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- WELCOME TO THE PAGESTREAM 3.3 Alpha6 UPDATE! July 16, 1997
- ============================================================
-
- Choose Scripts/View ReadMe.Now to read this from within PageStream3.
- (Requires ARexx.)
-
- Welcome to PageStream 3.3!
-
- First, PageStream3.3 Amiga is just about "beta". We have a few features to
- finish, but most of the work is done on the new features. We still have
- much to do with testing and fixing bugs I'm sure, but we have been using
- this version in house so its pretty far along.
-
- How much? For PageStream 3.2 owners, the upgrade price will be $50. That
- includes a brand new manual and all the features mentioned below. For
- 3.0/3.1 users, the upgrade price is $85.
-
- What about the a manual? If you purchased a copy of PageStream3 without a
- manual and your entitled to a manual, you can knock $10 off the upgrade
- price or just get the manual at no cost without upgrading. If you didn't
- get a manual and your _not_ entitled to a manual, you can just purchase the
- manual for $10 (but we would prefer to sell you the upgrade!).
-
- When? How about real soon now? We are terrible at giving dates, so I won't
- bother now! We are going to try something new. If you purchase the upgrade
- in advance, we will provide you with a secure ftp site name and password to
- allow you to download a full _non_ time expiring _non_ patch version with the
- manaul in PageStream format. We hope this satisifies 3 complaints with the
- betas in the past:
-
- 1, I don't like patching all the time.
- 2. I don't have the version installed to patch from.
- 3. If I start using the new version, I don't want to be left hanging with
- the old version when it expires.
-
- But really, when? Ok, ok. My best _guess_ is late July. We hope we
- make, don't be mad if we don't! Manuals will go off Monday the 21st. We
- should know more a couple days after that.
-
- What's in PageStream3.3 you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked :-)
-
- - Fly Out Tools
- Tools have now been grouped together in "popup" like icon list that let
- you switch between tools quickly. This gave us the "screen space" we needed
- to give you more tools. Also, by grouping them together it does so in a way
- that makes it easier to use.
- The new tools are:
- - Rotation Tool
- This new tool is now grouped with Object Tool, Reshape Tool, and the Crop
- tool. What does it do? It lets you finally set the rotation point of
- object(s), and if you grab and object you can rotate it right on screen!
- You can also slant/twist with keyboard qualifiers!
- - 1,2,&3 Column Tool
- Now you can switch between the 3 most common column counts in a text
- frame without changing your prefs.
- - Note tool
- Create a yellow non-printing column much like a sticky note for your
- notes. This will of course not print.
- - Scallop, Bevel, Insert Box Tool
- The rounded corner box and these are now grouped with the box tool. Pick
- a corner type from the toolbox and draw away.
- - Star, Wavy, Scallop, Puffy Polygon Tool
- Like the above two, you can quickly switch between drawing these polygon
- types without changing your prefs between them or drawing it as one type
- and changing it to another.
- In the future we hope to add a few more useful polygon types such as gears.
- - Grid Tool
- Yea, it was in a 3.2a beta for awhile, but there was no room for it and
- borders. While you could always get to it via macros or the configurable
- toolbar in 3.2, now its always there and "official". In the future we will
- group some other object types with this as a sort of Misc group.
-
- - Define Font Substitution
- Big time feature! Load an old document and if it uses a font you don't
- have it will let you know what fonts are in use that you don't have
- installed and give you a chance to replace those fonts with another
- font or just display it in another font but retain the orginal font.
- Loading a document from another machine or even from another platform
- has never been easier and more comforting.
-
- - HTML Help
- Now we can have the same help files between Mac and Amiga. Also, we can
- supply our help files with more content like we used to do, and better yet
- provide pictures where it helps.
- In the future, we hope to add interactive help and more.
-
- - Improved Adobe Illustrator Import/Export filter
- The current Illustrator filter leaves much to be desired. Now you can
- export to Illustrator and expect it to keep as much as possible when
- importing into another application that supports Illustrator files.
-
- - RTF Text Export
- Now you can exchange files with WordPerfect PC or Microsoft Word with
- most of the formatting intact.
-
- - 2.2 Style Place Graphics
- With the changes necessary for Font Subsitition, it makes it easier for
- us to return the old favorite 2.2 style placing of graphics. While you can
- configure PageStream to still place graphics automatically in the center of
- the screen like it works now in PageStream, if you want you can set it to
- allow direct placing and scaling of the graphics before it is placed on
- the page. For those not familiar with PageStream2, after the graphic is
- imported, you get a paste mouse cursor. When you click on the page it places
- the upper left hand corner of the graphic where you clicked. If you click
- and drag the mouse, you actually define the "frame" that the graphic is
- scaled to fit into.
