------------------------- The Professional Page manual and the software it describes conform closely to many of the standard Amiga conventions. It is assumed that you have some familiarity with basic Amiga procedures. To help novices in the early stages, some basic procedures are descnbed in detail even if that may seem redundant to experienced Amiga users. Some of the basic conventions adhered to throughout the manual are: * The use of "bullets" (*) to indicate related information, lists or sequences. * Use of the Amiga hierarchy of terms for pull down menus. Main menus are called "menus", sub-menus are called "items", and options of sub-menus are called "sub-items". The terms "gadgets" and "tools" are also used. * Menu selections are often listed in this manual using the format: Menu/Item/Sub-Item. For example, Page/Alter/Current refers to the Current sub-item in the Alter item of the page menu. * Where keyboard equivalents are found, the following notation is used (where "x" is a specified character): A x - Depress x while holding the Right Amiga key. C X - Depress x while holding the CTRL key. a x - Depress x while holding the ATL key. s X - Depress x while holding the SHIFT key. * All manual references to Professional Page screen menus, items, sub-items, gadgets and tools are in italics. * Moving the mouse pointer to a desired location and pressing the left button to make a selection is called "clicking" or "selecting". * Moving the mouse pointer to a desired location, pressing the button and holding it down so as to move some screen object is referred to as "dragging". * Keyboard equivalents are graphically depicted in dhe pictures of the pull-down menus. * Text in BOLD type is used to highlight important information. * The COURIER font indicates text that you should type in via the CLI or in the text line of a requester. Many of the terms used in this manual come from the publishing field, such as pica and leading, or are Amiga specific, such as menus and gadgets. For a complete explanation of these terms, consult the Glossary. MAKING A WORKING COPY OF PROFESSIONAL PAGE ------------------------------------------ You should not use the original disks which you received with the Professional Page package other than to make working copies from them. Instead, immediately make a backup copy of each disk to use as your working disks. Put the original program disks away in a safe place, and only use them to make replacements if your backup copies are lost or damaged. For your convenience, Professional Page is not copy-protected. Please respect the fact that Gold Disk Inc. has made it easy for you to make backups of this program. Don't sell, lend, give, or otherwise distribute this program to anyone. Please read the Program Licence agreement and the copyright information relating to unauthorized copying. Remember, software piracy is a crime, and it discourages the development, improvement, and technical support of good software. Making a Backup --------------- (See "Duplicating Your Disks" and "Copying a Disk" in your Amiga user manual). It is easier and quicker to make a copy using the CLI, but a novice may want to use the mouse and the icons in Workbench. Using Workbench is a bit slower and more cumbersonae than using CLI, but it's more intuitive and less intimidating for a new Amiga user. From CLI (Command Line Interface--the AmigaDOS): ------------------------------------------------ * Use the Amiga Workbench disk, your Professional Page program disk, (the "source" disk) and a blank 3.5" disk (the "destination" disk) on which to make your copy. * Boot up with the Workbench disk. * Open up the CLI as described in your Amiga manual and type: DISKCOPY DFO: TO DFl: * The Amiga will request that you insed the "source", and "destination" disks into the appropriate drives. * Place the Professional Page program disk in the first drive, (DF0:) and be certain that the disk is write protected. * Place your blank disk into the second drive, DFl:, and press the RETURN key. Your Professional Page disk will now be duplicated. l"dl lleG * To copy the Fonts and Utilities disk, repeat the above steps, using the Fonts and Utilities disk as the "Source" disk. From the Workbench: ------------------- * Boot up with the Workbench disk that came with your Amiga. Place the Professional Page program disk in the first dnve, and a blank disk in the second dnve. Be certain that the program disk is write-protected. * Move the mouse pointer over to the icon of the Professional Page program disk and "grab" the icon by pressing and holding down the left mouse button. * Still holding down the left mouse button, move the Professional Page icon over on top of disk icon for the blank disk, and release the button. * The Amiga will provide the necessary instructions to complete the backup. * After the disk copy is finished, you must rename the copy of Professional Page. To do this, select the backup disk by clicking on its icon, and activate the Rename item from the Workbench menu, as described in your Amiga manual. * The backup disk will have automatically been given the name "Copy of PPage". Rename the disk "PPage". Similarly, when you make a backup of the utilities disk, rename it "PPageUtil". WARNING: NEVER REMOVE A DISK FROM ANY DISK DRIVE WHILE A DISK LIGHT IS ON! If you do, you may destroy the infomnation on the disk. Until you have made a backup of your Professional Page program and utilities disks, be extremely cautious. STARTING PROFESSIONAL PAGE -------------------------- From the Workbench: ------------------- * Insert the Professional Page program disk "PPoge", in the lirst dnve and boot the system. * Double click on the Professional Page disk icon to bring up the Professional Page window. * Double click on the Professional Page program icon to start the program. From the CLI: ------------- * Insert the Professional Page disk in the second drive, while your workbench disk is in the first dnve. Open up the CLI, as described in your Amiga manual. Change directories by typing: CD DF1 : and press the RETURN key. * Assign the special Professional Page fonts by typing: ASSIGN FONTS: PPageutil:FONTS and press the RETURN key. * When the prornpt reappears, run the Professional Page program by typing: PPAGE:PPAGE 3. INTRODUCTION.... ------------------- Professional Page is a powerful, versatile and simple to use "desktop publishing" program. It is page-oriented, rather than document-oriented. This means that the intention of the program is to allow the user to create pages one by one, with the maximum of flexibility to make design decisions at every stage. A document-oriented program is more suited for long, relatively uniform documents. It is quite feasible to create long documents such as books and magazines using Professional Page, (such as this manual), but Professional Page excels in situations where varied layouts with extensive use of graphics are typical (for example, newsletters, ad designs, brochures, and educational materials). If you do wish to create a longer doccument, Professional Page has procedures for formatting or coding text at the word processing stage (see Appendix F: Formatting Text), and powerful template features which make it very productive while still keeping page makeup very interactive and open to changes. ABOUT DESKTOP PUBLISHING ------------------------ Although electronic / computer-aided publishing has been around for some time, the technique has required expensive equipment and specially trained operators, similar to more traditional forms of publishing. With desktop publishing you can perform the functions of graphic designers, writers, editors, layout people and typographers yourself. This not only saves you money, but drastically reduces the turnaround time needed to prepare a professional quality document. The phrase "desktop publishing" is often used in a rather misleadng way. Logically, the publishing process includes all "pre-press" operations, from writing and editing to page assembly and platemaking. Desktop publishing programs, though, are more accurately described as "typesetting and page assembly" programs. Professional Page allows the user to integrate all the stages of publishing on a personal computer, even though many of those stages involve other software products. The text and graphic components of a document can be gathered from their various sources (word processors, scanners, paint programs, etc.) and assembled into a complete document, and then output in camera ready form from a laser printer or typesetting machine. With Gold Disk's Professional Color separator (sold separately), pages can be output as screened, color separated film, ready for platemaking and printing. Despite its relative simplicity and economy, typesetting and page assembly with a desktop publishing systen, is still a skilled process. To create professional quality documents, some knowledge of typography and design priciples is essential. To help the experienced designer relate traditional methods to the new technology, and to give the novice a workable basic understanding of how to create attractive and readable pages, refer to the Design section of this manual. In the same way that microcomputers unleashed computing to a mass audience, desktop publishing has offered access to publishing tools to a larger base of users through personal computers and laser printers. As the term suggests, it is possible to fit all the necessary equipment for desktop publishing on a desk and with it to produce near-typeset quality documents. In its fullest sense, publishing involves more than just typesetting and page make up, though. Writing, editing, photography, illustration, and many other processes are involved. Professional Page allows you to integrate the pre-press stages of publishing on your Amiga. DESKTOP PUBLISHING VS. WORD PROCESSING -------------------------------------- Desktop publishing is often confused with a sophisticated form of word processing. It is true that a desktop publishing system performs many of the same functions as a word processor. More than that however, desktop publishing is a process for laying out pages and this often requires as much manipulation of graphics as of text. Even with traditional electronic typesetting, word processors are used as a front-end to prepare copy for page layout. Similarly word processors are often used to create the first draft of text for a desktop publishing system. It is important, therefore, that the system can import text from many different word processors. Professional Page has a full featured word processor. For short projects, it is preferable to create copy from within the desktop publishing systen to eliminate the extra steps of importing the text; but if more than one person is preparing the copy it is more practical to prepare the text on a word processor because only one page layout can be worked on at a time. The features that you require for your project will also affect whether you use Professional Page's word processor or a separate word processing package. ABOUT PROFESSIONAL PAGE ----------------------- Professional Page is designed for professional quality page layout. Included is a full set of typographic controls for manipulating text and halftoning bitmapped graphics to take full advantage of the resolution of PostScript output devices. We understand the importance of What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get, and have all the tools for editing and creating both text and structured graphics available right where you layout the page. There are also numerous other advanced features such as: automatic hyphenation, kerning, wrapping text around boxes, and retention of full-color information for four color separation. Professional Page will prove to be a powerful yet intuitive tool for page layouts. SAVING PROFESSIONAL PAGE DOCUMENTS ---------------------------------- If there is one point that should be stressed when using Professional Page, or any software product for that matter, it is that you should save your work often. This "insurance" will pay for itself the first time you run into any difficulty. For example, saving a document before a major layout change will give you the option of going back to the original layout at any time. Especially when you are first learning to use a computer or a particular program, you could manage to "crash" the system. Saving files frequently will make sure you only lose, at worst, a few minutes of work. Another important suggestion is to print your documents often. Professional Page attempts to provide the most accurate representation of your page possible on the Amiga, but it is still just that, a representation. If you have access to a PostScript laser printer where you can print your document several times during its creation, your final product will take form more quickly, and more accurately. It is more desirable to alter only one element on your page at a time rather than modifying many, which may change the overall design of your document. COMPATABILITY ------------- Professional Page allows you to import files from many other software packages. Imported text from WordPerfect, Scribble! , TextCraft, TextCraft Plus, and many others (in ASCII format). Graphics can be created with graphic software such as DeluxePaint II, Aegis Images, and Digi-Paint, and from hardware peripherals such as the Easyl pressure sensitive digitizing tablet and the Digi-View video digitizer. Structured graphics can be impoAed from Aegis Draw Plus. Any IFF compatible package can be used to import text or graphics. (See Appendix G:Using Professional Page with Other Amiga Products). 4. TUTORIAL... -------------- The best way to learn Professional Page is to use it. As described in the Introduction section, Professional Page emphasizes a natural, intuitive equivalent to traditional design tools and methods. With some practice, assisted by the tutorial and reference information in this manual, you can learn to use all the features of Professional Page for a wide range of design Jobs. In this tutorial we will create a two page newsletter (see Appendix H:Newsletter). In the course of creating the newsletter, you will use many of the basic tools of Professional Page, and you'll go a long way toward becoming comfortable with using the program. The principles you are introduced to in this tutorial will give you a sense of how to go about organizing any similar project. At all times, feel free to experiment wAth the various commands and functions of Professional Page. Don't be afraid to experiment. You can always restart the tutorial and try again if the situation becomes too confusing. The tutorial is divided into two basic parts. The first part shows you how to use all of the tools and features that you need to make a simple layout. Once you know how to manipulate the basic tools, you can start laying out the sample newsletter in the second part of the tutorial. The tutorial is only a first introduction to the capabilities of Professional Page. Many specific examples of the program's features are found in the Design section of the manual. Other examples of text, bitmap graphics and structured drawings are also to be found on the Fonts and Utilities disk included in the Professional Page package. These can be used to modify the newsletter example in this tutorial if you wish. Good luck! To run the tutorial, you need: ----------------------------- * A working copy of the Professional Page Program disk. * A working copy of the Professional Page Fonts and Utilties Disk. * A blank, formatted data disk. * A suitable output device, if available (preferably a 300 dpi laser printer). If you are not already in Professional Page, boot up the Program in the ----------------------------------------------------------------------- following way: -------------- * At the Workbench prompt, insert your copy of the Professional Page program disk into the internal drive. * Move the mouse pointer over the PPage disk icon, and double click. * Double click the Professional Page program icon. If the program does not completely load, it may be because you only have 512k of memory. Professional Page is designed to work with one megabyte or more of RAM (for information on memory expansions, see Appendix G:Using