November 1992
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Missing link Found
The IV24'1 Video Imaging System by GVP is your computer |r| link to:
»•
Vnu have only 1 video ,sloi in your Amiga®. Only liVP's IV2-i makes sure you Like maximum advantage of it. No other multi-function video enhiincemeni peripheral links your
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Amiga to more video equipment, multi-media and otlier devices. boards and programs than GVPsIV24. Check out diese features:
* Separate Composite and RtiR Video Genlocks * 1.5MB, 24-biL 16.8 Million dolor Frame Buffer -k Realtime Pramegrabber/Digitizer ■* FHcker- liliminalor(de-inicrlac«l video) * RGB. Composite, S-vi IS aid optional Component (YtV) Format Compatfcllity with the vti
* Picture-In-Picture (PIP) Video-Over- Application or Application-Over-Video Display * Digiud ;uid Analog Key Inputs. GVFS bundled software Ls your link to creative imaging. 'Uteres absolutely no limit to your creamitv'. arching mid fun with
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included will) your IY'2-t:
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MylAD"' (My live Action Director) makes everyone a professional video- grapher with a 3 signal, 2-input switcher mul ill spectacular transitions.
New, enhanced Macmpaint-lV24"* lets the artist in you truly express itself witli 16.8 million color paint and image ib'giiizing that shows your work in 2-i bits — as you use it.
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ware
iskrop Darkroom
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iliik'is I have shown broadcast engineers."
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Hill Evans, (^ti*|Kiral(.' Comiiumicatiuns IV. hnii iau. rabmcl Corp.. Garden Grove. CA
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9 0
"I found a link to great animations...
[urn lliihlit~.ii. I'nxllaiT. Wild Onhid Graphics. City Kock. OK
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I'Al I. (ilLMAV Entrepreneur
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and they're
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GREAT VALLEY- PRODUCTS. INC. PHONE 2 1 5 « 3 3 7 - B 7 7 0
600 CLARK AVENUE KING OF PRUSSIA. PA l?4C6 U 5.A FAX 2I5-337-9922
Circle 25 on Reader Servce cacd
CONTENTS
VOLUME 8, NUMBER 11, NOVEMBER 1992
FEATURES
The Amiga 4000 By Um Wallace . . . $ 0
It's the fastest, must powerful, and amazing- ly "colorful" Amiga ever made. Find out why the Amiga is hack on top of the personal- computer heap in this special in-depth pie- view of the A4000, to he introduced this fall.
ARTICLES
Piece Negotiations
By Steven Blaize i> D
Creative image-compositing techniques can yield interesting digital collages to use in your video, animation, or print presentations.
Know Your Rights
By Eric Giguere 39
If you write your own programs and want to sell them or distribute them as I'D or shareware, here's what you need to know about copyright conventions.
Publish With Panache
By Victor Osaka 43
Try this hands-on, A-lo-Z course in print design if you plan to get involved in pro- ducing newsletters, bulletins, brochures, or any other "home-grown" publications.
Digging into DOS — 1
By Sheldon Leemon 4 7
A brand-new series on AmigaDQS 2.0 debuts ibis month to show you how to get the most out of Release 2 of the Amiga operating system.
ANIMATION LIVEl By Gene Hamm . .52
If you want to do animation but are not an accomplished artist, "rotoscoping" may be just the ticket to get you over the hump.
(01 I M\ S Editor's Drawer By Dennis Bruson . 6
There's a new name on die corner ollice at ,111.' so bid 'bye 'bye to Barney and give a listen to Brisson,
Accent on Graphics
By Joel Hagen 58
A few simple painting and image-pro- cessing techniques can help you quickly create realistic, natural-looking back- grounds for any type < >f presentation.
// wilt huff and puff and blow the cybersox nf] any PC/Mac in the house. Check out our special preview of the Amiga 4000, due out this fall.
VIDEO SUITE By Paulo de Andrade ..60
For video buffs who are baffled bv the bur- geoning arrav of videotape and YTR for- mats, here's a clear, concise guide to elimi- nate the confusion.
DEPARTMENTS
Overscan 8
A monthly roundup of (he latest news. nni products and network inlormation from every corner of Mondo Amiga.
Help Key ..92
WI.Ol' is hack on the air this month to provide answers to your tech-trouble questions.
The Last Word 112
I lere's a sampling of a flood oi mail we've been getting hitch' about the magazine and the Amiga market.
AW Product Information. 1 04
To contact the vendors of products mentioned in this issue ofAmigaWorld, consult our all-in-one "Manufacturers'/ Distributors' Addresses" list.
REVIEWS
Professional Draw 3.0 (Gold Disk)
and PROVECTOR 2.1/PSlMPORT (Stylus) 20
Major updates of two heavyweights in the structured-drawing arena.
A2386SX Bridgeboard (CBM) . . 22
Full PC compatibility with IBM's latest models.
EXCELLENCE! 3.0(Micro-Systems) and
Kind-words 3 (The Disk Co.), 26
There's one big winner in this duo of\VP updates.
Virtual Reality Studio (Domark /
Accolade) 72
Top-notch adventure-game building tool.
Expert 4D Jr. (Genisoft) 76
Entry-level 5-D modeling and animation.
BOOMBOX (Dr.T's) 80
Interactive music-making made easy.
Personal VDA (DPS) and Bread- board (Cardinal Video) 81
Internal video-signal distribution amps.
EXPERTDRAW (Genisoft) 84
Entry-level stmctured-drawing program.
Animatrix Modeler (duBoh) 84
Low-budget 3-D modeler.
(JAMES
CRIB NOTES By Peter Olafson 98
This month, AWs top game tipster tackles Ultima VI: The False Prophet.
SlMEARTH (Maxis) 98
Sim games fans will be wowed bv this one.
MEGAFORTRESS (Three-Sixty / EA) .101
Highly detailed aircraft simulator.
Conquests of the Longbow:
ROBIN HOOD (Sierra On-Line) 102
Colorful adventure/strategy game.
Short Takes ..106
Capsule reviews of new Amiga games.
The Next Round 108
Announcements of upcoming game
titles.
NEXT MONTH:
The annual Amiga Games Special!
Plus: Amiga claymaiion, 3-D digitizing,
AResiN Q&A, AmigaDOS 2.0 and more.
COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY KDWARDJUDICE
Amiga World 3
The most ingenious Genlock ever engineered for all Amiga users
Create video and multi-media productions that totally unite your video, audio, and Amiga graphics on demand... at the click of a mouse!
OTP's G-LOCK is without doubt the easiest, most flexible, most capable, high performance gen- lock you can buy for yuur Amiga.
How can we make .such a hold statement? Take a look and com-
pare for yourself.
G-LOCK advantages abound
The differences between G-LOCK and oil other gen- lock boards start with ihese time-saving, creativity- generating benefits only available an G-LOCK:
* Push-button Control Panels with Intuitive, Mouse-Click Simplicity — with Full ARexx and CLI Interfaces.
* Software Switchable between &_ 2 Composite Video f\ Inputs or 1 Y/C (S-Video) In.
*■ Real-Time, Software-Controlled Video \ <A
Processor (Proc Amp) with Complete Video J^^ Signal Processing Control.
-*■ Complete 2-lnpui Audio Processing with Real-Time Volume, Bass, Treble, Mix and Mute Control - Samples to Your Videos.
* Software Controlled RGB Color Splitter for Use with Newtek Digi-View' and Other Video Digitizers.
r.T5FtOCh-ConlnilPM«l
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Argument* (W) • is- •l*-j~ tit But Treb Audio Source |
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- Add DSS8" Audio
AmigaWorld
Dale Strang, Publisher
Dennis Brisson, Editor-in-Chief
Daniel Sullivan, Executive Editor
Swain Pratt, Managing Editor
Barbara Gefvert, Senior Editor
LOUIS R. Wallace, Senior Editor, Technology
Linda Barrett Laflamme, Review Editor
Editorial OFFICES: 1-800-441-4403} 1-603-924-0100
Gene Brawn, Joel Hagen, David T. McClellan,
PETER OlaFSON, Contributing Editors
Howard G. Happ, Art Director Laura Johnson, Assistant Art Director
Ann Dillon, Designer ALANA Korda, Manufacturing Manager
Michael McGoldrick, Advertising Director
BARBARA HOY, Sales Representative
HEATHER GUINARD, Sales Representative
MEREDITH BiCKEORD, Advertising Coordinator
Advertising: i-800-44i-4403; I-603-924-0I00
GIORGIO SaLUTI, Associate Publisher. West Coast Sales
533 Airport Blvd.. Fourth Floor. Bnrlingame, CA 91010
1-415-375-7018; FAX: 1-415-375-7019
WENDIE HAINES MarRO, Marketing Director LiSAjAILLET. Desktop Publishing Manager
DkhQRAH M, WALSH, Circulation Manager; 1-603-924-0280 Subscription Senices: 1-800-827-0877 or 1-815-734-1109
TechMedia Publishing Dale Strang, President
SUSAN M. HaNSHAW, Director of Operations
LISA LaFleUR, Business & Operations Manager
MARY McCOLE, President's Assistant; Customer Service Liaison
Kenneth Blakeman. Associate Publisher, Ancillary Products TIM WALSH, Ancillary Products Manager
WILLIAM M. Boyer, Director of Credit Sales &* Collections KEMCO PUBLISHERS SERVICES, Newsstand Circulation
And only G-LOCK offers . . .
Full transcoder operation with composite. Y/C. and RGB/YUY outputs; K8C/AA keyer modes control; complete AmigaVision*- and Scala " com- patibility; and a host of other features only GYP realized you want from a quality genlock — hut you'd never expect — at such an affordable price.
AinsfJ ancE Arnica \fi,inii Hr crgtMrfni (ralinw ki jC Qimnvjticirt-Amlg* Inc. GVP, G-U.k, jcul tJSSM uv tndcmaiia c( Grew Valley Produce. Inc Digi-Virw n , ir*JtTMCk uf New Ttk. lac S> Opjti^ht 1^92 Gtrjc Valley Pmdutn. Inc.
For more information or your nearest GVP Dealer, phone 215-337-8770 today. For technical information call 215-354-9495
GREAT VALLEY PRODUCTS. INC.
600 CLARK AVENUE KING OF PRUSSIA. PA 1940S U.S.A.
PHONE 215*337*8770 ■ FAX 215*337*9922
Circle 1 on Reader Service card
r*
AttrigoWwUl (ISSN 0K8:i-^:i9l>) is an independent journal not rtmiicned \»iih Coin mod oit* ltii\inc-s<> Machines, \t\c. :tmigti\\\tih} i-i published niomhh by TfechMedia Publishing, Inc., an IDG l "Ompajiy; 80 Elna St, lV-tei borough, N'Et OS-I"jH. l.'.S. subscription rait- is 5'2il.07, one year; $57.97, two years; $s:&..)7, three years, Canada and Mexico $38.97, Foreign Surface $49.97. foreign Airmail $84,*]7. U.S. funds drawn on L .S. bank. Prepayment is required on al! fi.irt-igii suhscriptionv All foreign rates are one-veai only Second-class postage paid at ftterboiough, Nil. and at additional tmiiliny offices. Phone: 603-U24-0100. Entire contents copyright 1992 by IfeehMetfia Publishing, Inc >■■> pat ' ofthis publication may be primed oi otherwise reproduced without written permission from the publisher Postmaster: Send ad- thvssLlKiiiftv* la Atittfrtimiiht, Subscription Services, PO Box 595, Mi. Morris, IL 61054-7901. Xaiion.illv disiiihuR'd bv K.iblt* Strn-hCa.Amigatlbrtil ni^ke*. tvrn efToil to ensure the ami rat \ ol' articles, listings ami dmuts published in the magazine, AmignlVorM assumes no responsi- bility Tor damages due to errors or omission*!.
REAT VALUE AND PERFORMANCE
^ GVP'S lOExtender...
ALWAYS THE RIGHT CONNECTION
H0
Two high-speed, multi-function serial and one parallel port give your A2000/3000 maximum connectability. With GVP's IOExtender, you:
• Separate 16-Byte FIFO buffers for send and receive on each serial port channel. Reduces CPU overhead, allows high speed communications (615 Kbps theoretical maxl and eliminates character loss.
• Configure Parallel Port as Amiga or PC Compatible.
• PC AT-Style, DB9 RS232 Connectors.
• Option connector allowing future options such as a dual channel MIDI interface module to be connected. Software controlled switching between options (e.g. serial ports or MIDI ports).
• Easy, Software "Port-Control" System.
n&
• •••••
k MAXTOR TAHITI II
V MAGNETO-OPTICAL DRIVE ...
THE MUST-HAVE MASS STORAGE AND/OR BACKUP DEVICE... IDEAL FOR IV24 & TOASTER USERS
Removable cartridge provides an easy and reli- able way to add unlimited data storage capacity to any Amiga with a SCSI controller. Features:
• Supports both 1GB (i 000MB! I or ISO com- patible 650MB removable disk cartridges.
• Appears to Amiga-DOS like a removable hard disk.
• 35ms average access time. Fastest M-0 drive available.
• External SCSI connectors for SCSI "pass- through" for connecting multiple units.
■ Built-in universal power supply, fan and air filtering system.
m GVP'S A530-TURB0 AND FA500-HD8+ CLASSIC ...
POWER YOUR AMIGA* 500 BEYOND AN A30O0!
^.
See why Amiga World says GVP's A530 Turbo could be the "Best A500 Expansion Box Ever" . With its 68EC030 CPU running - at a blazing 40MHZ the A530 runs your soft- ware applications up to 10X faster— smoother animations, better multitasking, quicker windows and more...
• Disk drives up to 240MB.
• Direct, instant access to up to 8MB 32-bit RAM |Turbo| or 8MB RAM (Classic).
• Expandability for up to 7 SCSI devices, GVP's "Mini-Slot"" for optional add-ons such as GVP's A500 PC/286 Emulator, 68882 math processor
| FPU [—optional for A530-Turbo.
• Free dedicated universal power supply.
• 2-Year Limited Factory Warranty.
k. GVP'S A500 PC/286 EMULATOR .. F NOW YOU CAN RUN 1000'S OF PC COMPATIBLE SOFTWARE PACKAGES!
Used with GVP's innovative and unique "Mini Slot" for A530-TURBO and A500-HD8+ users only. The A500-PC/286 emulator features:
fe GVP'S HARD-DISK-CARD...
#1 ANDDRIVE-ING HARDER TO STAY THAT WAY!
Proven performance reliability. 1 00,000+ satis- fied users. GVP's factory installed and tested HC8+/120, 213 or 420MB Hard-Disk-Cards are the only smart safe choice with:
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• Custom DMA ASIC technology provides highest performance even in heavy multi- tasking situations.
• SIMM Sockets for installing up to 8MB oS INSfo/ ot FA-ST RAM expansion. )^^dC^joOl * Supports up to seven internal or
* ^» external SCSI devices. 2- Year Limited Warranty.
GM* J
>TA*
■ MS-DOS, DR-DOS and Microsoft Windows
applications capabilities. • 16MHZ 80286 CPU with a Norton Speed Index
up to 15.
> Hercules, CGA, EGA/VGA (mono) emulations. 1 Simultaneous PC and Amiga applications use. '512KB dedicated PC memory (DRAM1. Able to
transparently use Amiga memory for PC appli- -
cations requiring more than 512KB. ' Optional 80C287math processor (FPU).
•Jfe
FACTORY INSTALLED 3.5" HARD
D1SKDRIVE
GVP FACTORY
INSTALLED
SEAL
GVP
CUSTOM VLSI CHIP
UP TO
3MB
FASTRAM
EXPANSION
GREAT VALLEY PRODUCTS, INC.
600 CLARK AVENUE
KING OF PRUSSIA, PA 19406
U.SA
PHONE 215-337«8770
FAX215'337>9922
For more information or your nearest GVP Dealer,
call 215-337-8770. Dealer inquiries welcome.
For technical support call 215-354-9495.
Amiga is a registered Irarlemant of CommoCore-Ajniga. Inc. JOExtenfler.
MOM :=• ,4530-lttt rtfMKrTfflMmlnJimrrtjrJSrM n >. - z:_~.i -
0 1992 Great Valle/ Products, [nc
Circle l on Reafler Service card.
PS
DRAWER
The A4000 is Commodore's latest computer, with a new DOS, a faster processor, and a dynamic new graphics chip set. But will it fly?
Bye-Bye Barney
Publisher's note:
This issue marks the debut of Dennis BrissoD as editor-in-chief of Amiga- World. He succeeds Doug Barney, who lias accepted a position with InfoWorld.
We wish Doug well as he leaves he- hind the luster of the Amiga market — where music, art, animations, and greal games are the norm — and returns to a market dominated bv spreadsheets, databases and accounting software. Doug anticipates the upcoming chal- lenges of his new position and lakes with him many fond memories from his three-year stint vnihAW.
Dennis is a capable successor, with nine years' experience in the Com- modore market — albeit the eight-bit side. Some of you may already be fa- miliar with Dennis's work as editor-in- chief of RUN, the C-64/128 magazine, since its inception in January 1984. He will continue to function as RUN'S editor-in-chief, along with his duties at AmigaWorld.
— Dale Strang
An Auspicious Beginning
I take over the reins ol AmigaWorld at a propitious time. Commodore has just taken a giant step in the evolution of computing with the introduction of the A4000.
The specifics of the newest member of the Amiga family are spelled out in this issue's feature article (see p. 30). Highlights of the system include a new 25-MHz 68040 processor, a new ver- sion (3.0) of AmigaDOS, expansion options galore, and the introduction of a new graphics chip set.
Some of you may be thinking: "Oh no, another new machine, another
A] 000 rehash!" In the past, Commo- dore has been criticized for introducing machines that feature the same old technology in a brand new package. Whether or not you agree with that assessment, you'll encounter plenty of new and exciting features in the A4000. In fact, there are several reasons we feel justified in referring to the A4000 as Commodore's first new computer since the A! 000.
Three reasons are Alice, Paula and Lisa, the most dynamic trio since Char- lie's Angels. This Advanced Architecture (AA, pronounced Double A) chip set establishes new standards for desktop video and multimedia. The AA chips offer an expanded choice of colors (you can use up to 256 different colors on a screen at once from a palette of over 16- milliorj colors) and screen resolutions. The machine is also designed to accom- modate a variety of memon-storage and expansion options.
Amiga I bird-party developers now have a great tool to show off their imagination and talent. We've chatted with several company reps who are genuinely excited about creating prod- ucts lor the A4000. We fully expect that vendors in this market will, once again, rise to the challenge and create many interesting new A4000 products in the near future.
In bringing the A4000 lo market. Commodore did nothing to jeopar- dize its standing as the leader in graphics-intensive applications. We predict that the niche they've secured in the high-end multimedia and desk- top video market will continue to expand. Among multimedia zealots and DTV devotees, Commodore cer- tainly solidified its reputation by introducing a high-end multimedia and desktop-video machine for an attractive price (also, a trade-up pro- gram for this machine may be in the
oiling, given Commodore's marketing history).
The A4000 will have its detractors. Questions about the feasibility of upgrading existing Amiga machines to the A4000 standards remain unan- swered. Also, some may complain that access to SCSJ devices is an option, and not a standard feature, with the A4000. However, while critics will never be assuaged, fans will be pleased. This computer promises to excite those graphics groupies and video partisans who are involved in multimedia productions, videos and animations.
In this issue, we hint at the prospect of more good things coming from Commodore. No doubt, the A4000 represents the first of what may devel- op into a new line of Amigas. In this case, the old show-biz saying, "You ain't seen nothing yet," applies.
I look forward to my tenure as edi- tor-in-chief, which promises to be filled with many new developments from Commodore and the Amiga community. AmigaWorld wi\\ continue to bring its readers the highest-quality editorial with the latest new develop- ments in the market, the most objec- tive and timely reviews, informative and entertaining features and useful and easy-to-understand tutorials. Be sure to stav tuned.
6 November 1992
FOR WE AMIGA" 2000 SERIES
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ T
CCELERAWN:
THE TIME TESTED,
USER-PROVEN, BEST
SOLUTION
NOW
SHIPPING 33Mhz
Only the GVP Family of Combo Accelerators are Packed, Stacked and Backed with more of what you want Most!
