€€SAXON PUBLISHER İ SETTING NEW STANDARDS IN THE ART OF DESKTOP PUBLISHING. Saxon Publisher is a revolutionary new highİend desktop publishing program created for the Amiga family of personal computers. It represents a new standard in DTP software and finally provides Amiga users with a highly efficient and truly professional alternative to higher priced IBM and Macintosh based desktop publishing systems. Its unique design and its extensive capabilities provide users with a powerful tool for creating high quality documents with a minimum input of time and labor. Our aim in creating Saxon Publisher was to overcome the numerous deficiencies found in existing highİend desktop publishing programs. Amiga users have long been restricted in their choice of quality desktop publishers. Furthermore, available práĝágrams have simply not been able to live up to users' expectations of professionalism, efficiency and ease of use. The end result has always been the unavoidable concession of a great deal of time and energy in preparing professional documents. At the onset of this project, preliminary market research showed us overwhelming user dissatisfaction and frustration with available desktop publishing programs. Self proclaimed 'professional' programs were inadequate for many applications and were cumbersome to use. We at Saxon felt that we could overcome these deficiencies by creating an innovative new program that would intrinsically provide users with levels of performance unparalleled by other desktop publishing programs. A year and a half of painstaking development has proven the validity of our original vision and has reinforced our company's commitment to quality and excellence. From its inception, Saxon Publisher has been designed with professional users in mind. We have encouraged input from Amiga users throughout the development cycle, and have, whenever possible, tried to accomodate their requests. After all, who would know better about the desired attributes of a professional desktop publisher than its end users? The result of our work was the creation of a desktop publishing program like no other. Uncompromising attention to detail and quality is evident throughout this exceptional program. Every effort has been made to maximize the program's efficiency, flexibility, and ease of use. Saxon Publisher is a program that excels in its performance, and enables users to more fully exploit the capabilities of their Amigas. Saxon Publisher's overall superiority over other currently available DTP programs is not based simply on the unique features that it possesses. Rather, it arises from the fundemental concept behind the program: Saxon Publisher places a tremendous emphasis on speed, efficiency, and ease of use İ attributes which are paramount in any professional setting. Meticulous attention to these details is readily apparent in every aspect of this exceptional program, and sets Saxon Publisher apart from its competitors. Saxon Publisher is the only DTP program written for the Commodore Amiga that is based on an ingenious system of style and text tagging. This clever feature inherently enables both novice and expert users to maintain a high degree of consistency and to increase overall efficiency in creating documents. This ability is made possibleÜjÜ through the exclusive use of type styles. A type style is a complete definition of parameters for rendering a paragraph, containing all necessary information about font, size, and spacing. A user defines each of the parameters for the various type styles that he or she wishes to implement. Once a type syle has been defined, it is given a name (called a style tag) which is then used to refer to that style. In this manner, whole paragraphs can be reformatted simply by clicking the mouse on the desired style tag that appears on the sidebar. Every type style contains separate definitions of font and size for normal text, the first letter of a paragraph, and capital letters. In addition, each type style contains two fonts for special uses such as math characters. Also contained within a type style are definitions for justification. Text can quickly be justified in any of five ways: vertically, centered, flushŞleft, flushİright, or forced justified. Saxon Publisher also contains definitions for spacing above, below, left, and to the right of lines and paragraphs, as well as left indent, tracking, and automatic kerning. The greatest advantage of using a tagging system is that it increases document producing efficiency tremendously. Entire paragraphs can be reformatted in a single step. Using a tagging system also inherently enables users to maintain a high level of consistency in producing documents. In order to further enhance efficiency, we have also provided users with four additional style transfer gadgets on the sidebar. These gadgets enable the quick transfer of style tags above or below individual boxes or entire bodies of text in a document. TEXT GRAPHICS AND STRUCTURED DRAWING TAGS In Saxon Publisher, the use of tagging is not limited to type styles. Bodies of text are also given names for future reference. Text can be made to flow through multiple boxes by attaching that text tag to each box through which it should flow. The same tagging system is also used for bitmapped graphics and structured drawings. A bitmap or structured drawing need only be imported once to