-
- - Automatic Text Frame "Like" Toggle
- When you import text with Auto Text Frames on, any overflow text will be
- placed into columns created on blank pages. Before, it always created them
- the same as the Masterpage margins/column count & gutter specified. Now you
- can also choose to have the new columns created with the same coordinates,
- count and gutter (and even the same color!) as the last column in the
- article.
-
- - PostScript Style Dash Line
- You can still define line dash styles using the old familiar bitmap
- on/off mannor, but you can now also describe the individual dash lengths
- as you do in PostScript and applications such as Adobe Illustrator and
- ProDraw.
-
- - Set Type Language Submenu
- Installed languages are now in a submenu in the Type menu. Select one of
- these and you page numbers, dates, times and hyphenation will change to
- reflect that language if you didn't specify it in the afore mentioned
- attributes. Language can also be set in the Attributes dialog box, and
- can be defined for paragraph and character style tags.
-
- - DPI Calculator
- A little script for those DPI impared users! Basically, you type in the
- x/ydpi that you want the selected picture scaled to and it does the
- calculation and scales the picture for you.
-
- - Improved Color Palette
- - Tint
- Set the percentage tint for the color directly from the palette.
- - From/To Color
- Gradient to colors can now be set directly from the palette.
- - Swatches
- Small swatches in the color palette now let you identify what the color
- looks like.
- (* Note: For users with low color depth this function is pretty worthless.
- Unless you are in at least 32 colors, and hopefully 256 or 24bit,
- forget it!)
-
- - Auto Page Orientation
- Yea! Now you can mix landscape/portrait in a single document and print
- at once. Better yet, stop changing your printer prefs everytime you print
- a landscape document. Let PageStream do the work.
-
- - Drag Duplicate
- When your moving a object(s) with the Object Tool, or rotating them with
- the Rotate Tool, hold down the Alt (or Option) key and when you let go of
- the mouse button your original object will still be in the same place, but
- a duplicate will be placed in the new location.
-
- - Tab/Shift-Tab cycle through objects
- Pressing Tab/Shift-Tab cycles through the objects on the current page.
-
- - New toolbar buttons for view pictures/drawings/column outline/text
- framelinks/invisibles
- Turn pictures on and off with ease again!
-
- - Chapters can now be moved into and out of parent chapters
- If you change the structure of your document you don't have to start
- over now. Add and remove chapter levels on the go.
-
- - Pages can be moved from a document to a new chapter
- Create a document and decide you need chapters? No problem now.
-
- - Set screen frequency/angle/spot function for Halftone dither to
- non-PostScript printers
- Thats right, now non-PostScript users can set all this (and more). 10dpi
- line spot functions for those special effects, or set the freq/angle for
- each ink on your color printer to finally get the best color you can.
- ** Flash ** Now you can also set a gamma for each ink and UCR/GCR for
- the RGB to CYMK conversion. Set them in the XPD pref file or just
- "customize" it in the print setup requester.
-
- - Improved Ordered and FS dither options to provide a better range of grays
- to high res printers. Now the Ordered and FS dithers use a bigger cell
- size when you print at higher resolutions.
- What does this mean? Less banding on your gradients and more
- recognizable shades of gray/color
-
- - Mirror, Negative, Thumbnail, Crop & Reg marks, and color seps to
- non-PostScript
- I can't say that I agree with the use of several of these, but you
- wanted it, so you got it! At least thumbnails is _very_ nice!
-
- - Colorize B&W or Grayscale pictures. Print them on a specific spot plate.
- Scan a black and white logo and change it to a spot color if you want!
- Make it red! It will print that way, and if its a spot color it will
- print on that spot plate!
-
- - Load/Save printer prefs
- Switch between printers quickly. Just load/save miniprefs from the
- printer pref folder. Now you can switch between your color inkjet, black
- and white laser, and setup for printing to disk for an imagesetter without
- looking for those scraps of paper with the right settings for each.
-
- - Preview color seps on screen
- Just shift-select the name of the view in the hide or show submenus in
- the window menu and now you can not only rename the view like before, but
- you can also show the color plates one at a time to make sure you have
- right spot colors or overprint/knockout options set!
-
- - HP driver now supports user editable XPD file
- Add new resolutions or tweak defaults without waiting for an update from
- us.
-
- - External pictures FPOs are now saved with the document
- When you load a document you don't have to wait to display those
- external pictures while it rebuilds the FPO!