Professional Page with Other Amiga Products). ANATOMY OF THE SCREEN --------------------- Before you begin, you should famliliarize yourself with the various elements on the screen. The Professional Page screen should look like this: Professional Page Gold Disk Document: Untitled For a more detailed explanation consult the Technical Reference section. Once the Professional Page art board is on the screen, you're ready to create a page. CREATING A PAGE --------------- * Hold down the right mouse button, and the menu strip becomes visible along the top of the Amiga screen. * Keeping the right mouse button pressed down, move the pointer to the Page menu (the second menu from the left). When the pointer touches the word Page, a "pull-down menu" appears. Still keeping the mouse button pressed down, move the pointer down to the Create item, presenting two "sub-items", From Template and From Default. Still keeping the right mouse button pressed down, move the pointer to the From Default subitem and let go. This procedure is called "selecting a menu". * A "requester window" appears, showing a number of adjustable settings. For the moment, use the default settings, which creates a letter-sized page (8.5"x 11") with no columns. Click once with the left mouse button on the OK gadget in the lower left hand corner of the requester to create the page. A representation of the page appears on your art board. Also, at the top of the gadget strip on the right hand side of the screen, the page number (page 1, in this case), is displayed. KEYBOARD COMMANDS ----------------- The New Page Format requester that you called up with the mouse and the pointer can be accessed directly with a keyboard equivalent, in this case (CTRL N). Call it up again, this time using the keyboard equivalent of the mouse command. Hold down the CTRL-key and press the N-key. The New Page Format requester pops up again. Click the OK gadget at the bottom left of the requester. The page number changes to 2 (you now have two pages in memory - see "Page Numbers" in the Technical Reference section). Most of the commonly used features of Professional Page can be accessed with either keyboard or mouse. The mousepointer/ pull-down menu system is the simplest and most natural way to get at Professional Page features, especially for a novice. When you become profient with Professional Page, especially if you're using it in a production environment where speed is important, you will want to make more use of the keyboard equivalents. A full list of keyboard equivalents can be found in Appendix B: Keyboard Equivalents and on the Quick Reference Card. THE NEW PAGE ------------ The new page appears on the screen as a white rectangle with rulers along the top and the left side. By default, the page appears on a standard Amiga monitor screen at 33% of its actual (printed) size, so that you can see the entire page at one time. SAVING AND OPENING (LOADING) YOUR DOCUMENTS ------------------------------------------- Before you begin the second part of this tutorial, you should know how to save and load your documents. Professional Page loads and saves files in a manner famliliar to users of other Amiga programs. Saving a Document ----------------- Although this tutorial is short, you may not be able to, or not wish to, finish it in one session. You should know how to save your current document so that you can continue from where you left off at a later date. Also, saving your document where you leR at a later date. Also, saving your document to disk at frequent intervals is a very good habit to get into. Especially while you are learning to use Professional Page, you will want to protect your work from destructive features that you may accidentally invoke, such as the power OFF switch. Even as an expert, you are still capable of makLng mistakes, and will be subject to acts of God or the electric company, such as power failures. Even if you have a hard disk for your Amiga, continue to make backups of your documents on floppy disks as well. Before saving a document, make sure that a formatted data thsk is in your Amiga,s internal disk drive (DF0:). Since we have already created a page, let's demonstrate how to save the blank page as a docunment on disk. There are two ways to save a document to thsk. The first is the use of Save As. To use Save As: --------------- * Make sure your data thsk is in the internal drive (DF0:) * Select the Save As item from the Project menu. * When the Save Document As requester comes up, click on the DF0: gadget. * In the File text line, type the name for your document, TESTSAVE for example. * Click OK to save the document. For more information on the file requester, see Technical Reference section. The name of the document (visible from the status line) should change to the name that you specified with the Save As item. The second way of saving your document is to select the Save item. The Save item is very convenient when you are updating a file that you are working on. You could save modifications to the file frequently without the hassle of re-entering the same file name information. WARNING: the Save item overwrites the previously saved file. Selecting Save causes your file to be saved immediately to whatever disk and directory was used in the Save As operation or the default drive and directory if the Save As operation hasn't been used. If no file name has previously been specified using the Save As item, Professional Page will automatically name the document "Untitled" and store it in tbe default directory. To give the file a name: ------------------------ * Select the Project/Information item. * Delete the default file name "Untitled", and type in the name of your file. From now on, if you make any changes to your document, and wish to update it to disk, simply select the Save item, and Professional Page will automatically use the given file name, and the previously specified disk drive and directory. Loading a Document ------------------ If you want to load a previously saved file, use the Open command from the project menu. To demonstrate this, clear the document in memory, and restore the document that you already saved. To clear the document in memory: -------------------------------- * Select the New item from the Project menu. * A "Warning" requester will appear. * Click Yes, and the page on screen will be erased. The name of the document will go back to being "Untitled". To load the previously saved document: -------------------------------------- * Select the Open itemn from the Project menu. * A requester similar to the one used in the Save As item will appear. * Select the disk drive and directory, if necessary. * Professional Page will give you a list of all of the documents located on that disk (in this tutorial there will only be one). Click on your file with the mouse pointer. Professional Page will take your selected file, and transfer the name to the "File:" text line. * Click the OK gadget to load the file. NOTE: the previous two steps can also be achieved by double-clicking with the left mouse button on the file name. Professional Page will load that file, and you will see your document on the screen. In this case, you will see the blank page you created earlier For more information on the file requester, see Technical Reference section. Now that you know how to save and load liles, we can start on the tutorial, keeping in mind that you can stop and restart any time you wish. Once again, you should frequently save your document. It is very easy to load a previously saved document, but much harder to recreate it from scratch if something should go wrong. MAKING AND USING BOXES ---------------------- The most important idea behind Professional Page is its use of "Boxes". Once you fully understand boxes, you have grasped the main concept of Professional Page. Every object on the page is placed in a box, Whether it is text, structured drawings, or bitmap graphics. Boxes can be any size and, as the name implies, are rectangular in shape. But a box is more than just a defined holding area. You can change many attributes associated with that box. For exanaple, a box can have visible frames, or be filled in with a shade of gray, which can be printed as a halftone screen or pattern (see "Printing" in the Using Professional Page section). Boxes can even have margins internally for your text to follow (much like a page has margins). Boxes can serve as windows for your graphics, allowing you to crop the graphic to any size. Start by experimenting with creating and manipulating boxes. For now we will just experiment with empty boxes. We will fill them with text later, but it helps if you know how to handle them. To create a new box: -------------------- * Click on the Box Create tool frorn the general tools section of the tool palette (see Tool Palette" in the Technical Reference section). * Move the mouse to the position on the page where you want the top left hand corner of the box to appear (place it anywhere inside the top left hand page). For our purposes, the exact position doesn't matter. * Press the left mouse button and drag the mouse over to the position where the bottomn right hand corner of your box is to be placed, approximately at the 7.5" x 3" setting, and release the button. The outline of a large box will now be visible. * Professional Page remains in the Box Create mode to allow you to create more boxes. Go ahead and experiment by placing a couple of boxes on your page. Professional Page will remain in the Box Create mode until you select another tool. To help you when creating a box, the position of your mouse is always shown as a thin line on the rulers around the page. Also, the position of your mouse in relation to the top left-hand corner of the page is indicated by the two coordinate numbers on the menu bar (when you are resizing your box, the figures will change to represent the box dimensions, not its position on the page). To return to the mode of operation that you were in before activating the Box Create tool, click on the Null Pointer tool. Boxes are displayed with thin oulines around them. These outlines will not print out on your final page. They are only a visual guide for you. You will also notice that only one box, the one created last, has a solid outline, while other boxes have broken (dashed) outlines. The box with the solid outline is called the "Active Box". The Active Box -------------- The Active Box is the one that you are currently working on. To work on a different box, simply click in the desired box, and it will become the Active Box. To quickly locate the Active Box: --------------------------------- * Select the Show Active item in the Box menu. * Professional Page will position the page such that the Active Box is showing on the screen and flash the outline of your Active Box. Moving and Resizing a Box ------------------------- After you have created a box, you can change the position or the size of it with ease. To move a box: ------------- * Press the left mouse button anywhere in the interior of the box and keep it pressed. The pointer changes into a hand shape, telling you that the box is ready to be moved. * Drag the box to its new position. The outline of the box will move with your mouse. The coordinates of the top left corner of the box appears on the right side of the menu strip, corresponding to the ruler cross hairs that are visible on the top and left edges of the page. * Release the mouse button to let go of the box. Handles ------- Box outlines have eight "handles" (one on each corner, and one in the middle of each side). These handles can be grabbed with the Null Pointer tool, and moved, causing the box to change size and proportion. To resize a box: ---------------- * Move the pointer to any of the handles on the box, depending on which dimensions you wish to change. For example, if you decide that you want the bottom of the box to drop lower but are satisfed with the left and right sides, drag with the middle handle on the bottom of the box outline. * Move the pointer up or down, causing the box to change size, and release the button at the desired location. * For precision control of positioning and resizing of boxes, you can use the Active sub-item of the Alter item in the Box menu (see the Technical Reference section for details). Deleting a Box -------------- Deleting a box is very easy. First make the box you wish to delete active, and then select the Delete Active item from the 80K menu. NOTE: If the box that you wish to delete contains any information (text, graphics, or drawings), Professional Page will pop up a warning requester for a confirmation before deleting the box and its contents. A CLOSER LOOK ------------- At the default magnifcation (33%), it would be quite difficult to accurately position boxes manually, nor could you read any text. You can zoom in for a closer look, so that any information that you place in the box will be readable. There are five magnification modes available for your use. They are: 25 %, 33%, 50%, 1OO% and 200%. You can change your magnification at any time without losing any information. To change your magnification level to 100%: ------------------------------------------- * Select the 100% sub-item of the Magnification item in the Preferences menu. NOTE: to the right of every magnification option is a keyboard equivalent. You will find it a lot quicker and easier to use the keyboard equivalents for changing magnification rather than the mouse (See Appendix B: Keyboard Equivalents). You will see that the page zooms in and fills the screen, and only a small part of your page is visible at one time. The part of your page that is visible is displayed in the Page Position gadget. You can move your screen around to view other parts of the page at this level of magnification. To move about the page: ----------------------- * Move the pointer over the Page Position gadget. * Drag the small white rectangle in the Page Position gadget (this represents your screen), releasing the button when you have moved it to the area of the page that you wish to view. Try the other magnifications. Experiment, using both the mouse and the keyboard. Thus, to attain the 100% magnification level, hold down the Right Amiga Key and depress the "2" key. For a list of other conventions used in this manual, consult the Getting Started section. For a list of all keyboard shortcuts, consult Appendix B : Keyboard Equivalents and the Quick Reference Card. From this point on, you should freely use any magnification level you desire to perform any of the functions in this tutorial. The tutonal will prompt you to set a particular magnification level only when it is necessary that you be in that level to complete a part of this tutorial. Otherwise, use your discretion All features of the progran will work in any given magnification level. USING THE ART BOARD ------------------- Essentially, the art board is the Professional Page equivalent of a designer's drawing table or light table. The art board can be used as a storage location for boxes that you wish to keep off of the page for one reason or another. If you have a very complex page, and wish to reorganize the format, but maintain the boxes and their information, you can temporarily move any, or all of the boxes to the art board. The art board serves as more than just a storage place. You can actually create boxes directly on the art board and place text, graphics and drawings in those boxes. All of the box resizing and manipulating features work on the art board as well as the page. Professional Page tells you if you are over the art board, or the actual page. If you move a box on the page, the pointer turns into a hand. When moving that box off the page and onto the art board, the pointer will change to thumb tack. The real power of the art board lies in allowing you to move boxes from one page to another. Although the page will change, the art board and its contents remain. See the Using Professional Page section for more on box manipulation. NOTE: At 100% and 200% magnification levels, you may not see any part of the art board. This does not, however, prevent you from placing boxes on the art board. To place a box on the art at 100% magnification: ------------------------------------------------ * Switch to 1OO% magnification. * Create a box. * Grab the box and drag it over the ruler at the page edge. * Move the hand pointer to the edge, over the ruler. At this point the hand changes into a thumb tack, and if you place the box on the ruler, the box is placed off of the page, and onto the art board. You can confirm this by switching back into the 33% magnification level. To make the page invisible: --------------------------- * Select the Visible item from the Page menu again. The page and its contents will disappear, leaving only the art board, If a box seemed to disappear when you moved it off the page, it probably "fell under" the page and becomes visible when the page is made invisible. To bring the page back: ----------------------- * Select the Visible item from the Page menu again. The page will now reappear with all its contents intact. When you finally save your document, your art board will be saved with it, thus allowing you to safely save half finished documents. Experiment by creating and manipulating boxes on and off the art board. Once you realize how easy it is, you will use the art board quite frequently (refer to the Design section for some examples). USING THE GRID -------------- As you have found out, it is difficult to position boxes with great accuracy using the mouse. You can use a grid to help you position boxes more precisely. In addition to being a visual guide, and unlike grids on paper the grid in Professional Page can automatically align boxes to the grid line intersections. The grid lines will not print out on your final page. Grid lines can be chosen in several units of measures, Inches, Picas (for more information on the Pica measurement consult the Design and Technical Reference sections), and Centimeters. We will use the Inches unit of measurement for this tutorial. To set grid spacing: -------------------- * Select the Layout Tools item in the Preferences menu. * You will see that the unit of measurement is Inches (the default setting). You willl need a grid spacing of 1/2 inch for this tutorial. * Click on the X: spacing text line to change the spacing. * Delete the contents using the backspace and DEL key. * Type in 0.500 and press RETURN. Do the same with the Y: spacing text line. * Make the grid lines visible by clicking the Grid ON gadget. * Turn on the Snap to Grid to force all future boxes on the page to align to the grid line intersections. * Click the OK gadget when you have set the desired options. Create a box or two to see the effect of using the Snap to Grid item. GROUPS ------ In much the same manner as you move one box, you can move several boxes at one time, keeping their positions rela tive to each other unchanged. Grouping allows you to manipulate one or more boxes in many different ways. As well as having the ability to move several boxes at one time, you can clone, delete, align, and center groups. You are also free to add and subtract boxes to and from a group. Making and Moving Groups ------------------------ To demonstrate grouping, make sure that you have three or four boxes drawn close together on your page. To make a group: ---------------- * Select the Group tool from the tool palette. This tool allows you to select a number of boxes which Professional Page will remember as a group. * Drag an outline around the boxes you want to group. Every box that is completely enclosed by the outline is grouped. NOTE: Only one group can be active at a time, and after you have created a group, the Group tool is cancelled and replaced by the Null Pointer tool. Before you selected the group, the active box had a solid grey outline and the other boxes were outlined witn broken, dotted outlines. When you select a group, the active box remains as before with a solid grey outline but the other boxes in the group are now represented with solid black outlines. To move a group: ---------------- * To move the group (all of the boxes at the same time), hold the SHIFT key, and grab any box in the group. * Move the box and the grouped boxes will move together. * Release the mouse button when you are satisfied with the position of the group. Rearranging Groups ------------------ It is possible to rearrange the position of boxes from within a group, yet still keep the group intact. To change the position of a box from within a group: ---------------------------------------------------- * Grab the box that you wish to move within the selected group and move it as if you were to move the box on its own. Don't use the SHIFT key. Adding Boxes to a Group ----------------------- You can add boxes to an established group at any time. To add a box to the existing group: ---------------------------------- * Press the SHIFT key, and click on the box that you wish to add to the group. * The new box is now a part of the group. You can verify this by moving the group. Removing a Box -------------- * To remove a box from the group, use CTRL-select. Press the CTRL-key and click on the box that you wish to remove from the group. Deleting a Group ---------------- * To delete all boxes in the group (and their contents), select the Delete item in the Group menu. If any of the boxes in the group are not empty, a warning requester will ask for confirmiation of the action. CREATING THE NEWSLETTER ----------------------- For this newsletter, you should start off with a clear page. Select the Project/New item followed by a Page/Create/From Default sub-item. It's OK to use the default settings. Preparing a Masthead -------------------- Now that you have practiced the basics of creating boxes and activating the tools necessary to create a layout, you can go on to create the newsletter. To create a box for the masthead: -------------------------------- * Create a box starting at the 1" x 1 " ruler setting. You don't have to position it exactly at the grid intersections. Remember, we have Snap to Grid enabled so the box will automatically place itself at exactly the 1" x 1" location and make the box. * Stretch the box over until it is one inch in height, and 6.5 inches in width. Don't forget to select the Null Pointer tool to get out of Box Create mode. Entering Text in Your Box ------------------------- Professional Page ia capable of importing text from a variety of different word processors. But there are situations, such as a newsletter masthead, where you may wish to add text at the last minute, without going to the inconvenience of using a word processor where you can type and edit your text at any time right on the screen. In fact, if you wish, you can create the text entirely Professional Page. To enter text into a box: ------------------------ * Select the Text tool from the general tool palette. * Click inside the masthead box. A small line cursor will appear in the top left hand corner of the box. * You can now type in the headline of the masthead (try "New Laser Times"), correcting any mistakes with the backspace and cursor keys. The text is displayed on screen in the default Times font style at the default point size of 12 points (for more information about fonts and point sizes consult the Design section and the Glossary). The text for the masthead of the newsletter should acutally be 48 point type, in the Helvetica font style. Changing Point Size and Typeface -------------------------------- To change the text to 48 point Helvetica Bold centered text: ----------------------------------------------------------- * Select the Edit/Select Box item. All the text in that box will be highlighted. This is called a marked block of text. While there is a marked block of text, changes to the text attributes through the Type menu will affect the entire block. * Select the Type/Typeface/New sub-item. A requester will display all the available typefaces in the fonts: directory. Select Helvetica by clicking on the Helvetica line of the directory and clicking OK. Use the scroll bar as necessary. Using this requester is similar to using the file requester (see Technical Reference section). * To change point sizes, select the Type/Size/New sub-itern and enter 48 in the requester's text line. You now have 48 point Helvetica. The Screen representation uses the closest available screen font and then scales it to the required size. * Select Style/Bold sub-item in the Type menu to bold the block of text. * Select the Type/Justification/Center sub-item to center the block of text. * Select the Null Pointer to exit Text mode. Changing Box Attributes ----------------------- You can change many aspects of the box that you have just created, guch as background color, border style, margins, and positionlng. In the newsletter many of the box attributes are different than the ones Professional Page has given you by default. The newsletter uses a top margin of 0.250". Margins in boxes do not refer to their positioning on the page. The Position control has that function. Rather, margins refer to the positioning of text and graphics in the box. You will notice that the text in the masthead box is positioned at the top center of the box. To move the text lower in the box (i.e.set up a top margin), you must change the Top Margin value from "0" (its default). To change the Top Margin: ------------------------ * Select the Box/Alter/Active sub-item. * Click on the Margins/Top text line, and change the value to 0.250 inches. * Select the OK gadget. Creating Columns for the Body Text ---------------------------------- Looking at the example, you see that there is a bitmap graphic picture in the center of the two columns. We will ignore the bitmap picture for now. We will create the two straight columns first. Just as you created a box for your masthead, now you must create a box for your body text. Referring to the illustration of the newsletter, we see that there are two columns. You could just create two boxes, in the way you created one for the masthead, and use your resizing and repositioning skills to eventually match up the boxes, but there is an easier way. Earlier when you created your page, you stayed with all of the default settings. Professional Page allows you to make changes to the specifications of that page at any time, without losing the contents of the page/. First, reduce the magnification back to 33% so that we can see the entire page. The newsletter has two columns. Each one is 3.000 inches in width, staring 2.500 inches from the top, and ending 1.000 inch from the bottom. To redefine your page with guidelines for two columns use the following --------------------------------------------------------------------------- steps: ----- * Select the Page/Alter/Current sub-item in the Page menu. The familiar Current Page Format requester will appear. * Click in their string gadgets and change the Margins Top to 2.500 inches and Margins Bottom to 1.00 inches. * Make sure the Margins Right and Margins Left text lines are set to a value of 1.000 inch. * Change number of Columns to 2. Set the Gutter (the amount of space between columns) to 0.500 inches. * Select the OK gadget. The page looks a lot like it did before. To see the columns, activate them the same way as you activated the grid. To activate column outlines: --------------------------- * Select the Layout Tools item under the Preferences menu. * At the bottorn of the Layout Tools requester, click on the Columns On gadget, and then click OK. The columns are now visible as dotted lines. NOTE: the columns are not boxes, but outlines. You can not directly move or resize columns. The outles are just there to make your job easier by giving you accurate precise guides. You should also note that you do not have to stick to the margins or placements of the columns, they will not restrict you in any way, they are just visual guides. To use the columns to hold text, you will have to place boxes over the outlines. Tere is an easy way to accomplish this, called Auto Boxing. Auto Boxing ----------- Before you can fill your columns with text, you must import that text into Professional Page, or write in Professional Page's built-in word processor. On the Fonts and Utilities disk is a text file created for the newsletter. You can now import that file. To import text: --------------- * Select the Project/Import/Text sub-item. * The default requester is titled "Import ASCII file?". Professional Page will permit you to import text from a wide variety of Amiga and other word processors. In this case, the text file was created with WordPerfect, so you don't want to use the default ASCII import. Select Cancel. * From the Preferences menu, select the Text/Format/WordPerfect sub-item. * Now select Project/Import/Text again. * The Import WordPerfect File requester will appear. Click the DF1: gadget and click on the NEWSLETTER directory. * Click on the first file NEWSLETTER1.txt * Press the OK gadget to import that file. You now have a text file waiting to be placed on your page (actually, it is sitting in the text paste buffer). * Click the Text tool to indicate where you wish to place text. * Move the pointer on top of the first column outline and press the left button while holding down the CTRL key. The largest possible box is created inside the column. You want the text to be 12 point, Times, plain, flush justified (see the Design section). * Change the typeface to Times by selecting the Type/Typeface/Times sub-item. * Select the point size of the text by selecting the Type/Size/l2 sub-item. * Select plain text by using the Type/Style/Plain sub-item. * Select flush justification by using Typeq/Justification/Flush sub-item. * Select the Paste item, in the Edit menu. That's it, your text is now placed on the screen. * Select the Null Pointer to exit Edit mode. NOTE: If you are at 33% magnification or less, the text will appear "greeked" and you must view the page at a higher magnification if you want to see the text. You used the Auto Box feature to place your text. Professional Page created a box for you with the same dimensions as the column that you had specified earlier. If you change your mind, you can resize and move the box as you please. Auto Boxing allows you to fill pages with text very quickly and with precision. Increase the magnification, and move the Page Position gadget in the tool palette to view the part of the page with the copy that you just placed on the page. Linking Text Boxes ------------------- Set the magnification back to 33%. The bottom right hand corner of the text box is highlighted with an invertd "L". Professional Page is telling you that all of the text will not fit in the first box that you specified. what you want to do now is to link the first column with a second column, so that the text that would not fit in the first oclumn will spill into the second one. To link two boxes: ----------------- * Make sure that the first column is selected as the Active Box. * To link two boxes, Select the Link tool. The pointer will change to the link pointer. * Move the pointer over the second column outline and click while holding down the CTRL key (using the Auto Box feature again). The text that did not fit in the first column will appear at the top of the second column. * Select the Null Pointer to exit the Link mode. Before you finish with text, take a closer look at how your flush justifed text actually appears. When you change magnification level to 1OO%, you will notice many large gaps in the text. To eliimnate these gaps, you could haae Professional Page automatically hyphenate your text. To hyphenate text: ------------------ * Select the Text tool and click inside a text box. Since the boxes are linked, you can click on either box. * Select the Edit/Select All item. * Select the Type/Hyphenation item and all your text will be hyphenated automatically. You can see the changes flow through your text. Notice how this eliminates the many gaps throughout the un-hyphenated flush-justified text. Now, let's take a look at the graphic. Importing Graphics and Drawings ------------------------------- You can import graphics and drawings in much the same way as you you are able to import text. There is a big difference between a graphic and a drawing. A graphic is a picture that is stored as a bitmap. Any picture created in DPaint, DPaint II, Aegis Images, GraphiCraft, using the mouse or a