Don't get stuck. Don't overpay. Don't buy half a solution. Don't take chances. When you're shopping for an accelerator, there is only one thing you should do...
Choose from GVP's family of G-FORCE 040 and 030-based Combo Accelerator boards.
WHY? Because only GVP:
► Has a proven 5 year history of the best product performance and support.
► Gives you the choice of state-of-the-art 68030 or 68040 CPU Power at blazing speeds of 25, 33, 40 or 50MHZ. No matter what your budget or speed requirements, GVP has the right solution for you.
► Provides unsurpassed multi-functional- ity through superior design integration giving ALL GVP accelerator users:
• On-board SCSI-II compatible DMA Hard Drive Controller
• Up to 16MB of high speed 32 Bit- Wide Memory expansion (up to 64MB with 16MB SIMMS available late 1992)
• Ability to transform your accelerator into the ultimate hardcard with
GVP's new improved snap on Hard Disk mount kit
• On-board future expansion possibilities with the GVP exclusive 32-Bit expansion bus [including GVP's EGS 110/241. This feature alone literally obsoletes ALL other accelerator products.
Backs ALL GVP accelera- tors with a full 2-year war- • ranty and upgrade program.
Choose GVP's newest, fastest and feature filled accelerator... theJWOOG-FORCEtm
It's the fastest accelerator — bar none:
► 68040 CPU running at up to a blazing 33MHZ clockspeed, outperforms even high end workstations costing thou- sands more.
It's the most highly integrated — bar none:
► High performance onboard SCSI/SCSI II compatible hard drive controller.
► On-board serial port with speeds up to 625 Kbps and two 16 byte hardware buffers 1 1 read/ 1 write) to prevent data loss. Ideal for adding additional modems, printers etc.
► On-board user configurable parallel port for Amiga/PC compatibility.
► Future expansion via GVP's exclusive GVP compatible 32-Bit expansion bus.
CALL YOUR GVP DEALER AND ORDER
A GVP G-FORCE 030 or G-FORCE 040 TODAY!
GREAT VAUEY PRODUCTS, INC,
600 OARK AVENUE
KING OF PRUSSIA, PA 19406
USA
PHONE 215-337-8770 FAX 215-337-9922
For more information or your nearest GVP Dealer,
call215*337-8770. Dealer inquiries welcome.
For technical support call 215*354*3495.
Amiga ts a registered trademark or Commodore Amiga. Inc.
All other trademarks are trie property ol their respective owners.
© 1992 Great Valley Products, In.
Circle 1 on Reader Service card
OVERSCAN
A/ews, A/ew Products and Networks
Art in Action
How do you parlay experience as a race-car mechanic and a driller on a Mediterranean oil rig into a career as a top graphics designer"- For British-born Ray Masters, the answer was: Get an Amiga!
II you're not from South Florida, von may not be familiar with Masters' name, but you're sure to have seen his work, It can be found on beaches and ski slopes throughout the world. His bold, colorful designs adorn fashion items from inter- national sportswear giants such as Elho Brunner, Ellese, Swatch, and Wilson. (Elho Brunner sold S 1 5 million worth of clothing bearing Masters' designs in one year.) Masters has also designed striking posters and programs for major sport- ing events, including the Toyota Grand Prix, the World Water Ski Champi- onships, and the Chris Evert Pro- Celebrity Tennis Tournament (pictured at the right), to name just a few.
Sketching on a Digital Canvas
Some time after his apprenticeship on
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the oil rig off the coast of Sicilv, Masters washed up on the Florida coast at Delray Beach. His first American design venture was making T-shirts — by hand — for the local sun-and-surf set. He soon latched
on to the just-released Amiga 2000, and with an early version of DeluxePaint and an HP PaintJet printer, he quickly ex- panded his operations far beyond the beaches north of Miami.
Oddly enough, Masters— who now presides over a four-person company, Ray Masters Productions, [hat requires a high-priced firm of tax accountants — has retained the simple computer-design ap- proach he employed in the earlv davs. No 24-bit graphics, 1 6- million-color palettes, and fancy enhanced-display de- vices for Masters: "I'm basically a DPaint artist. I always use the same form of ma- nipulation. Fin a low-res, eight-color man. 1 don't rely on the technology as much; I depend on it as a canvas." Yet, despite this electronic sketch-pad ap- proach to computer graphics. Masters is one of the most successful Amiga artists in the world today.
Jack of all Trades
While acknowledging that the Amiga has made a crucial difference in his work
Video Edits, JPEG Style Extra Explanations
Digital Micronics' new Digital EditMas-
ter ($2495) turns your A2000 or A3000 into a video-editing suite and promises to pro- vide capabilities that would normally cost you upwards of S100.000. The heart of the system is a video compressor based on full- motion JPEG technology and LSI Logic's JPEG chip set.
In real time, the board digitizes, com- presses, and stores traditional video seg- ments onto your Amiga's hard disk, where you can edit and modify them. The board is capable of compressing and storing typical animation frames to a hard drive on a frame-by-frame basis, and you can play back the result in real time directly to tape, without needing a single-frame recorder. (RS# 130.)
Bailled bv Workbench or ARexx? Help is as close as your bookshelf. Fast Guide to Workbench {Vidia. $8.95) covers Preferences, system programs, utilities, and tools, Commodities and their hot-key codes, fonts, gadgets, keyboard shortcuts, and other operating-svstem topics. To make your own crib notes, the booklet includes blank function key and numeric keypad overlays for reference templates. For a con- cise reference to ARexx commands and functions, consider Fast Guide to ARexx (Vidia, $8.95), which describes each command's syntax, keywords, options and re- sults, as well as providing general language conventions. (RS# 1 12.)
Ifvou prefer a walk-through approach, Hip through the pages ofThe ARexx Cook- book by Merrill Callaway (Whitestone, S24.95). Supplemented by thorough discussions of commands and techniques, lessons increase in complexity from writing simple stand-alone programs to making complex connections among multiple applications.
Whether you're a rank beginner or a seasoned programmer trying to control PostScript via ARexx, The ARexx Cookbook promises enlightenment. For easy and thorough reference, the book's index and margin notes include page numbers for William Hawes" and Commodore's .ARexx manuals, documentation for application software discussed, and the Cookbook itself. An optional (S5) companion disk rounds out the package. (RS# 1 13.)
To locate the vendors of products mentioned, see the "Manufacturers'/Distributors' Addresses" list on p. 104.
8 November 1<>>>2
ProWritef33 The Best Just Keeps Getting Better
ProWrite is the best selling word processor for the Amiga®, and for good reason. High perfor- mance. Ease-of-use. Constant upd and enhancements. And now a new low price!
New Features
ProWrite 3.3 gives you more power than ever before. .More powerful graphic handling, including automatic text-wrap. Print preview. Password protection for your documents, The ability to name and find pictures in long documents. Full clipboard sup- port, for seamless exchange of text and pictures with other programs. And HotUnhS »™ support, giving you total integration of ProWrite with other HotLinks-capable programs!
Proven Performance
Combine this with ProWrite's already
formidable feature set, and you have the most powerful word processor for the Amiga. Features like multiple fonts and pictures. A spelling checker with over 100,000 dictionary words. A thesaurus with over 300,000 cross-ref- erences. Outline font support, jaggie- free printing, for high-quality printing on dot-matrix printers. PostScript printing. Macros and AREXX support for power users. Mail merge, for form letters. And multiple columns, includ- ing side-by-side columns for writing audio/video scripts — a ProWrite exclusive! And the list goes on!
And of course, ProWrite 3.3 retains the speed and ease-of-use that has made it famous with thousands of Amiga users world-wide.
New Low Price!
Even with all this power, ProWrite is more affordable than ever before — because ProWrite is available now for only $99.95! So you no longer have a reason not to treat yourself to the best!
See for yourself what makes ProWrite the most popular word ,-dSG*^o# processor for the Amiga. Visit your local Amiga dealer and put the power of ProWrite to work for you today!
-A
■"-P'vdicfc!---
Features
"What you see is what you get" display.
Multiple fonts, sizes, styles, and colors.
Outline font support,
insert IFF and I -IAA1 pictures in your
documents.
• Automatical]}.' wrap text around pictures.
* Multiple columns, with snaking or sidc-hy- side text flow.
Spelling checker with 100,000 word
dictionary.
Thesaurus with 500,000 cross-references.
Pull system clipboard support,
I IotLinksT.Vt support
Linda and Redo command.
Ald.il merge.
AREXX port.
Macros, when used with AREXX-
Name and search for pictures in a document,
Speakint; capability, to read hack document contents.
Separate odd and even page headers and
footers.
Paragraph sorting.
Automatic page numbering with five different page number styles.
Insert current date and time, with five different date formats and two time formats.
Word count 2nd readability level calculation.
Up to 10 documents open at the same time.
Document password protection.
User-set document comments. .
Horizontal and/or vertical document rulers, for precise positioning.
Custom page sizes.
Print preview.
PostScript printing, in black & white or color.
High-quality graphics printing for [aggie-free
output.
Print NLQ text and graphics at the same time.
Complete printer control, including sideways priming and 4,0% color printing.
Automatic timed saves And backups.
Import and export Professional Page text files.
Comprehensive keyboard commands.
Easy to use "3-D" user interface took.
Fully customizable.
Full support for Kicks tart 2.0.
Requires KIcLstart 1.2 or later, one megabyte ol memory, and two disk drives.
PniW rite is 9 registered trademark of New I lorizons Software, Inc. HotLinks is a trademark of Soft-Logik Publishing Corp. Amiga h a registered trademark of Commodore- Amiga, Inc.
NEW HORIZONS
New Horizons Software, Inc. • 206 Wild Basin Road, Suite 109 • Austin, Texas 78746 • (512) 328-6650
Circle 65 on Reader Service card
0 V E R S C A N
and its success (he states he could never have been as prolific and efficient with- out it). Masters did come equipped with some natural talent of his own. After leaving Harrow, the prestigious English public school, at age 16, he worked as a photographer and graphics artist at a London advertising agency. Sandwiched between his auto-racing clays and his stint as an oil driller, he also worked in design and marketing For the high-pow- ered UK-based Norwood Group.
All of this varied experience finds ex- pression in his work. Masters' love of sports, knowledge of race cars, and ad- ventures on the high seas inform both the style (broad, bold, energetic) and subject matter of his art. As the title of his media kit/portfolio attests, his is "The Art of Action." —Jan Jackson
Multimedia Makeover
Scala MultiMedia 2.0 (also called Scala MM200} packs even more features into Sca/a's popular multifunction multimedia program. MM200 adds 25 more special effects, an unlimited-length horizontal crawl line; out-wipes; area transitions; a link function for simultaneous movement of multiple text lines or logos; variables and conditional branching for interactive presentations; support for DCTV stills and animations; AnimLab (an animation-enhancement utility); and the long-await- ed sound support. You can now synchronize music and sound effects with your presentation graphics and animations, as well as record your own sounds with a sampler board.
The program's interface was also revamped. As an alternative to Scala's fa- miliar (and now configurable) main menu, the Scala Shuffler lets you view and rearrange thumbnail versions of your presentation pages. Reaching out for more power, the Scala Ex system of control modules for external devices and pro- grams lets you incorporate into your presentations images from laser-disc and still-video players, audio from MIDI devices and CDTV CDs, and input from ARexx-compatible programs. For new owners, Scala MM200 retails at $495. Registered owners of Scala should contact the company for upgrade informa- tion. |RS# 115.)
Last month, I addressed the benefits ol'Iiucrnet. the network layer service recently made available through Portal. With
increased versatility and interac- tion between the nets, "tclecom- municationspeak" is trickling down from the high-end busi- ness and education fields to the hobbyist level. Maybe you've heard of things like Telenet, Usenet, and Tymnet, but is is clear just what they are"-
For a frame of reference on how these various services relate to telecommunications in to- day's networks, a Reader's Di- gest look back into computer history is in order.
Telecommunications History 101
In the 1970s, computer use was generally limited to a teletype- iike printing machine that read punched cards or inch-wide rolls of paper. These terminal machines were connected with others via phone lines to a large mainframe, or host com- puter, across town or across the state.
These network-connected hosts and terminals constituted early-generation LANs, or local area networks. Teteconinnmica-
ON-LINE
SCAN
By Tim Walsh
tions pioneers worked to create voluntary protocol standards for the network of terminals and computers. Host computers were tied into local networks, and began to serve as "gate- ways" to such network services as CompuServe.
In the course of the next decade, network layers such as Intci net came on the scene. To get the various smaller nets working in harmony. Internet Protocol established standards for sending e-mail and other data between servers and host computers, opening up the possibility of data sharing with all platforms having common access to a network. Portal is a great example of such data sharing taken to a new, low-cost level on the nets.
Many education centers and large corporations use UNIX- based mainframes, worksta- tions, and even UNIX-based Amigas to send e-mail and other data to a variety of nets. Usenet is the network of choice for UNIX-based telecommunica- tions, and thus UNIX is widely represented on networks such as CompuServe. Consequently, a lot of messages on networks that support gateways and direct
Usenet connections, such as Por- tal, will have the address of the author in a username, site, net- work format.
A generic, simplified exam- ple might appear as timw@ cs.brown.edu. The first part of the sending party's name isjust that — a person's on-line name or screen name. That is then followed by the "at" sign and the server's site or location. Even the originating network is sometimes included: in the above example, it's Brown Uni- versity. Some of the smaller nets keep this information intact with the e-mail, so you can typ- ically figure out where the mes- sage originated.
Making Connections Telenet and Tymnet are not net- works; rather, they serve as telecommunication packets for connecting between networks. For instance, with a call to one number listed in the White Pages. I access my accounts on every network that 1 mention in this column (except GEnie), plus a few others such as America Online.
Packet services can be further divided into smaller specialties such as Sprininel and PC-Pur-
suit. Familial' to many Amiga users, PC-Pursuit is the name of the outdialing service that can reduce the price of Calls for com- puterists without local numbers for Telenet and Tymnet. Fi- doNet is lesser known because it's outside of the normal net- work circle, being comprised of large-scale BBS systems.
So, now there you have it — a glance at some of the words that end with "net" and how they came to be common in Amiga telecommunications. Of course, this overview hardly scratches the surface. There's a lot more of this information online: here are some good places to start looking:
BIX
800/227-2983 617/354-4137
CompuServe
614/457-0802 800/848-8199
GEnie
800/638-9636
Portal Communications 408/973-9111 □
10 November 1992
mm
Makes your A2000/3000@ a
Computer, Fax Machine,
Voicemail System and
Answering Machine...
All at once!
It's an amazing amount of office productivity power on a single board... and that's just PhonePak's starting point
PhonePak handles all the calls on ever)7 phone line it's installed on. With PhonePak you can:
■fc Retrieve and store faxes on your hard drive for on-screen viewing and/or plain paper printing.
~k Record and playback voice messages.
*k Get combined voice and fax messages.
~k Look at a fax on-screen and listen to a message about it at the Same time — a GVP mulli- MaMHHMMMHaHMMMIH^_MaaaH
media bixsikthrough.
* Send multiple faxes instantly, or via the built-in scheduler.
~k Create ciLstomized databases, j configure private mailboxes, and much more.
* let's users keep working even when PhonePak is taking calls.
|
■■an-M-mt? ■ -■■.■!»'■■ ■b mQ - |
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I ' L ■ ' |
■ ■■ |
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I „u |
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GVP'S DSS-8... Still
the most powerful 8-bit
Digital Sound System
for your Amiga®!
It's a premium stereo sound sampler,
fast and easy editor, and self-contained
4-track sequencer — all in one!
With DSS-8 and your imagination, there's no limits to your composing, recording and editing of musk and sound effects.
* Software controllable filters and volume control. ~k Record sound samples from any audio source.
* Edit sounds in real time.
+ Add o full range of effects, including reverb, echo, reverse-sound, loops, etc.
* Use up to 31 instruments, 4 octaves and 8 effects at the same time.
* Analyze voice patterns and stereo separation.
* Remove "pops" from old recordings.
PhonePak saves you time and money
* Eliminates thermal paper.
* Has scaled, non-scaled and inverted fax viewing.
* Transfers incoming calls over Centrex * or other networks.
* Provides complete privacy for each fax received — no other fax system can do that!
Install PhonePak.
You'll wonder how you ever got along without it.
Ai '■■■.■: in.l
C Copyn^hi 1993
Gft.ll Vjllc, I'd.liiH. In.
For more information or your nearest GVP Dealer, phone 215-337-8770 today. For technical information call 2IS-3S4-949S
GREAT VALLEY PRODUCTS, INC 600 CLARK AVENUE KING OF PRUSSIA. PA 19406 U.S.A. PHONE 215-337-8770 • FAX 2l5-337*»922
DSS-8 has built-in everything
There's not enough room to list all the DSS-8 features, but here's a sample:
* AmigaDOS 2.0. 68020 and 68030 compatibility.
* Multi-tasking operation.
* Intuitive graphic interface for easy self-teaching.
* MIDI-in capability.
* Direct sequencer to editor interfacing.
* On-screen sample dipfay of up to 31 samples. ■fc HLTF1 recording for high quality- playback.
* Multiple effects for each note.
* Real time oscilloscope ;md spectrum analysis.
~k Grapliic editing and freehand drawing of waveforms.
~k Direct editing of individual sample numeric values.
■*■ Sampling maximums of 51,000/sec (mono) 38,908/sec. (stereo).
* Saves in IFF, SONDE and RAW formats.
•k SoundTracker, Noise Tracker and SoundFX compatibility.
Amijia ii * trjjjreml cnl^irurk n*'Qimfi«»luft- Amipi. Inc. GVP. and ffiSSarctradrrruAi.i-r'Grrai VitJey tVoJum, Im
OCopyrighr 1992Grt-ji Valley Pieducit. Inc
For more information or your nearest GVP Dealer, phone 215-337-8770 today. For technical information call 215-354-9495
GREAT VALLEY PRODUCTS. INC. 600 CLARK AVENUE KING OF PRUSSIA. PA 19406 U.S.A. PHONE 215*337-8770 • FAX 2IS-337-9922
Circle 1 on Reader Service card.
0 V E R S C A N
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...
The more things change in the Amiga industry, the more you need to know.
For instance, you should know that Octree has changed locations (see new address on p. 104) and has picked up Ditek's DynaCADD 2-D/3-D design program for distribu- tion. The program is weil suited to work with Octree's own Caligari 3-D modeling, animation, and rendering software. According to Octree, you can "design in Calrgari, follow up with precision design in DynaCADD, and then animate and render in Cali- gari." DynaCADD, which has a suggested retail price of $995, is available for S499 (plus $30 shipping and handling) from Octree. (RS# 122.)
The developer of Video Music Box has also made two changes; in its name and its product. The Menasha, Wisconsin, developer has changed its name from Digital Expres- sions to Digital Expressions Research. The change was necessary because, unknown to the Wisconsin firm, an established games manufacturer in Cleveland, Ohio, had previ- ously reserved the name Digital Expressions. Product changes come in the form of Video Music Box 1.4 (SI 09), which adds Workbench 2 compatibility, new parameters for controlling pitch ranges and randomization, editing functions, and more. The upgrade is free for registered users. (RS# 123.)
Lissa 1.2, the 3-D curve generator from Technical Tools (S35), produces more com- plex objects than before (you can create "wiggles within wiggles"), supports more mod- elling packages, and offers an enhanced interface, with icons for frequently-used con- trols and more comprehensive help features. The upgrade is free to registerd owners. (RS# 124.)
ASDG's ADPro just keeps getting more capable. The latest module ($200), aimed at video professionals, allows you to exchange digital images stored on 8mm cartridge tapes between an Amiga (equipped with a Commodore SCSI controller and Exabyte 8mm tape drive) and an Abekas A60, A65, or A66 digital-disk recorder. You don't have an Abekas system, but need to send work to a post-production house that does? You can create digital video streams (essentially treating the tape drive as a single-frame recorder). (RS# 125.)
Also expanding the Amiga's video capabilities \s Interactive MicroSystems. The firm's MediaPhile video-editing setup now provides support for Sony VISCA protocol decks as well as VBOX control for Sony CTL-L/LANCS-port decks and camcorders through the Amiga's serial port. (RS# 126.)
MIDI Sample Wrench 2.0, the updated 16-bit sound editor from dissidents ($299), gives musicians, audio engineers, and videographers a toolbox-full of new options. The software works with a variety of MIDI keyboards as well as IFF samples, and it reads and writes several file formats.
