Calamus User

Welcome to the cut down issue of Calamus User.

In this two page taster we have included several segments which appear in the latest issue, just to whet your appetite. For anyone who may not have come across our publication before, let me enlighten you. As the name suggests, Calamus User is a magazine dedicated to those using what must be the most widely used DTP package on the Atari. Produced on a quarterly basis, each Issue includes a number of regular sections such as News, Question & Answer forum and Hints & Tips. In addition, there are two series of articles, with the first taking a look at Calamus Related PD, whilst the second entitled Creative Calamus demonstrates how to produce some innovative ideas. Naturally, no magazine would be complete without a review section and we are happy to oblige with a series looking at the current set of add-on modules for SL. in addition to the magazine, Calamus user also offers a large number of the services including our own collection of fonts and vector clipart; support for our subscribers via our telephone help line or email, and there is much more.

For anyone who wishes to subscribe to, the magazine please send a cheque or postal order for £10.oo ,for 4 Issues or £3.OO for the latest Issue' to:

Calamus User,. P0 Box 148, Deal, Kent. CT14 7QN.

Alternatively, please send, a SAE if you require more information on all our services

Regards , Steve Llewellyn , Editor

Colour Printing From Bob Yates, Radcliffe-on-Trent
My setup currently consists of a pair of STE's (4Mb), an H-P Laserjet III, a mono monitor (Atari 5M125 hi-rez) I have recently obtained a second hand Canon BJC-600 colour printer; I have also located a printer driver suitable for outputting from Calamus SL to the printer. The only thing that worries me slightly Is whether it is practical to print in colour without being able to see colour on the monitor? I have a feeling I'm overlooking some vital factor.

Reply from Mike Hosking.
The important Ingredient In these circumstances is your printer driver. Provided that is compatible (in colour) with your printer, the paper will output from your printer in colour despite the fact that you see the image in monochrome. This, happens to me frequently, when I am running SL on my machine (Falcon) In mono and, at some stage, need to output from the printer, In my case a Stylus Colour II, in colour. Provided I load the correct driver (I do, on occasions, forget!) the printed output is in colour.

Outline Art 3 and SL Colour

John Mcholts, Birmingham. Whilst using the latest version of Outline Art , I have experienced a problem loading some colour (.CFT) tables. Whilst some update the colour list, others do not appear to load at all. Can you help?

I think I know what the problem may be. Whilst Outline Art 3.0 can load colour tables generated from SL, it can only handle those which have been saved from earlier SL versions. When the DMC programmers updated SL In 1(1~4 to include spot colour, they not only changed the document format but also that of the colour tables. So I suspect that the Colour Tables you are having problems with are generated from a later version of SL.

Diagonal Headlines

Whilst playing with Calamus one evening we discovered a simple way of producing diagonal Headlines by using the kerning option So here is how it is done.

First, create a Text Frame Then type In the required text for the headlines and set the font attributes, such as size, colour, style.

Next, create a line frame using diagonal lines which should start from the first character (see illustration) within the Textframe, This will act as a guideline which will ease the kerning procedure. Step 4. Activate kerning (ESC), Now using the Shift or Control and the Arrow keys you can now start kerning each character. Remember to stop at the guideline! Once you have completed the headline it should look similar to that in fig 2 below, don't forget to remove the guide line before using the headline.


IDEAL USES FOR SPECIALIZED FONTS

Every Calamus user has his favourite collection of type fonts, and the available supply continues to grow daily. For this reason many of us wonder why anyone would want to go to all the trouble of designing their own fonts. To be honest, unless you understand type design, you can get pretty frustrated using a font editor.

However, there is an alternate use for that vector font editor that does not require the expertise of a type designer . Since each character in a font is an outline letterform, there is nothing to say it has to be type oriented. Draw a chicken if you want, or better yet some type of logo or dingbat that you are lacking. Above and beyond this, I would like to suggest a specialised fonts which may appeal to people with specific interests , such as bird watching, dog breeding family tree researchers, etc.

As for myself my own interest in military history led me to design a tank font which held a ll of the vehicles required to portray Rommels panzer divisions on paper using Calamus 1.09N. These were eventually incorporated into a book on the North African Campaign of WW2.here is a small clip showing a single tank company which was typed in line

line as :-
mmmF33 , 11111 , 4444 , 4444 , 4444 , 4444.
The heads and subheads were then set in regular type and added. Using this specialised type font at 30pt I was literally able to type in all of my graphics on over 80 pages of divisional organisational charts. The speed, uniformity and ease of altering sizes gave this method a great advantage over other options. The big joy was the ease with which you could go back into the editor and alter any vehicle at any time if required .Eah vehicle was given a key position and then I spent an hour building a chart showing which vehicle was on each key. With this chart in front of me I had no problem typing in what I wanted. For those not interested in professional type design a low priced Calamus font editor like FONTY or GENUS would suffice. Actually, you will be using the font editor as a simple draw program, where you can create key oriented illustrations rather than type characters. Shown below are samples at about 100 points of what can be achieved within a simple font editor. Naturally if you already own a quality font editor you have the best of both worlds, and will be able to achieve even finer detail. If you don't have a scanner, you might consider tracing a screen sized representation of your object on thin clear acetate and adhering it to your screen. You use this as a template from which to trace your shape. Once you have your basic shape and proportion correct then move into a larger zoom screen to clean up the finer details. Another great feature is that since there may not be too many character/illustrations in the fonts you build they will hardly intrude on your available memory


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