-
- - Easier reselection of moved external pictures
- If you ever reorganized your external pictures, you know what a pain it
- is to tell PageStream where those 50 pictures went. Now, it remembers where
- you helped it find each "lost" graphic and looks there for others before
- asking you where they went!
-
- - Unsupported accent characters get displayed as unaccented
- Not every font supports every accented character. Now if it can't find
- the accented character it will use the unaccented character.
-
- - Total object count shown in Report...
- Get a general idea how your document is shaping up.
-
- - Configurable Paper and DPI list in new ILBM XPD file
- Now you can set configure the ILBM printer driver for any DPI or paper
- size you want.
-
- - When defining Bullet character; and Tab fill and align on character,
- select from a list using a requester similar to the insert character\
- requester, say goodbye to typing strange unicode characters to access
- characters not found in the standard system fonts but that are
- handled by PageStream and its font engines.
-
- This is the short list. There are of course countless bug fixes and speed
- enhancements, but this covers what I can remember for features that we are
- committed to. The details of some of these things are far more impressive
- in real life, but that is what the betas are all about. You get to try it
- "hands on" and we get some feedback.
-
- Enjoy!
-
- Deron Kazmaier
- SoftLogik Publishing Corp.
-
- PS- We have included the borders extension and 5 sample borders to give you
- an idea how it works. We hope your as taken with this extension as we
- are.
-
-
- PageStream 3.3 Feedback!
- ------------------------
- Please post all beta feedback to the pgs33beta list. To join, send
- a message to listserv@softlogik.com. In the body of the message,
- type "subscribe pgs33list email@domain.com". The email address is optional
- if you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe the email address which originated
- the message. For now, this is done by humans so the format is not all that
- rigid. This mailing list is only available in message format. Directions for
- posting to the list will be provided in a welcome message after you join.
-
-
- CHANGES FROM 3.2b TO 3.3
- ------------------------
-
- TEXT:
- - Text marks with accented characters in their name now show in the Insert
- Text Mark Name and Page Number popups properly.
- - Internal changes for loading/saving of styletags for support on other
- platforms.
- - Improved text processing on loading/importing of text.
- - RTF: ANSI files now use Windows character set and not Amiga. This problem
- caused some characters to disappear when importing.
- - Numerous text attributes that only made sense with positive numbers would
- choke on negative numbers. In these cases negative numbers are now forced
- into a sensible range or ignored.
- - Inserted revision version number variables always showed 1.0 (ie, the first
- revision version number). Now shows the version number to the _last_
- revision.
- - Fixed editing of custom color for text.
- + Tab Align To and Leader character, and Paragraph Bullet character have
- a selector like Insert Character which lets you choose the character
- visually from a list. New in 3.3!
- + Type Language- Now quickly set the language of your text used for long dates,
- times, page numbers. Can now be set via the Language submenu, in Attributes
- dialog box, and also in Paragraph and Character style tags. New in 3.3!
- + RTF: Now you can export your text to RTF for importing into many Windows
- and Macintosh applications with most formatting preserved. New in 3.3!
-
- OBJECTS:
- - Drawing & Picture x-box place holders are now clipped by the mask.
- - Picture stroke now displays properly.
- - Can edit zero height and/or width objects without lockup now.
- - Duplicated external pictures will show the proper resolution in the
- Information dialog box.
- - IFFDR2D: Fixed dash stroke style importing.
- - Fixed edit palette rotate button directions for multiple selected objects
- in object mode. It was rotating the opposite direction from the other
- edit palettes.
- - An object first moved to the pasteboard and then the move undone will no
- longer move to never never land but will move to the proper old location.
- - Objects on dissolved spreads will now be placed on the page where the center
- of the object lies and not the upper left hand corner as before.
- + B&W and Grayscale pictures can now be colored using object fill color.
- New in 3.3!
- + When dragging object(s) with the object tool, pressing and holding ALT will
- create a copy when releasing the mouse. The mouse form will change the a
- the paste icon to indicate a duplicate will be made. New in 3.3!
-
- DOCUMENTS:
- - Selecting and editing a page other than the current page using the page
- palette will now edit the proper page.
- + Font substitution. Documents, text, or graphics loaded which contain
- text which use fonts not recognized, will result in a dialog box with the
- list of unknown fonts and present the choice to display as a different
- font or replace the references. New in 3.3!
- + Revision Changes can now specify a version number of the revision,
- with defaults to bump minor (same as before), plus bump major, and
- custom. New in 3.3!
-
- MISC:
- - When first loading PageStream, if duplicate modules are found, a list
- will be presented with all the duplicate modules found. The user must
- remove any old or duplicate modules before PageStream can be loaded.