graphic tablet such as the Easyl pressure sensitive drawing pad, or which was created with a scanner such as Digi-View', is considered a graphic. A drawing is a picture that was created using structured graphics. The picture is stored as a mathematical representation of what is seen on the screen. Any picture created in Aegis Draw or with the Professional Page structured drawing tools is considered a drawing. For more information about drawings and graphics, consult the (Using Professional Page and Technical Reference sections. The graphic used in the sample newsletter is also on the Utilities disk. In this newsletter, it will be located near the center of the page. To make a graphic box: --------------------- * Use the Box Create tool from the general tool palette. * Create a new box for the graphic. The graphic must have an empty, active box ready to receive it in order to load. * Create a box starting at the 3" x 5" grid location. * The bottom right hand corner of the box should extend to the 5.5 " x 7.5" grid locations. * Once your box is created, select the Null Pointer tool to exit Box Create mode. To load a graphic into the graphic box: -------------------------------------- * Select the Project/Import/Bitmap Graphic sub-item. * A file requester appears. * Click on DF1:, then click on the NEWSLETTER directory. * Select the file NEWSLETTER1.pic. * Select the OK gadget. After a moment, a grey-toned image of the graphic appears in the box. Looking at the newsletter, you see that at this point, the graphic box is in the middle of the page, overlapping parts of the other two columns. You could use your editing skills to laborously add spaces to the text in the overlapped parts of the columns, so a box would fit in a cleared space in the center of the page. Professional Page gives you a much easier solution: text runaround. Text Runaround -------------- Text runaround is a feature that will wrap text around any box overlying it so that the text and box won't overlap each other. To activate the Text Runaround: ------------------------------- * Click on graphic box to make it active. * Select the Box/Alter/Active sub-item from the Box menu to change the graphic box's attributes. * The Active Box requester will pop up. * Select the Impermeable Box gadget. * Set all box margins to 0.100 inches. * Click OK. The text in the box below your new graphic box reflows itself around the graphic box. The text runaround feature can be used to create drop caps, or to insert any pictorial element anywhere into columns of text. As it happens, the graphic is actually larger than the box it is displayed in. Parts of it are not visible to you, since they extend past the edges of the graphic box. To position the graphic within the box: -------------------------------------- * Move the pointer over the graphic in its box. * While pressing the ALT key, press the left mouse button. * Moving the pointer, while keeping the button pressed, will allow you to move the graphic around inside the box without changing the position of the box. * Release the button when you are satisfied with position of the graphic. The same routines that were available for sizing text boxes are available for sizing graphjc boses. When resizing a graphic box, the graphic inside will keep its prevaous position relative to the page. There is, however, one new feature that is applicable to graphic or drawing boxes. This is graphic scale. More on graphic scale a little later, when you do the second page. Structured Graphics ------------------- Your first page is almost complete, minus a few cosmetic additions in the form of horizontal lines which you wi11 now draw on the page. Adding any straight lines, at any angle, is a very simple process. So is adding rectangles, ellipses, free hand drawing, polygons, and bezier curves. All of the structured drawing tools that you require are available right on the screen, in the structured Drawing Tool palette (see the Technical Reference section for a description of the structured graphic tools). The real advantage in using the structured graphic tools is that they produce "Drawing" quality results. This means that the structured graphics will output in the highest resolution of printer that you have available. A straight line at a 45 degree angle will look very straight (no jaggies) when output to a 300 Dot Per Inch laser printer. The same is true for the Ellipse tool, Bezier Curve tool, the Polygon tool, and Free Hand Draw tool. These tools can be used anywhere on the page without creating a box prior to their placement. Professional Page will automaatically create an exact fitting box for your structured graphic upon completion. Back to the newsletter. Let's draw a one point horizontal line at the 2 inch mark. Since you have the Grid Snap enabled at 1/2" increments, positioning the graphic at the precise location desired will be simple. To place the structured graphic: ------------------------------- * Select the Line tool from the structured graphic palette. * Select the Draw/Line/Weight/1 point sub-itern. * Position the pointer at the 1" x 2" location. * Drag the line horizontally out to the 7.5" x 2" mark and let go. You may have noticed that the line drags out and follows your pointer at any angle. You may have also noticed that it required a bit of patience in order to create a perfectly horizontal straight line. In this case, the snap to grad ensured that you created a perfectly straight, level line. But many times you will work without any snap to grid. Creating straight lines is much more difficult under these conditions. That is why Professional Page provides you with a constraining feature for drawjng with structured graphics. Constraining Structured Graphics -------------------------------- Constraining Graphics will limit the shapes or angles of the structured drawing tools to certain predefined values. For example, constraining the straight line drawing tool will only allow you to create lines at 45 degree angle increments. Constraining the rectangle drawing tool will only allow you to create squares. Constraining the ellipse drawing tool, you can only create circles. Constrained beziers will allow the start and end points of the curve to always be at 45 degree increments. And by constraining polygons, you get a closed polygon. The free hand drawing tool is not affected by the constraining feature. To demonstrate the constraining feature, and how easy it is to create a perfectly horizontal line, please delete the line that you just created, even if it was conrect. To delete a structured graphic: ------------------------------ * Click on the structured graphic box to make it active. * Select Box/Delete Active. A warning requester appears and click Yes. To further demonstrate the use of constraining graphics, deactivate the Snap to Grid. The process of disabling the Snap to Grid is similar to that of enabling it as you did at the beginning of the tutorial. Select Preferences/Layout Tools and when the Layout Tools requester pops up, click the Snap to Grid gadget OFF. Placing Constrained Graphics: ---------------------------- * Start by selecting the Line tool as you did previously. * Move the pointer over to the begiming location of the line. * Before pressing the left mouse button to start drawing, press and hold down the ALT key. This key informs Professional Page that you wish to enable the constraining feature. * Now, simply press and hold the left mouse button and drag out the line. You will notice that the line will remain horizontal, even if the pointer moves up or down slightiy. To further demonstrate the constraining feature, move the pointer around the first anchor point of the line (the point where you began to draw). The line will jump at 45 degree angle increments. * Release the mouse button when the line is at the desired location. Again, boxes containing structured drawings can be moved and resized just like any other box that you would create yourself with the Box Create tool. In resizing the box, the graphic will always keep its relative position to the page, unless, of course, you move the entire box. In the illustration of the newsletter, there is a similar line located 10.5 inches down the page. Draw a similar line on your own page. Printing Newsletter Page One ----------------------------- This concludes page 1 of the newsletter. Before you go to Page 2, print a copy of page 1, just to prove that the printed copy really does look like your screen image of the newsletter. Assuming that you have a PostScript laser printer connected, tne process to print a page is as follows. To print a page: ----------------- * Select the Project/Print/Current Page sub-item. The Print Page requester will pop up. * Leave the number of copies at 1 (the default). With most PostScript compatible devices, you will Output to: with the text line set at the ser: selection, representing your Amiga's serial port. Check the Using Professional Page section, and Appendix D: Connecting Your Amiga to a Printer, if your laser printer is somehow different. NOTE: some additional printing options can be found in the Page/Alter/Current sub-item. They are discussed in more detail in the Technical Reference section, and Appendix D:Connecting Your Amiga to a Printer. * After making sure that your laser printer is ready to receive data, click on the OK gadget. In a few seconds, your laser printer will produce your first page. Check Appendix A: Troubleshooting Guide if you have and difficulties. NEWSLETTER PAGE TWO ------------------- The second page uses more boxes then the first one. Because of the more complicated design, it would not be possible to change the page format as you did to create the columns for the first page. The only way to create this is to manually place the boxes in the desired fashion on the page. Describing the actual layout would be time consuming, and not very informative, considering that you already know how to manipulate boxes. For this tutorial, you have an alternative to creating all of the boxes from scratch. You can import the page as a Template. Templates --------- Template pages are essentially individual pages that you have created earlier and saved to disk as pages. They can contain boxes, either empty or with information inside them such as graphics, drawings or text. Templates can be very useful when repetition of a layout is common. For example, say you are writing reports that share many common elements. You could define all of the standard layout elements (dimensions of the page, number and dimensions of columns, levels of indents, crop marks) and save that as a page. Then, to create a particular document, you can recall the appropriate template, and add the specific information for that document to it. The template that you will be using in this tutorial consists of a pattern of empty boxes already arranged as a layout. Importing a Template -------------------- * Select the Page/Load/Even Templates sub-item. The Load Even Template Pages requester will pop up. * Click the DF1: gadget in the requester. * Click on the NEWSLETTER directory. * Double click the Page2.template file. The template is now loaded into memory. Once loaded, all pages created From Template will look identical to this particular template. Professional Page allows you to define two different templates at any given time. Under normal circumstances, they are used for the even and odd (or left and right hand) pages in a document and are labelled as such. However, you are not restricted to using the templates in this way. Creating a Page from a Template ------------------------------- * Select the Page/Create/From Template sub-item * A requester appears. * Click on Use Even * Click on OK The page will then appear on your art board. The Page Number Indicator value, at the top of the tool palette on the right edge of the screen, will change to the number two. Examining the second page more closely, you will notice that each box has a number inside it, intended to identify each box that the tutorial is referring to. Before you actually place any information in the box, you will want to erase the number, without affecting any of the box attributes. This is accomplished with the Mop tool. Mopping Up ---------- To demonstrate mopping in Professional Page, let's erase the contents of Box #1, located at top left corner of the page. To Mop up: --------- * Select the Mop tool from the General tool palette. * Select Box #1. A warning requestor will pop up. * Press the YES gadget to confirm that you wish to erase the contents of the box. The number will disappear, but the box will remain. That's it, the contents have been "Mopped up". NOTE: You can not enter anything (text, graphic, drawing), in a non-empty box. You will always have to mop it first. WARNING: Mopping a box that is part of a linked chain of boxes (i.e. a text article) will delete the entire text contents. The links remain intact. Switching Between Pages ----------------------- Flipping between pages is very easy. There are two ways of doing it. To flip back or forwards one page: --------------------------------- * Click while your mouse pointer is over the bottom arrow of the Page Number Indicator gadget to flip back one page, and click on the top arrow of the Page Number Indicator gadget to flip forward one page. NOTE: the Page Number Indicator gadget can be operated using any of the tools selected. To jump directly to any page: ----------------------------- * Click on the text line in the Page Number Indicator and erase the number you find there. Type in the page number that you wish to jump to and press the RETURN key. Now, please return to Page One. Linking Text from one Page to Another ------------------------------------- If you look at the bottom right hand corner of your second column, you will notice the "L" shaped gadget indicating that there is extra text which could not be fitted nto your first two linked boxes. This text is still in memory, waiting for a box it can be flowed into. You can flow the additional text into Page Two by linking Page One's second column with a box on the next page. To Link the pages: ------------------ * Make the second column active. * Select the Link tool from the tool palette. * Flip to Page Two using the Page Number Indicator gadget. * Click onto the original box #1, which you mopped up earlier. This procedure links colunn 2 from Page One to the box #1 on Page Two, allowing text to pour out into the newly linked box. You will see that Page Two has entirely changed. A sequence of boxes has been flled with text automatically. How did this happen? Linked Boxes in Templates ------------------------- The template used to create Page Two was constructed with several boxes, some of which were linked. When the template was loaded, and text poured into the first box, it continued to flow through the entire series. Go into a higher magnification mode to view the type that flowed into the boxes on Page Two. You will see that the type is in several typefaces and point sizes without you having set any of the typesetting parameters yourself. Embedded Codes -------------- This pre-formatting of text was done using "embedded codes", instructions inserted into the text at the word processing stage and picked up by Professional Page when the text was imported. The use of embedded codes means that anyone wijth a word processing program can do much of the text formatting which you would otherwise have had to do with the mouse and the pull-down menus in Professional Page (see Appendix F: Formatting Text, for more information on formattjng text). You will notice, though, that your text does not completely fill the page. There is still a structured graphic to import to finish the page. Import a structured graphic into the middle left hand box, which is labelled box #2, and was not filled with text like the other boxes. Mop up the number identifying box #2, using the Mop tool, so that the box will be active and empty. Select the Null Pointer when you are finished. Now you can import a drawing into this box. Importing a Structured Drawing ------------------------------- * Select Project/Import/Structured Drawing. * When the Import Drawing? requester pops up, click the DF1: gadget. * Select the NEWSLETTER directory. * Select