The new Wrench promises extensive waveform-viewing options, from overviews to a few points, and you can calibrate waveforms in terms of sample points, seconds, or SMPTE frames. It also includes more advanced digital signal-processing features, as well as resynthesis tools that let you expand or compress waveforms in time without chang- ing pitch. The program works with DOS versions 1.3 and higher, and is linkable via ARexx. Registered owners of earlier versions can upgrade for S20. |RS# 127.)
Designed with the developer in mind, version 2.0 of ARexxDB (S125) is the "records manager for the serious Amiga user," according to JMH Software. In addition to ARexx support, the program offers new features that include record searching, automated indexing, a query language, and a utility for creating files. ARexxDB is a database engine that you can easily customize, and it imposes no upper limit on either file or record size. With ARexx DB, you can develop database applications using your own custom inter- face. (RS# 128.)
EasyScript has upgraded some of its products, including LabelDex! ($74.95), which now promises an easy way to make professional-looking video and audio cassette labels for cassette splines and faces. This integrated VideoLibrarian module supports HP LaserJet, DeskJet, Epson, and PostScript-compatible printers.
BibleReaderProl, which replaces BibleReader!, includes an 800,000-word concor- dance, supports Amiga speech, does not require a hard drive, and comes in four ver- sions (KJ, Nl, NKJ, and NASB), each selling for $89.95.
The higher-end BibleScholar! supports speech, too, with version 2.0, It also comes in PAL and NTSC display versions, and offers a 640x400 interlace display. Further, you can fetch search results with the click of a button. (RS# 129.)
OVERHEARD
Workbench 2. 1 is already shipping with lhc Amiga 600, and it's destined to be- come available for other Amigas. (Com- modore has not yet settled on a release date for upgrade kits.) So what can you look Forward to in 2.1? There are several brand-new features, including CrossDOS, the favorite MS-DOS/AmigaTJOS-format transfer utility which now also allows access to MS-DOS formatted floppy and hard disks.
The new Local Preferences editor lets you read screens of 2.04-supporting soft- ware in any of several languages. An in- staller utility, which automatically inte- grates the new Workbench on your system, also comes with this release, as do printer drivers for PostScript devices and Canon's Bubbiejet.
Another printer driver, for the HP Deskjet, has been enhanced since the 2.0 release: it now supports the popular HI1 500 Color DeskJet. Other enhancements include simplified installation and activa- tion of printers, keymaps, monitors, and DOS drivers. The Format and DiskCopy functions now provide graphical interfaces that allow vou control.
True Color Prints
No longer is your printer limited to 4096 colors and 16 shades oT gray. TruePrint/24 (ASDG, $89) prints 16-mi'l- lion color (24-bit) and 256-shade grayscale (eight-bit) images on most Preferences-supported color or black- and-white printers. Capable of out- putting images at any size (even poster proportions), TruePrinl/24 offers 1 1 dithering and halftoning techniques, in- cluding a 32-shade gray-scale for such character-only devices as daisy-wheel printers. (RS# 111.)
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Without TruePrint/24, the Amiga OS Is limited to 16 shades of gray (left); with it, 256 shades are possible.
12 November 1992
IGA BASICS...
External FDD Series
• Compatible with all Amiga" computers ■ Slim-line design with solid metal case
• Additional drive connector and on/off switch
Opto-Mechanical Mouse Series
Precise cursor control - 290 dpi resolution Stylish and ergonomic design Top quality construction with micro-switch buttons
Cordless Infrared Mouse Series
■ High power infrared transmitter with a 4-foot range
■ LED indicators on receiver reflect every mouse action
■ Includes long-life maintenance free rechargeable battery • Precise cursor control - 280 dpi resolution
ALFA -^^r DATA
ErgononwDesign Trackball Series
■ Compalifale with all Amiga computers
■ Ergonomic design for comfortable operation
■ Top quality construction with micro-switch buttons
109 North Duncan ■ Champaign, IL 61821 Tel: (217) 366-1962 • Fox: (217) 356-4312
For more Information, contact your nearest Amiga dealer
Dealer inquiries welcome.
Amiga is a 'egrsterea trademark or Commodore Airrtga, Inc.
Circfe 191 on Reacer Serv.ce card
OVERSCAN
Haitex Hails Harlequin
Haitex Resources, maker of X-Specs 3-D stereo-vision glasses, now distributes the long-awaited Harlequin 32-bit framebuffer from Amiga Centre Scotland. The board, available in NTSC as well as PAL display formats, promises to coexist with Great Valley Products' IV24 and NewTek's Video Toaster, and it fits into either an A2000 or A3000. It comes in several memory configurations, from 1.5 to 4MB of RAM. It provides compos- ite RGB output and an optional alpha channel, both of which you can toggle via soft- ware. Harlequin comes with lots of software, including a program that lets you scale and convert images to other formats, and a real-time 24-bit slide-show program with over 30 transitions. Among outside products that support Harlequin directly are Imagemaster (Black Belt), ADPro (ASDG), Real 3D (Activa) and Caligari Broadcast (Octree). (RS# 131.)
Get in Touch
Why point and click when you can reach and touch? The CT-Amiga driver (Carroll Touch) lets you use infrared touch screens with your Amiga. The driver both emulates the Amiga's mouse and allows a mouse and touch screen to operate concurrently. Compatible with Amiga Vision, the driver is free with the purchase of the company's scanning infrared touch frames, which include systems for 14-inch Zenith ZCM-14.92 flat-tension and Mitsubishi AUM-1381A Diamontlscan moni- tors. (RS# 110.)
Climbing the Family Tree
No matter how prolific your ancestors were, The Puzzle Factory claims that its ge- nealogical database, Origins ($85), is up to keeping track of them. In addition to cata- loging over six million relatives. Origins can track multiple marriages, step-children, un- married parents, and other unorthodox situations. You can print reports on people, family group sheets, pedigree and descendants charts, and Tiny-Tafel listings, as well as import and export GEDCOM formatted data. To help you connect faces with names, Origin even stores IFF images. (RS# 114.)
Accountant Not Included
Bring your business's books on line with Business Front (Designing Minds, $129). Featuring General Ledger, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable modules, ibis business accounting program can handle up to 32,500 records per iile, provides password protection, carries balances from year to year, and allows periodic and fiscal compaction. In the General Ledger you can define a chart of accounts, assign account and subaccount numbers for job costing, and print the customizable reports.
Accounts Receivable oilers automatic interest calculations for overdue payments, aging reports, user-definable terms of sale, automatic discounts based on payment terms, and complete customer information. Accounts Payable features aging reports, bills due reports, a check register of transactions, and the ability to mark bills for partial or fiill payment and to search for payments by index or vendor number. (RS# 117.)
Officlul Immigration
Long a popular import, the AMOS programming language is now available in an NTSC ver- sion— American AMOS (S1 10). Featuring more than 500 commands, the language is optimized for graphics and sound manipulation, and, with the new version, no screen-size adjustments are needed. Europmss Software has also set up a US technical support line (219/874-6380) and BBS (219/874-0367) to give AMOS users easier access to customer support. (RS# 118.)
Memory Magic
Offering support of up to one gigabyte of virtual memory, GigaMem (Pre'Spect Technics) gives welcome relief to systems with lilled-to-bursting RAM by swapping data from memory to either a hard-disk file or partition. To optimize perform- ance, the program supports caching and monitors memory-access frequency for more intelligent memory swapping. GigaMem runs on all accelerated systems with MMUs and promises to work with all hard-drive controllers. For use with Pre'Spect Technics' ALF 3 Oktagon controller, GigaMem sells for S98; for all other controllers, the price jumps to £149. (RS# 1 19.)
Faster than the Emergency Room
Whether your (loppy disks are failing or your hard drive needs help, Moonlighter Software Development has the right medicine. Ami-Back Tools' (S79.95) medical bag includes GP, a disk optimizer; Disk Analyst, a program that checks disks for potential problems and then makes the appropriate repairs; 91 1 -Recovery, a specialist in recovering deleted files and data from crashed disks; Antiseptic, a disk wiper that clears everything horn your disks: and Lab Test, a utility thai checks and compares checksums for file corrup- tion and virus protection. Overseeing these programs is the Administrator in- terface, which lets you set up, schedule, and perform whatever tests you desire. (ES# 120.)
Follow the Stars (and Satellites)
If you're in search of space-science software, ihe chances are thai Kinetic De- signs has the righl program For you. The company's collection of public domain and shareware programs includes satel- lite trackers, planetary-orbit calculators, siderial-timc calculators, weather-related programs, deep-sky databases, gravity simulations, telescope designs, and space- art. A complete catalog of programs is available, at a cost of only a self-ad- dressed envelope with two stamps, while Amiga Space 12pak, a 12-disk compila- tion of programs, will run you $29.95. (RS# 116.)
Make Your Point
A 3-D object editor and converter. Ver- tex (The Art Machine, S40) oilers all the standard object-editing tools (including single-point editing), plus more exotic distortion options, such as multiply, scale map, twist, randomize, and gravity. In addition, you can bevel fonts, create 3-D fractal objects, separate and combine ob- jects, cut windows, and add face and edge divisions. For further customiza- tion, the program has an ARexx port. On the conversion side, vertex supports Imagine, Turbo Silver, Light Wave 3D, Sculpt 3D, Geo, and W'avefront formats. (RS# 121.)
Overscan is compiled by Barbara Gefvert, Linda Laflamme, and Tim Walsh. Send your news, new products, and network informa- tion to Overscan, AmigaWortd Editorial, 80 Elm St., Peterborough, NH 03458. ■
14 November 1992
Tis the Season
to be Entertained...
Formerly AmigaWorld Videos
Sit back and be entertained by award-winning animations, from professional and
novice animators alike. Or learn how you can be more creative and productive with
the best selling software and hardware products available for the Amiga.
Chranos DV15 History of the Amiga DV12
New Release! Brealhtaking 70mm cin- An intriguing and entertaining look at the
ematography captures the timelessness origins ot the Amiga computer. Listen to
of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Athens' the initial trials and tribulations which Jay
Animation Vol. I dvio
The original AmigaWorld Animation Video that will fascinate, entertain and inspire viewers as it demonstrates the amazing capabilities of Amiga anima- tion. 48 minutes. $19.95 AnimationVol.il DV1 1
AmigaWorld's editors do it again. Excit- ing, innovative animations using pro- grams such as Lightwave 3D. Imagine, Sculpt-Animate 4-D, and DeluxePaint 111. You'll be thoroughly entertained by these animated stories. 90 minutes. S24.95
1 989 Best of the Fests DV17
A film festival in a box! Award winning an- imation, comedy, documentary and ex- perimental shorts. 90 minutes. $29.95
The Mind's Eye DV13
A compelling look at the universe, utilizing the talents of over 300 top computer an- imation artists with music composed by James Reynolds. 40 minutes. S1 9.95 Beyond the Mind's Eye DV14
This is a case where the sequel is even better than the original. Coming in October. Soundtrack by Jan Hammer. 40 minutes. $19.95 Best of the Fests 1991 DV18
More award-winning animation, comedy, drama, experimental and documentary short films from 1991's top international Film Festivals.90 minutes. $29.95
Acropolis, Mont St. Michel, the Arc de Triomphe, the Vatican and over 50 other locations. 40 minutes. $19.95
Green Toons DV16
Just released! Entertainment with a con- science! 14 humorous, pointed and beautiful short films by North American animators. 45 minutes. S19.95 Animation of the Apocotypse DV19 Eight astounding independent visions of doom, revelations, and the end of the world! 60 minutes. $24.95
Miner, R.J. Mical, Caryn Mical, Dale Luck, Carl Sassenrath, Dave Needle and the rest of the original "Los Gatos gang went through. 45 minutes. $1 9.95 Tony Vegas' Animated Acidburn Flashback Tabu DV20
Aural and visual absorblion. Transcen- dence. Revelation. Breathe. Dream. Re- lax. Animations for you to tune into from the early 1980's. 60 minutes, $24.95
New Releases, Updates and Prices.
Amiga Animation Hollywood Style DV50 New Release! Learn classic, Hollywood, Dis- ney-style techniques using DeluxePaint IV and Disney Animation Studio, from renowned Ami- ga animator. Gene Hamm, Especially for artists who are computer novices and comput- er users who don't draw with a mouse. 30 min- utes S24.95 New Release!
New Releases from Desktop Images! The NewTek Video Toaster 2.0 Tutorial Series
Video Toaster Essentials DV51 The first of 4 videos, featuring Video Toaster expert Lee Stranahan, leads you through a step-by-step guide to the Video Toaster's switcher and spe- cial effects. 83 minutes S49.95
ToasterPaint Essentials DV52 Discover the full potential of ToasterPaint as you go through each of its powerful functions step by step, 62 minutes S49.95
ToasterCG Essentials DV53 A step-by- step guide to the Video Toaster's character generator wilh demonstrations of special tech- niques.59 minutes S49.95
Professional Techniques DV54 Get more from ToasterPaint and ToasterCG with demon- strations of special techniques to create pro- fessional network quality graphics.59 minutes $49.95
The Toaster 2,0 Essentials Bundle Pack DV69 SAVE 10% and get all 4 Desktop Images for only S1 79.95
Killer Graphics: Real Time Solutions With DCTV New Release! DV67
Volume I. This tutorial series will teach you how to create killer graphics quickly and easily wilh the most current version of DCTV. using real projects as examples. 54 minutes S29.95
The Amiga Primer DV64
The alltime, best seller for getting started wilh your Amiga. Including setup, Workbench, Shell, CLI, expansion, and AmigaVision. A must lor every Amiga owner. 90 minutes S24.95
Amiga Graphics, Second Edition DV61 Learn the ethics ol style and how to use the Amiga lor graphics. An ideal tape lor getting started. Includes interviews with experts. Fea- tures DPaint IV. NewTek's products. Kara Fonts and others. S1 9.95
Desktop Video, Volume I DV62
The best tape for getting started with Desktop Video. Excellent advice from experts, including Academy Award winning director Terry Saun- ders. Features camcorders, editors, peripher- als, techniques, titling, and more. S24.95
Desktop Video, Volume II DV63
More help en understanding Desktop Video with the Amiga. Includes direct comparisons ot tape lormats. NewTek's Toaster, Lightwave 3D, DPaintlV, DCTV, Virtual Reality, and 24-bil ren- dering. S24.95
How To Animate I New Price! DV58
Relevant to novices and intermediate users alike. Pick up helpful tips and techniques on using DeluxePaint! V from Joel Hagen, and us- ing Lightwave 3D from Am/pa tVorftfs Lou Wal- lace. 45 minutes $24.95 Hot Rod Your Amiga DV57
New low price! This update will assist you in your shopping for the most popular peripherals on the market today. Learn about accelerators, RAM, the Video Toaster. Genlocks and more. $19.95
DeluxePaint IV Video Guide DV59
In easy to follow, step by step fashion, you'll ex- plore many of DPaint IVs features which will meet most of your graphics and animations needs. Includes the new menu structure, Meta- morphosis, HAM color mode, the new Gradi- ents and Cycle requesters, the new advanced palette mixer and much more! 60 minutes $24.95
Advanced Techniques Wilh DeluxePaint IV DV60
Learn tips and tricks for combining DPaint IVs different tools to achieve spectacular effects with professional results. Create 3D text. Prop shadows, textures, cycle color animations, pro- fessional titling techniques, and much more! 60 minutes.S24.95
Videomaker, The Video Series DV65
The experts at Videamaker Maga2ine will teach you about bringing a documentary to life, professional lighting, camera moves, and most important, generating income with your video equipment, 40 minutes S19.95
Desktop Video. Master's Edition DV55 The ultimate guide to desktop video takes you through the entire desktop video experience. Create a complete video from pre-production to finished master with this interactive and in- formative program. Includes specific exercises and effects, background music, sound effects and graphic backdrops 60 minutes $24.95 Imagine, A Guided Tour DV66
This tape will give you extensive help on achieving Professional 3-D rendering results with Imagine. Learn about object loading and creation, surface attributes, lighting tech- niques, texture mapping, animation. 12/24-bit rendering, and much more! 90 minutes $24.95
The Magic of Music and Midi DV56
New Low Price! This new edition brings you the most up-to-date information on using the Amiga as a music generator or MIDI device. Features Super Jam!, Bars & Pipes Profes- sional, Dr. Ts Sonix. Deluxe Music, AudioMas- ter and others, $1 9.95
Call 1-800-879-0759
Orders Only, Please
ORDER BY TELEPHONE OR MAIL IN THIS FORM. Enter Video Product #(s) below.
Total of videos = 3 _
CA Residents add
7.75% Tax S _
Shipping
and Handling S
Total Due 5
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#Units |
Product # |
Cost |
Payment Enclosed Please charge my
DevWare Video, 1 2.r>20 Kirkham Conn, Suite 1 -I'M 10, Powav, CA 92064
Support (619)679-2825 Fax (619)679-2887
The Mind's Eye. Beyond The Minds Eye and Chronos a/e Trademarks of Miramar, Inc. DeluxePaint IV is a trademark of Electronic Arts. DeluKePainl IV Video Guide and Advanced Techniques, wft DeJyxePaijnt iv are trademarks oi Saddle- back Grapihks Amiga 1$ a tpgisiered trademark of Commodore Business Machines, Video Toaster, Toastefftsint and Toaster CG are trademarks of NewTek. tnc. Desktop Images is a trademark of Rave Video Production Facilities.
ex: #
Signature
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□ MasterCard □ Visa
□ Discover Exp.
Phone ( )
_St zip
Following day shipping in UOSI cases. Shipping and handling within continental U.S., add $3.00. Alaska. Hawaii and Canada, add ■1,(1(1. Add S. 50 lor each addiliunal unit shipped. Foreign orders, $6.00 shipping for each unit, Sl-f>0 for each additional unit. Payment in U.S. hinds only.
TM10
Final Copy n
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rINAL COPY
nr>< ■*<<•■ t^nil turltrtii*.. '=>J pitta V "^ rw> T ui. u.^1 (*- !rri>;xato'«ir*n)kihBnl* >"'WJ™, I »«■■
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Final Copy II produces high qua professional looking documents. It combines advanced word processing features, easy-to-use page layout capabilities, and state-of-the-art printing technology into one convenient program.
While other programs claim to have quality printing, Final Copy II is the only word processor on the Amiga that will produce excellent quality printouts on any Workbench (1.3, 2.0 or higher) supported graphic printer. If you have a PostScript printer, Final Copy II is the only word processor on the Amiga that has true WYSIWYG PostScript print capabilities - other programs limit you to a few fonts and a limited number of sizes. With Final Copy II you get Ihe same great looking output produced in expensive desktop publishing programs.
Final Copy II sword processing features include: 144,000 word speller; 1.4 million response thesaurus; automatic hyphenation; named paragraph sheets; master pages; mail-merge; multiple newspaper style columns; search and replace; header and footer support; left, right, center and decimal tabs; paragraph justification; and automatic date, time, and page number insertion.
Final Copy II 's graphic features include: object-oriented, structured tools for drawing boxes, ovals, lines, arrow-tipped lines, and rounded cornered boxes; graphic object color fill, line weight and line color; ability to import IFF ILBM pictures and brushes including 24 bit ILBM and HAM; real-time text flow around any graphic; graphic sizing; cropping; object locking; and graphic depth arranging.
RSfllKraRinini
include: 35 outline t from 4 to 300 points; compressed and expanded cha widths; underline, strikethru, and small caps styles; superscript and subscripts; positive and negative text obliqing; and color text.
Final Copy Il's user interface features include: command ribbon; real-time scrolling; ARexx port; magnified and reduced editable page views; user preferences; WB 2.0 look and feel; mouse zooming; mouse document panning; hori- zontal and vertical rulers, and page guides.
Say good-bye to jagged-edged printouts. Your documents will look more polished and professional than ever before. Final Copy II is an excellent investment for your software library.
SoftWood, Inc.
.O. Box 50178 • Phoenix, Arizona 8501
1(800)247-8314
Circle 46 on Reader Service card
I
Legibility
&
Readability
Typographic clarify comes in two fla- vor*: legibility ana readability. Even though much of the typographic community treats them as such, they are not Interchangeable terms. Differ- ent typefaces have varying degrees of legibility; while typography should be readable.
