Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    
    I'm not sure but it almost sounds as if the system is having trouble
    finding ICONX.  Do you have it in your :C directory?  I'll look tonight
    and see if I can come up with anything that might help.
    
    The manual adendum specifically states that it DOES work with a 1.2
    workbench (Page 27 of the addendum. I have it here).  It's VERY slow
    printing in NORMAL mode under WB 1.2 because of the print drivers.
    
    Also, the current version is 2.00b (use the "ABOUT" menue entry to
    see this).   If you don't have the latest version, call em',  there's
    no charge but you'll have to send back disk #1 for a replacement.
    
    Frank
    

    
    Re .0
    
    Almost forgot.  V2.00 requires 1 meg of memory according to the
    addendum.
    
    
     Frank
    

    Hi Gregg!
    
    Your problem IS WorkBench 1.2.  IconX is a WorkBench 1.3 program.  I 
    believe it will work on 1.2 so if you can find it somewhere, you
    probably won't have any problem using it. If you can get hold of a 
    WorkBench 1.3 disk, it should be in your C directory.  If you still
    have your 500, you can run WorkBench 1.3 without having to upgrade the
    ROMs.  If your hard drive controller is an autoboot, I suggest
    upgrading both the workbench and the ROMS so you have autoboot
    capibility.
    
    The program disk for Exellence should be 1.3 so the IconX should be in
    it's C directory.
    
    Later
    
    Ken

    	Seems we have some Excellence! experts here. Good. I have a
    question about the latest version that you might be able to field. The
    flier they sent me says it has 100% color PostScript support and 4
    types of printer output: NLQ, Draft, Graphic, and PostScript. Normally
    "PostScript Support" means that the program can send a PostScript file
    to a PostScript (laser) printer. Sometimes it means that the program
    can cause a printer - even a not-to-bright dot-matrix - to deliver
    PostScript response at various resolutions. I would like to know if
    Excellence! is the former or the latter. 

    After a recent problem with excellence! my daughter called the 
    technical support line. They told her that excellence! 2.0 and 
    higher requires both 1 meg AND Workbench 1.3.
    
    We had the 1 meg, and once we got Wb 1.3 everything was OK.
    
    I am afraid I can give no help or advice on excellence! with
    PostScript or colors.
    
    Regards!
    
    John B. 

    
    Re .3
    
    I have to disagree with .3 on two points.
    
    1. excellence! 2.00 does not ship with a workbench.  There is no C:
       directory and there is no ICONX shipped with the product (at least
       with my copy).
    
    2. I don't believe ICONX is tied to 1.3 in any way.  As I recall, I was
       using it long before 13 was available.  Perhaps 1.3 is the first
       thing from Comodore to use it. I don't know.
    
    Back to .0  all those ICONS (except for HD-Install) DO require ICONX
    in the C directory.
    
    Frank
    
    

    re -.1
    
    Well, I don't have Excellence so I had no way of knowing if it shipped
    with a WorkBench disk or not,  I was just assuming it did and if so, it 
    certainly would have been 1.3.
    
    As far as IconX is concerned, unless I am mistaken, a virgin 1.2
    WorkBench disk did not have it.  I was quite sure that IconX was around 
    in 1.2 days but it's been a couple of years since I went to 1.3 so I
    just wasn't sure anymore.  Commodore included IconX on 1.3 C:
    directory.
    
    If the previous replies are correct and Exellence does not run on 1.2,
    Greg, you are just going to have to break down and upgrade to 1.3 :^)
    
    Ken
    

    
    re .4   excellence! postscipt ...
    
    Try answering this in a couple of parts -
    
    I do postscript between excellence! and LPS40 all the time so I can 
    verify that.   Those print types you talked about (NLQ, DRaft,
    postscript, graphic) are cycled through via a gadget in a std print
    requestor.  For LPS40 use you simply select postscript mode and specify
    a file (eg DH0:TMP/FOO.PS) as the destination.  You simply upload it
    and print it just as you would a VAXDocument postscript file. 
    Excellence! postscript output is true WYSIWYG (matches the screen
    perfectly).
    