- Simply changing the name of a module is not suficient to disable
- loading. It must be moved to another directory or deleted.
- - Added support for defining line style using PostScript dashed style lines
- in addition to existing pattern.
-
- GENERAL PRINTING:
- + Paper orientation is automatically adjusted to best fit page orientation.
- New in 3.3!
-
- POSTSCRIPT PRINTING:
- - Driver will now attempt to print clear line styles. It will usually
- work, and never lock up. It kinda cheats to support this, but then
- again, PostScript doesn't really support it, and who would really
- want to do this anyway...
- - Gradient Sin/InvSin/Saw/InvSaw fixed for angle > 90, and the code
- was tightened up some and made a little faster.
- - Added support for dashed style lines in addition to existing pattern.
- - Renamed output options PostScript file to Disk file and EPS file to
- EPS disk file
- - Fixed orientation problem to imagesetters. Now if you are print a
- document that is 17" x 11", for custom you would choose 11"width and
- 17" height with landscape on, for printing to an imagesetter whose
- roll width is < 17". If you printing that document to an imagesetter
- whose roll width is >= 17" then you would choose 17" width and
- 11" height with no landscape.
- - "Fixed" problem with screwed up PPDs. Some PPDs (especially the Linotronic
- PPD files) specified that Symbols and Dingbats where special encoding,
- but had a standard characters set. They should indicate that those fonts
- have a special character set as well. The PostScript driver now requires
- that the font not be a special encoding in addition to not being a special
- character set. The ppds should be fixed but they are not ours to fix. This
- fixes the problem just fine however.
- - Fixed printing of stroked masked Pictures, Drawings, and EPS.
-
- NON-POSTSCRIPT PRINTING:
- - Page height, top & bottom margins now are calculated properly for
- non-square aspect ratios.
- + HP Printer driver now supports XPD files for simple user updates
- for new printers. New in 3.3!
- + Screen frequency/angle/ and spot function can now be set for
- halftone dither printing. New in 3.3!
-
- INTERFACE:
- - Documents listed in the recent list will be removed at initializiation time
- if the document no longer exists or can not be found.
- - Masterpages can now be moved between chapters after being created. The
- interface tried to let you do it, but it didn't work.
- - Text frame routing displays better now on rotated text frames.
- + In plate control, clicking on the icons in the list will now toggle that
- option as if you had clicked on the popup or check box. New in 3.3!
- + Added toolbar buttons for View-> Show Pictures, Drawings, Column Outline,
- Text Frame Links, and Invisibles. New in 3.3!
- + Chapters can now be moved into and out of parent chapters using the
- document palette. New in 3.3!
- + When creating a new chapter, holding down SHIFT key when choosing OK
- will move pages from the document into the new chapter. New in 3.3!
- + Flyout tools to reduce toolbox size and increase number of available tools.
- New in 3.3!
- + New drawing tools: One/Two/Three count columns, Scallop/Inset/Bevel boxes,
- Pie ellipse, Star/Scallop/Puffy/Wavy polygons. New in 3.3!
- + New editing tool: Rotation tool. Free rotate selected objects by grabing
- their size handles or any portion of the object and rotating them. Also,
- the rotation point can now be selected and moved with the rotation tool.
- When rotating a object(s), holding down the ALT key will create a duplicate
- object rotated to the new orientation. Pressing Shift or Control while
- rotating will slant or twist. New in 3.3!
- + Magnify Tool can now drag zoom from center or from corner. Definable
- in prefs, and shift key will live toggle when drag zooming. New in 3.3!
- + Added "Select Text on Paste" toggle to File Preferences. Now text can
- be selected or not after inserting/pasting. New in 3.3!
- + Added "Place Graphic in Center" toggle to File Preferences. When checked
- graphics will be automatically placed/pasted in center of view. When _not_
- checked user will need to place the graphic with the mouse. Drag out to
- define region to fit graphic to. Only the toggle has been added.
- No code behind it yet! New in 3.3!
- + Added Like Masterpage/Previous toggle to Automatic Text Frames. When set
- to Like Masterpage, the automatic text frame will be positioned to mimic
- the Masterpage using its margins and column count/gutter. When set to
- Like Previous, the automatic text frame will be positioned to match the
- last previously created text frame in the article. New in 3.3!
- + Added support for dashed style lines in addition to existing pattern in
- line/fill for objects and text. New in 3.3!
- + New drawing tool: Note tool. Located with column tools. Creates a yellow
- non-printing column for entering in notes much like a sticky note.