use it in multiple boxes. ERGONOMICS Like any other tool, an otherwise superb program is essentially useless without the ability to use it effectively. In developing Saxon Publisher, we have endeavoured to create a working atmosphere in which the program complements its user rather than inhibiting him. Saxon Publisher's tagging system is a perfect example of our program's intuitive user interface. Whenever viable, we have attempted to facilitate access to Saxon Publisher's extensive capabilities, thereby providing users with more time to devote to the job of creating. Saxon Publisher makes extensive use of onİscreen gadgets to perform numerous program functions. The reason, quite simply, is that it is far easier to manipulate a mouse pointer than it is to fiddle around with odd keyboard combinations. In addition to onİscreen gadgets, Saxon Publisher also incorporates several requesters in order to conveniently define function parameters. Furthermore, special characters (such as emİdashes, bullets etc.), are conveniently located on the numeric keyboard. The various requesters also contain several commonly used presets, as a convenience feature. In addressing ergonomics, it wasn't enough to simply maximize accessibility. There is also an underlying aesthetic element. InÜjÜ this regard, we have created screen representations that are both visually pleasing and logical in design. Saxon Publisher's sidebar was logically placed along the left hand side of the screen. Four different mouse pointers have been provided, each complementing the respective mode that it was designed for. (cursor, text, paragraph, and draw modes). Screen magnifications are relative to the page size, rather than being absolute. For example, the page shown on the screen can be displayed in one of five ways: Actual size, full width magnification, full height magnification, enlarged or reduced magnification. Bitmaps displayed onİscreen are shown using a two pass blitter process. This technique uses dithering to approximate sixteen shades of grey using only four, thereby conserving memory. The onİscreen ruler and box outlines can be hidden in order to give the user a better perspective of what his completed page will look like. BOXES Saxon Publisher has the unique ability to create nonİrectangular text boxes. In this desktop publishing program, A box is defined as a closed boundary of connected line segments (of any polygonal shape) inside which text and graphics are enclosed. Each box has its own margins (left, right, top, bottom) as well as its own transformation matrix to rotate, scale and skew its contents. Once a box has been defined, it can be moved as a whole or easily reshaped by moving its hooks (corners), or sides. Because boxes will most often be rectangular, provisions have been made within the program to make rectangular boxes particularly easy to handle. Upon creation, a box's transformation matrix is set to zero skew, zero rotation, and 1:1 scale in both the X and Y axes. These parameters can easily be altered with the Box Definition Requester, when it is called from the menu. A box can be cloned with or without its contents being cloned. Furthermore, the contents of a box can be easily deleted using a convenient deletion gadget on the sidebar. Bitmaps are automatically resized to fit inside boxes. Individual boxes can be loaded to or retrieved from memory, as can entire stylesheets (complete lists of defined typestyles). TEXTURES Each style tag, box, and structured drawing has a texture associated with it defining how it should be rendered. Saxon Publisher has the ability to impose bitmapped textures on text and structured drawings. The Texture Requester also provides users with such options as bitmapped backgrounds, outlining, drop shadows, and colors. STRUCTURED DRAWINGS Saxon Publisher has the ability to import structured drawings in Encapsulated PostScript or ProVector formats. While its elementary PostScript Parser can understand most functions and data structures, some files are too complex to parse and display on screen. Even these files can be printed using Saxon Publisher, but their screen representation will consist only of the drawing's bounding box. All E.P.S. files generated by Gold Disk's Professional Draw will display properly. Saxon Publisher also contains its own onİscreen drawing commands, with fill and outline features. An extremely useful feature of our structured drawing commands is the use of four point bezier curves. This enables the user to efficiently handle the creation of smoothÜjÜ french and nonİcircular curves. HANDLING TYPE AND LEADING As mentioned earlier in this document, Saxon Publisher allows the user to define justification in a variety of ways. For forced justified text, an important consideration is the program's handling of intercharacter justification (ie., on lines where wordspace justification is extremely wide). Saxon Publisher's justification algorithms automatically balance intercharacter and interspatial justification in a 1:2 ratio. This prevents heavily justified text from merging and maintains the individuality of the justified words. Saxon Publisher also contains defineable parameters for vertical justification, as well as the ability to handle Drop Caps quickly and efficiently. The program also allows text sizes over 8000 points in addition to cut, copy, paste, search and replace operations