    If you had a local postscript printer on the Amiga you'd simply send
    the output of excellence! to the printer.  I have no way to verify that
    this works (don't know why it shouldn't).  I guess there are 3
    assumptions:
    
     1. your printer can interpret postscript
     2. the postscript fonts are either built in OR are downloaded via
        some other process.  Excellence! can't do it.  
     3. The fonts you use must be understood by your printer.  Excellence!
        is theoricically capable of supporting any postscript font.  It
        comes with Times, Helvetica, Courier, & Symbol whose use is
        licenced by Commodore (so I'm told by MSS).  There is also a 
        utility with excellence! v2.0 to convert the postscript metric
        files from Professional Page to excellence! format.  That sounds
        good in principle but I believe LPS40's don't incorporate many
        of them.  
    
    Excellence! V2.0 supports full color Postscript but I don't have access
    to  anything that can print it stuff so I've never actually seen
    output.  I did generate a color postscript file and looked at it's 
    contents with a text editor and it certainly looks like proper color
    postscript syntax to me.  Bring on those new color printers!
    
    I've also tried sending a postscript file to my dot matrix (24 pin) 
    printer using Pixelscript and can say:
    
    1. What a waste. Output was far from acceptable to me.  At best, the
       output was draft quality and you can achieve much faster by printing
       in graphic mode.
    2. Pixelscript took 20 minutes to render 1" printing (on a 68000)
       and it goes just as slow on white space as printed area.
    3. I don't know if Pixelscript has been fixed but it worked with
       V1 of excellence! and not with V2.  Apparently pixelscript has
       intimate knowledge of how some applications deal with font scaling
       and that was changed in V2.0 of excellence! (the prologue).
    
    Hope this tells you what you were looking for.  And yes, I am
    opinionated.  I love the compatability and ease of use in going
    between excellence! and LPS40.
    
    Frank

    There was a PD program out during the later days of 1.2 called Xicon. 
    When 1.3 came out CA added a IconX.  So every one is right.
    
    
    Both Xicon and IconX did simular functions, in allowing you to launch
    CLI only programs from the workbench.
    
    

    re.8
    
    Frank,
    	thanks. What you seem to be saying is either that it doesn't work
    or isn't worth the effort. At least to a dot matrix printer. I don't
    have a laser printer at home, can't afford to buy one nor have I the
    space for it, so how well it works with that equipment is not important
    to me. I could, indeed, ship it off to work and print it there, but
    that would be an abuse - and a long distance call. I'll have to look
    around for another option.
    
    	Dave

    re .8, .10
    
    This is a bit off the topic, but if you want excellent font quality on
    a dot matrix printer (at least a dot matrix with high density)
    Professional Page doe great when using the CompuGraphic fonts.  I was
    really amazed.  This is the only program I've seen so far that does
    decent font printing on D.M. printers.  I have a 24-pin panasonic, so
    don't know how it does on 9 pins.
    
    Ken 
    

    Re .11:
    
>   This is a bit off the topic, but if you want excellent font quality on
>   a dot matrix printer (at least a dot matrix with high density)
>   Professional Page doe great when using the CompuGraphic fonts.  I was
>   really amazed.  This is the only program I've seen so far that does
>   decent font printing on D.M. printers.  I have a 24-pin panasonic, so
>   don't know how it does on 9 pins.
    
    While we're off the subject, PageStream 2.0/2.1 also produces excellent
    output on dot-matrix printers using both CompuGraphic and PostScript
    fonts.  My Star SG-15 is supported at its maximum 240x208 (whereas the
    Panasonic KX-P1124 can be supported at 360x360 -- higher density than
    most laser printers).  The trick is in the rendering of OUTLINE fonts;
    rather than scaling and dithering a dot-matrix font, the actual edges
    of each character are calculated so they come out smooth and sharp.

    re: .12
    
    Don't be fooled, as I was, by that 360 by 360 specification.  While it
    is true that the pins can be positioned and fired on a 1/360th inch
    grid, the size of each pin is 1/180th of an inch, so some of the
    resolution is lost.
    
    By contrast, a 300 dpi laser printer has a 1/300 inch spot size.
        John Sauter

    	Sounds like I'll need to buy a DTP package to print out my letters
    to the kin-folk and other important documents. 
    
    re:.13 
    	Actually, the pins aren't quite that big. Still, some resolution
    would be lost. Just no where near as much as expected. Nice dark images
    also photo-copy better than the light single-pass images.