the NEWSLETTER.DWG file. * The drawing will load into box #2. Unlike the graphic that you loaded into Page One, this drawing fits snugly within the box outline. Professional Page will always import a structured graphic at a size that fits the box while maintaining its proper aspect ratio. Onto the Art Board ------------------ * Switch your magnification mode to 33%, and, using the Null Pointerr, move the structured graphic onto the art board. Notice that the Null Pointer tums into a hand while dragging the structured graphic's box across the page. The hand icon then turns into a thumbtack icon when it moves onto the art board. * "Pin" the box anywhere on the art board. The drawing will wait safely out of the way while you reorganize the page. Rearranging the Page -------------------- * To make box #1 larger, drag the bottom middle handle of box # 1 down to the bottom of the page. Text will flow from other boxes in the chain into the newly enlarged box. Deleting the box: ---------------- * Select the upper right hand box. * Select Box/Delete Active item, and the box will disappear The text will flow into the next box. Finishing the Page ------------------ * Drag the drawing off the art board, and drop it into the middle of the page. * Select the Box/Alter/Active sub-item. The requester will pop up. * Click the Impermeable Box gadget on. * Set all box Margins at 0.250 inches. * Set the Position and Size to left 2.5, top 7.5, width 3.5 and height 2.5. * Adjust the Graphic Scale to 0.8 The text will run around the drawing, which will have resized to the center of the page. You'll notice that the text fits the page quite comfortably. That's it, your complete newsletter iS finished. Viewing the Newsletter --------------------- You can view the newsletter without the distracting rulers, or box outlines. After all, they do not print on your page. To disable all of tbe non-printing outlines: ------------------------------------------- * Select the Preferences/Layout Tools item. The Layout Tools requester pops up. * Set all of the follow;ing to OFF: Grid, Ruler, Columns, Outlines * Click OK. Professional Page will now show you the page without any outlines or grids, This will give you a better preview of the final output. NOTE: You can switch between page one and two, and fully edit the pages as before. Printing the Complete Newsletter -------------------------------- Professional Page gives you a great deal of flexibility in printing your document. For example, each page can be rotated and/or scaled to any size, using the PostScript Output Specifications in the Page/Alter/Current sub-item. These features are discussed in the "Printing" sub-section in the Using Professional Page section. For this tutorial, though, you will first print the newsletter using the basic default settings. To print the entire newsletter: ------------------------------ * Select the Project/Print/Entire Document sub-item. The Print Document requester will pop up (for a full discussion of printing options within this requester, see the Technical Reference section). * Select OK. After a few moments, each page will be printed. CONCLUSION ---------- Let 's review what we have learned. On the first page, we created and deleted boxes, delined columns, used groups, created and used grids, imported text from a word processing program and created text with Professional Page's own text editor, linked boxes, styled and hyphenated and justified text, imported a graphic, ran text around it, created some rules with structured graphics, practiced the use of constraints, and practiced outputting the page. With the second page, we went on to use templates, learned about mopping, flippang between pages, linking text between pages, learned the existence of embedded text codes, imported and manipulated structured drawings, and learned how to print an entire document. Where do you go from here? Experiment. There are many other features that weren't discussed in this tutorial. Only through experimenting with the various features listed in the Technical Reference section, and in the Using Professional Page section, will you actually acquire skill in their use. After the Using Professional Page section, you should study the Design section. Although the Design section is not a hands-on tutorial, it does discuss Professional Page from the point of view of design and production. The Design section also explains some of the finer points of typography, an area which we did not cover in great detail in the tutorial. It will also explain the principles of good design, and tie that in with the information that you have learned in this tutorlal. On the Fonts and Utilities disk, there exists a copy of the finished newsletter. If in your experimentatlon, you destroy part, or all of your newsletter, you can always recall the original stored on the disk. This newsletter that you have just created is a great test bed for further experiments with more advanced features. The file is called NEWSLETTER.FINAL, and can be loaded from the NEWSLETTER directory of the Fonts and Utilities disk with the use of the Project/Open item as described earlier in this tutorial. 5. USING PROFESSIONAL PAGE... --------------------------- The aim of this section is to help you learn to use Professional Page effectively, by showing you the concepts underlying the program, and how to use them. It is assumed here that you have worked through the tutorial, and have a good idea of how to find your way around the Professional Page screen and menus. By the time you finish this section, you should have a much clearer idea of how Professional Page parts work together, and you will be able to take the initiative in terms of starting your own projects. The section is composed of four parts: ------------------------------------- * "Using Boxes" concerns how boxes are created and used singly, in groups, and in linked sequences or chains. * "Text" is a descnption of how text is created, imported, and manipulated. It is mainly concerned with the text editor, and leaves typographical considerations for discussion in the Design section. * "Bitmap Graphics" covers the use of Amiga bitmap graphics. * "Structured Drawings" describes the use of Amiga structured drawings. * "Printing" discusses how you can output your documents from various PostScript compatible laser printers and typesetting machines. HOW TO USE THIS SECTION ----------------------- This section is intended to give a general picture of how the eleMents of Professional Page can be used. It is not a hands-on tutonal like the previous section, nor is it a series of definitions like the Technical Reference. Rather, it is intended to integrate the concepts behind the separate operations. You should refer to it whenever you want to refresh your understanding of Professional Page's conventions. THE PRODUCTION PROCESS ---------------------- "Desktop Publishing" has to encompass the entire "pre-press" world of publishing, which means understanding and managing a variety of skills and a variety of tools outside of Professional Page. For the experienced designer using new technology, or for tne novice wishing to understand the steps involved in putting together a document, this section provides a general perspective on the effective use of Professional Page. Traditionally, publishing involved several distinct steps peformed by people with widely varying skills, separated from each other by craft traditions and technology. The magazine publishing process, for example, often went something like this: Writing - Editing - Layout - Typesetting - Photography and Illustration The editor would commission articles and illustrations for an upcoming issue. The publication's art director or designer established the design standard for the publication. Writers, artists, and photographers produced stories and graphics. Advertisers submitted ads either camera ready or as text and graphics for the magazine's art department to assemble. The editor read the typewritten stories and manually corrected them. The graphics went to the editor, art director, or designer for approval. The edited text was manually retyped into a typesetting machine by a typesetter, who ofen worked for a company separate from the publishing company. The typeset text was output from the typesetting machine as a long strip or column of type, referred to as a "galley". The galley was proofread and corrected, and then the art director or designers would wax the long strips of type and past them onto an art board. Photos and illustrations were enlarged or reduced to the concect size with a stat camera and photos would be "screened", or turned into a pattern of dots instead of continuous-tone photographic print. The graphics were pasted onto art boards, and the finished art boards were sent to the printer's for platemaking and printing. Under the old systern, there was a great deal of repetition and manual labor (for example, a story might have to be retyped two or three times). The typesetting equipment was often too expensive and complicated for a publisher to own "in-house", which meant using an outside company, which often resulted in extra delays, costs, and communication problemS. Many times, people were effectively prevented from publishing high quality documents by the cost and coplexity of phototypesetting and its related services. The Professional Page Method ---------------------------- With Professional Page, the production process can be greatly streamlined and made less expensive. For a modest investnent, and with some training and practice, almost any publisher can concentrate most or all of the steps in the production of high quality documents in-house. A designer can have the computerized equivalent of a design studio and a typesetting shop at his or her fingertips. Again, using the example of a magazine, an ideal production process using Professional Page might look like this: Writing - Editing - Layout and Type - Output | | | | Disk Disk Disk Disk |_________| |___________| |_____________| Photography and Professional Page PostScript Printer Illustration | |_____________________| First of all, authors write their stories on personal computers (using word processing programs on Amigas, or on any other computers which can export text to Professional Page. The editor receives the stories on floppy disk, or by telecommunication using a modem, and edits them using a personal computer (again, either an Amiga, or any machine which can export text to Professional Page). The writer or the editor can also put in the typesetting codes or formats stating what typeface, point size, and style the type is to be set in. An author who regularly writes a column for the magazine, for example, can easily learn the few basic codes for formauing his or her own articles. The magazine's art director or designer also uses Professional Page. He or she sets up the "templates", or grids, of the magazine's standard layout, perhaps based on rough sketches created with a pencil and paper. The Professional Page templates are similar to blank art boards. The designer uses Professional Page to rough out pages, reserving space for the ads, and then begins pouring columns of text into the boxes, fine tuning the typographical features, and editing copy to fit. Photos and other artwork can be scanned into the Amiga as bitmap graphics with the Digi-View digitizer (see Appendix C; Using Professional Page with Other Amiga Products). The digitized photos are imported into Professional Page, cropped and resized, given margins and frames as desired, and screened for output as halftones. For many applications. Professional Page completely eliminates the need for a stat camera. In other cases, scanned photos can serve as guides showimg position and cropping for traditionally produced halftones. If the designer wishes to use halftone or line art froml non-computerized sources, he or she can leave an empty space in the layout to manually paste in the illustration after the page has been output. Similarly, if an advertiser is supplying camera ready art, the designer simply leaves an empty space for the ad to be dropped into place manually. Columns of galley, or entire pages, can be output from a laser printer at any stage of the process for proofreading and editor or advertiser approval. The final pages can be output from a high-resolution typesetting machine (see "Printing" later in this section). With Gold Disk's Professional Color separator (sold separately) pages can be output as screened and color separated film. Here are the advantages of using desktop publishing with Professional Page: * A complete design and typesetting studio can be set up by a publisher in-house at a fraction of the cost of traditional equipment. * Professional Page and its Professional Color separator offer the most comprehensive capabilities available in a desktop publishing system. * The amount of manual typing, editing, retyping, and keying of text into the typesetting machine is greatly reduced. This saves much time and money. * Proofreading can be greatly simplified by using spelling checkers and by printing out clear legible proofs for correcting. * The number of times that the text has to be output from an expensive typesetting machine can be greatly reduced by using a laser pmter for galley and page proofs. * For some purposes, laser printer output is of sufficient quality to eliminate the need for typesetting machine output. Even if high-resolution typeset output is required, a designer using Professional Page has full control over typesetting, rather than having to rely on an outsjde typesetter to interpret the dummy pages and specs that the designer created and sent with the typewritten copy. Desktop publishing with Professional Page still relies on human skill and artistry, and on traditional writing, editing, and design skills. However, it combines typesetting, design, illustration, and color separation tools in an inexpensive, and easy to use personal computer. The Operating Environment ------------------------- As stated at the beginning of the manual, this program is a "page oriented" typesetting and page assembly program. It allows great flexibility when creating a document one page at a time by not automatically paginating the entire document. Professional Page duplicates in computer form many of the traditional tools and methods of graphic designers. The Screen ---------- The screen is your art table, with a representation of your current page on the right hand side of the screen. The normal screen display is 640 by 400 pixels on an ordinary NTSC (North American Video Standard) monitor. Using an "overscan" utility such as "More Lines" (see Appendix C: Using Professional Page with Other Amiga Products), you can display up to 704 by 442 pixels at once, although this takes more memory. PAL Support ----------- Professional Page looks to see if your Amiga has a PAL (European Video Standard) chip. If it does, Professional Page operates in PAL resolution (640 by 525 pixels). Multitasking ------------ Professional Page suppods multitasking, up to the limits of chip and overall memory. This means that you may be able to run other programs simultaneously with Professional Page. In a case where the programs take up a lot of chip memory (such as Professional Page and Deluxe Paint II, or Professional Page and WordPerfect), there nay not be enough chip mleory to support both. Artboard -------- Any area of the screen outside the current page is known as the "art board". The art board is a convenient area to store parts of the document. If you want to have text flowing into boxes on widely separated pages, you can keep a box with overflow text sitting on the art board until you find a space for it on another page. If you wish to reorganize a page, you can remove parts of the page onto the art board until you need them. Grid ---- You can set up grids on your page to create a consistent, organized framework for positioning text, drawings, and graphics (See the Design section for some examples of grids). Snap to Grid ------------ Selecting the Preferences/Layout Tools/Snap to Grid sub-item automatically causes boxes or structured graphics you create or move to snap to the nearest grid intersection. Rulers ------ There are rulers