steveg@SAIC.COM (Stephen Harold Goldstein) (01/10/90)
Well so far I've encountered several problems with the 'debugged' version of PageStream (1.8). Some are bugs, others are annoyances. The first was relayed previously and has to with outline text appearing see thru when placed on top of other objects. Fill styles only fill the area AROUND the text not the letters themselves. In trying to create a deep shadow effect, you can overlay several copies of your text offset about 0.01" over and down (up and over etc), from each other, then place an outline copy on top. The resultant output on my SLM804 is quite pleasing, but the screen display is a mess. The 'UNDO' feature still does not work in all cases. As a bare minimum, you should be warned before the program executes something that cannot be 'undone'. Inconsistent defaults on entering font/size selection form. Sometimes it defaults to the font of your selected block, others to the first font available. Real annoying habit of ALWAYS asking whether a font/size change should be global or block only - why not a little checkbox in the font/size dialog that you can toggle as needed? The screen is still not properly redrawn after moving some objects - object 'handles' get left on the screen, objects can be rotated/stretched so they seem to disappear etc. Finally, I've recently had a problem printing Postscript to disk. If I create a file from scratch all works fine. However, upon re-entering the program and opening the saved document, an attempt to print to disk triggers repeated screen dumps to the laser! I've got a number of AUTO folder pgms and ACCs loaded, and a lot of fonts, and haven't tried to duplicate this yet with a 'clean' system, but it's still quite strange. If the screen dump AUTO program is not loaded, the system just hangs. Anyone out there have similar problems to what I've described? Any guesses as to when the *real* debugged version will be out? :^) Sure glad I didn't jump in until v1.52 was out. I shudder to think what 1.0 was like. Don't take me wrong, once you know how to navigate around the traps its a very useful and powerful package, but it drives me crazy whenever I run into software whose annoyance factor is just barely outweighed by its utility factor. That is to say, all things considered, it's an OK program, but with the potential to be a *great* program.
fyl@ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) (01/12/90)
In article <9001092309.AA02621@CASPIAN.SAIC.COM>, steveg@SAIC.COM (Stephen Harold Goldstein) writes: > > Well so far I've encountered several problems with the 'debugged' version of > PageStream (1.8). > > Sure glad I didn't jump in until v1.52 was out. I shudder to think what 1.0 > was like. Yeah, me too and I have 1.0 and 1.1. The really disappointing this is that rather than fix what is wrong, new features are added. PP 1.01 does essentially what we need to do. Nothing fancy. We use it to lay out some of our advertising flyers. All of our "real" publishing work is done on the UNIX systems. But, each new version of PP (now PS) adds a whole bunch of stuff plus some new bugs. I have looked at the options and still don't have the right answer. FleetStreet 2.0 lacks some stuff. I don't know if 3.0 is good or not. Calamus is wonderful -- I have played with it -- but I need PostScript output as we ultimately send stuff to a Linotronic. -- Phil Hughes, SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155 (206)FOR-UNIX uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl or attmail!ssc!fyl (206)527-3385