I've just received an offer from MSS to upgrade from my rather antique version
of Scribble! to excellence 2.0 for $69. On occasion I've contemplated upgrading
to a topflight document-processor, but I'm not sure if excellence is it or not.

What I'd really like to have is the full feature set of FrameMaker, if anyone is
familiar with that; if you're not, DECwrite is based on it and is pretty
similar. Biggies include index/TOC capability, headers/footers, inclusion of
graphics; built-in graphic editor (however simple) a plus. The idea would be
to be able to use this to produce professional-quality reports, feasibility
studies, design documents, and the like. I do have the tiny glossy sheet listing
excellence's features, but what they say isn't always what you see. F'rinstance,
can one import EPS files or just output PS? Can you flow text around graphics?
Can you have both "anchored" and "unanchored" graphic frames?

Thanks for your opinions.

Cheers,
	Bob

    
    Re -1
    
    Bob,
    
    I use excellence! 2.0 and while it's far superior to Scribble, It lacks
    a number of features you're looking at.  Essentially, the glossy sheet
    they sent you is accurate.  Here's some more input -
    
    1. It does indeed do index and table of contents but you have to number
       your own headings, it's not automatic.  Along the same line, it does
       not give you bulleted lists automatically but it has all the ruler
       indent features that allow you to do it manually.
    
    2. It does headers, footers & footnotes very nicely
    
    3. You can include IFF graphics.  The graphic can be resized.  You
       can't flow text around a graphic.  Actually, the grapic is treated
       as a giant character in some respects.  By that, I mean it occupies
       some space on a line.  You can enter a line of text up-to-it from the
       left and add text to the right of it.  In practice I find it's much
       like inserting figures in a runoff document.  There is a 2nd problem
       also.  If I recall correctly, when you import the picture, the
       colors in the picture get remapped to the current excellence!
       pallette (or was it the other way around?).  Either way it's another
       thing you have to deal with.
    
    4. You can't import EPS. In fact there's no way to include a structured
       graphic of any type that I'm aware of.
    
    5. You can't write EPS, only PS.   PS output is a "very" accurate
       WYSIWYG.   There is also a page prieview mode (2 pages at a time)
       which I use quite often.
    
    6. If you output a PS document which includes IFF pictures, the
       pictures become bitmapped PS images and the PS files get huge,
       very rapidly.
    
    7. The program has no graphic editing capabilities whatsoever.
    
    8. I've never heard the terms "anchored", ans "unanchored" graphic
       frames so I don't know what that means in excellence! terms.
    
    Frank
    

Thanks, Frank. You've confirmed some of my impressions. The ecstatic little
bullets like "100% PostScript-Compatible!" usually leave more unsaid than said,
and this case is no exception.

I'm afraid I got quite spoiled by FrameMaker (on the Sun under Unix, BTW). I
found it both powerful and intuitive, and quite rugged as well. DECwrite seems
to be a "value subtracted" version, though- it really lost something in the
translation.

I think for the moment I'll skip the upgrade. If I do decide to get a more
powerful product, I'll take a good look at the info on Professional Page and
PageStream, as the apparent frontrunners in the Amiga DTP field.

Cheers,
	Bob

I also have Excellence, and the previous description seems accurate.  I
absolutely HATED Scribble!, and find Excellence a great improvement in ease
of use as well as functionality.  It isn't wonderful, but it is decent.

One problem I had not anticipated with it is output speed.  I have never
been able to get the draft output modes (using the printer in text mode) to
work, so all output had to be in graphic mode.  This is painfully slow on
an LA75, and doesn't look professional quality.  I now have a PS printer
and the output is fine, although postscript is only supported in a
halfhearted way and is very poorly documented.

	Paul

    
    re .-1
    
    Paul,
    
    That speed problem with draft mode must be an LA75 driver problem. It
    almos sounds as if you're printing in "graphic" mode if its slow.  When
    I print in either DRAFT or NLQ mode it runs at printer speed.  I guess
    it doesn't matter now that you have a postscript printer.
    
