Issue 8 AMIGAZINE!  CITY DESK  A Review by Brian Jean (Using an HP LaserJet II)  The world of desktop publishing has recently become a reality for the Amiga. With all the power packed into the Amiga, it has the ability to quickly become the leader in desktop publishing. As such, users are looking for the software which best suits their needs. A powerful computer without the right software is like Porshe 911 without gas. The Amiga is the tool, and in this instance City Desk is the fuel. City Desk is much like other desktop publishing software now available, with just a few differences that set it apart from others. I like the fact that City Desk provides very direct support for the Hewlett Packard LaserJet+ and Series II laser printers. All the others "support" the HP LaserJet in that the printer driver is found on your WorkBench disk, but that is hardly support. Let me give you an example. I was using PageSetter with my LaserJet Series II with 1.5 megabytes of memory on my Amiga with 2 megabytes of RAM. With Preferences set to "HP LaserJet Plus", a single page took as long as 30 minutes, sometimes longer to print, regardless of whether it contained all text or a mixture of text and graphics. PageSetter also lacks the ability to take advantage of the Laser's fonts. City Desk will allow the user to use any printer in Preferences along with the LaserJet, but also defaults to it's own built in LaserJet driver. The built in driver not only allows the user to access all the Laser's fonts and power, but prints a page of text in about 20 seconds or less. This "text" page can contain 2 or 3 columns (or more) with boxes drawn around the text and drop shadows added. This appears to be graphics, but it is treated as text. A page with some graphics (10% or less, give or take a bit) will print in 3 - 5 minutes. The time required to print increases with the amount of actual graphics (IFF pictures) used. Let's talk fonts for a moment. A serious desktop publishing tool *MUST* be able to take advantage of your printers fonts. Using the Amiga's fonts with a laser printer results in nothing more than a screen dump, resulting in jagged print. That's fine if you're working with a dot matrix printer. Some of the fonts are optimized for a dot matrix printer. But if you have a laser, the output is the same as a dot matrix printer, only a bit darker. In other words, your Amiga with a laser printer and software that doesn't TRULY support that laser, is a large waste of money. I understand PageSetter may now have an additional disk available for about $45.00 that offers LaserJet support. At this time, I have not been able to test that software or see it so I really can't say much more about PageSetter's ability to talk with the LaserJet, other than it doesn't (or didn't). City Desk allows the user to select Laser or Amiga fonts, and also allows for mixing the two on the same page. So if you have a special Amiga font that you want to use, you still can while using your laser. Still on the topic of fonts, (I'm about to do a little more City Desk / PageSetter comparison here), PageSetter allows for only one font per "box". Each box is placed on the page and then can be sized. The default font for the box is then selected. City Desk on the other hand, uses a default font for it's "box", but it also allows an unlimited number of fonts per page, box, or line. This is done using embedded commands in the text. Let's take a quick look at an example ... This is a test would be printed out with the default font. To change fonts in that same line, the text would have escape sequences added which may look like this ... [font topaz] This [italic] is [bold] a [plain] test. The result is "This" is printed using a topaz font (any of the laser's fonts can be substituted here) "is" is printed in italics, "a" is printed in bold lettering and "test" is printed back in the default font. Most of the commands allow for abbreviations such as simply [p] for plain or [it] for italics. City Desk has 57 different embedded commands for everything from defining the top and bottom margin to changing font types and sizes. Two more very powerful and helpful features of City Desk is it's ability to print IFF color pictures of any resolution (not HAM) in gray scales and it's ability to "FLOW" text around graphics. PageSetter, as an example, requires all graphics be black and white and in 640 X 200 resolution. Using 640 X 400 and/or color pictures will give unpredictable results. City Desk transforms IFF pictures to various shades of gray, yielding more pleasing results. The text flow feature allows the user to place his/her graphics on the page, then drop in the text. The text will then "FLOW" around that piece of graphics. This eliminates the need to play around sizing boxes to get the text placed around the graphics. If a user prefers to place the text around the graphics manually, then fine, it can still be done. The flowing text does have one draw back, being that the graphics must be to the far right or left of the page or box. If