on the top and the left side of the page, marked out in whatever units of measure (inches, picas, or centimeters) you select using the Preferences/Layout Tools/Units sub-item. Quick Move ---------- You can select whether or not you wish to have the contents of the box visible while you are moving a box by turning Quick Move on or off. Tools ----- There are several general tools (Box Create, Null Pointer, Group, Hand Move, Text, and Mop) that you must specifically turn on and off. For example, if you wish to create a box, you must select the Box Create tool. If you wish to type text into the box, you must select the Text tool. If you wish to move the box, you must select the Null Pointer. This seems simple, but if you forget which tool is cunrently in use, you may become confused. The only exception to this convention is the Group tool, which automatically turns itself off and selects the Null Pointer after you make a group. This happens because Professional Page only allows one group to be active in the document at one time. Tool Pointers ------------- Several tools have pointers to help you see which one is currently in use. The Null Pointer is an arrow. When you move a box on a page, the pointer turns into a hand. When you move a box onto the art board, the pointer turns into a thumb tack. The Text tool pointer is a vertical line showing the exact point where text will be inserted. The Mop tool pointer is a mop. The Hand Move tool pointer is a hand. The Box Create and Group tool pointers are a set of crosshairs, to allow you to drag your box to the precise location. To let you see the location of the crosshairs, guidelines on the rulers on the top and left of the page show where the pointer is located. On the top right of the menu strip, the exact coordinates of the pointer's location are displayed in the current units of measure. Requesters ---------- Making menu selections often causes a requester to appear. The different types of requesters are: File requesters with a standard layout; Warning requesters with simple Yes/No! options; and Specialized requesters. Requesters are one way Professional Page asks for instructions, and presents choices for you to select. Keyboard Shortcuts ------------------ Professional Page allows you to use the mouse to make menu selections, but also offers keyboard equivalents to allow users to make selections more quickly. There are some general shorcuts useful in making selections from requesters. For instance, press RETURN instead of clicking OK to cause a file to load or save and double click on a file name to cause the file to load or save. Many of the keyboard equivalents are grouped to make them easier to remember: * CTRL x: Holding down the CONTROL key and pressing a second key usually selects a non-menu item. * ALT x: Holding down the ALT key and pressing a second key usually alters something. * A x: Holding down the Right AMIGA key and pressing a second key usually selects a general menu. * F: Pressing a function key selects a text editing item. * SHIFT x: Holding down the SHIFT key and pressing a second key selects everything not assigned to the keyboard equivalents listed above. For a complete list of keyboard shodcuts, see the Quick Reference Card, or Appendix E: Keyboard Equivalents. UNDERSTANDING THE PAGE ---------------------- Pages are kept in consecutive order within Professional Page. When the Load/New Current sub-item is chosen the new page is loaded at the end of the document. The Page/Create/From Template sub-item creates a range of pages using the odd or even templates or the appropriate pages based on page numbers. Creatjng a range of pages in the middle of a document shifts the existing pages up automatically. The Page/Create/From Default sub-item also fits a range of pages into the document automatically. The Page/Delete item resequences page numbers upon deletion. The Magnified Page ------------------ When you are working on a page in one of the higher magnification levels, you may find it useful to be able to see where you are on the page, and to scroll around the magnified page with some degree of precision. The part of the page you are in is indicated by the white rectangle in the Page Position tool. There are three ways to move around a magnified page: * Select the Hand Move tool and use it to drag the visible part of the page around the screen. * Use the white rectangle on the Page Position tool to drag the visible part of the page around the screen. * Use the cursor keys to jump around the page. One press of a cursor moves the visible part of the page four inches in the selected direction. Pressing SHIFT/cursor jumps to the end of the page in the direction selected. Pressing CTRL/cursor jumps to the end of the page in the direction selected. Changing Pages -------------- The Page Number gadget has two ways of changing the current page. Click the Up or Down arrows to select the next page or the previous page, respectively. Pages can also be selected by using a keyboard entry. USING BOXES ----------- A box is a container of text, bitmap graphics or structured graphics. Boxes are the building blocks of your finished documents. The box is an amazingly flexible and powerful tool, and when you have made yourself fully proficient with all its uses, you will be able to use Professional Page very profuctively as a versatile, high quality page design system. This sub-section is devoted to the uses of the box in conjunction with the text, graphics, and drawings it can contain. What is a Box? -------------- A box is a precisely defined area which can serve as a container for text, bitmap graphics, or structured drawings. A box can exist anywhere on a page, or on the art board. The Anatomy of a Box -------------------- The box appears on the Professional Page screen with a rectangular solid or dashed outline. The outline is solid in the active box (the last one that the mouse was clicked on), and all other box outlines are dashed. Every box has eight handles on it, one in each corner and one in the middle of each side of the outline. These handles can be used to resize the box by clicking on a handle with the Null Pointer and dragging. The only time a box does not have handles is if it is a locked box. The appearance of the box outline changes when a box is made part of a group. A box containing text or a bitmap graphic can be automatically given a perfectly fitted frame using the Box/Alter/Active/Frame gadget. Boxex can also be given margins of clear space to separate them from other boxes using the Box/Alter Active/Margins gadget. Creating Boxes -------------- Boxes can be created with the Box Create tool of the tool palette, or by means of the Auto Box feature. When you have created as many boxes as you need, be sure to turn off the Box Create tool by selecting the Null Pointer. Otherwise, you will continue creating boxes whenever you press the left mouse button. Moving a box ------------ There are several ways to move a box. The most simple is to grab it using the Null Pointer. The pointer turns into a hand shaped icon if the box is on the page, or into a thumbtack shaped icon if the box is on the art board. Drag the box around the page or the art board to where you want it and release. Positioning the Box ------------------- Positioning boxes with the mouse is very intuitive, but may not be precise enough. Professional Page offers several tools for positioning the box more precisely. They are: Rulers and Coordinates, The Box/Alter/Active Position gadgets and the Preferences/Layout Tools/Grid and Snap to Grid gadgets. Using the Rulers ---------------- Rulers are on by default, and unless you specifically turn them off they will be visible on the top and the left side of your page. As soon as you start moving the box around the page, the precise location of the top left hand corner of the box is indicated by the ruler lines along the top and the left side of the page. The exact coordinates of the top left hand corner are also displayed on the nght of the menu strip. Snap to Grid ------------ You can lay out a grid on your page using the Preferences/Layout Tools item, and turn on Snap to Grid (see the discussion of the Layout Tools item in the Technical Reference section, and the parts of the Design section concerned with the use of grids). From then on, whenever you create a box, it will automatically adjust itself to fit its corners to the nearest grid line intersection. If your grids are measured in 1/2 inch increments, you can drag your box to approximately the right location and size. When you release the mouse button, the box will snap to the nearest grid intersections. The Active Box -------------- Only one box is "active" at a given time. The active box is the one most recently clicked on with the mouse pointer. The active box is where most user-initiated operations take place (for example, enterig text, drawing, loading graphics and drawings). You can locate the active box easily by selecting Box/Show Active. The active box will flash in green for a moment. Active Box Positioning ---------------------- In the Box/Alter/Active requester, there are four Position settings. Type in the locations of the top left corner, the width and the height, and the box will be resized and located as required. Filling A Box ------------- A box must be empty before it is filled with any imported element whether text, graphic or structured drawing. You must first select it as the active box (see Project/Import in the Technical Reference section). Mopping a Box ------------- To delete the contents of a box while leaving the box intact, select the Mop tool from the general tools palette, and click on the box you wish to empty. A warning message will appear, asking for confirmation, and the contents can be deleted (see Tool Palette/Mop in the Technical Reference section). Deleting a Box -------------- The active box can be deleted by selecting the Box/Delete item. If the box has contents, a warning message will appear, following which the box and its contents disappear. Howvever, in the case of bitmap graphic boxes, this is only true if the box was not cloned. For examlple, if the box was cloned several times, the warning message will only appear if you are deleting the last copy of the box. In the case of a text box, if all the contents of the text file are in the box, a warning message will appear, after which the box, and the contents will be deleted. If the text file extends through a series of linked boxes, no warning will appear if you delete a box, until you delete the last box in the linked series (see Box/Active/Delete in the Technical Reference section). Grouping -------- Grouping means that the boxes designated as a group can be moved as a unit, keeping their position relative to each other. Any combination of text, graphic, and drawing boxes can be designated as a group. Using groups can save you a lot of time. For example, if you want to reorganize the layout of a page, you can remove a large part of the page onto the art board, empty, or replace the remainder of the page layout, and then move the group back onto the page. Creating a Group ---------------- Select the Group tool from the general tool palette. The Group pointer is a set of crosshairs. Go to the upper left hand corner of the area whose boxes you wish to group, and draw a group outline around the collection of boxes. When you release the mouse button, the Group tool switches off, and reverts to the Null Pointer. All completely enclosed boxes will be made into a group. Adding to a Group ----------------- Hold the SHIFT key and click on a box. The box must be on the art board or the same page as the main group to be added to it. Removing a Box From a Group --------------------------- Hold the CTRL key and click on a box. Cloning a Group --------------- Select the Group/Clone item and all boxes in the group are cloned. Only the visible box contents are copies, including all graphics and text. Article chains are not copied. Once the group is cloned, the original group is forgotten, and the newly cloned boxes form a new group. Deleting a Group ---------------- Select the Group/Delete item and all boxes that are part of the group are deleted. A warning message appears if any of the boxes has any contents. Forgetting a Group ------------------ Select the Group/Forget item and the group is forgotten (ungrouped). At this point, no group exists. Aligning a Group ---------------- Selecting the Group/Align item and one of Top, Bottom, Right or Left, correspondingly aligns the group with the active box. (See the Technical Reference section for details.) Centering a Group ----------------- Select Group/Center and one of the sub-items and all members of the group are centered vertically, horizontally, or both with the center of the active box. Merging a Group --------------- Select Group/Merge and all structured drawing boxes in a group merge together into one box. This allows sizing and moving of the structured graphics as a single unit. NOTE: A merge cannot be undone. Linking Boxes ------------- Boxes may be linked together into a series or chain of boxes to allow you to flow text articles across a page or pages. Only text boxes can be linked. To line one box to another, use the Link tool. Make the first box of the article active and select the Link tool. Click on the second box in the series, then the third, and so on. The text will flow to fill the boxes, until all the text has been poured. If there is more text than can be accommodated in the linked series, the last box will have its lower right hand corner highlighted by an L-shaped handle. (See the Technical Reference section for information on the Link tool.) Unlinking --------- A series of linked boxes can be unlinked by selecting the Unlink tool and clicking on a box. The box in the series prior to the one clicked on will be the last box in the preceding series. The box clicked on and any subsequent boxes in the series will now be a second, separate linked article chain. Deleting a Linked Box --------------------- You can delete a linked box by clicking on it to make it the active box, and then selecting the Box/Delete item. The box will desappear without a warning requester, because as long as there is at least one box in the series still intact, the text isn't deleted from memory. When you go to delete the last remaining box in a series, a warning requester will pop up asking for a confirmation. When the last box is deleted, the text contents will be deleted as well. Layering Boxes -------------- Boxes are layered one on top of each other based on the order of their creation. The last box created is automatically placed on top. To change the order of boxes, use the Box-to-Back gadget to move the active box to the back of all other boxes. Use the Box-to-Front gadget to bring a box to the front of other boxes. Auto Boxes ---------- Boxes can be created automatically using Auto Box. The size of this box is determined by where you click. Boxes created by Auto Box take on the width of the column where the click was made. They are made as tall as possible without running over any other box in the column. A box is created (using the Auto Box technique) when: * in Box Create mode: the left mouse button is clicked while the CTRL key is held. An empty box is created. * in Link mode: the left mouse button is clicked while the CTRL key is held. A text box is created and linked to the currently active box. * in Text mode: the left mouse button is clicked while the CTRL key is held. A text box is created for text editing. TEXT ---- Professional Page is a page design and layout program, and is not intended to compete with dedicated word processors. Rather, Professional Page is designed to work with text from a wide range of both word processors and text editors, whether generated by the Amiga or by other computers. Once a document is created, there is a need to be able to edit or create new text without exiting the program. Professional Page handles text in the following manner: * Text can be imported into Professional Page as ASCII files, or in the formats of particular Amiga word processors such as WordPerfect, TextCraft Plus, Scribble!, and others. * Professional Page accepts native style parameters of word processor