    My only postscript output has been to an LPS40 and I've been very
    pleased with the results.  I wish it could deal with EPS so we could
    include structured drawings.  I've asked them about this several times
    but they don't seem interrested.
    
    Are you aware that you can use the Adobe fonts on the C= extras disk
    as well as the ones that come with the program?  The advantage to the
    Adobe fonts is that you can run excellence! at pitch-9 and see the whole
    page (well, almost the whole page) on the screen at a time.  The screen
    font rendering is much finer/lighter this way but you don't have to deal
    with the left/right scrolling as you're entering the text (using the 
    excellence! fonts and pitch-15).
    
    Frank
    
    
    
     
    

>    That speed problem with draft mode must be an LA75 driver problem. It
>    almos sounds as if you're printing in "graphic" mode if its slow.  When
>    I print in either DRAFT or NLQ mode it runs at printer speed.

If I run in draft mode it does print in text mode, but the output is
useless - every line starts at the left margin of the printer, regardless
of how it is supposed to be positioned.  It is as if the raw text is being
sent to the printer without ANY formatting or positioning information.  I
have a feeling that either I have a buggy version or have set some
excellence option wrong.
    
>    Are you aware that you can use the Adobe fonts on the C= extras disk
>    as well as the ones that come with the program?  The advantage to the
>    Adobe fonts is that you can run excellence! at pitch-9 and see the whole
>    page (well, almost the whole page) on the screen at a time.  The screen
>    font rendering is much finer/lighter this way but you don't have to deal
>    with the left/right scrolling as you're entering the text (using the 
>    excellence! fonts and pitch-15).

I have heard that something like this is possible, but have been able to
find no information on this.  A customer at the Memory Location last
weekend was trying to show how to do this, but he didn't have all the
details either and screwed it up.  In addition to changing the pitch to 9
and moving some fonts around, he set SCALE=72 in the Excellence tool icon.

I would appreciate more information on how this scale parameter, the pitch
setting, and the fonts interact.
    

    
    Re -1
    
    I made some notes regarding the use of the Adobe fonts and the
    excellence! settings.  I'll take a look and enter something over
    the weekend.
    
    Frank
    

    Does Excellence! do anywhere near as nice a job printing to a LJ250 as
    ProPage? 
    
    My complaint with ProPage is that its slow with screen updates.  How
    fast is Excellence!? Can you get a head of it? How fast is screen
    scrolling and cursor placement?
    
    Execellence! really has no line art tools?
    
    
    ... Rich

    Re -1
    
    I can't compare excellence! to ProWrite graphics outout. Just never
    seen it.  In NLQ mode they should be identical.
    
    Yes you can get ahead of excellence!.  Screen behavior/speed is very
    comparable  between the latest versions of these products.  The
    programs typically get behind when editing.  Inserting text at the 
    end of the buffer is rapid.
    
    No! excellence! has no drawing tools and probably never will. According
    to the technical support peopleas MSS they consider it simply a word
    processor and are very resistant to features which which "they"
    consider drawing or desktop publishing in nature.
    
    Frank
    
    

I'm considering excellence! versus an upgrade to a DTP package such as ProPage
or Pagestream. I've downloaded the PageStream demo, but I haven't yet found
either a ProPage or an excellence! demo. Does anyone have or know of one for
either of these programs?

Thanks in advance,

	Bob

After perusing all the notes regarding PageStream, ProPage, and Excellence!,
reading the available literature on each, downloading the PageStream demo, and
speaking with Frank Gatulis offline....

I'm going for excellence! 2.0, for the following reasons:


(1) For structured documents such as reports, excellence! is actually better
than the DTP packages. Can't figure out why they don't include indicies and
TOC abilities.

(2) In the DTP packages, screen updates are excruciatingly slow; to be fair,
they have a lot of work to do, using outline fonts and calculating precise
page layout, but it's crippling for massive text entry. Perhaps an accelerator
board alleviates this to the point that it's tolerable, but I don't have one.

(3) To really use one of the DTP packages, you really *must* have a flicker-free
display if you want to keep your eyesight; I don't.