- New in 3.3!
- + Improved color palette. Now set the secondary to color for gradients,
- apply tints, and preview the color with the provided color swatches.
- New in 3.3!
-
- SCRIPTING:
- - Internal changes for loading/saving of scripts for support on other
- platforms.
- - GETTOOLMODE now returns the proper tool mode name.
- - Changed DUPLICATE and TRANSFORM command.
- Added [IDLIST &idlist/.COUNT.0.1...], and they now return count
- of objects created.
- + New macro: MERGESUBPATHS. Turns all but the initial movetos in a selected
- path to linetos. New in 3.3!
- + Changed MOVECHAPTER go move chapters to the end of the chapters, and also
- to move chapters into and out of other chapters. New in 3.3!
- + Added "FROMDOCUMENT" parameter to NEWCHAPTER command. This parameter will
- cause the pages & chapters of the document to be moved into the new
- chapter. New in 3.3!
- + Added [DRAGZOOM <CENTER|CORNER>] to SETMAGNIFYINCREMENTS command. New in 3.3!
- + Added [LIKE <MASTERPAGE|PREVIOUS>] to SETAUTOCOLUMNS command. New in 3.3!
- + Added [BITMAPSIZE stem/.W.H.XDPI.YDPI] to GETPICTURE command. New in 3.3!
- + Added new arexx script, PictureCalculator.rexx. The user enters the dpi to
- scale the picture too, and it does the rest. New in 3.3!
- + Changed ADDREVISION BUMPREV to BUMPMAJOR and added BUMPMINOR (the default)
- New in 3.3!
- + Added [NOTE] parameter to DRAWCOLUMN. Will override the column default fill
- and stroke with a sold yellow fill and a dashed black stroke. Will force
- the column to non-printing. New in 3.3!
-
- BME:
- - Fixed paintbrush leaving garabage behind when clearing a region.
- - Updated address and phone numbers.
- - Internal changes for loading/saving of scripts for support on other
- platforms.
- - Fixed a problem in the display which caused crashed at various times.
- - Crop no longer erase old selection since it was redrawn afterwards
- anyway.
-
- MAC:
- - Scratch path is now used. VM files are written to the path assigned
- as the scratch path and no longer are written to the hidden directory
- on the startup volume.
- - Printer setup values from the standard print dialogs no longer get reset
- to the defaults.
-
- NOTES
- -----
- - SoftLogik recommends CanonStudio or Studio II for printing on Canon
- printers. Some Canon models are supported in Epson emulation mode by
- PageStream's custom Epson driver.
-
-
- PAGESTREAM 3 EXTRAS
- -------------------
- Borders1 Library ($40): Basic Borders. Contains 60 borders, including
- coupon, map and symbol designs.
-
- Borders2 Library ($40): Geo Borders. Contains 60 decorative borders in
- a variety of designs including nature, classic, and music.
-
- Borders1&2 ($60): Purchase both borders libraries and save $20!
-
- TextFX 2 Extension ($50): Warp text in shapes, bend text on curves, and
- convert text to graphics!
-
- TrueType Font Engine ($25): Use TrueType fonts with PageStream 3.
-
- Wordworth Document Filter ($20): Open entire Wordworth documents in
- PageStream 3, retaining pictures, text, endnotes, headers, footers,
- objects, etc.
-
- Gary's Effects ($25): Twelve new cool effects for PageStream 3's BME,
- including Convolve, Blur, Histogram, Gamma, Average, Threshold and more!
-
- Direct Templates ($30): 488 templates for PaperDirect(R)'s North American
- papers. If you use PaperDirect papers, you need Direct Templates.
-
- Home & Office Forms ($20): 50 templates for the home, school and office.
- North American paper sizes.
-
-
- HOW TO CONTACT SOFTLOGIK
- ------------------------
- SoftLogik Publishing
- 1732A Westpark Center Drive
- Fenton, MO 63026
-
- SALES 1-800-829-8608 (314-305-7878)
- sales@softlogik.com
- FAX 314-305-7874
- DIGEST listhelp@softlogik.com
- EMAIL support@softlogik.com
- WEB http://www.softlogik.com
-
-
- THIS ARCHIVE CAN BE DISTRIBUTED AS LONG AS IT IS LEFT INTACT
- WITHOUT ANY CHANGES! NO CHARGE ASIDE FROM A REASONABLE COPYING AND
- DISK FEE CAN BE CHARGED FOR IT.
-
- Copyright 1997 SoftLogik Publishing Corporation
- SPatch Copyright 1992 SAS Institute
- LHex Copyright 1994 Commodore
-