Studios and Reports
Most of us have heard about legi- bility and readability studies and their resulting reports. You know, the or>es that typopniles refer to when they dis* cuss legibility or readability, and sup-
fiosedly answer all questions about hese Two topics. Wetl, referring to Ihese reports and actually trying to use k- L£? ^ft^ PT?^ c°ri5,de"7d4 '° Ibem con bo two very diffemnT things, be the ablhry lo distinguish one letter )f> foct Ju5, MnQ to f^ rhem b ^fa. from another In a particular lypefoce design. Readability, on fhe other hand, is the de gree at ease with which ty- pography can be read. As a result. It Is possible to use a highly legible typeface and create unreadable ty- pography. Whfle carefully constructed, readable ty- pography cannot restore missing legibility to a type- face design, if can enhance the message presented by a less than kJeaE typeface.
For practical purposes, definitions are not oil thai impoi lant. What ts Important Is that you ore aware of the factors that can affect fypefoce legibility, and the ways reodabfflry con be enhanced - or reduced -- through typographic ar- rangement;
cut!.
They are not in neatty bound vol- umes readily purchased at the local bookstore. Chances ore, unless you Sve in a big city, your public library doesn't have them. Teachers of the communication arts do not often make them available to the* stu- dents, and manufacturers of fype- , settlna and printing equipment do not Include them in their corpo- rate libraries,
So what and where are these mythical studies? For the most port, they were published as articles In trade journals and schol- arly magazines, and they were not normaffy Intended for ty- pographers or graphic communica- tors. Educators. Technical wrrters. jour- nalists ond Ihe like, were their usual tar-
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Vou want n document thin reads well in addition in looking good. Final Copy™ comes with a 144,000 word speller. 1.4 million wo ret thesaurus with definitions, masterpages, stylesheets,
paragraph sorting, math, mail-merge, automatic hyphenation, and user-denned tab stops to assist ymi In your writing.
Final Copy's11' graphic support is the best there is in any Amiga® word processor. Place IFF ll.li.V! pictures and brushes anywhere In a document Draw boxes, ovaLs, lines, arrows,
squares, and circles using Final Copy's™ structured drawing tools. Flow test aroutid or on top of any graphic in a document.
Style sheets and master pages are features you can really use to ensure vour documents are
ge views let you work
Multiple snaking columns, left/right pages, and title page options are easy to use.
Outline Fonts Style Included Sheets
Final Copy II
35
Yes
Master Line, Box, Oval PostScript" Thesaurus Speller Automatic Pages Drawing Tools Support Responses Words Hyphenation
Yes
ProWrite 3.3s
No
No
parison Snaking 24 Bit Editable Outline Font Print 1 pg. Math Outline Fonts Print
Columns ILBM Support Page Views Processing Document Support 1.3 and 2.0 Quar
Final Copy II
1-6
Yes
25-400%
Fast
3u WOi
Yes
Yes
ProWrite 3,3!"
1-5
No
No
Slow 2 min. 5 sec.
No
No
Excellent
Fair
System Requirements: Amiga® with aliens! I megabyte of RAM and either a hard drive or 2 floppy drives.
Circle 4B on Reade Sew? cm
r>
B or years, the Amiga* name has been synonymous with multimedia. We've proven to the world that when you combine the brilliance of video, audio, and animation with a computer, incredible things can happen.
Well, now that the world has finally caught on to the concept, Commodore takes the medium to an entirely new level: With the all-new Amiga 4000.
The A 4000 frees you to do more multi- media computing for less than any other personal computer. It empowers you to create exciting professional tele- vision effects, stimulating interactive training programs, and more powerful presentations like never before. * That's because the Amiga is the only computer designed as a multimedia machine from the ground up. Which means the A4000 doesn't suffer the handicaps other so-called multimedia machines endure. There is no need for costly, cumbersome add-ons, no need to kludge together potentially incom-
Thc Amiga 4000 gives you the ability to easily create real-time, colorful animations.
parable components. So it gives you spectacular multimedia performance right out of the box, at a price that keeps the cost of imag ination very realistic.
Sit in front of the A 4000 and instantly you
filled with high-resolu- tion graphics simul- taneously displayed in up to 256,000 colors from a palette of over 16.8 million hues. You gain a heightened ability to create exciting graphics with full video overscan. And you attain the freedom to create complex animations at a full 30 Frames Per Second, not at 15 FPS.
You even have the option of choosing from a The Amiga -tooo spectrum of high resolution SmoI^XS modes while still main- "Coprocessor. taining NTSC scan rate capability. Al! this multimedia muscle, of course, comes through true design elegance. At the heart of every A 4000 lies our new, unique, custom coprocessors, the Advanced
1 1 932 Commodore Business Machines. Inc Commodore and the Commodore logo are registered trademarks of Commodore Electrodes Ltd. Amiga and Amiga DOS are regis!. U S- through an authorized Commodore-Amiga dealer. Customer activation required Some optional programs require a charge. MS-DOS is a registered trademark ot
Graphics Architecture™ chip set, and the latest multi- tasking operating system, Amiga DOS™ 3.0. Add to this Motorola's thundering
expandability, compatibil ily, and the capability for hundreds of business applications.
In fact, the A 4000 even fits seamlessly into whatever operating system you're currently using by coex isting and communicat- ing with your Macintosh or MS-DOS computers in a Novell® network
With a dedicated chip for audio, (he A 4000 sounds tike nothing you've ever heard.
Announcing The Amiga*4000. The EncoreToThe Most Powerful, Cost
68040 Chip (which other computer companies consider to be enough on its own), and not only is the A4000 blind ingly quick, it literally gives you true workstation power.
Of course, there's much more to the A 4000 than just being the ultimate tool for creativity. It also comes with a large capacity hard drive, and a 1.76 MB dual speed high
density floppy j? drive which, combined with Cross-DOS, allows you to read and write MS-DOS® files. And a design that allows for
And we back all this technology up with a potent service package that is second to none: Including a 24 hour hotline and optional on-site service,**
To find out more about Commodore Multimedia and the all-new Amiga 4000, call 1-800-66-AMIGA. (In Canada, call 1-800-661-AM1GA.) We'll show you an outstanding performance that will certainly bring you to your feet.
C- Commodore®
AMIGA
idemarks ol Commodore-Amiga. Inc. Products available on GSA schedule GS-OOK-91-AGS-5069 "With optional hardware/software. "Available only on systems purchased in the 3ft. Inc. Novell is a registered trademark ol Novell. Inc. Macintosh is a registered trademark ol Apple Computer, Inc. Motorola is a registered trademark ol Molorola. Inc.
Circle 9 on Reader Service card.
High-level
structured
drawing.
Professional Draw 3.0
Gold Disk, S 199.95. Hard-drive installable. Not copy protected. 2.0 compatible.
Accelerator compatible.
Minimum system: 2MB RAM, hard drive.
Recommended system: 2MB RAM, hard drive, ARexx.
Structured
drawing
and Post*
Script file
manipulation.
ProVector 2.1, PSImport 1.0
Stylus Inc., S299.95/S89.95. Hard-drive installable. Not copy protected. 2.0 compatible.
Accelerator compatible; FFP version included. Minimum system: 1MB RAM. Recommended system: 1MB RAM, ARexx.
Both Professional Draw 3.0 and ProVector 2.1 implement structured drawing and Post- Script, but with different emphasis. WhilePro- lessional Draw 3.0 excels at structured draw- ing, ProVector 2.1 proves to be the most help with PostScript output and exchanges.
Professional to the Core
Pro Draw has, arguably, the best user interface of any personal computer for creating Be/ier curves. In Pro Draw, unlike other programs, all the deselect- ed anchor points and oars (the control points pro- truding on cither side of a line) leave while after- images on the gray background thai you can refer to while you are dragging an oar or anchor point. Similarly, when you drag an oar to alter the curve of a line, yon can ctearlv see both the initial curve and the new curve. Ifyou decide that you prefer the original curve, simply press the Esc key to abort the change Even the Mac's venerable Adobe Illustrator doesn't offer this convenience.
So, what has version 3.0 brought to this superb drawing tool? First, Pro Draw 8.0 finally has Undo and Redo commands. In addition, it lets you import 24-bit bitmaps and rotate and scale them with the same tools you use to manipulate drawings. You can now double-click on the Rectangle tool to set a ra- dius for rounded corners, 'lb speed screen redraws, 3.0 lets you keep some objects in wireframe format while viewing others in WYSIWYG.
To locate the vendors of the products reviewed, see the "Manufacturers'/Distributors' Addresses" list on p. 104.
One of the biggest additions is the Function Genie tool, which allows vou to access mam' ARexx scripts. When you execute one, a message explain- ing what you should do next is displayed at the top of the screen. One of these Genics moves only selected points on a line, another allows you to position an object at an exact layer, and so on. They are very useful, but the Function Genie tool has usurped the place of the Hand Move tool. The latter was always a bit unpredictable, but it came iit handy in case you needed to nudge a page a bit in some direction.
Gold Disk has also improved text handling somewhat. You can now edit text direcdy on the page, although it goes a bit slowly. Creating a small text file and importing it is usually the better method — especially because Pro Draw still does not have the ability to change a font once the text is on the page. Ifyou want to change the font or the tracking, you must delete the text and import it again. One disappointment: Because the manual stated that you can access characters from the ex- tended character set by pressing the Alt key and entering the ASCII value on the keypad, I thought I would finally be able to use true left and right double quotation marks, but, sadly, they are still not available.
The FonlManager program supplied with Pro Draw 3.0 is an extremely valuable addition to the package. It allows you to convert Type l PostScript louts into Compugraphic format, which vou can use for high-quality screen displays and dot-matrix printouts with both Pro Draw and Professional Page. Ifyou want to use PostScript clip an. however,
2i> November 1992
Pro Draw will not help yon; on the oilier hand, ProVector will.
Rhythm of a Different Drummer
ProVector 2.1 is a breed of its own. Most structured drawing programs won't let yon work in WYSIWYG mode, but in ProVector, you do everything in that mode, with all the colors and line weights displayed. Contrary to the norm, ProVector has no wireframe mode. Most structured-drawing programs require an extra step to make a corner when you draw curved lines. ProVector's primary drawing tool op- erates in the reverse fashion: Yon have to go back and adjust your curved line (a simple enough pro- cedure) if you want your line joins to be contiguous or tangential. Alternatively, its Smooth Polygon tool automatically creates averaged smooth curves for your whole line (you do not have to drag anything while you are drawing the line). You can later edit the oars a bit.
ProVector's drawing tools are unusual, but they have a surprisingly pleasant feel to them, especially the primary drawing tool. When you drag the mouse, you drag out an oar from the previous an- chor point; when you let go, the oar from the cur- rent point is attached to your cursor. Click again to put it in position. The Rectangle tool can actually create polygons with any number of sides, and, like- wise, the Circle tool can generate arcs and pie- shaped wedges. The program comes with some ready-made pattern (Ills and allows you to create vour own (displaving dtem slows down the program). You can also control ProVector via ARexx to auto- matically build graphs and charts from databases.
While its tools for creating graphs, charts, dia- grams, and simple illustrations are excellent, I found several of ProVector's line-editing procedures difficult. When I "uncurve" a point on a line, I ex- pect the oars to retract into the point, and not trans- form into additional points. Similarly, the Make Curve command does not cause oars to spring out of the point; instead, it turns the two adjacent points into oars. Luckily, the supplied ARexx macros offer an alternative to these methods.
ProVector has some other convenient features: You can scale or rotate an object simply by typing a Dumber and ending with the appropriate keystroke. You can set any number of undo levels and cut and paste from multiple windows. You can put elements of your drawing on separate layers and temporarily
rrotFiilon.il Br.«M VJ.a ,j 1TO Cold Diik Inc. Folio: PDrju-piclurH.f nl d1 ' H~il.
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Two approaches for an interface to structured drawing: Professional Draw (top) and ProVector 2.1 (bottom).
hide them, as in a CAD program. The Change tool lets you be very specific about painting a particular object with the current default settings or vice versa, In the case of merged objects (objects with holes in them), however, the default settings I made seemed to affect the object immediately, rather than waiting for the signal from the Change tool.
PostScript Pro
Pro\ ector 2.1 "s exemplary PostScript skills come from an add-on module called PSImport, which lets you import PostScript or Encapsulated PostScript files. For my many test drawings, the module has per- formed very well. If it encounters an unfamiliar com- mand, it displays an error message. When you click Okay, it continues importing the file. ProVector 2.1 cannot recognize filled open objects, so it closes them by drawing a border all the way around. Similarly, it cannot recognize lines with caps other than joins, so it simplifies those lines when il encounters them.
The module also imports 1'ostScript Iype 1 fonts, but without kerning information and at somewhat the wrong aspect ratio. The Stylus representatives — who were very helpful in answering technical-sup- port questions — said that the developers were work- ing on solving these problems.
The differences between ProVector's and Pro*-
AmignWorld 21
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ImageFX is faster, easier to use, more expandable, more adaptable and more powerful than any other product of it's kind for the Amiga*.
■*• Scut in or framegntb from virtually any image capturing device directly
into your Amiga. ■*• Use vour Amiga as an image prepress, color correction svstem including
CMYK, RGB, HSV' and YU'. ■*■ Digitally retouch any image with the most complete set of filters, color gradi- ents, image distortions, masks, and text handling tools available, •*■ Automatically convert from virtuallv all image file formats. (IFF, AN1M,
TARGA'MIFF, IMPULSE*, RENDITION", SaiPT*, and GIF to nameafeff)- ■*■ Create true, full motion "morphing" animations just like they use in
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II ;. iii! v.:uii Che most exciting and versatile image processing system ever, ImageFX Ls a must bin!
GVP's C in eMorph gives your Amiga graphics and animations new magical powers — at an affordable price!
If you need ImageFX Morphing power alone, GneMorph is for you. When il comes to transforming an image, or images, from one into another, GVP'S GneMotph is easy enough to be used by novices, yet offers professional qualify "morph results.
motion morphs, merge scenes, and per-
* Warp single or motion images, create I form digital dissolves
■*■ Set different speeds for different ports of the morph.
• Work guiddy and easily with Amiga style controls, then output directly to any Amiga, OCTT, or HAM-E' systems — indudrrig 24-bit display boards like GVP's IV24".
If you're looking only for morphing effects, join the revolution... buy CtncMoroh.
An«iiu iTK.wcmi ir*kf:uik ttCttTurciktr-Aiiug*. Irar Ims^rFr. CincMafrh. ml \\'21 ur iniemuU ti litm Vdlry PpjJi»u, Ik. All Mh«r(r»i«nxrla ire ri* property irfrtwir mp«ii« ownera. 0 Gopynubi 1992 Great Villey Prntlucis. Inc.
For more information or your nearest GVP Dealer, phone 215-337-8770 today. For technical information call 2 1 5-354-949S
GREAT VALLEY PRODUCTS, INC. 600 CLARK AVENUE KING OF PRUSSIA, PA 19406 U.S.A. PHONE 2I5'137'877» ■ FAX 2I5-337-9921
Circle 1 on Reader Service card
HGVP
R E V 1 E W S
Draw's PostScript support becomes apparent when you try to import a Pro Draw PostScript print ("tie into ProVector. Pro Draw's PostScript file can address only 100 steps of gradation, while ProVector can address PostScript's full 25(i steps. For ex- ample, if you want a light-blue sky gradation as a background, Pro Draw will show visible steps in it, while ProVector will not. Before saving the PostScript (or Encapsulated PostScript) file from Pro Draw, you should convert all lines to Fiiled/No-Line- Weight objects; you can reset the line weights and colors after you import the tile into ProVector.
So using ProVector with PSImport, you can access the art cre- ated by Professional Draw and all of the PostScript dip art avail- able in the Mac and MS-DOS markets. Just be sure, when you are using small text and detailed illustrations, to use the fast floating-point-math version of ProVector for greater accuracy. Also, note that ProVector 2.1 lacks the ability to describe the screen density and angle lor Linotronic black-and-white prints.
Overall, Professional Draw 3.0 rates an A+ for its drawing abil- ity, but gets poor marks for communication because it cannot read PostScript files. In the same vein, (iolcl Disk is not helping to open channels of communication bv releasing an MS-DOS l*ro- fessional Draw that cannot read the files from its Amiga cousin.
If you want to import PostScript clip art into a desktop-pub- lishing program, ProVector 2.1 and PSImport is certainly the combination for you. While I have criticized some of its draw- ing procedures, ProVector applies good, innovative ideas to structured drawing.
—Jim Silks
A2386SX Bridgeboard
Commodore Business Machines, S9S9.
A2000, A3000/A3000T. Internal IBM slot. Installation: moderate. Hard-drive installable
software. Not copy protected.
2.0 compatible. Minimum system: 1MB
of RAM. Recommended system:
1+MBofRAM.
Emulates an IBM 2386SX; runs MS-DOS and Windows software
T A 7hen the Amiga 2000 was released in 1987, Commodore VV supplied PC compatibility via an internal board that "bridged" the machine's Amiga-only and PC-only slots. The (irst Bridgeboard provided a 4. 77-MHz XT-compatible PC. The A2286 Bridgeboard upped the ante with an 8-MHz AT- compatible connection to the PC world. Commodore's latest offering, the A2386SX, propels the Bridgeboard squarely into the 90s.
Rev It Up
The A2386SX, which is available in either a 16- or 20-MHz configuration, provides you with the power to use the plethora of IBM-compatible software currently available. Included on the board is a socket for an optional 80'i87SX math coproces- sor; one megabyte of RAM (with room to expand to eight megs); a batteiy-backed-up real-time clock and calendar; the ability to use your existing Amiga drives simultaneously with both AmigaDOS and MS-DOS; an external connection for at- taching a standard Amiga external disk drive for the Bridge- board's exclusive use; a speaker; and a four-pin DIN connector that the manual states can be used for future external control options. Software is the fuel that makes the A2386SX flv. The board ■
22 November 1992
—•
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(vjhcK O^t*
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people are terrific, and even the prices are competitive. So put some new life into your joystick, and sign on. We'll see just how good you are. □ Sign up now: I. Set your modem for haif duplex (local echo) at 300, 1200 or 2400 baud. 2. Dial toll free — 1-800-638-8369. Upon connection, enter HHH 3. At the U # = prompt, enter XTX993I3, Amiga92 then press RETURN 4. Have a major credit card or your checking account number ready. □ For more information in the U.S. or Canada, call 1-800-638-9636.
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Circle 18 on Reader Service card.
R E V I K \\ S
comes with MS-DOS 5.0 (including a manual) and version 2.0 of the [anus
software. Janus emulates the PC key- board on the Amiga; allows the Bridge- board tn access a printer connected to the Amiga's parallel port; utilizes a stan- dard Amiga monitor to create PC MDA mono or CGA color video displays in an AmigaDOS window; creates a "virtual" PC hard drive on an Amiga hard disk or allows access to up to seven Amiga par- titions on a PC hard disk; uses the Amiga mouse with PC programs: and copies files between the PC and Amiga. Janus 2.0. compatible with both AmigaDOS
1.3 and 2.0, adds Amiga software to share an Amiga printer connected to the serial port and the "flipper" software needed to share an Amiga disk drive with the PC.
The Bridgeboard installation should not be difficult if you fee! comfortable putting internal expansion boards in your Amiga. While the manual contains excellent instructions for installing the board in the Amiga 2000, 3000. or 3000T, it cautions that your warrant)' is voided unless an authorized Com- modore dealer/service center performs the installation.
The magic carpet ride begins . . .
Rub the lamp
I come to life.
Aladdin 4D is the most advanced, flexible and intuitive 3D render- ing and animation software for the Amiga.
Ride the magic carpet on a jour- ney through your dreams as you create spectacular images and animations never before possible.
If you have been searching for 1001 nights and don't want to spend the treasure of the Forty Thieves, pick up the phone, call one of our genies and use t he first of your three wishes on our free illustrated brochure.
Want your second wish? Replace your tarnished lamp! Upgrade to Aladdin 4D from any Amiga graphics package for only $2 19.00. Call for more details.