My basic take on the situation is that a desktop publishing package is *not* a
replacement for a good word processor, but an adjunct to one. Packages like
ProWrite and PenPal seem to be addressing the users who don't require "pro"
features in either text processing *or* DTP, but no Amiga package currently
available seems able to provide professional-level features in both. Excellence!
seems to have the best WP capability, IMHO, though a different perspective than
mine might give the nod to WordPerfect. It also has at least rudimentary
capabilities for including graphics, hich should be sufficient for me (I think).
If I find that I *do* require DTP capabilities, I expect I'll still use
excellence! as my WP program, and then "postprocess" the result with the DTP
package.

While I don't know if my requirements are shared by other noters, I figured this
info *might* be useful to others in roughly the same situation, thus this reply.

Cheers,
	Bob

    
    Any WB 2.0 users out there that - 
    
     Run Excellence! 2.00x  &
     run with an overscanned screen &
     can "successfully" print to prefernces in "graphic" mode ?
    
    I've never been able print in graphics mode from excellecne! while
    my screen is overscanned (normal size works fine).  I have WB 1.3
    Furthermore, my favorite support person (ha!) at MSS says:
    
    - they have never tried overscan and don't have a capable monitor
    - his guess is that it probably doesn't work
    - they're not likely to fix because they believe C= doesn't bless
      overscan ????  so they only support "std size".  
    
    I can't imagine C= doesn't see overscanned screens as being acceptable
    under 2.0.  
    
    Last saturday I recieved the latest version of excellence! (2.00c)
    which has some WB 2.0 bug fixes.  It still has the overscanned print
    problem under WB 1.3 and I wondered if there's some reason why it
    "might" just work under WB 2.0.
    
    Thanks,
    Frank
    
     
      

    Reply to notes .19 & .20
    Hi Frank , could you post the settings you have been using with
    Excellence when creating Documents for eventual output to a Postscript
    printer. You mentioned setting the Pitch to 9 instead of the 15 that
    MSS recommends in theyre rather thin docs on Postscript also What Scale
    value have you been using ?? Are you using the Pcourier, PHelvetica
    fonts that were on disks ??
    I have been previewing the PostScipt docs I have been creating with the
    Public Domain Postscript interpreter called Post with Limited success
    as POST seems to choke with a DictFull error on the files created with
     Excellence   .The files do Print okay when output to a LN03 Script
    Printer. I have found Post to be useful when Previewing and printin
    Postscript files from ADPRO and Pagestream 2.1.
    
    Regards     John Lemoine at @EMO   Compuserve 75320,143
    

    
    John,
    
    Let's take em' one at a time .....
    
    Pitch-15 is correct if you're using the fonts that came with
    excellence! (PTimes, PHelvetica, PCourier, PSymbol).  Note that
    there is a corresponding set of .METRIC files in your fonts 
    directory for each of those excellence! fonts.
    
    I chose instead, to use the ADOBE fonts which are on the 1.3
    extras disk.  The adobe fonts look completely different. They are
    very fine looking on the screen and depending on the monitor you use,
    may look unacceptable to you.  I run excellence! in interlace mode and 
    have a flicker fixer and multisync and I like the results.  The
    MAIN reason for wanting to use the adobe fonts is that I can see
    the whole page on the screen without having to scroll horizontally.
    This happens because the bitmapped versions of the adobe fonts are 
    require a pitch=9.
    
    I'm happy with this set up but there are some drawbacks.
    
    a) The excellence! fonts are available in even point sizes 10,12,etc which
       seem sort of standard.  The Adobe fonts only come in odd sizes
       9,11,13.  This really DOES make a difference.  You would think that an
       11 or 13 point font would surely be close enough to a 12 point to not
       notice (it's only 1/72 of an inch!). Well, to my eye it is very
       noticeable when I look at an entire page.  It's a combination of not
       only the font size, but the inter line spacing is different as well.
       A good deal of this can be compensated with the line spacing gadget. 
    
    b) Another drawback is that you can't mix the excellence! and Adobe fonts
       because SCALE and PITCH apply to the entire document but each font
       set requires different pitch and scale settings.
    
    c) The adobe fonts only consist of Times, Courier, Helvetica. There's no
       Symbol font.  All I use is Times,  so it's ok with me.
    
    Documentation in the manual is not to clear so here's how you can try
    the adobe fonts for yourself and see if you like em'.
    