files, such as: italics, bold, underline, tabs, and others. * Special formatting codes may be embedded in the text at the word processor level. These codes are interpreted by Professional Page as instructions for such characteristics as typeface, point size and leading. * Professional Page has its own WYSIWYG (What-YOu-See-Is-What-You-Get) text editor which fnctions as an adjunct to the page layout and typesetting features. Professional Page's text tools allow you to manipulate imported text and to compose text while working on a document. The typographical controls are mentioned briefly in this section (see the Design section for more information.) Pre-planning Your Text ---------------------- To make the most productive use of Professional Page, the computer, and your time, you can do a little advance plaming to ensure that word processed files come into the program in their most useful form. You may ask the author or editor of an article to insert the basic typographical specifications (point size, typeface, and leading as a minimum) for you, using the Professional Page formatting conventions (see Appendix F: Formatting). Formatting at the writing or editing stage is easy to do, and will save everyone both time and money. Text File Translation --------------------- If you are using a text file from an Amiga word processor not specifically suppoded by a Professional Page (or from a computer other than an Amiga), you should test how cleanly a file from that particular computer or word processor comes into Professional Page in generic mode. Some may import more easily than others. Some word processed files may be imported with unwanted characters or control codes. Try to avoid surprises, especially if you're working to a deadline, by conducting tests ahead of time. Importing Text -------------- Typically, users tend to use a favorite word processor. Therefore, the Preferences/Text Format item only needs to be set once. If you must import a file from more than one word processor into a document, just change the Text Format to the appropriate setting just before you import them. Once the file has been imported into Professional Page, it sits in the paste buffer for processing. ASCII files ----------- Word processed files from non-Amiga sources can be brought into Professional Page in generic ASCII format. It is helpful to have the particular woru processor save the contents in plain ASCII (text only), rather than its native form. ASCII files can be transmitted via a modem or a null modem cable from another computer. Native Style Parameters ----------------------- Styles (bold, italic, etc.) are imported into Professional Page from all supported word processing packages. This speeds up production by eliminating the need for you to manually insert style parameters. Embedded ASCII Codes -------------------- Any writer or editor can produce galley by inserting typographical formatting codes into a word processor file. This greatly reduces the operator's burden of inserting typographic codes manually after the text is imported. Any text editing terminal thus becomes part of Professional Page's production process. Text Editor ----------- The text editor is invoked in Professional Page by selecting the Text tool from the general tool palette and clicking into a text box. Professional Page uses a "point and shoot" format to input and edit text. Click in the text box where you want to place your text cursor and you are ready for editing. You can perform block operations by marking a block and manipulating it. A block of text is some portion of your text which you have delined for the purpose of changing a specific characteristic in some way. Buffers ------- Aside from the screen itself, Professional Page has two additional internal buffers to hold text -- the paste buffer and the undo buffer. These buffers oeerate in conjunction with block operations. The paste buffer is used to temporarily hold text in "Cut and Paste" operations. The undo buffer temporarily holds deleted blocks of text. Creating A Block ---------------- While in Text mode, there are several ways of marking a block. A marked block is highlighted on the screen in reversed text. The following methods can be used: * Move The Text pointer to the word, and double click to mark a single word. * Click in a box and select the Edit/Select Box item to mark the visible contents of the entire box. * Click in a box and select the Edit/Select All item to mark the contents of an entire series of linked boxes. * Click on the beginning of the box you want marked with the Text pointer and drag the pointer to where you want the block to end. All text between where you started to drag and where you released the pointer will be marked as a block. * To mark a block extending from one box to another, or across several pages, click with the Text tool where you want the block to start. Move to the end of the block (which can be several boxes or several pages from the beginning), and click while holding the SHIFT key. All text between the two clicks will be defined as a block. Block Operations ---------------- Once you have marked a block, you can manipulate the block in several ways with the items in the Edit menu. Cut --- Selecting Edit/Cut deletes the block from the page and places it in the paste buffer. Copy ---- Selecting Edit/Copy places a copy of the block into the paste buffer without deleting the block frorn the page. Paste ----- Click on the spot where you want to insert a block from the paste buffer, and then select Edit/Paste. The block will be inserted just before the text cursor position. Unmark Block ------------ Selecting Edit/Unmark Block umnarks the marked block. Save Block ---------- Selecting Edit/Save Block saves the marked block to disk as an ASCII text file. All typographical information is translated to imbedded formatting commands before saving. See Appendix F: Formatting Text. NOTE: This is the only way that you can easily save a Professional Page document as text only, and as such it is a valuable technique to use if you wish to break a long text file up into several shorter files, or if you wish to re-edit a document in a word processor and re-import it into Professional Page. Select Box ---------- Selecting Edit/Select Box marks all the visible contents of the individual text box as a block. Select All ---------- Selecting Edit/Select All marks all the contents of a series of linked boxes as a block. Find and Replace Operations --------------------------- The find and replace operations have two functions. They can be used to find and modify text strings in the conventional sense or they can be used to find and replace text with specific typographical characteristics. Typographical codes (see Appendix F: Formatting Text) are only applied to the first character of the string in the find operation. The replacement strig can contain any number of embedded formatting codes. For example, you can search for all occurrences of the BOLD strig "PPage" (by using BPPage") and replace them with Italic underlined Helvetica "Professional Page" (by using "\I\U\ff<Helvetica>Professional Page"). Find ---- Selecting Edit/Find finds the next occurrence of a particular string. You have the option of search direction and whether to ignore the case of the string. Replace ------- Selecting Edit/Replace replaces a specified strig with another specified string. You have the option of search direction, whether to change one or all occurrences of the search string, and whether to query each change. Find Next --------- Finds the next occurrence of the search string in the indicated direction. Replace Next ------------ Replaces the next occurrence of the search strig with the replacement string. A query is made if it was selected as a option in the Replace item. DELETE OPERATIONS ----------------- A marked block is deleted by: * pressing the backspace key. * typing a character. * using the paste operation. The marked block is placed in the Undo buffer and the typed character or pasted block is placed in the location of the previously marked block on the screen. To get the deleted block back, place the text cursor and press the ESC-key. The deleted block will be placed in front of the cursor. Text Boxes ---------- All text must be placed into an empty or text box. Once text has been placed into an empty box, Professional Page marks that box as a text box, and will not allow you to put a graphic or a drawing into it. Conversely, you cannot enter text into a box already containing a graphic or a drawing. Text boxes can, however, be overlaid on top of graphic and drawing boxes. Text boxes can be located on a page or on the art board. Viewing Text ------------ Professional Page displays text on screen using special screen fonts whjch simulate serif and sans serif fonts. Screen fonts are displayed with reasonable accuracy for all available fonts found in the fonts directory. Text whose fonts do not have a screen representation will not display correctly in form, but will be scaled to take up the correct amount of space on the screen. For example, to display 30 point Times on the screen, Professiona] Page will scale the closest available font (likely 24 polnts), to the correct size. Upon output, the text will be printed in the proper font and size. Text can be viewed letter by letter in the hjgher magnification levels. In the lower levels of magnification, text will be "greeked", that is, shown as lines rather than letters. Colored Text ------------ Text can be colored using the Ink Color item in the Color menu. Colors can be created with the CreateColor requester or loaded from an already established color database on disk (see the Color section). Transparent and Opaque Text --------------------------- Text boxes can be selected as either transparent or opaque by selecting Box/Alter/Active and clicking on the Box Opaque-Transparent gadget. Text in a transparent text box can be overlaid on bitmap and structured graphic boxes wjthout showing the box and its outline by using this gadget. Halftone Screens on Text ------------------------ To cause text to be output as a screened halfone, select Color/Ink Color, and pick a gray value for the type. Select Preferences/Print Specifications/Halftone Screen to speci@y the Density (lines per inch) and (in degrees) for the halftone. BITMAP GRAPHICS --------------- Professional Page allows you to make use of any compatible bitmap graphics. Graphics can be any size, ranging from one pixel to 1024 by 1024 pixels (depending on available memory), in any resolution mode (Low, Medium, Intelace, or High), and with any number of colors from 2 to 4096 at one time. See rippendix E: Examples of Graphics. Black and White Output ---------------------- Graphics can be output as black and white halftones in sixteen gray scales from any PostScript compatible laser printer or typesetting machine. Color Separated Output ---------------------- With the Professional Color separator color graphics can be color separated onto positive or negative film, or onto positive or negative resin coated paper from a PostScript compatible typesetting machine such as a Linotronic 100 or 300 typesetter. Screen Display -------------- Color bitmap graphics are not displayed on the Professional Page screen in color. An eight gray-tone representation of the graphic is created. The full-color information remains stored on the original data disk. Importing --------- An empty active box must be available on the page to receive the graphic (see Project/Import/Bitmap Graphic in the Technical Reference section). Default Size ------------ When the graphic is imported, it appears at a default size of 75 pixels per inch (for example, a 640 by 400 pixel picture will fill the whole widdh of an 8.5 inch page). The graphic can then be rescaled or resized. Altering the Graphic Parameters ------------------------------- You can crop, resize, frame, and screen your bitmap graphics in Professional Page. As well, you can run text around the graphic box, or lay black and white or colored text over the graphic. If you wish to alter some feature of your graphic box, make sure the box is active, and then select the Box/Alter/Active sub-item. In the requester, you can adjust the Location, Margin, and Graphic Scale of the graphic (see "Box Menu" in the Technical Reference section). Location -------- The precise position of the box on the page can be determined by typing the location of the top left corner of the box and the box's width and height in the requester that appears when Box/Alter/Active is selected. Frames and Margins ------------------ Bitmap graphic and text boxes can be supplied with a structured drawing frame. Professional Page will draw the frame in whatever line weight, pattern, ink color, and fill color that has been selected from the Draw and Color menus. All boxes can have margins for white space along the inside edge of the frame. Frames and margins are specified in the Box/Alter/Active sub-item. Cropping -------- Using the handles on the graphic box, you can adjust the box to cover or reveal as much of the graphic as you wish. If you need to move the graphic within its box, drag the graphic around with the pointer while holding the ALT-key down. This moves the graphic around inside the box without moving the box outline. Sizing ------ To resize the graphic box, hold down the ALT-key and change the size of the box by dragging a handle. Sizing can also be done by changing the Graphic Scale in the Alter Active Box requester. Storage ------- Unlike text files or structured drawings, the acutal bitmap graphic isn't stored as part of your document. Whenever you load or print the document (whether in black and white or color separated), Professional Page will ask for the original graphic file from its original data disk. Aspect Ratios ------------- You may find that there is a difference between the aspect ratio of your bitmap graphic on the Professional Page screen and its appearance on the output. They may appear slightly condensed (see "Printing"). You can correct this by adjusting the Graphic Scale gadget in the Box/Alter/Active sub-item. For example, graphics created in the Medium (640 by 200 pixels) or Medium Interlace modes (320 by 400 pixels) will appear on the Professional Page screen distorted but can be corrected using the Box/Alter/Active Graphic Scale gadget. STRUCTURED DRAWINGS ------------------- What is a Structured Drawing? ---------------------------- Structured drawings are images created from components that are mathematically defined. These components can be lines, arcs, and curves, each with line weight, line pattern and pattern attributes. Structured drawings are printed at the maximum resolution of the output device, such as 300 dpi from a laser printer or as high as 2540 dpi on a laser typesetter. Structured drawings are often used for computer aided drawing and design (CAD). Structured drawings are also ideal for a designer or typographer. They quickly create clean shapes such as lines, cmcles, and patterned fills. Importing Aegis Draw Plus Files ------------------------------- Structured drawings can either be imported into Professional Page from the Amiga CAD package Aegis Draw Plus, or can be Created with Professional Page structrred drawing tools and Color and Draw items (see Project/Import Structured Drawing item and the Draw menu in the Technical Reference section). An imported structured drawing file requires an empty active box to be imported successfully. The drawing is fit into the box as large as possible and in the correct proportions. The box can be resized manually using the mouse, but to avoid distorting the aspect ratio it is a good idea to use the Box/Alter/Active sub-item. Colors ------ A multi-colored drawing will be displayed with the xProfessional Page screen palette of up to eight colors. Professional Page documents can have a total of 127 colors defined for use in structured drawings or text. (See the Color section for more details.) Professional Page Drawing Tools ------------------------------- The Drawing Tools subpalette of the Tools palette contains six drawing tools. They are: * Line Tool: A line is drawn by clicking where the line is to start and dragging to the end poAnt. * Rectangle Tool: A