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(216) 337-3325
Circle 38 on Reader Service card
I had no difficulty installing the A2386SX. The first step was to decide the types of disk drives I wanted to use. I opted to share the Amiga's dfl : drive and set the A2386SX's jumpers accord- ingly. I next installed the supplied cable between dfl : and the A2386SX and in- serted the board in my A'2000's first three-slot bridge connector. An impor- tant design difference between the A2386SX and the A2286 AT bridge is that the former has no daughterboard. Where the A2286's daughterboard cov- ered the adjacent slot, the A2386SX leaves it free for use.
Installing the [anus software and cre- ating a virtual PC hard disk on my Ami- ga hard drive was even easier. Janus 2.0 uses the new Commodore installer to copy all of the required files to their proper spots on the Amiga boot disk. If you want a virtual hard drive, the in- staller asks you for the desired si/.e and then automatically creates it. This is a significant improvement over the previ- ous version of Janus, which required you to perform the installation manually. Janus 2.0 also uses an improved PCPrefs to configure the PC video display, turn the PC speaker on or off, and configure the PC disk drives.
Getting the PC side of the house up and running was also a snap. The first time you use the A2386SX, you need to establish the PC configuration using the built-in set-up utility, which configures the A2386SX's clock/calendar, disk drives, video, speed, and memory. After you've established the board's configura- tion, you reboot the PC and insert the MS-DOS install disk. MS-DOS 5.0 auto- matically looks at your configuration, formats the hard drive and installs itself on the newly formatted drive.
Operation Normal
The A2386SX is one speedy little PCI Commodore supplied a 20-MHz version of the board for testing. According to Norton Utilities' SI program, a leading benchmark for testing PC speed, the A2386SX ran at 21.4 times the speed of an IBM XT Ebr comparison, I ran SI on an IBM 386SX clone running at 16 MHz. SI rated the clone at a 17.6.
I noticed a speed lag on the A2386SX only when using the Amiga's video to emulate a CGA color PC screen. This is understandable, because the video is passed from the PC to the Amiga. The problem was completely solved by adding an inexpensive VGA card to one of my Amiga's PC slots and connecting a multisync monitor. With the advent of Windows-based software, a VGA adapter is nearly a necessity with the Bridge- «
2'! November 1992
Win an A
deprl
ssion
Introducing Art Expression, the Amiga Illustrator
Art Expression is the most powerful drawing program ever designed for the Amiga. It allows you to warp and distort text like never before. You can ran text around a curve, warp it inside shapes and edit it in any way. Art Expression even has color blends and shape metamorphosis!
Rotate, Skew. Blend. Stretch, Fill and Edit. Text and objects are completely under your control so you can create whatever you imagine. Change colors, edit character shapes, create transparent holes, and transform objects. Art Expression has the most sophisti- cated drawing and editing tools of any Amiga drawing program.
Compatibility
Art Expression can use any of the thousands of available Post- Script Type 1 fonts. You can load and edit IFF DR2D. Aegis and Adobe Illustrator files for compatibility with Amiga. Mac and PC standards. Save your illustrations in DR2D or PostScript for use with PageStream, Sign Engine, Pro Vector and other programs.
More Value Out of the Box
You gel a lot of value when you buy Art Expression. Not only do you get the leading Amiga illustrator, you also get BME trace at no extra charge. BME allows you to touchup and crop pictures, and to convert your bitmap pictures to jaggy-free structured drawings automatically. You also get 35 PostScript fonts and two illustrated manuals with a "cookbook" of examples. And when you send in your registration card, we'll mail you a disk of more free PostScript fonts and clip art!
Win an Amiga 4000!
Enter the Art Expression Design Contest to be eligible to win an incredible Amiga 4000! There are lots of other great prizes, inclu- ding our entire 3000 piece Graphic Library, fifty Graphic and Type- face Library volumes, plus Art Expression T-shirts! Get your copy of Art Expression and enter today! Contest details are included in the Art Expression package and are available on request.
M, Soft-Logik Publishing • 1-800-829-8608
Circle 46 on Reader Service card
mo
r/iT
W^
B
Only $249.95
PowerUp from any version of Professional Draw, ProVector, Expert Draw or PageStream for only $125 until Dec. 31, 1992. Call for details.
Art Expression and Pagt'Slrcam arc registered trademarks or trademarks of Soft-Logik
Publishing Corp. Amiga i s a registered trademark of Commodore Business Machines.
All other Irademarks are the property of their respective osvners.
Art Expression Design Contest ends April 30. 1 993.
r i; V I E w s
board. The addition of" a VGA card also solved a bug in Janus 2.0's color display thai causes the window to resize to a half screen every time a program changes graphics modes. (Commodore reports it is working on a less expensive solution to this problem.)
I tested a variety of PC software, includ- ing WordPerfect 5.1, Microsoft's Flight Simulator, Microsoft Excel, and the PC version of Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint, as well as Windows 3.0. I was unable to test Windows 3.1 without a PC-compatible high-density drive, because Microsoft was unable to furnish a version on 720K disks
in time to complete this review. However, another A23S6SX user with a high-den- sity drive reports he is running Windows 3.1 without difficulty,
If you're looking to add PC compati- bility to your Amiga's many talents, the A2386SX is a stellar performer. At a list price of $959, however, the Bridgeboard competes with a complete IBM PC 386SX-compatible system bundled with a VGA monitor and hard drive. Unless desk space is truly critical, a complete 386SX-compatible system might be a wiser investment.
— Bob Eller
68030 ACCELERATION
VXL30&RAM-32
AND 32-BIT WIDE RAM
Cost-effective, high-performance system acceleration for the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000. VXL-30 uses the low cost 68EC030 or the standard, MMU-bearing 68030. True asynchronous design supports versions at 25MHz and 40MHz. Installs into the Amiga's 68000 socket (and the 68000 is re-installed in VXL-30). Accepts the 68882 math chip. User upgradeable. Compatible with AmigaDOS 1.3 and 2.04 systems. Cold-boot jumper selection as 68030 or as 68000. Warm boot software selection as 68030 or 68000. Supports separate VXL RAM-32 Memory board with 2 or 8 megabytes of Fast Page Mode RAM with Burst capability. RAM autoconfigs in the Amiga FASTRAM space and is DMA-able; can be mapped high; supports mapping Kickstart to 32-bit RAM even without MMU. RAM-32 has alternate Ktckstart ROM socket for optional 2.04 ROM. RAM-32 is also accessible (16-bits wide) in 68000 mode. Performance of VXL30/RAM-32 as a system is equal to an Amiga 3000 at 25MHz and about fifty percent faster than an A3000 when a 40MHz processor and math chip are installed (speed comparisons based on averaging of sixteen standard benchmarks in AIBB 4.5). Typical raytrace times at 25MHz (using Impulse's Imagine) are sixteen limes faster than with the basic 68000. VXL-30 is the price leader in affordable. 68030 acceleration. Available new from your Amiga dealer.
liMicroBotics. Inc.
i ■«#. 1251 American Parkway, Richardson, TX 75081
■Amiga 500"Anga 20M- ar* •Kckslan* are regstered trademarks * CommrMore.Arnga •VXL-M" and -VXL RAM 3? are Merotolcs, Inc. trademarks.
excellence! 3.0
Micro-Systems Software, $99.95.
Hard-drive installable. Not copy protected. 2.0 compatible. Accelerator compatible. Minimum system: 1MB RAM. Recommended system: 1MB RAM, hard drive.
Heavy-duty word processing; simple page layout.
KlNDWOROS 3
The Disc Company.SI 24.95
Hard-drive installable. Not copy protected, 2.0 compatible. Accelerator compatible. Minimum system: 1MB RAM. Recommended system: 1MB RAM, hard drive.
Entry-level word processing.
One of the Amiga's oldest word pro- cessors, excellence! has never really lived up to its name — until now. Version 3.0 may have finally reached world-class status, at least among Amiga software. Another recent update, Kindwords 3.0, has not aged as well.
excellence! 3.0: A New Standard?
Sporting a new 2.0 look (even under Workhench 1.3), excellence! is an attrac- tive program. It opens a full-featured but conservative ruler atop the screen and lets vou toggle many display options, such as margins, paragraph markers, and the ruler. You configure its resolution from the Preferences requester, excellence! even has built-in support for virtual mem- ory, so if you have a hard drive, you can work on files greater than your available memory would normally permit
Timed saves, one of the more signifi- cant features added to version 3.0, are handled elegantly. Besides specifying a time interval for excellence! to save your work, you can also tell it to warn you of an impending save by beeping. If you want to abort the save and avoid inadver- tently overwriting important data, press the Escape key. As a further precaution, excellence! will back up the current file before a timed save, and you can specify as many back-up levels as you like. Now you can even have an audit trail of large documents that effortlessly retains every incremental version in case you need to go back to something written and "dis- carded" a week ago! »
26 November 1992
Circle 6 on Reader Service card.
Professional Digital Sound for Your Video, Music, and Radio Productions
Finally, true CD quality 16 bit audio is available for your Amiga! SunRize's new ADS 16 gives you eight tracks, plus a time code reader and a DSP chip. Included with the ADS 16 is Studio 16- version 2.0. This new release of our popular 16 bit editing software puts a complete sound studio on your desk!
AD516
The ADS 16 hardware pro- vides stereo in/out connectors, plus a SMPTE in. Just plug your VTR, CD player, radio, tape deck, or other audio source di- rectly in, Then record in stereo, direct to hard disk, with 16 bits at sampling rates up to 48,000 samples per second. Plus, the AD516's efficient design allows 8 track playback direct from hard disk. The AD5 16 can synchronize and chase SMPTE time code at 24, 25, 29.97, and 30 fps (drop or non-drop frame). Designed to exceptional audio standards, the ADS 16 of- fers 15Hz to 22KHz fre- quency response and 85dB dynamic range.
Video Production
The Video Toaster goes a long way towards solving your video problems. But what about sound? Do you want to do ADR or voice-overs? Do you need to synchronize background music with your productions? How do you add foot- steps, door knocks, and other sound effects to your video or animation? Do you need to fade, cross fade, or eliminate sections of audio? Can you edit your audio, or are you stuck with the first take? Studio 16 solves all these problems by turning your Amiga into a complete sound studio. With Studio 16's cue list and SMPTE support you can lock sounds frame accurately with your video. Audio triggers re- liably, at the same spot, every time. Or you can slip your audio effects, trying at different spots. And since Studio 16 plays directly off hard disk, the number of sounds you can trigger is unlimited.
Mixer and Meters
Each of Studio 16's eight tracks can be metered and mixed. Unlike two track sys- tems, Studio 16 can combine multiple tracks with no generation loss. And it can record two tracks while playing up to eight!
Waveform Editor
The Studio 16 sound editor graphs the audio waveform and allows you to cut, copy, and paste audio. Up to eight samples
can be edited per window. And edits can be non-destructive or permanent. Zoom, scale, fade, reverse, echo, normalize, loop FFT, resample, and many other functions are available. Named regions can be de- lined and used in the cue list or transport modules.
DSP Supercharger
The AD516 includes a special sound coprocessor - the advanced 2105 DSP. The DSP allows Studio 16 to handle those eight tracks while performing real time mixing. The DSP can also do high quality 16 bit ef- fects such as echo, flange, delay and chorus.
Low Prices, High Performance
Studio 16 2.0 comes with either the AD516 (16 bit, 8 track, stereo, S14951ist)ortheAD1012 (12 bit, 4 track, mono, S595 list). Also available is the DD524 digital I/O card for direct interface to DAT. Call today a free Studio 16 information packet Tel: (408)374-4962. Fax: (408)374-4963.
INDUSTRIES
2959 S. Winchester Blvd., Suite 204 Campbell, CA 95008 USA
European RcprrcroaLvci fISLAND Fu»sr Compiler .358 ( 18)78 ! 8992. FRANCE Sural +33 < 1 ) 43 57 46 57, GERMANY ASiS +4S 1069) 5 48 8 1 30- ITALY AP*S .39 (0433) 759364. SPAIN PiXeLSOFT +34 (088) 71 27 00. SWEDEN DtsplayDKa +46 (M57) 503 80. SWITZERLAND Microti™ +4 1 (032) 872429. UNITED KINGDOM HB Mirktling +44 (0753) 686000. Studio Ibis R trademark afSunRire Industries. Video Toaster is a trademark of HewTek. Inc. Amiga is a trademark ofCBM.
Circle 57 on Reader Service card.
R E V 1 E \\ S
The program is chock full of other new features, as well. Bookmarks, a handy addition, are the electronic equiv- alent of paper scraps to tuck between im- portant pages in a large document for easy location. As for page-layout options, what modern word processor would be complete without multiple columns? excellence! allows up to eight. It also in- cludes a generously large dictionary and thesaurus — not to mention a grammar checker. (This review clocks in at an 1 1 th- grade reading level, and 1 seem to use fewer sentences in the passive voice than tvpical life-insurance policies.) When
vou're readv to print, you can even see what you are about to get with a page- preview function.
One particularly nice feature is the ability to work on a file with requesters open. Usually, the spell checker or find/replace requester locks yon out of the word processor itself: in excellence!, you can continue to edit the current doc- ument while it is on screen.
One of the best reasons to buy excel- lence!, however, is its ability to quickly and easily generate an automatic table of contents and index. This invaluable function was previously available only
Ami-Back takes care of your data.
Ami-Back Tools takes care of
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The best way to protect your data is to back it up.
W - WWI 11,1
fci-mt iKi»<Mimmi«
Maybe a friend already gave you that advice. Or maybe you learned its value an your own. Either way, keeping thai rule in mind will save you a loi of headaches, heartbreaks, and hassles. The best way to back up your data is to use the best backup program: Ami-Back v2.0. With Aim-Back, you can be sure that your data is safe. And with Ami- Back's sharp interface, making the kind of backups you want is a real snap. All of Ami-Back's features are at your fingertips. Intelligent data compression that doesn't slow you down. Multiple backups on single tapes. Recovering lost data from crashed hard drives. Backing up incredibly large amounts of data across multiple tapes. Scheduling unattended backups. Password protection, Arexx suppon, and even online help. And a heck of a lot more. Join the thousands of users worldwide who have found Ami-Back to be the only backup program worth owning.
Competitive Upgrade
Moonlighter Software Development. Inc., is
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Keeping your drives in top condition Is essential for trouble-free computing.
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excellence! 3,0's grammar checker provides interactive output.
Kindwords 3 offers a large toolbox for common commands.
in Amiga WordPerfect, an undesirable choice for manv word-processing tasks. excellence! is about as full-featured and intuitive as you are likely to see on this side of AmigaDOS. It even includes ex- tensive macro support with ARexx and an easy-to-use "Glossary" (a user stock- pile of macro commands).
In a nutshell, excellence! does just about everything you might want or ex- pect in a word processor. It doesn't do ev- erything perfectly, however. It cannot change die case of words with a keystroke. Its Insert Literal function is marginal. It doesn't show you what the actual charac- ters are in a given font, but only what they would be in the standard character set — not terribly useful for finding the penguin shape in your Symbols loin. Lastly, I felt betrayed by the box, which proudly proclaimed "ASL Compatible Font/File Requesters." It turns ottt that ex- cellence! doesn't actually use the ASL li- brary at all. Instead, MSS has inexplicably provided ASL look-alikes, preventing you from using a single, standard requester in all your Workbench 2.0 software.
Kindwords 3: Starter Kit
It would take very little tweaking to make
excellence! the finest electronic typewrit-
Contmued on p. 72.
28 November 1 992
Cucle 69 on Reader Service card-
Finally! True Cinematic Quality Morphing For The Amiga®!
ASDC is not the first to advertise "cinematic quality morphing" for the Commodore Amiga ' . Having seen the other products, there's obviously more than one way to define that term.
To us, "cinematic quality morphing" means these things:
• Morphing must be fast.
In a production environment, time is money. ASDG's MorphPlus " is the fastest morphing product available for the Commodore Amiga". MorphPlus' powers through complicated full overscan morphs 3 to 1 1 times faster than the other products.
What's The Plus?
|
Fastest |
....MorphPlus™ |
|
Easiest-To-Use |
....MorphPlus" |
|
Highest Quality... |
....MorphPlus'" |
• Morphing must be easy. Experts in the field praise the intuitive design of the MorphPlus'' user interface which lets them create sophisticated full motion morphs in minutes instead of weeks.
•Morphing must be high quality
(so that it truly can be used for cinematic or professional video applications). MorphPlus" is already in use in Hollywood productions, replacing high end systems.
This is what we mean by "cinematic quality morphing."
If these are the criteria you would use, then MorphPlus ' is the choice you should make.
See it at your local dealer!
925 Stewart Street Madison, W! 5371 3 608/273-6585
1QH1
And More!
The following names are trademarked by the indicated companies: MorphPlus: ASDC Incorporated, Amiga: Commodore Amiga Inc.
Circfe A on Reader Service card
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Meet the future of computing:
Commodore's new 68040-based computer
that features a new processor,
a new DOS, and a dynamic new chip
set. Prepare to expand your horizons
with the exciting graphics potential
of this colorful machine.
I
VI November 1W2
BY LOU WALLACE
OR SEVERAL YEARS, Amiga users and developers have been clamoring for a major upgrade to the Ami- ga custom chips. During this lime, the Mac and MS- DOS systems equaled, and (hen surpassed, the Ami- ga's graphic-display system in terms ofboth resolution and number of colors.
Because of the increased emphasis on multimedia and desktop video, the Amiga's screen size, number of colors and total palette became limiting factors. Al- though ihird-parlv developers have lilted I he void with Sophisticated 24-bit display cards, this hardware is aimed mostly at static displays, is basically unsupported by the Amiga's operating system, and has had little im- pact on most of us in our day-to-day applications.
It has become evident that change is needed. And I'm pleased to say dial dtis fall a real change is coming to the Amiga. The lirsl sign of this renaissance is an en- tirely new machine, die Amiga 4000! 'The first public demonstration of the A4000 was scheduled last month for the World of Commodore show in Pasadena.
The A4000 is the most significant upgrade to come out of Commodore. It boasts main additions and changes, the most significant of which concerns its graphic display. The A4000 is the first of a new line of Amigas to incorporate the AA (Advanced Architec- ture) graphic chip set, which immensely expands the Amiga's graphic potential. The AA (called "Double A") chips are Alice, Lisa, and Paula. While Paula is essen- lially unchanged, the other two are full replacements for the Agnus and Deni.se chips.
A4000 Specifics
The A4000 is the first in a new line of Amiga comput- ers to take advantage of these new chips. It is also the first Amiga to be based on the 08040 processor. Inter- estingly, there is no CPU on the motherboard. Instead, the A4000 CPU resides on a plug-in card that installs in the 200-pin processor slot. This approach means that the 32-bit A4000 is completely configurable — at the dealer level.
While the initial version is a 25-MHz 68040, as other processor cards become available, von will be able to buy (or upgrade to) faster 68040s, custom CPUs, or even fu- ture high-performance processors like the 68060.
Internally, the A4000 has four Amiga Zorro II/III slots as well as three PC/AT slots. As with earlier mod- els, though, using some PC slots precludes using other slots for Amiga cards. As in the A3000, the video slot is in line with one of the Amiga slots. This arrange- ment will encourage development of specialty video cards (much like Great Valley Products' IV24 multime- dia/ video package).
The CPU case is a bit larger than that of the A3000, but not as big as the A2000's. There is room inside for two floppy drives and two hard disks; an external flop- py connector is available for more drives. In addition, the front drive bay can accommodate a 5.25-inch disk device, allowing you to mount large internal hard drives, CD-ROMs, or other removable media.
A 120MB IDE hard disk is standard. Lor those who
want access to SCSI devices, an optional 32-bit SCSI-11 controller card will be available. Interestingly, the includ- ed floppy drive is a high-density 3.5-inch unit that can read and write in either 880Kor 1 ,7MB modes, and can read and write to standard MS-DOS formatted disks.
Like the A3000, memory expansion in the A4000 al- lows a total of 18MB on the motherboard — two megs of chip and 16 megs of 32-bil RAM. You can add more via plug-in cards. The base configuration of the A4000 includes 2MB of chip RAM and 4MB of 32-bit RAM, although this is subject to change.
AmigaDOS 3.0
These hardware improvements and additions require new software to take advantage of them. Not surprising- ly, the operating system shipped with the A4000 is a new release called Amiga DC )S 3.0. h is an enhanced version of the 2. 1 OS, introduced on the .Amiga 600, and it in- cludes all the 2. 1 features, plus support for the A\ chips and their new color and screen-resolution features.