for text throughout a document. Text files imported by Saxon Publisher can be either WordPerfect or generic files in nature. Plain, bold, italics, and underline features are easily implemented using conveniently located onİscreen gadgets. As with most professional programs, leading is user defineable as a percentage of type size. Saxon Publisher further provides users with two convenient presets for commonly used leading factors (20% and 30% leading). Once it has been defined for a particular type style, leading does not have to be redefined throughout the life of that style tag. Saxon Publisher also has the ability to condense, expand, or oblique type, as well as commands to define the transparency (On/Off) of outline type. Text and graphics can also be rotated, scaled, or skewed properly using Saxon Publisher. This exceptional program uses a two pass blitter process to quickly render manipulated text and/or graphics, thereby greatly reducing the processing time required to carry out these complex operations. COLORS AND SCREENS Saxon Publisher is the first professional Amiga desktop publishing program to offer four color separations with full trapping (user defineable) and undercolor removal. Screen angles and densities are defineable to four decimal places. Although Saxon Publisher doesn't have specific routines to carry out mechanical screen tints, its page cloning abilities make this process possible. Furthermore, the availability of over 16 million color hues, greatly enhances the use of this program for mechanical screen tinting. A SAXON FIRST: RESOLUTION DOUBLING Saxon Publisher's output routines contain nonİlinear 'intelligent' routines to double or quadruple the resolution of output bitmaps without destroying sharpness or detail. These unique interpolation routines will also remove the color bands caused by the Amiga's 12 bit color registers. DEDICATION TO PROFESSIONALISM Saxon Publisher is the first desktop publishing program written for the Amiga that can truly be called professional. In an atmosphere where time is very valuable, professionals should not be hindered by inadequate or inefficient software. In developing Saxon Publisher, we have implemented features that enhance user productivity as much asÜjÜ possible. Every aspect of this desktop publishing program exudes the characteristic of efficiency. This underlying theme is apparent in the way things fit and work together as much as it is apparent in the overall design and execution of the program. Our commitment to this goal is readily apparent in Saxon Publisher's use of several major time saving features which greatly increase productivity and significantly reduce the turnaround time required in producing documents. Once a user has become thoroughly acquianted with any software tool, redundant features serve no purpose but to reduce overall efficiency. Realizing this, we have added effective features that enable the user to keep redundancy to an absolute minimum. These features work by reducing the processing time required for projects in the following ways: Firstly, onİscreen color representation can be turned off, thereby reducing the time required for screen redraws and freeing a large portion of available memory. Similarly, bitmaps can be hidden in order to save memory and reduce processing time. A bitmap is hidden by replacing its onİscreen representation with a grey block of the same dimensions. Saxon Publisher also makes use of a user implemented quick display feature which automatically replaces colored text on screen with text that is strictly black and white, and hides bitmaps and structured drawings. This feature greatly reduces the time taken for screen refreshes and redraws, while at the same time allowing a large portion of memory to be devoted to other functions. Perhaps the most useful time saving feature offered by Saxon Publisher is its unique Function Key Assignment feature. This incredibly valuable feature allows users to assign style tags, boxes and pages to the ten function keys on the Amiga keyboard. Once an item has been assigned to a function key, it is stored in the program's disk memory. any stored item can be retrieved days, weeks, or even years later and incorporated into the current document with a single keystroke. The many implications of this feature are obvious. The most important of these are: 1. An item that is used several times throughout a document can easily be cloned and placed wherever it is required within that document. 2. Items that are consistent throughout documents can quickly and easily be imported each document that requires the use of the saved item. For example, a company may save a copy of its letterhead to disk by assigning it to a function key. Once assigned the letterhead can subsequently be imported into any document that requires its use. Using these features in unison will significantly increase document producing efficiency and will reduce turnaround time. Saxon Publisher's Function Key Assignment feature is just another example of our company's commitment to technical excellence. In our refusal to settle for compromise, we have created a professional desktop publishing program of unequaled calibre. Saxon Publisher is an exceptional program. It is extremely innovative in its design and execution, and will redefine people's perception of what a fully featured desktop publisher should be.