rectangle is drawn by clicking for one corner and dragging to the opposite corner. * Ellipse Tool: A ellipse is drawn by clicking for the center and dragging to the corner of the box that will contain the ellipse. * Bezier Curve Tool: A Bezier curve is drawn by clicking and dragging a line to represent the start and end points of the curve, then moving the pointer to "pull" the curve in a rubberband fashion, and then clicking to anchor the curve. * Free Hand Tool: A freehand drawing is made when the left mouse button is depressed. * Polygon Tool: A polygon (series of continuous line segments) is drawn by clicking on a series of points to which line segments are connected. Double click to complete the polygon. When drawing with Professional Page drawing tools, each drawing operation creates its own box. You can group several structured drawings and merge them into one box. Drawings can be freely grouped and merged together, but they cannot be subsequently "un-merged" (see "Group Menu" in the Technical Reference section). Constraining Keys ----------------- When using Professional Page drawing tools, holding down the ALT-key constrains the shapes drawn by the tools. Constraining causes the following reactions: * the Straight Line tool draws only at 45 degree increments. * the Rectangle tool draws only squares. * the Ellipse tool draws only circles. * the Bezier Curve tool places endpoints at 45 degree increments to each other. * the Free Hand tool is unaf&ected by the constraint. * the Polygon tool always produces closed polygons. Using Attributes ---------------- Structured drawing elements can be created with attributes like Line Weight, Line Pattern and Fill Pattern from the DRAW menu as well Line Color and Fill Color from the Color menu. The Frame gadget in the Box/Alter/Active item automatically draws a structured box outline around a bitmap graphic or text box. Attributes of a structured element can be determined in two ways: * In Drawing mode: After selecting a drawing tool from the drawing tool subpalette, Draw and Color menu attributes can be set so that the next element drawn takes on the attributes. * In Null Pointer mode: The attributes of the active box are in the Draw and Color menus. Attributes are flagged with a checkmark beside the applicable item or sub-item. For those cases where there is no checkmark, select the sub-item to bring up a requester, and the value in the requester will reflect the value for the active box. Changing attributes in the Draw and Color menus changes the structured drawing or box frame to the current attribute settings. NOTE: A quick way to duplicate drawing parameters for creating additional elements is to select the box with the necessary attributes before selecting one of the drawing tools. The drawing tool will take on the attributes of the active box. The Draw Menu ------------- This menu displays the drawing tool parameters for structured drawings. Line Weight ----------- Line weight is the width of line that a structured drawing is drawn with. There are seven predefined settings, ranging from None to four points. There is also a Custom sub-item which allows you to select any line weight up to 127 points in 1 /2 point increments. If you select Custom, a Line Width (Pts.): requester appears. Delete the current line weight setting from the text line, and type in the line weight necessary. Line Pattern ------------ Several predefined line patterns are available in the Draw/Line Pattern item. Any line pattern used by an Aegis Draw Plus drawing can be imported as a part of the drawing. Fill Pattern ------------ Several predefined fill patterns are available in Draw/Fill Pattern item. As with Line Pattern, you cannot create a custom fill pattern but you can import fills created with Aegis Draw Plus. In Professional Page, fills larger than a screen in the higher magnification modes, will not be displayed, but will print properly. Fills are always displayed in lower magnification modes. Color Menu ---------- All of the structured drawing tools can be colored using the Ink Color or Fill Color items in the Color menu (see the "Color" section). NOTES ON USING STRUCTURED TOOLS ------------------------------- Tracing From Bitmap Graphics ---------------------------- A bitmap graphic can be brought into Professional Page and used as a template for a structured illustration, diagram, or map. Simply draw over the outlines of the graphic as desired, using the various drawing tools, and then mop the graphic box to get rid of it. Merge the elements of the structured drawing into one box, and finish it with type, fills, or patterns. Using Snap to Grid ------------------ To get different line segments to join neatly, adjust the Snap to Grid at a line setting, and set it On. It will be much easier to get the ends of lines or curves to join neatly if they are automatically snapping to the same grid intersections. Freehand -------- It is difficult to draw smoothly with the Freehand tool, since it is sensitive to even slight deviations of the mouse or drawing tablet. Rather, use Bezier curves or straight lines when possible. PRINT ----- It js easiest to learn and use Professional Page if you have easy access to a printer to output your pages regularly as you create them. Output Service Bureaus ---------------------- If you do not own a PostScript compatible laser printer or typesetting machine, you can find instant printing or typesetting shops in most major centers which will sell PostScript output or rent output time. If an output service does not have an Amiga to hook up to their printer, it is possible to transmit a Professional Page file as an ASCII PostScript file to whatever personal computer the output service uses (such as a Apple MacIntosh or an IBM PC) which can then send the file to the printer. If you find yourself using a number of output services, make sure that the output service you are using is loaded with all the fonts you need. Different companies have different selections of fonts. Collect different output bureaus' typeface samplers, and refer to them regularly (see the Design section for information regarding the selection of typefaces). PostScript Compatibility ------------------------ Professional Page will output to any PostScript compatible laser printer such as the QMS PS 8OO+ and the Apple LaserWriter, or to a PostScript compatible typesetting machine, such as a Linotronic 100 or 300 that is equipped with a PostScript RIP (Raster Image Processor). Connecting Your Amiga to a Printer ---------------------------------- For more informmation, see Appendix D: Connecting Your Amiga to a Printer. Setting Printer Specifications ------------------------------ Professional Page gives you a wide variety of printing options, including halftone screening, a variety of film and paper sizes, and page rotation. There are three menus that affect printing: Project, Page, and Preferences. Some parameters affect the entire document, while others afrect individual pages. Printer Specifications in the Preferences Menu ---------------------------------------------- Adjust the Preferences/Printer Specifications item to let Professional Page know what kind of output you want from the printer. You can specify the size of paper or film, whether it is sheets or rolls, whether you want to print positive or negative, and right reading or reversed. You can also specify the density and angle of halftone screens for printing graytones, color bitmap graphics, colored text, and structured graphics. Printing a Document or a Page From the Project Menu --------------------------------------------------- Select the Project/Print item to output pages to a PostScript printer. The Print item has three sub-items: Current Page, Entire Document, and Thumb Nail. For all of these sub-items number of copies, where to send the PostScript output, automatic or manual feed, proof mode, and whether to override custom specifications is requested. Project/Print/Current Page will print the current displayed page. Project/Print/Entire Document will print the document; allowing you to specify the range of pages to print (default is the entire document). Project/Print/Thumb Nail will print either 4, 9, or 16 pages onto one output page. Changing the Printing Specifications of a Single Page ----------------------------------------------------- You may find it useful to change the print specifications of a particular page. You can rotate individual pages, and adjust the scale and position on the output page or film. In the Page/Alter/Current requester, select the Output Print Specifications gadget. The requester contains a Page Position gadget for viewing the size and orientation of the page. The printer output dimensions are indicated by a white rectangle. You can also select the X and Y position, and scale the page. Type the numerical values for Position, Scale, and Rotation (in degrees) into the appropriate text lines, and press RETURN after each entry. The outline of your modified page will be superimposed over the white rectangle of the printer's output dimensions to show you what the page will look like when printed. 6. COLOR... ---------- From within the Professional Page program, you can print black and white halftones in sixteen gray shades from any PostScript compatible laser printer or typesetting machine. In addition to sophisticated use of black and white graphics and text, you can make use of color in the Professional Page systen in a variety of ways. This section describes how you can create and maintain a color database, and use color within Professional Page docunments. Importing and Creating Color Information ---------------------------------------- Professional Page provides facilities to manipulate and save color information for later output using the Professional Color separator. Color information can originate from three sources: * Amiga color bitmap graphic images. Amiga graphics can be created by painting, animation, or any IFF compatible graphic programs or by video digatizers such as Digi-View (see Appendix G: Using Professional Page with Other Amiga Products). * Structured drawings from CAD programs such as Aegis Draw Plus, which can have a variety of colored lines and patterns. * Color information created within Professional Page using the items in the Color menu. Displaying Color --------------- The Professional Page screen can display up to sixteen colors at a time. Nine of these colors are predefined as shades of gray. The remaining seven are used to represent user defined colors. Full color information is maintained for the Professional Color separator. Color Bitmap Graphics --------------------- Professional Page can import any Amiga bitmap picture so long as it is saved in the IFF file standard. This includes pictures ranging from 1 pixel square to 1024 by 1024 pixels. Any number of colors from 2 to 4096 can be used including Amiga HAM format pictures. These bitmaps will be converted to 8 grey levels for screen display but all of the color information is retained by Professional Page for later printing. (See "Bitmap Graphics" in the Using Professional Page section.) Aegis Draw Plus Structured Drawings ----------------------------------- Aegis Draw and Aegis Draw Plus CAD (Computer Aided Design) structured drawings can also be imported into Professional Page. The color information in the drawing will be retained, but Professional Page will use its internal color palette to represent the colors. Color Created Within Professional Page -------------------------------------- Color information can be created in Professional Page in a variety of ways. Professional Page maintains a data base of up to 127 colors which can be defined within the program and saved to disk. Colors can be assigned to text and structured graphics through the Color menu. Using Color ----------- Professional Page treats color much like any style or typographical attribute of text (see "Typography" in the Design section). It also affects the active box in terms of frame colors or structured drawing colors. Any type, structured drawings, or frames are then depicted in the chosen Ink color. Fills are displayed with the Fill Color. THE COLOR MENU -------------- The Color menu is composed of five items: Ink Color, Fill Color, Define, Load, and Save (see the "Color Menu" in the Technical Reference section). You can work with two Professional Page colors simultaneously, one for text and structured drawing tools, and one for filled patterns. Ink Color --------- The Ink Color item specifies the color of any defined block of text, or oftext you type in with the Text tool. You can also specify the color of any of the structured graphic tools you draw with, or of structured frames for graphic or text boxes. By default, the ink colors immediately available in Professional Page are nine shades of gray, from black to white. However, if you select the From List sub-item, a requester will appear, giving you access to all of the colors in the current color database. You can select an already defined color, or you can define a new ink color of your own using Color/Define. Fill Color ---------- The Fill Color item works exactly the same as Ink Color item, but it allows you to specify the color of patterns and fills for structured drawings. Defining a Color ---------------- You can create almost any color to use with the Ink Color or Fill Color items. If you select Define, a requester appears and you can specify custom colors for display and printing. RGB Color --------- Screen colors are defined in terms of RGB values. On the left side of the requester is a set of Red, Green, and Blue sliders. These sliders let you set any color from the Amiga's palette of 4096 colors. For example, moving the Red and Green sliders to the top, and the Blue slider to the bottom creates a yellow color. The color you define appears in the Current Color Display gadget in the lower right of the requester. You can name the color by clearing the Name text line and typing in the name of the new color. Ust the standard naming conventions of your choice. Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan ------------------------- In printing, yellow/magenta/cyan colors are used. Below and to the right of the RGB sliders are three small text lines labelled Y, M, and C. These are linked to the RGB slider, and show the color separation equivalent of the computer's video colors. The Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan text lines allow you to specify color information more precisely than it can be displayed on the screen. Type in the precise color values ror each of the three color components, name the color, and save it to your document's Color database. When color separating the document, the Professional Color separator will generate the black, yellow, magenta, and cyan components from the yellow, magenta and cyan information. Custom Color and Mechanical Color --------------------------------- There are two circular gadgets in the middle of the Color Palette requester, labelled Custom Color and Mechanical Color. A Custom Color is a Yellow, Magenta, or Cyan combination to which you have assigned an arbitrary screen color. For instance, if you have created three very similar shades of blue by typing in the Y, M, and C values in the text lines, you can assign them radically different screen colors so that the shades will be easier to distinguish. The proper color will be used in printing. Mechanical Color indicates that the color that you select is not intended to be separated into Black, Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan components. Rather, any page elements given a Mechanical Color value will be saved as one completely separate color, for printing as part of a two or three color job, or as an extra, solid color in a four color process run. Loading Colors -------------- Select the Load item. This will call up a Load Color file requester. Select the disk drive and directory you have designated for storing your color databases, and select the color database you wish to load. See "Using file requesters" in the Technical Reference section. Saving Colors ------------- When you select Save, a file requester appears. Select a disk drive and directory, and save the new color database. End Of Part 1