New to OS 2.1/3.0 is the addition of CrossDOS, a program by Consul tron that lets you easily read and write data between Amiga and MS-DOS disks. Printer Preferences now supports PostScript directly, and new printer drivers have been added. A Sound Preferences editor lets you customize your system with the sound effects of your choice. Also, a Local Preference editor lets you tell the system what language to use in its mes- sages and text displays (use the language library of your choice). This feature should bolster the interna- tional appeal of the Amiga. (AmigaWorld will address new operating-system features further in future issues.)
Commodore says that AmigaDOS 3.0 will, for the lime being, be limited to the A4000 and other AA ma- chines. That's reasonable, as the unique features of 3.0 are designed to take advantage of the new chip set. AmigaDOS 2.1, however, is another story. Any Amiga that can use the 2.04 version can take advantage of 2. 1. Look for an upgrade path at some future date, as yet unspecified by Commodore.
Over the Rainbow
With the A\ chips, you can forget about yesterday's 4096 color palette. These chips feature a full 24-bit palette, which gives you access to any of 16,777,216 colors for use in your screens. The total number of col- ors on screen will depend on how many bitplanes you use and on the display mode. You can create screens using one to eight bitplanes, which translates into two to 256 colors at once. Most importantly, there is no limit on the number of colors you can use in the var- ious screen resolutions.
While current Amigas allow up [o 32 colors in low resolution, 16 colors in high resolution, and four colors in Productivity and SuperHires modes, the AA chips have no such limitations. With eight bitplanes, every screen can use up to 256 different colors, a fact that you will appreciate even more when we discuss how many new displays and resolutions are available.
For those who think 256 colors are not enough for ■
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AmigaWorld 3 1
I II E
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some applications, the AA chips have yet another color surprise in store. Remember how the Amiga's HAM (Hold And Modify) niode was able to create Stunning low-resolution images using all 4096 colors with the older chips? Well, the new chips have their own eight- bit HAM display mode, which lets you create images that use over 256,000 colors simultaneously.
The AA HAM mode has 6-1 base colors instead of the 16 available in the earlier HAM displays. This means that software can minimize the fringing thai often accompanies HAM displays. And, as with the stan- dard color modes, you can use AA HAM mode with any screen, regardless of resolution.
imagine a 640x480 display with 256,000 colors! Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Now try imagining 640x960, or 800x600 or 1 280x400 with dial many col- ors! Then add overscan. Are you excited yet?
Exotic Resolutions
The A4000's AA chips oiler all the standard Amiga NTSC and PAE screen sizes that ihe original and later ECS chips support. These include the original displays of 320x200, 320x400, (540x200, and 640x400 with or without overscan. Also included are the l-X'.S 640x480 and 640x960 Productivity mode and 1280x200 and 1 280x400 SuperHires modes. AA chips go even further with their Super72 modes, including a verv nice 800x600 display. And, these resolutions do not include the extra display area you gel when you use overscan modes.
In fact. Commodore engineers are now defining even more screen resolutions. These new chips are pro- grammable: You can vary the horizontal and vertical screen sizes in a great variety of ways, so man}' more exotic displays are not only possible but vety likely. And keep in mind that all screens can support up to 256 col- ors (out of 16.7 million), as well as the phenomenal AA
The AA chips are used here to display multiple 32-color IFF images,
HAM displays of 256.000 colors. Ihe possibilities lor artists, animators, multimedia producers, and desktop
vicleographers are monumental, especially when you consider that all these feature's will now be standard on the A4000 and all future Amigas.
Behind the Scenes
One feature that enables these new chips to create such
graphics is the bandwidth of the chips. Bandwidth measures how fast inlbrmation can be processed, and the new AA chips have a Ibm lold increase in bandwidth over their predecessors. This increase does much more than give you improved color resolution; it improves the performance of the graphics as well.
Regardless of what processor yon have, when you open a 16-color. overscan, hi-res interlaced screen in your existing Amiga, your overall system performance will degrade because so many of the Amiga's CPU cy- cles are required to support [his display. Thanks to the AA chips' increased bandwidth, however, such a display performs as well on the A4000 as a two-color display: It is fast and effective rather than sluggish and futile. Oi course, even wilh [he new chips, using the maxi- mum resolution along with the maximum number of colors will cause a performance hit — but one not nearly as pronounced as with the older chip set.
Sprites benefit from the extra bandwidth. Hie new system allows sprites that are 16, 32, or 64 bits wide. (The previous chips only allowed 16-bit-wide sprites.) Game developers will be able to use these verv large, yen' fast sprites instead of slower bitmap objects, also, sprites (such as your pointer) can be set to various res- olutions, independent of the screen resolution.
One chip missing from Commodore's newest ma- chine is the A3000 display enhancer, which creates a non-interlaced, llicker-free display. Because of the in- creased bandwidth and programmability of" the chips, software can define a deinterlaced, flicker-free screen, provided vou use a multisync monitor. Examples of these modes are the Productivity 640x480 and Super72 800x600 displays.
Bandwidth is not the only factor that contributes to the chips' speed. Another important A4000 compo- nent is 32-bit access to chip memory, instead of ihe 16- bit access of earlier chips. This means that the proces- sor can read and write data to chip RAM twice as fast. Another feature of the system architecture, 32-bit page- mode access, also means faster access to RAM.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Will you be able to upgrade your existing Amiga to the AA chips? "The quick answer is no. AA chips are 32-bit wide and not pin compatible with the earlier Amiga chip sets. One possibility — which Commodore neither confirms nor denies — is a motherboard upgrade. This would require you to purchase and install a completely new motherboard, designed for AA. While this is pos- sible for the A3000 (which is a 32-bit system), it is a much more difficult proposition for A2000s, A600s, and A500s. Even if it does become available, though, a drawback to the motherboard option is cost. Moth- erboard replacement is often expensive enough to jus- tify a new system. This will be an even bigger consid- eration if other, less expensive AA machines appear.
There is, however, another force in the market that can make such an upgrade feasible. "That is the ever- creative third-party companies that often provide so- lutions to "impossible" situations. 1 have no inside in- formation about such upgrade scenarios, but experi- ence leads me to expect them.
Impressions
One difficulty Amiga industry professionals have had »
32 November 1992
DESKTOP SPACE EXPLORATION
HAS LANDED!
Right and Delow:
Voiles Morlnerls,
Mars before and
after Terraformlng,
SBhB
CHOOSE V1STAPRO...
AND MAKE YOUR EXPLORATION UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Dosed on real-world data obtained from NASA spacecraft and The U.S. Geological Survey, Vistapro allows you to accurately recreate and explore real-world landscapes in vivid detail.
FEATURES
• Complete control of camera viewpoint with easy point-ond-click interface.
• Gouraud shading produces painring-qualiry scenes of unparalleled beauty.
• Direct 24 bit output
• User-definable colors, clouds, rree line, tree rypes, snow line, waves, haze, lakes, rivers, ere.
LANDSCAPES
• Included: The cauldera area of Olympus Mons - Mars, Yosemire, Mr. St. Helens, Crarer Lake, various Californio sires,
• Mony orher landscapes available, call for info.
MAKEPATH - Advanced animarion uriliry for use
wirh Visrapro S25.00 wirh coupon in box. TERRAFORM - Landscape ediring uriliry far use wirh
Visrapro $25.00 wirh coupon in box.
Vistapro retail: $99.95.
OR CHOOSE DISTANT SUNS
AND MAKE YOUR EXPLORATION REALLY FAR OUT.
This Virtual Reality Observatory Is a beautiful and well thought out balance between solar system and deep sky display.
FEATURES
• Realistically displays rhe nighr sky from 4713 B.C. ro 10,000 A.D.
■ Displays up ro 9100 srars (expandable ro 250,000!), 450 galaxies, nebulas and srar clusters.
• Add up ra 3,000 custom objects.
• Move your viewpoint from earrh our inro rhe solar sysrem.
• Reproduce eclipses, show lunar phases.
• Unique feature provides poinr-and-click linkage between planetari- um objects and full screen soiar sysrem and deep sky photos.
Distant Suns retails for S99.95.
For more information, or the name of your nearest distributor contact:
Virtual Reality Laboratories
2341 Gonador Court
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
(805)545-8515
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The grand master of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke warns Stanley Kubrick, "If you get Vistapro into your computer, you'll never do any more work! It produces images of olmost photographic quali- ty... So I can explore oil the interesting places on Man!" |
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"I'm really boggled - It's beautiful, espe- cially when the lights are off. I'm awed by what > have done!"
Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
UNLEASH THE POWER OF YOUR YOUR IMAGINATION!
Circle 58 on Reader Service card.
T H E A 4 (► 0 ()
to endure is knowing about Commodore's plans, but being restrained from talking about them. This has been especially problematic lately, in the lace of much speculation and commentary concerning a lack of de- velopment for the Amiga line. I'm happy to report thai there is much new technology coming from Com- modore, and AmigaWorld will continue to bring that news to you as soon as we can.
I am impressed with the AA chip set and am eager to start using an A4000. The new displays will be a boon to artists, multimedia producers, and desktop videographers, and game developers should have a field dav with the color, speed and resolution Double A provides. So will the rest of us! ■
Applications for AA
torn: I ■ I
ii
as !
Some new Preferences tools displayed in 256-color SuperHires.
A4000 Specifications
25-MHz 68040 CPU
Base machine includes 2MB chip RAM and 4MB
32-bil flAM Up to 18MB RAM on motherboard; additional RAM
via RAM cards (to 1.7GB) Upgradable CPU via 200-pin slot 120MB IDE hard disk 880KB/1 .7MB internal floppy Supports four internal disk drives (two floppies and
two hard drives) Four ZORRO ll/lll expansion slots Three PC/AT expansion slots Video-expansion slot Full 32-bit system architecture 16.8-million color palette Up to 256 simultaneous colors, plus 256,000 colors
using HAM display mode Advanced Architecture (AA) Graphic Chip Set (Aiice,
Lisa and Paula) Programmable display resolutions include 640x480,
640x960, 1280x400 and 800x600 Video overscan modes supported All color modes available in all display resolutions Flicker-free interlaced modes AA chip set backward compatible with earlier ESC
chip set Price: S3699
As you might expect, Com- modore has been keeping de- velopers informed of these hardware changes, and quite a few have been developing products to take advantage of the new features. While many were not willing to "pre-an- nounce" their work, others were far enough along thai they felt comfortable dis- cussing their new AA products. (To locate vendors of the prod- ucts mentioned, see the "Man- ufacturers'/Distributors' Ad- dresses" list on p. 104.)
INOVAtronics is upgrading its CanDo multimedia applica- tion language and Directory Opus file manager to support AA machines. The firm also promises a new, high-powered text editor, as yet unnamed.
Scala tells us it will fully support the AA chips in Scala Multimedia 2.0 (scheduled to ship this fall), a greatly en- hanced version of the existing Scala presentation software. Included with the package is a utility to create animations us- ing the new eight-bit HAM modes, which Scala can play.
New Horizons was sched- uled to release ProWrite 3.3 at last month's World of Amiga show. This update will fully sup- port all screen resolutions as well as graphics with up to 256 colors. A new version of De- signWorks, scheduled for a Christmas release, will also support the AA chips. New Horizons also states that its other packages, such as Quar- terback, QuickWrite and Flow, will work with AA, al- though by the nature of their tasks 1hey do not require the extra color.
Impulse plans a free up- grade for any registered Imag- ine 2.0 owner with an AA-chip machine. This new version will support the extra modes and resolutions. If you plan to get
an A4000 and have not al- ready registered your copy of Imagine, it is time to do so.
Octree, publisher of Cali- gari 3-D products, is also jumping on the AA bandwag- on with Caligari 24. an up- grade to Caligari 2. Octree is excited by the new hi-res, eight-bit HAM mode, which it thinks will satisfy users who really do not want or need a full 24-bit framebuffer.
ASDGs ADPro image pro- cessor and FRED (FRame EDitor) animation utility al- ready support AA. I used AD- Pro to process 24- bit images into both 256 color and eight- bit HAM displays, and was surprised to find that it would already open the new screens and display the images it cre- ated. ASDG's Morph Plus will aiso offer features based on AmigaDOS 3.0.
Digital Creations' 24-bit paint-and-animation package. Brilliance (scheduled to ship in fate October), uses every display mode your system can generate, including AA modes.
Soft-Logiks PageStream is already designed to work in the 256-color mode as long as you open it on the Workbench. The company plans further enhancements to take advan- tage of other AmigaDOS 3.0 features.
Gold Disk is upgrading Professional Page and Pro- fessional Draw to take advan- tage of the new color modes. The next release of Profes- sional Page is scheduled tor later this year; a Professional Draw update will follow.
Electronic Arts' Deluxe- Paint IV 4.5. which is expect- ed this fall, will have full AA chip support. A Deluxe Music Construction Set update, scheduled for release in early winter, will also be compati- ble with the new system. □
34 November 1992
PIECE NEGOTIATIONS
CREATING A COMPOSITE IMAGE
By Steven BEaize
Where disparate images meet, an
interesting collage can result. Not, however, without some finessing. Here are some techniques you can use to negotiate a successful work — piece by piece.
A COLLAGE IS an artistic medium used by professional artists and grade- school kids alike. The hard-copy ap- proach involves cutting and pasting vari- ous pieces — pictures and other mater- ials— to create an entirely new composition. I lie digital approach involves combining images rom various sources on screen. Whether you create your collages by hand or by comput- er, yon must carefully select each element so the final com- position is a new work of art. The concept behind any good design is to convey your message to the intended audience. This is true whether your design is for business, television, art, or feature film.
Although the selection of pieces is specific to each project, I can offer pointers and assembly tips that can help you time and time again. The examples I use to illustrate this article are intended for video, but the techniques work equalh well lor animation and print. Also, while my primary tools lor ere- »
AmigaWorld 55
I M V G E
C 0 M P 0 S i T I \ G
ating collages air AS DCs Art Department Professional (ADPro), Digital Creations' DCTV, and Impulse's I.iglu24, you can apply these same ideas to whatever programs you use.
Picking Up the Pieces
Before beginning to assemble a collage on screen, you need a source for your digital art. You can use any paint, draw, or ,'i-D rendering program to create original an. You can also employ dip-art disks, the purchase of which generally gives you license to use the included images. If you have a framegrabber or still digitizer, vou can capture images from video, live sources, or static pictures. In digitizing, keep copyright in mind; there has been no clear definition of the impact of digital
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Figure 1. This composition is derived, in part, from the images in Figure 2.
Figure 2. The DCTV-digitized dolphins, before stenciling (top) and after.
composition and changes to copyrighted imagery. So be 1 anlul: II vou are digitizing a published piece of art or video, you should gel permission to use it.
Once you have collected all the pieces you waul to in- clude, you are ready to start cutting and pasting. Paint programs such as Light24, Toaster Paint (NewTek), MacroPaint (Lake Forest Logic/GVP) and DCTV Paint allow you to work with images in 16.7 million colors (24- bil), but require display hardware to provide ihis color accuracy on the Amiga. (Each of these programs comes packaged with the appropriate hardware.)
You really do not need special display hardware, however, in order to create 24-bit collages. The Art De- partment Professional and Image Master (Black Belt Systems) are specifically designed for processing im- ages in 2 1-bit color, but the\ do n< 11 require anything beyond the Amiga's normal display. Ihis is a major benefit, even if your final output will be lb-color or HAM. (While Image Master comes packaged with Black Belt's HAM-E display hardware — which it is es- pecially suited to take advantage of — it is sold sepa- rately, as is AD Pro.)
By combining your elements in full (24-bit) color, you can mix multiple pictures, even HAM images, without palette problems. Then you can render your collage in 24-bit or in any of the standard Amiga modes with an optimized color palette. (Native display modes limit you in terms of palette: lb combine ele- ments of two images in paint software, both must share the same palette. If the images' palettes are different, you must either convert one image to the other's palette or change both to a third.)
You can also use programs such as Digi-Paint 3 (NewTek), DeluxePaint IN' (Electronic Arts), or Spectra- Color (Oxxi) to combine Amiga-mode images — that is, images that do not require a special device for uncom- promised screen display. I suggest these programs be- cause ihev provide transparency controls that are very helpful for such things as see-through drop shadows.
figure 1, which illustrates basic image compositing, served as the opening title to an environmental news segment. I digitized the two dolphin photos using DCTV (see figure 2) and loaded the clip-art image of the Earth onto die jump screen. Then, with the paint program's stencil features, I cut the dolphins as clips (bottom images), resized them appropriately, and stamped them into position on the jump screen. I saved the result as a 24-bit IFF file.
Although 1 could have added the text directly in DCTV. I instead created it — along with its near-black drop shadow — on a solid-black background in another program. Keeping the background and lexl pieces sep- arate allows vou 10 change the text quickly i( you later find (hat necessary.
I then loaded this new picture with the Earth and dolphins into AD Pro. Making sure the Comp button was on, 1 then composited the IFF and title files, sel- ling RGB values to 0 and Mix to 100. This permitted the black background of the title screen to become to- tally transparent, while the rest of the image was mixed at 100 percent. (By setting the RGB and Mix levels, you can make any specific color in an image transparent while mixing the rest of the image to any level of transparency.)
Finally, 1 scaled the entire image down one percent before scaling it back up to the final 736x4X0. This al-
36 November 1992
I M \ G
C (I M POSITING
lowed me to create anti-aliasing around the text with- out sacrificing image quality.
Masks and Shadows
Paint programs such as DcluxcPainl, I.ighl24, and DCTV provide the ability to create stencils to protect areas of your image from changes. You can then com- posite other images into your collage over the unpro- tected areas. You can achieve this same effect through AD Pro by creating a two-color mask. The top-left im- age in figure 3 demonstrates this: It shows the entire deco-style design in black and white.
After deciding which pans will be the same color, you can use your paint software's 1111 tool to create the sep- arate mask liles. (The first of the mask llles for our ex- ample appears in the lop-right corner of Figure 3.) You then simply load the background (in ibis case the mar- ble shown at the lower left) and then composite the mask, making the black transparent. The result is shown in she lower-right corner of the figure.
For this particular image, I used three types of mar- ble lor different parts ol the design. Then 1 composited these intermediate files together, with white being transparent. The final image (see p. 35) was placed on a black background for added contrast.
Some i>l your projects mav invoke 3-D graphics and animations. The third example includes 3-D text ren- dered in Imagine (Impulse). Looking at Figure 4, you can sec most of the elements that were used to create the final image. The lop half shows I he image before processing, while the bottom half depicts the pmcessed image. I created the blue background using I he ARexx script for embossing that's included with AD I'ro on the picture of wicker. I then composited ibis at a mix of 30 percent over a plain blue backdrop.
You achieve the embossed look by first loading a negative of your image, and then loading the original image one pixel to the right and one pixel down from the negative, with only a 50-percent mix. (It works best if your image is made of various gray levels and has good contrast.) In this manner, you can use your paint programs to create the same tvpe of look.
I created the red rectangles in a paint program and added them next, lirsl with a 30-pcrccnl mix and each of the RGB values at 2").") (lo produce white). Then I shifted the image to the right and down, using the helpful visual indicators in AD Pro's Composition Con- trol screen, 'litis created die transparent drop shadow, which adds depth to the image. I then added the same file at a mix of 100 percent, finally, I rendered the 3-D text on a black background and added il in die same manner, with a full 100-percent mix and black designated as transparent (see Figure 5).
Those of you who work with 3-D software may won- der why I would composite a rendered 3-D scene over a background rather than use the latter image as a backdrop in the 3-D program. There arc two reasons: time and memory. The 3-D software must read die im- age from disk and load it into RAM before rendering takes place. This consumes significant amounts of both commodities, as an overscan 24-bit background is aboul 1MB in size. While some of the lime saved is lost again during compositing, my experience shows that there is an overall saving.
Furthermore, because the 3-D program may com- promise the backdrop during rendering, composit-
ing ensures that the background will be of the very highest quality.
The easiest way to composite fixed backgrounds into an animation sequence is with an ARexx script. ADPro comes with several ARexx scripts that give even novices a good start, and you can use this approach with any ARexx -controllable paint program or image processor that lets you composite images together.
