CompuServe Messages

#Saxon DTP demo

    16-May-90 02:45:45
Sb: #Saxon DTP demo
Fm: Roger Hand 73520,3506
To: ALL
I tried out the Saxon DTP demo for the Amiga. It's in the DTP Forum, section 12. One BIG advantage is that you can have non-rectangular boxes — just zig-zag like crazy when making your box, and the text will flow around every twist and turn. Great! I've been wishing ProPage could do that! Unfortunately you can't do anything much fancier than that. If you try putting a box in the middle of a body of text, the text will flow to either the left side or the right side of the box, but not to both sides of the box. Many of the easy to use bitmapped graphics controls in ProPage seem to be missing, or more difficult to use. For instance, bitmaps come into ProPage already scaled to the active box. Further changes of scale can be done with the mouse and the ALT key. In Saxon your options seem much more restricted. And I may be wrong about this — the demo, incredibly, comes with NO documentation to help you out — but choosing different fonts didn't seem to change the on-screen appearance of text. And, in any case, the on-screen text's jagged appearance means you can't get any aesthetic feel from looking at the screen. I've really been spoiled by ProPage's CG fonts. It's good to see another Amiga DTP entry. The style sheets and better text flow are improvements on ProPage. But not nearly enouch to make me want to switch, especially with a new ProPage supposedly due in a month. – Roger