    1. From the 1.3 extras disk copy the font directories and .FONT files
       to your working font directory (for Times, Helvetica, Courier).
       Don't forget to re-boot or do a fixfonts.
    
    2. In the excellence! icon tooltype, you'll need to change/add 
       SCALE=72  (check the book for the number, I think it's 72 for Adobe).
    
    3. In excellence! page-setup, set the pitch to 9. (You type it in directly
       after an ALT+LEFT-MOUSE on the pitch gadget. I think!).
    
    once you've gotten this far you're ready to go as far as the screen 
    is concerned.  If the fonts look useable to you there's one last thing
    you need to do if you before printing to a postscript file.  You need
    metric files for the new fonts.
    
    The metric files which came with excellence! are all you need and you
    can either rename or copy them. I did a rename since I no longer use
    the excellence! fonts:
    
    Rename PTimes.metric      Times.metric
    Rename PCourier.metric    Courier.metric
    Rename PHelvetica.metric  Helvetica.metric
    
    And your done ......  Good luck.
    
    Frank
    
    
    
    
    
        
    
    
    
    

    Hi Frank,
    
    	Thanks for your informative response. I tried your suggestions and
    followed the advice of the manual. 
    	I have the correct fonts and pitch settings and I am quite impressed
    with the results (quite an improvement over topaz), However I have one
    remaining small problem. I composed a document using the Adobe Courier
    11 point font then saved as a postscript file, then uploaded to a Vax
    and printed on a LN03 ScriptPrinter. The document printed fine except
    that some of the Kerning of the text turned out funny. Particularly the
    IM occurences ie. in the word Impulse the I and the M are too close
    together, I thought that Courier was a monospaced Font ??
    
    	Could there be a problem with the Metric file (Courier.metric) ??
    	I remember you said that you only use Times, was there any
    particular reason or do you just like times ?
    
    	Regards    John Lemoine
    

    
    John,
    
    I'll upload some courier stuff and take a look it particularly the IM
    pairs.  Yes, courier IS fixed spacing.  Just a thought, but perhaps the
    kerning is an illusion where those 2 characters are the opposite
    extremes of the actual character widths.  I don't know anything about 
    standards for kerning.  Since courier is fixed width, we ought to be
    able to whip up some test text (try saying that 10 times fast!) and
    take some measurements.  Another thing to try is print the same thing on
    an LPS40 and LNO3 and see if the printout is identical.  Perhaps our
    printers are slightly different.
    
    My reason for just using Times?  Goes like this - For courier, the
    internal fonts in my printer are excellent.  If I use my printers
    internal courier in conjunction with, NLQ, and  a film ribbon, you have
    to look close to tell it wasn't done on a laser printer so theres no
    need to postscript these.   So I do use courier, just not postscript.
    Unfortunately I don't have an internal  printer "proportional spaced"
    font which matches anything on the Amiga.  This means I can't get
    WYSIWYG between excellence! and my own printer with proportional fonts
    so I go the postscript route.  I like Times over  Helvetica (personal
    preference only) for my porportional spaced fonts and I've found the
    postscript output from excelence! to be near perfect WYSIWYG.  The way
    to proove it is to print some stuff on a local printer in graphic mode
    and upload a postscript file of the same stuff. After you print the
    postscript file make an overhead tranparency and lay it on top of the
    graphic mode printout.  The kerning of the excellence! our "space" is 
    slightly different than the LPS but overall output is amazingly close.
    
    Ont thing you'll eventually run into is that the margins are almost always
    off when you upload postscript and print on an LPS40.  I think that's
    an LPS40 paper adjustment variation.  Some are OK but most are shifted
    such that the print is about 1/4" to the right.  The printers are very
    consistant so the solution is to check out the printer you use and
    make a margin adjustment in excellence! page setup to compensate for
    any variation.
    
    Frank
    
      

    Hi Frank,
    	Thanks again for the prompt response. I will try playing around
    with the different fonts to see what I like. I guess as you say, a
    person just has to find a configuration that they like.
    	You are right about the font spacing when using the Commodore
    supplied Adobe fonts, they do look a bit queer (11 seems small, 13
    seems Large) I guess you get so used to seeing 12 point fonts that
    anything else seems odd.
    		Regards    John Lemoine