While I do not have space here for an ARexx lesson, I can offer a lew pointers. First, create a list of the names of your rendered frames. You can do this easily from the CLI by changing the directory to the loca- tion of your images and typing List>filename sort quick. (You can use an editor to remove the extra en- tries from the list and also to easily rearrange the or- der of the images.) ►-
Figure 3. These parts went into the creation of the Image on this article's opening page.
!!!l!l!i!liil!!Sl!i!|l!l!l!li!!S!S!ii!!!!i!l!Ili|i !tl|{{llllll|!lll(ll(lll!llllt|illl!l(!!|lli!
IH!«lll!l!ll,,i!!il!|il!is:!!i,
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jitliiiii.
Figure 4. Different dimensions: The 2-D and 3-D elements that combine to make the image in Figure 5.
A-migaWorld 37
I M A G li
C 0 M P 0 S I T I N G
When writing the ARexx script, use the command for your program that can load your background im- age (wii li ADPro, use GetKle). Now create a loop to first load the background file; then load the foreground pic- ture, specifying mix levels and transparent color (AD- Pro uses parameters after the load command); finally, output the image. With ADPro, you could even save the result to a Framebuffer (such as Impulse's FIRE- CRACKER or GVP's IV24), and then trigger Microll- lusions' Transport Controller to record your images au- tomatically to videotape.
We Do Windows
The last example (sec Figure 6) involves a few more steps, but should give you further ideas of what you can easily achieve. All of the original scenic pictures were
Figure 5- 3-D graphics are exceedingly good news in the realm of compositing.
Figure 6. A 30-percent white overlay gives this composite image its gauzy feel.
high-resolution, severe-overscan, 24-bit clip-art images. I created the red, white, and blue borders in Deluxe- Paint at 772x5 1 6 and saved them as a single file. I then loaded this border into AD Pro and, using the Center button with a 100-percent mix, composited each scene into the middle between the borders. I then scaled each scenic image down to one-third of its size and temporar- ily saved it to disk as an individual file. To form the transparent drop shadows, 1 also created a plain-black rectangle the same size as the reduced images.
To create the final image, I loaded the marble back- ground and then added the first black rectangle, with a 30-percent mix. Although I positioned the rectangle by eye, I noted the exact starting positions because I knew that the next step involved adding the first small bordered image ten pixels up and to the left of the shadow.
I handled the three other images in the same man- ner, placing the shadow first and then the scenic. In this way, I was able to have see-through shadows on the marble as well as on the underlying scenics. This ap- proach added depth to the finished picture.
The final touch in this example was to add cut-out titles — instead of standard text — over the images. I cre- ated a mask for the title in a draw program where I could easily manipulate the characters. I saved the mask — black characters on a white backgound — as a simple two-color picture. Then I composited it at a :!()- percent mix, with the black totally transparent: that created the gauze effect.
Later, I added the outline around the letters using a similar mask. This time, I used RGB values of 1 in- stead of 0 for the black element — the outline — so that the composited result is not transparent. As in the last example, I used the same scaling technique for better antialiasing.
Regardless of what type of project you are working on, remember to think about your final design before you begin. Collect and arrange your elements carefully, keeping the goal of effective communication in mind. When considering source images, look for unusual ideas — such as the use ofwicker for texture in the third example — that can enhance your design. These cre- ative touches can make a great difference.
finally, be sure to save intermediate files temporarily as you progress. If you change your mind about one of the elements you are including in a multilevel im- age— such as that in the third example — the interme- diate files will save a lot of re-creation time. Besides, saving along the way lets von experiment with various results. And with a little experimentation, the possibil- ities are endless. ■
The Earth Matters image is a derivative composition, with elements from original 1990 copyrighted works of Laurel Canty and Pieter Folkens/Earthvie.ws, Except for the dol- phins, all 24-bit images are from Texture City's professional image libraries.
Steven Blaize is owner of Creative Fire, a multimedia pre- sentations company, and co-owner of Texture City, dei'eloper of 24-bit backgrounds and textures. He is an author, lecturer, and consultant on Amiga and MS-DOS platforms, as well as the Assistant Director of the Amiga Video-Craphics Guild. Please contact him do AmigaWorld Editorial, 80 Elm St., Peterborough, NH 03458.
38 November 1992
law — whether you intend to sell your work, make it freely distributable, or place it in the public domain.
Y
ou've just downloaded a new program from your favorite bulletin-board system and are scanning through its documentation when you tome across this paragraph:
This program is (c)1991 by Joe Cool. This program is public domain and may be distributed only for noncom- mercial purposes.
If you don't know why the above statement is flawed, this article is for you. For now, let's just sav that Joe Cool would be in for a surprise if he tried to sue for copyright infringement.
Intellectual Property Rights
Most software developers feel a sense of attachment
to the software they create, especially if they depend on that software for their livelihood. The computer industry as it is today would not exist were it not for intellectual property rights — a term that includes copy- rights and patents.
A patent grants an exclusive monopoly for a limited period of time (the length of protection depends on the country) to the inventor of a new, nonobvious product. In exchange for litis monopoly — which allows the inventor to license the product to manufacturers ►■
BY ERIC GIGUERE
n 1 1 strati n l IV I Kl II l,Y\( n
AmigaWorld 39
K \ I) (I ^ 0 l R R i G II T S
and collect royalty payments — the in\emor discloses the complete plans for the invention to the govern- ment, which puts the plans on file. Once the patent period expires, anyone can use or sell the invention as lie sees fit.
Can software be patented? This question is being hotly debated even as you read this. The US Patent Office has already granted several patents on soft- ware and program algorithms. Whether the patents are enforceable will not be known until a few lawsuits have wound their wav through the legal system. In any case, obtaining a patent is a time-consuming and expensive operation, so the vast majority of developers depend on copyrights to protect their software.
A copyright grants the creator of an original work of expression — a book, a painting, a sculpture — the exclusive right to make (or to license the making of) copies of that work and to prevent others from using the work without permission. Unlike patents, copy- rights do not protect ideas, only the expression of ideas. Copyright protection also lasts longer, usually the lifetime of the creator (author) plus a fixed number of years.
Software can definitely be copyrighted, as can pro- gram documentation. Most Western commies consider software to be akin to literary work and deserving of the same protection. For most developers, copyright is the only viable wav to protect software.
Your Rights
Countries that are signatories to the Berne copyright treaty — including Canada and, recently, the US — do not even require that a copyright notice be present for the work to be protected. Copyright exists the moment a work is created. Not all countries, however, are mem- bers of the Berne convention. For many years, the United States was a signatory to the Universal Copy- right Convention (UCC), but not to the Berne conven- tion. For protection in non-Berne countries a copyright notice like this is required:
©1991 Joe Cool
The word copyright can be used in conjunction with or instead of the copyright symbol, and for maximum protection in certain countries the phrase "all rights reserved" should appear immediately after the notice:
Copyright ©1991 Joe Cool. All rights reserved.
The copyright notice should be displayed promi- nently within your source code and on the screen as well, il possible.
Note that the letter c in parentheses — like this: (c) — is not a valid substitute for the copyright symbol, so to be safe, be sure to use the word "copyright" in your pro- gram source code.
Although registering your copyright with the gov- ernment is not necessary, doing so affords you maxi- mum protection. In this way, you can sue lor statutory damages as well as actual damages in a copyright infringement case. Typically, this involves filling out a form describing the title and nature of the software and including two copies of the source code (or parts thereof) with a registration lee (less than S2(l in most cases).
Of course, copyright restrictions are useful only il
they are enforceable. While they certainly are. litiea- tion for copyright infringement is expensive, and if the violator has little or no money, about the best you can hope for is to stop the infringement. Unless your software is worth something substantial, there is little you can do in a practical sense to prevent infringe- ment.You must just have faith that your copyright will be respected.
A copyright can be bought and sold much like ma- terial property. The owner of a software copyright is usually the person or persons who wrote the software, unless it was done in the normal course of employ- ment, in which case the employer owns the software. The owner of the copyright is granted certain exclusive rights:
1) the right to make copies of the software in any form (this is the origin of the term copyright):
2) the right to sell, lend, give away, or otherwise license the use of those copies: and
3) the right to prepare derivative works.
As you can see, copyright protection enables software developers to peddle their wares to the public in the hope of making a profit and with reasonable expec- tation that their work will not be pirated. Kxcept for backup copies, anyone who makes and distributes copies Of copyrighted software without the permission of the copyright owner is liable to be sued for copyright infringement.
'Hie third right, that of preparing derivative works, is an important right. "Derivative" in this sense means works thai are based on one or more other works, as in new versions of programs. Even if you make substan- tial changes to a copyrighted program, the copyright to the new program as a whole belongs to the original copyright owner.
Public Domain
Copyright provides protection for a limited but lengthy period of time, especially where software is concerned. When a copyright expires, the work that was protected is said to enter the public domain, after which it is available for use by anyone for any purpose. In other words, it belongs to the public. Copyright protection can also be lost if the work is improperly or fraudulently registered.
Software can also be placed in the public domain by the copyright owner at any time before the copyright's expiration date. This should not be a decision lightly taken, however, because once copyrigbl proteclion is withdrawn, it is lost forever. While derivative works of public-domain materials can by copyrighted if the changes are sufficiently substantial (such as an English translation of Dante's Inferno drawn from the original texts), no one can copyright original works that have lapsed into the public domain.
It should be evident at this point that the phrase "this software is public domain" must be used with the utmost care in your software. Think it over carefully; clo you really want to relinquish your rights to the software? Remember that once your software is in the public domain, anyone can do anything with it. This includes selling il toothers without giving vou a single penny, or including it in commercial software without »
40 November 1992
Real-time 24-bit graphics for your Amiga or Video Toaster!
Introducing Visiona, a fully programmable real-time 24/32-bit 16.7 million coior graphics card for the Amiga 2000 and 3000 series computers (unlike the Harlequin and ImpactVision 24 cards, which are merely framebuffers.)
Visiona is based on the powerful Inmos G300 GaAS graphics processor which runs at speeds up to 135 MHz and utilizes up to 4MB high-speed (20ns!) on-board memory. Visiona supports programmable screen resolutions of 1024 x 1024 pixels in 16.7 million colors up to an impressive 5792 x 5792 pixel monochrome resolution.
Workbench-Emulator (included) allows you to open the Workbench (or any screen that uses the Intuition library) in resolutions up to 1280 x 1024! Visiona comes standard with many powerful utilities and several 24-bit color games!
Optional Visiona TV-Paint software turns your Amiga into a professional quality 24-bit 16.7 million color paint box system. TV-Paint also works together with the Video Toaster! In fact, the Visiona together with TV-Paint is the ideal combination to replace ToasterPaint, allowing you to edit your Video Toaster images on-screen in full 24-bit 16.7 million colors.
1024x768
-%¥
1280X1024
ST
Visiona requires an accelerated Amiga (68020 upwards) with one available Zoro II slot, hard drive. 3MB memory, and AmigaDOS 2.04 or later. Supports NTSC PAL, HDTV and D2MAC video standards.
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For more information contact your nearest Amiga dealer.
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Amiga. Workbench, tntuution and ArrvgaDQS are registered trademarks of Go mrnwJore- Amiga, fnc.
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giving you credit. (The ethics of such activities are debatable but beyond die scope of copyright law and this article.) 1 here is nothing wrong with placing vour software in the public domain, of course, bin you should consider the option thoroughly.
Freeware and Beyond
Another option is to give your software away without placing it in the public domain, ['here are a Dumber of reasons for wanting to do this, such as making sure no one makes radical changes lo your program without your approval. Copyright enters the picture here, since one of the rights attached to a copyright is the ability to distribute the program as the copyright owner sees lit. li is not unusual to see a statement immediately fol- lowing a program's copyright notice that says some- thing like this: "Permission is granted to freely dis- tribute and modify this program for non-commercial purposes only."
Copyrighted software with such a notice is usually re- ferred to as freeware or freely-distributable software, be- cause it can be freely shared with other users. (Techni- cally, all public-domain software is also freeware, as there are no copyright restrictions to prevent its being shared. However, the term freeware is not synonymous with the phrase public-domain software.) A program that can be shared, and for which a payment is requested if you use it after a trial period, is referred to as shareware.
If you are interested in making your software truly freely distributable (thus allowing it to be of greatest possible use to humanity), you may wish to examine what is known as the GNU Public License. Some- times called a "copyleft," the copyright statement is used on all software developed by the free Software foundation. A copy of the statement is included with ever)' FSF software product and is available separate- ly from the FSF (675 Massachusetts Ave., Cam- bridge, MA 02 139). Be aware that the Public License is somewhat controversial and thai you should exam- ine its ramifications carefully before using it in your software.
"lb implement the Public License, attach the follow- ing notices to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty. (At the very leasl, each file should have the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.)
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright ©19xx <name of author>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 1, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU- LAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Massachusetts Ave., Cam- bridge, MA 02139, USA.
In addition to these notices, you should include information on how to contact you by both electronic and pa pei' mail.
If she program is interactive, make it output a short notice like the following when it starts in an interac- tive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright © 19xx name of author. Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details, type "show w". This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type "show c" for details.
The example commands "show w" and "show c" should display the appropriate parts of the General Public
License. Of course, you may want to use Other com- mands, or even mouse clicks or menu items.
To make the process complete, you should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or vour school (if you are a computer-science student) to sign a copyright disclaimer for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample;
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program "Gnomovision" (a program to direct compilers to make passes at assemblers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice
For More Information
There are many books available dealing with copy- rights and other intellectual property issues. If you can- not End any at your local library (don't forget to check the section on book writing) a good bet is the nearest college or university library. Be sure to check the pub- lication dates on the books, as copyright law is always evolving. Software Protection by G. Gervaise Davis III (Van Nostrand Reinhold) is a good introductory book, if somewhat dated. For those with a keen interest in the subject area, The Law and Business of Computer Software edited by D.C. Toedt (Clark Boardman) is also a good choice. United States residents can obtain copyright- registration information by writing to the Register of Copyrights, Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.' 20559.
But remember: no book or article can substitute for professional legal advice. When in doubt, consult an intellectual property lawyer — your family lawyer is unlikely to have the expertise you need.
Bv the way, the example "copyright statement" at the beginning of this article illustrates what not to do if you wish to keep the copyright on your software. That statement might be titled nonsensical (because of the use of the words "public domain"), and copyright protection could be lost if an infringement case ever came to court. ■
Eric Giguere is the author oj Amiga Programmer's Guide to ARexx (Commodore/Amiga, 1991), and a member of the Computer Systems Group at the University of Waterloo. Write to him r/o the Computer Systems Group, ( University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Out., Canada N2L3G1,
42 November 1992
UBLISH
Producing a fresh, captivating
publication involves more than
pumping out prodigious amounts of
prose. We'll show you how to make the
right choices in terms of fonts, layout,
image manipulation, and more —
so you can get your point
across with style.
By Victor Osaka
Pan a che
ITS THE CONTENT that really matters, right? Who needs to design a newsletter?
In truth, both content and design are important, People are more apt to read your material if to the eve. If ihev imisl strain to read the text, however, thev will neither enjov it nor be in a state content. Imposing blocks of tiny or unreadable type may cause readers to skip over your text alto
Having seen scores of newsletters and produced one myself, I know that the quality and appearance of your newsletter depends less on your equipment or desktop- publishing program than on your sense ol design aes- thetics. Careful use of type and graphics make the real difference between a good design and a great one. This article oilers some design ideas and concepts to make your newsletter more effective, and shows how your Amiga software can help.
In describing some parts of the process, I'll refer to the black-and-white monthly I publish, the 3D Art Forum International (3DAFI) newsletter, which is pro- duced entirely on the Amiga. It is 12 to II pages (11x17 sheets folded in hall) and contains lots of high- resolution IFF images in addition to text. (To locate ven- dors of ike products mentioned, sec the "Mannfiictnrcrs'/Dc- veh/wrs' Addresses" list on p. 10-i.)
Good Design
To begin thinking about design, 1 suggest that you start a "good designs" (lie lor tear sheets and dippings from the most effective, attention-grabbing newsletters you see. You can refer to these for inspiration and education in the liner points of good design.
Think you don'l know what good design is? Really, at least on a subconscious level, you do — and you re- spond to it. What you must do is educate your conscious mind to implement what you already know. Ask your- 1
it is pleasing to absorb its gether.
tLLUSTKAl ED ISY MARY [OMAZZELLA
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self "What is it about these designs thai makes me like them?" You will find that you can indeed recognize good newsletter design.
Wln-n looking at the designs in your clip file, notice where your eye gravitates to. Your eyes should move log- ically over the page, first to the title of the newsletter, then toward the headline of the main article, and finally to other auxiliary information blocks. Also, pay attention to die Mow of in format ion I'nini page to page. Does your eye easily lind where the article continues?
Go ahead and model your newsletter after a success- ful publication, but do not copy il directly, and do not duplicate articles or images; they are copyrighted.
Your design sets I lie "personality" of your newsletter, which depends in large part upon your audience. To determine your graphic-design goals, first analyze your audience. Is il technically or artistically oriented, young or old, academic or otherwise? Review examples of newsletters, promotional, and trade magazines in its field of interest. Knowing what your readers encounter in oilier publications will help guide you to what they might expect from yours. In the end, though, it is you who must be pleased with the results.
Before implementing a design on the computer, cre- ate a "mockup" of it will) pencil and paper. The grid sys- tem helps you to determine your margins, column width and space between columns. Do a lew different grids and let l hem sit for a day. Then look at them again with a fresh eye tomorrow. The resulting template is important, as it forms the basis of all your future issues.
Programs such as Professional Page 3.0 (Gold Disk) and PageStream 2.2 {Soft-Logik) allow you to set your final grid system and apply it to all pages of your newsletter (except, probably, for the first page or cov- er). When you are readv to import the text of your ar- ticles, it will flow right into your pages automatically.
The Elements of Style
The ultimate goal of design is to facilitate effective com- munication. To achieve that goal, you must grab the reader's attention and hold it. The article titles should immediately catch the eye, pull quotes emphasize im- portant points, and graphic elements and images rein- force the content, not overrun il. The proper choice of type should earn' the reader through without fatigue.
And don't forge) air: A good design "breathes" visu- ally. It will have a balance of white space, type columns, headlines, and graphics. With careful use of white space, you can emphasize your titles and pull quotes and focus the reader's attention. You can manipulate balance by justifying the body text or by ragging on either side. Your choice will depend on the type of reader you arc catering to. Print out a sample ol vour design using two or three columns with a variety of column gaps between them. You may be surprised at how different gaps can affect the readability of your page.
As mentioned before, overly small type can drain your reader, but the issue of type goes beyond just choosing the right size. Different faces, line leading, and kerning variations can make a tremendous differ- ence in readability. When choosing a tvpe treatment, consider the final output method: I.inotronic output at 1 1' 10 dots per inch (dpi) mav give some type faces over- ly fine detail, and 300-dpi dot-matrix output can make sonic type look too dark.
Depending on the appearance you want to create for
your newsletter, you might choose a serif font (Palatine, for example) for the body text and a sans-serif Tout (such as Univers) for the headlines. In any case, a good design will minimize the variety of fonts used on a sin- gle page. Different type styles help to organize and em- phasize elements, but should not distract the reader. Using style tags will speed up the process of designing your newsletter by allowing quick and effortless global changes lor experimentation.
lb help determine a readable lout treatment, you will need an ASCII-format text file for "greeking." (Some say that it is best to use nonsensical type, but I just use the documentation from one of my programs.) The file should be large enough to lill your entire newsletter, and you should use 1 he same file for all your design iterations, flow ibis type into a page and run out samples using a variety of fonts ai the size of your newsletter. Vary die leading, kerning, and type faces for these tests and save them as a reference for future tvpe- design decisions.
On the Amiga, both Professional Page and PageStream use outline-font technology. This gives you the best qual- ity L\ pe loi an\ pi inter. I iv imend pun basing a vari- ety of fonts for your library. There are several hunched Adobe Type 1 fonts, which you can find on many Mac and PC BBSs. Both PageStream and Pro Page can easily convert these to Amiga-compatible outline fonts.
PageStream allows you to scale, stretch, twist and ro- tate outline fonts, abilities indispensable for creating dynamic headline type. You can use its drawing tools to create stylized filigree and then save it as an IFF im- age for use in anv layout program. You can get a similar effect with Gold Disk's Professional Draw and move the results into either Professional Page or PageStream, the latter ol which also allows von to manipulate your Professional Draw clips.