it is in the middle, the flow will be to the left leaving a gap on the right. In some cases this may be the desired effect, but in others it may not. City Desk's text editor is rather weak at first look. The manual explains a survey was taken that showed a very high percentage of users already have a favorite text editor with which they are very comfortable. MicroSearch felt it would be a waste of development time to create a full featured text editor for which you would have to learn a whole new set of commands. They might have a good point there. Rather than a full featured text editor, they have an editor which displays the text on a single line with a slide bar to move from one point of your text to another. This editor is best suited for quick spelling changes, adding/removing embedded commands or things of this nature. Use YOUR text editor to actually type in the bulk of your text. Ed, Scribble! or anything with the ability for ASCII output works great. City Desk does support WorPerfect files. Bug Report: I found three "bugs" in City Desk that users need to be aware of. These bugs seem to affect those of us using City Desk with an HP LaserJet. According to technical support, these problems do not occur when using a PostScript laser. The first is with overlaying boxes. City Desk gives the user the ability to create boxes around graphics and text. Those boxes can also be shadowed if the user prefers. Boxes then can be placed on top of each other, each box being specified as to if it shall "Mix" with the other box or be on "Top" of the other box. Being on "Top" will force the area of the top box to cover the area of the box below, giving an overlay effect. No matter what I did, all overlaying boxes printed as mixed. MicroSearch explained that PostScript was needed for that effect. The problem was in the printer not the software. However, I have been able to do this properly using MS-DOS software. MicroSearch will be looking into this more deeply. The next bug is in the "Inv" command which will Invert text. Let's say you want to print a title as white letters in a black box. This can be done by first creating a black box in the graphics editor, then placing it on your page and sizing it. Next, place your text on top of that page. At first, the text will be invisible. Select the box that includes the text, then select "Inv". Voila! Your text now shows up on your box. It looks great until you print it. When printed on the LaserJet you end up with just a black box. You can work around this by using the Preferences HP driver, but then you lose quality in the text. Technical support said the manual explains this can be done only through Preferences or on a Post- Script printer. I haven't been able to find that mentioned in the manual. The last bug I found was in the "Text Format" option. City Desk gives you the ability to read Amiga (NotePad) format, ASCII, and Scribble!. The problem is in reading Scribble! formatted files. It works fine unless you have any embedded Scribble! commands. Embedded Scribble! commands start with a period (.), after which you can specify margins, justification etc. When Scribble! prints your document it does what the embedded command lines tell it to do, not printing the actual command line. When City Desk reads the Scribble! file, it reads everything, and places everything onto your City Desk page, command lines and all. The way around this is to "Print" to a "file" from Scribble!, giving you an ASCII file which City Desk has no problems reading. You can also edit your Scribble! file removing the embedded command lines. Now for my "Wish List" ... The only thing that I would really want added to City Desk is the ability to create templates and specify a template with the default page setting. This would be of GREAT help when printing out a manual where the page size is less than 8 1/2" x 11". What is commonly done, is simply to create an outlined page with the borders set to the size of area the user wishes to confine his printing to. Outside that area, the margins are marked to indicate to the printer where the page needs to be cut in order for the finished product to be the proper size. Right now, the user has to draw those markings by hand on each page. That's not so bad unless you happen to be printing out a manual of 100 pages or so. MicroSearch explained they realize this would be a great feature, and hope to include it in a future update. In conclusion, City Desk and an HP LaserJet+ or Series II will give you the professional output many users want while still possessing extreme ease of use. There may be better desktop publishing software available for the Amiga as you read this review, but I haven't seen it yet. Editor's Note: Since this review was originally written, City Desk has released a v1.1 upgrade which is free to registered users. We were unable to get a copy of that upgrade prior to press time. However, if there are any problems with it or if it is a significant improvement, you can count on reading about it in AMIGAZINE! soon.