Return to the Article Index
Return to the Main CD Index

Improving GeoPublish (Part Two)
by Bruce Thomas

So you read the first portion of this series and said to yourself "What's the point?". Moving Guidelines and setting gutters just seemed like extra work, and no editor needs more work. Well, this is true but those little changes allow you to get more information on each page. There is another geoPublish trick that also allows more info on your pages and we'll take a look at this method now.

If you have been around the 64 scene for any length of time you may remember when Berkeley Softworks ran fancy ads in all of the C= magazines. With the introduction of GeoPublish this trend continued and brought us one ad in particular that I felt displayed a flaw in the way geoPublish handles text and graphics (or at the least in the way in which people placed text and graphics).

Following along through the tutorial from part one we get to the point where it is time to add the graphic image. The prescribed method is to go to Page Layout Mode and create another region with the Open Region tool. This works fine if your image is of a blocky type, as the text re-formats around the region, but leaves lots of empty space if you are using an odd shaped picture.

This brings us back to the Berkeley ad I mentioned above which featured a giraffe in the middle of two columns of type. Looking at the ad you can see the same poor guideline settings were used as the tutorial suggests for the Jelly Roll. We will redo this ad to incorporate all of the changes discussed so far and show just how much more text can fit on a page.

Figure 1 (preview mode) & Figure 2 (zoom mode) show a reasonable facsimile of the original ad. The basic layout was created using the Master Page '2C Divider' Library file and the Page Layout '2C Title U' Library file. After some manipulation of the guidelines and regions I had the desired layout and was able to import my graphic (a Giraffe from The Newsroom publishing package by Springboard). I poured this article into the text regions, added the headline and separator graphic and had a completed page in no time flat. The screen captures were made with GeoWizDump and the thumbnail image (Figure 3) was created with (surprise!) Thumbnail from RUN's GEOS Power Pak disk after printing the 'Publish page to disk with the Paint Pages printer driver.

Following my own advice I used Roma for the text and Mega Roma for the headline. This method allows a newsletter page to be laid out with very little effort and in a very short time. It does, however, waste a lot of space on your page and may lead to your newsletter taking up more pages than it needs.

To get around this we will do two things. First, we will not use the Library files that came with 'Publish but create our own Master Page and Page Layout templates. Second, we will not create a region for the graphic but will utilize the paragraph formatting of the 'Publish Editor to flow the text around our images.

This takes a lot of careful planning and counting but will greatly reduce the amount of wasted space around your images. There is also a lot of mode swapping as you must go from Editor to Graphics mode and back to get the fit you want.

Let's start by creating a new document and go to Master Page mode. Set your horizontal quidelines at 1/2", 2" and 10 1/2". Set Vertical Guidelines at 1/2", 4 1/4" and 8". Go to Page Layout Mode and choose the Options Menu. Select Set Gutters and make your Left and Right Gutters 10. Now make the three regions needed for the Headline and text.

You can import your text by selecting the 'T' icon in the toolbox and adding it to the two regions. Now choose Page Graphics mode and add the title. Select the 'T' icon and choose the font, size (about 80) and other attributes you desire. I generally choose Center for the text and make the box the size I want (in this case from side to side) so the text will not get cut off. Add the underline somewhere between the bottom of your headline and the guideline at the 2" mark.

Make sure your picture is in a photo scrap and choose the Bitmap Placement Tool. Move into the middle of the page and place your graphic. You can now select it (with the Arrow tool), go into the Attributes and resize it however you wish (select Stretched & Scaled and make it a good size). To match our faux ad I am going to stretch it down from 3 1/2" to the 9" mark and from about 2 3/4" to 5 3/4" on the horizontal scale (Figure 4).

Now is when you need to get a piece of paper beside you and get ready to count. Go into Zoom mode and locate the top of your image. Make note of the line of text directly above the graphic - you will want to make this the end of a paragraph. Make note also of the ruler position of the left edge of the graphic - you will set the Right Margin of the new paragraph 1 or 2 ruler notches short of this. Now, scroll down the page and count how many lines of text the graphic is tall - this is how many lines you need at that margin setting.

At present we are only looking at the left side of the graphic. We want to go into Editor mode and make the changes to our margins in the left column (you will need to reset the 'p' marker for indents as well as adjusting the right margin for as many lines as you counted). This will change the positioning of the text in the right column (as things move down) so we will have to go back to graphics mode. Once you are back in graphics mode scroll down the left side of the graphic and make sure your text lines up as you want (if it doesn't, go back to the Editor and make adjustments). The left column must be left alone once you start working on the right column.

Once you are happy with the left side start at the top of the image again and work down the right side. You will be counting the lines of text and deciding where to set the left margin of your text this time (Figure 5).

I know that this may sound like a lot of work but, once you've done it a few times, you will find it quite easy to do with very little mode swapping. You will also find that, if your graphics are odd shapes like our giraffe, you can fit a lot more text on the page (compare Figure 6 with Figure 3). Your graphics will appear to be part of the page instead of looking like a separate island.

Two very useful utilities for geoPublish users are Toolkit (by Rick Kranz) and GetItWrite V2.0 (by Joseph Thomas). Toolkit allows you to make font and ruler changes in your entire document and so avoid the pain of printing a page with one section in BSW 9 point. GetItWrite will check your disk and tell you if all of the text files needed for your 'Pub document are on the disk. This is very handy if you copy your files to an REU and want to make sure you have them all before firing up 'Publish. You can also change the name of a GeoWrite document and update the 'Pub file at the same time.

GeoPublish is such a powerful program that it takes a long time to learn how to use all of its' features. Hopefully these articles have helped show a couple of methods to improve your creations and save space at the same time. While it will still take time and practice to get good at using these methods I hope that they will inspire you to come up with some of your own geoPublish Improvements.