Outline-font technology makes it easy to include drop caps in your design. A drop cap is a very classy treatment that involves enlarging the lirsl letter ol' an article, making it anywhere from II to 20 points larger. For variety, try a reverse letter within a black box, or filigree surrounding the character.
More Than Words Can Say
Any images you include in your design should inii- malelv relate to the article, and you should carefully consider their placement and size. In general, images should accent the article — not the other way around.
Both PageStream and Pro Page can import super- bitmapped 24-bit images, but keep in mind that there is a point beyond which a higher resolution won't buy you any improvement in quality. Consider processing your very hi-res superbitmaps down tea more reasonable size using ASDG\ Art Department Professional (ADPro). I find that images are an important aspect of 3DAFI. 'I'lte cover, for example, incorporates a large, 3-D gen- erated IFF image.
Working with images in an Amiga desktop-publish- ing program can be difficult (the problem is related to hardware, not software.) Neither Professional fegc nor PageStream gives you a great representation on the screen, which makes it difficult to compose directly on lhe monitor. I fine! it best to print out images oversized beforehand, and then scale them down with a photo- copier to determine a good size. I then scale the on- screen image to match the photocopied piece, *■
4-1 November I<>1>2
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Out of Control.
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right from your PC instantly with Polaroid's Desktop Color Film Recorders.
You've got a big presentation. You've got pressures and deadlines. The last thing you need lo worry about are your slides. Will they look good? Will they come back right? And on time? Will they cost a fortune?
With a Desktop Color Film Recorder from Polaroid you can relax.
It's right at your desk so you can make last minute changes. And, it's easy to use. Both the CI-3000™ and the CI-5000™ are compatible with all leading DOS/Windows software packages. Plus, the CI-5000 works wilh Ihe Mac to bring you an even broader imaging range and slides at 4000 lines of resolution.
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Now supported on the Commodore Amiga'" byASDG. 608/273-6585
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P I' U I. I S II W I T II P A N A C II 1
[fyou are going to print 3-D reticle red images, you will probaly lintl them too dark. ADPro or Soft-Logik's BME (Bit Map Editor) can help you make them per- fect In addition, PageStream can import several Mac, PC, and Amiga formats.
I use both Professional Page and PageStream for newsletter production. The latest versions offer many powerful tools. Professional Page S.O's Genie function is ideal for newsletter layout design and its links to AD- PRO and Professional Draw 3.0 are fantastic. Pro Page is a joy to use when dealing with large image files, he- cause the images remain on the hard disk and not in the resulting file. PageStream, on the other hand, writes your image(s) directly into the file, so your
The Newsletter Design Process
o
• Determine who your readers are and what they would like from your publi- cation. If you don't know, conduct a survey.
• Create a design that communicates with clarity, interest, and directness. You might style your publication after another successful one (without copy- ing it, of course).
• Create a grid system that sets mar- gin and column widths in which to flow your text.
• After flowing the text files into
Design Checklist
• Do your eyes follow a logical pat- tern: first to the masthead, headlines, pull quotes and then subheads?
• Are the headlines and subheads in- triguing and to the point?
• Do the type face, type size and lead-
Working Conditions
WITH THE RIGHT hardware. Work- bench 2.0 allows for a larger working screen, which both Professional Page and PageStream can take advantage of automatically. Digital Micronics' DMI H = solver board upgrades your screen to a high-resolution graphic display. And personally, I am a firm believer in anti- radiation screens. I find that I can work much longer at the computer without fatigue using NoRad Corporation's anti- radiation screen, which I feel is the best. Accelerators and extra memory do wonders for desktop publishing. Don't be mistaken; your life will change dra- matically if you install an accelerator, preferably a 68040. This is especially
your pages, create your headlines and subheads, then create or input graph- ic elements and IFF images. Can you fit it all in without compromising the
design?
• Proof print the newsletter on a dot- matrix or laser printer. Check for major errors and omissions and evaluate your layout. Does it work visually?
• Send your files to a service bureau for Linotronic output or print them at the highest resolution of your printer. The results are your masters for me- chanicals), ready for the print shop.
ing make the text easy to read?
• Is there a good balance of white space, type columns, and graphics?
• Are the pull quotes and subheads effective and clear?
true if you use PageStream or Profes- sional Draw: Screen refreshes and file imports speed up to more reasonable rates.
Organization is paramount when you are dealing with many files. A good disk utility such as OPUS [INO- VATronics) or DiskMaster {Progres- sive Peripherals & Software] makes managing them much easier. Be sure to keep your original work files in archive. Programs like Quarterback [Central Coast Software) and Ami- Back [Moonlighter Software] are es- sential for irreplaceable files. I com- press my files with the public-domain program LZ before archiving them. !
graphics capabilities arc limited by the amount of RAM you have. And because the resulting PageStream file can be extremely large, storage can be a problem. PagcStrcam's forte, however, is its superior irealment of fonts and the ability to print superior halftone im- ages on the ink-jet printer. The latest version offers its own links to useful text- and image-editing programs. One caveat in using Pro Page and PageSueam togedi- er: The programs do nol talk to each other. You must create mechanicals (pasteup or composite) using final output from both — which I find easy to do.
Paper and Print
Paper selection is a very important decision if von want your newsletter to be of the highest quality. The right choice in paper can give you brighter type, crisper feel, and belter-folded edges. Don't take these things lightly; they can leave an indelible (although perhaps uncon- scious), impression on the reader.
Look for a paper that is very smooth, light and crisp, and dense enough so thai the printing on one side does not show through to the other. Make sure that the edges do not crack when folded in half. There are lit- erally hundreds of paper choices. Ask your local paper distributor or manufacturer for samples and availabil- ity in your area.
The printing method you use will depend upon the number of pieces you must distribute and the quality you wish to achieve. If you need to print more than a thousand pieces, consider paper or metal plates. Paper plate is a relatively inexpensive process, although the images it produces are generally not very crisp and contrasiy. The more expensive metal-plate method gives you beautiful image quality and clean, sharp type (only as good as your originals, of course). Because of the quality metal plates afford, in using them you should go to Linotronic output of your masters.
Simple photocopying is not recommended unless you require only a very small number of copies and im- ages are nol an important element in your design. Al- though laser copying is a bit more expensive, it is worth it. I have found the quality to be superior — as good as metal plates in most cases.
I create all the masters (mechanicals) for the 3DAFI newsletter with ffewfcttAic'Aanfs DeskJet printer. Because die newsletter's cover is so important, I send it to a service bureau for Linotronic output at 1250 resolution and 120 line screen. All the originals then go to a print shop, where die)' are output on a high-quality laser copier.
The issues involved in publication design and pro- duction arc vast and cannot be adequately addressed in one article. For more guidance, I recommend you look into a number of sources. The Designer's Guide to Text Type, bv Jean Callan King and Tony Esposito (Van Nostrand/Reinhoid, 1990), is a time-saving compila- tion of several dozen type Taces, styles, and leading combinations. tVeio.sle Iters — From The Desktop by Roger C. Parker (Venlana Press, 1990) is filled with excellent information and examples, ■
Victor Osaka is editor and publisher of the 3D Art Forum In- ternational newsletter, which serves the Amiga 3-D educational Inundation that he founded, lie is also president of the oi-ga- nizalion. overseeing support, information, and discount ojjers to members. Write to him at 13-11 Orean Ave., Suite 349, San- ta Monica, CA 90401-1066, or call 310/398-7649.
46 November 1992
Digging in to DOS
A SERIES THAT EXPLORES THE AMIGA'S RELEASE 2 DISK OPERATING SYSTEM
This, our first installment, investigates things you should
Release 2 incorpo- rates by fur the most significant set
of changes to Amiga- DOS since the operating system was released as ver- sion 1 .0 in 1 98.5. While some modifications may not be readily apparent, they alter some of the "rules" we have come to take for granted.
One area that includes many such changes is the boot procedure. In all 1.x Workbench versions. Kickstan reads the user preferences from the DEV'S; sys- tem-configuration file before it opens the initial CLI win- dow. By the time it begins to execute the s: startup- sequence script, Kickstan has ahead;' opened a Work- bench screen thai conforms to such user-defined pref- erences as screen type (interlaced or noninterlaced) and font (Topaz 8 or 9). Editing the startup-sequence file is a time-honored tradition in Workbench 1.x versions, and there are not many ways to generate problems bv adding commands to it.
In Release 2, however, the whole system of prefer- ences has changed drastically. Settings are stored in in- dividual files on the Workbench disk in the svs:Prefs/env-
know before you modify your AmigaDOS startup-sequence.
archive/sys drawer, which bears the logical- device name ENVARC:. The startup-sequence script creates the env and env/sys directories in the RAM disk and assigns ENV: to RAM:env. It then copies all files and directories from EN- VARC: to ENV:, including the pref- erence files, which go to ENV:sys. Later in the startup-sequence, the IPrefs program executes. IPrefs not only reads die prefer- ences files in ENV:sys and establishes the initial set- tings, but also watches those files and alters the set- tings when it detects changes. When you select the Use option from one of the Preferences editors, a new ver- sion of the preference file is written to ENV:sys. IPrefs reads the new" file from there and changes the setting. Because ENV: is assigned to the RAM disk, this change lasts only until you reset or turn oil' your computer. When you select die Save option, however, the file also copies to the ENVARC: directory, making the change permanent.
This new procedure works very well and has a num- ber of benefits. It allows Commodore to easilvadcl new i
BY SHELDON LEEMON
ILLUSTRATED BY BARTI IN 5 IAHIF.lt
AmigaWorld 47
DOS
0
preference items, such as sound or Postscript Prefer- ences, without a ROM upgrade. This scheme also serves ;ts :i model for third-party hardware and software developers. By following ( lommodore's example, com- panies can create their own preference editors with the same look and feel as Commodore's, and use their own programs to monitor the preferences files that these programs create.
Because Kickstarl automatically copies the contents of the env-archive directory to ENV:, you can even save archival copies of environment variables to this direc- tor)'. By thus creating permanent versions of these vari- ables, you need not re-create them at each session with the SETENV command,
Screening Room
As with the old Kickstart, IPrel's must set screen pref- erences (such as mode, font, and overscan) before any screens or windows open. If a Workbench screen opens before the new preferences are established, Kickstart must close that screen before IPrefs can open one thai matches the preference settings. The problem is that Workbench cannot close a screen containing windows (such as tile Shell window) that it does not directly con- trol. To avoid this situation, the new Kickstart does not open any display until it is absolutely necessary to out-
Programs in the WBStartup drawer run automatically when you boot — usually in the order in which you added them.
Adding the ToolType
DO NOT WAIT tO
a programtcon instructs WBStartup not to wait for the program to finish before starting the next o»;e in the drawer.
i
ion
Blanker (To&l)
21
Scri flrchiv.
Readabl Hritais!
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(X P0PDP=NB |
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(X.POPKEY=ctp[ att b |
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Del [DONOTURIT |
Save
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put text from a program or to display an error message or requester. That is why the initial screen stays blank so much longer under 2.0 than under 1.,'i.
If you examine the 2.0 startup-sequence file, you will sec that output from commands coming before IPrefs is either suppressed with a Quiet switch or redi- rected to NIL:. If you put one of your own commands at the beginning of the 2.0 startup-sequence and if that command generates some lexl before ll'rcfs es- tablishes the screen and font preferences, the Shell will be forced to open a window on a default .screen. Then, when IPrefs runs, it will be unable to close the old Workbench screen containing the Shell window, and will complain by issuing the Following mysterious mes- sage in a requester:
Intuition is attempting to reset the Workbench screen. Please close all windows except drawers.
If you get this message every time you boot your sys- tem, you have probably added a command line some- where in the startup-sequence before IPrel's. The simple solution is to redirect the output of anv new command line to NIL:, if the program is called MYCOMMAND, for example, and it takes the command arguments "ar- guments," change the command line from
MYCOMMAND arguments
to
MYCOMMAND >NIL: arguments
The only other time you may see this message is when you change screen or font preferences after Opening a program thai puis a window up on the Workbench screen, such as VirttsX or the Shell. Intu- ition cannot reconfigure the Workbench screen until all "visitor" windows are closed.
Here, Not There
'["fie new preferences scheme is not die only thing to keep in mind when modifying your startup-sequence lile. Lots of crucial system functions (such as monitor descriptions) are included in this script in 2.0, and Commodore will add more in the future. The more important it is to run the commands in the startup file in the proper order, the greater becomes l he risk of bringing the whole system to a halt by careless editing of this file.
To minimize this risk, Release 2 introduces the con- cept of a "user-startup" file. If yon put such a script fife in the S: directory, Kickstart executes it automat- ically as part of the startup procedure. Commodore advises all users to add new commands and assign- ments to this file, rather than editing the startup-se- quence file. It is also a good idea to make sure that programs designed to modify the startup script (such as hard-drive installation scripts) perform their oper- ations on the user-startup file instead of tfie startup- sequence file.
Of course, modifying either the user-startup or the startup-sequence file requires some familiarity with text editors and the AmigaDOS command interface. Because one goal of the new operating svslem was to free the user from having lo deal widi nonvisual, user- hostile interfaces, Release 2 introduces a completely icon-driven alternate method of automatically run- ning certain programs ever)' time the computer boots. *■
48 November 1992
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The new Workbench disk contains a new drawer called WBStartup. To autonmtiailly rim a program each time you start, just drag its icon into the WB- Startup drawer. It's as simple as that.
You should know, though, that programs in the WBStartup drawer execute in the order in which they appear in the directory. This generally corresponds to the order in which you dropped them into the di- rectory. You can see this order by calling the names with the LIST command (LIST Sys:WBstartup) from the CLI. (11IR is not of use here, because it alphabet- izes the list.)
If the order of execution is an issue — if one program will not run unless ARexx has been started, for exam- ple— you can usually modify it by dragging all the liles in the WBStartup drawer to the RAM disk, deleting them from the WBStartup drawer, and then dragging them back to WBStartup in the correct order. If this does not work, you may have to add the command that runs first to the s: user-startup script, which executes before the WBStartup icons.
Another point to keep in mind is that the system waits for each program to finish before it launches the next one. If any program does not finish within a cou- ple of seconds, Workbench pops up the requester:
Program 'NameofprogranV has not yet returned.
Should I wait some more?
You can instruct the system not to wait for a program to finish by adding a ToolType line reading IJONOT- WA1T to the program's icon. Just click once on the pro- gram icon, select Information from the Tools menu, click the New button under TooHypes, type DONOT- WAIT hit the Return key, and click on Save.
Commodities programs such as Blanker and Click- ToFronl (found in the 'Ibols drawer) make excellent candidates for the WBStartup drawer, bin many of these programs pop up a settings window when von run them, even if the settings are saved just as you like them. If you add the ToolType CXPOl'l ]>=\b to the icon of a Commodities program, it will not open a set- tings window when it runs.
When you think about it, you']] probably come up with lots ol rypcs of programs that you want to run au- tomaticallv; ARexx. virus checkers, keyboard enhancers, appointment calendars, a clock, and so on. Bv using the WBStartup drawer, you can modify your boo) procedure with the greatest of ease, and with no fear of generating some obscure error in an arcane script lile. ■
Sheldon Leemon, a respected authority on the Amiga, isfinish-
in<rn book about Workbench 2.0. When lie's not meriting, wit inn find him at Slipped Disk, a Detroit-area Amiga dealership.
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50 November 1992
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Animation
52 November 1992
BY GENE HAMM
For animators who aren't professional artists, rotoscoping is a neat trick for creating smooth, high-quality animations.
toscoping — the process of tracing over live action, frame by frame, and turning it into a moving drawing — is probably one of the more controversial and least understood techniques in animation. But while profes- sional animators are divided over its mer- its, computer animation buffs who are not accomplished artists can get a lot of mileage out of dm c\i ellenl le< hniquc.
The reason that rotoscoping is a dirty word to many of the pros is that they view the technique as a crutch for people who cannot draw the human body. Yet other shrewd practitioners view it as a handy trick when they need to quickly capture the essence of an action or gesture. Let's leave the debate to the academy and move on. Whatever its pros and cons, rotoscoping is used by animators more than they care to admit — and often to great effect.
Rotoscoping can result in very beautiful animation, as in ilte old Betty Boop cartoons and 101 Dalmatians, or in awkward, jerky movements, as in the movie Lord uf Ike Rings. The trick to rotoscoping is lo know when lo be interpretive with live action and when to be Ulna!. 'Hie fundamental rule to keep in mind is this: If live action is not altered in some significant way, it is not animation. So, if the animation appears so real that it seems live, save yourself a lot of work and just use live action.
Generally, literal rotoscoping is good for (pardon the pun) "inanimate" objects, where the mechanical look is a plus, while interpretive rotoscoping is best for humans and animals, where smooth, fluid movement is required. Often, the best rotoscoping Jesuits are obtained when the animator — working inierpulivelv — looks at the live action to estimate not where the out- line of a figure is, but where the skeleton is. The skele- ton is what is traced, with the animator then dressing
AmigaWorld 53
ROTOSCOPIN (J
the skeleton in whatever flesh he or she chooses. Let's lake a look at a few examples of how each method has been used 10 produce some very effective — and not-so- effective— results.
Lessons of Rotoscoping Past
Cab Calloway's exaggerated, mbbery dancing was well suited to animation. In several of the Betty Boop car- toons, animators used Calloway's timing, altitude, and gestures as reference points to create lluid dancing char- acters. One of the cartoons, "Minnie the Moodier," is a good illustration of interpretive animation because the rotoscoping employed in ii transformed Calloway — a tall, thin man — into a roly-poly walrus. It was easier for a man to act as if he were a walms — leaving the rest to an ani- mator's imagination — than it was to find a real walrus dancing on its hind legs and rotoscope him literally.
On the other hand, literal rotoscoping was put to excellent use in Walt Disney's 101 Dalmatians. Cruella De Yifs car was a white cardboard model, outlined in black so that the animators could see it clearly. Shot in Erame-by-frame stop motion and copied directly onto eels, the car looked just like a drawing — without any help from the animator, Cruella was then animated by hand, sitting behind the wheel of the car, and the eels were painted and photographed with the background. This is as literal as rotoscoping gets. (In recent years. Disney has replaced cardboard models with computer- generated ones. Amiga users can choose to digitize models or build them with 3-D programs, depending on the kind of software and hardware they use and the complexity of the model.)
Finally, the film Lord of the Rings seives as a caution- ary example of what not to do when rotoscoping. The entire film was live action, and the individual frames were blown up to 8x10 photographs. Some scenes were copied directly onto eels, while others were traced by hand. The film contains a lot of swordplay and fast action — so fast that, at times, a sword arm becomes an indistinct blur or disappears altogether.
Faced with tracing blurs and invisible arms, first-time animators did the logical thing: They drew anatomi- cally correct, perfectly foreshortened arms in the math-
ematically correct position of the arc of a sword swing. Each individual drawing was an exquisite work of art. The trouble, however, was thai when projected at film speed, the animation lurched along as if it were some- thing out of the movie Night of the Living Dead.
What went wrong? The animators neglected to re- member the basics of "squash and stretch." You must keep in mind thai the faster something moves, the more it stretches out. .As an arm picks up speed, it looks deformed. But don't perform cosmetic surgery on it — draw it deformed! \Vhcn it goes even faster, an arm turns into a streak, so draw a streak. Although the in- dividual drawings may look strange, the animation will be a lot smoother because it is the cumulative effect that is important, not the individual frames.
Rotoscoping Basics
To rotoscope on the Amiga, you need a VCR (a cam- corder is best), a digitizer, and an animation/paint pro- gram. Personally, I find the best digitizer for my jobs is A-Squared Distributions Live! because it captures multiple frames from a VCR in real lime. Once the images are grabbed, I use Electronic Arts' DeluxePaint FV to process and phi}- them back. (See the list on p. 104 for vendors' addresses.)
Shoot your subject against a blank wall. The wall should contrast with the subject: A light subject calls for a dark wall, and a dark subject requires a light wall. Forget about subtlety in acting for rotoscoping. Ham it up and exaggerate movements. Tell your subject to pretend to be a stage actor and to make broad sweep- ing gestures. What appears ridiculously overdone in live action will look completely natural and