THE MANUAL MAKER A Shareware GEM by Craig W. Daymon Reviewed by Milt Creighton Most of the software reviews you find in computer magazines are of commercial products and CURRENT NOTES is no exception. There is a very good reason for this: commercial software can cost upwards of several hundred dollars and magazines have a responsibility to their readers to suggest which packages are a good value and which ones to avoid. As a result, public domain and the less well-known shareware programs get short shrift (at least in the magazines) since they are available for little or no cash outlay. That does not mean that the PD and shareware authors are not valued or their programs not used by many of us on a regular basis; in fact, I have found the opposite to be true. It is just that the magazines do not feel the same responsibility to review a program which can be had for little or nothing. There are exceptions, however, and The Manual Maker is one. Every now and then a public domain or shareware program appears that is absolutely indispensible of just plain fun and, when that happens, the magazines should tell you about it. For those of you who are avid telecomputer users and regularly rake through the data libraries on boards such as GEnie and Compuserve, this review will probably come as no surprise. But for others who do not make use of their ST serial ports except as dust collectors and have no means of deciphering the cryptic notes in magazine and user group public domain libraries, perhaps this review may make you aware of a nifty program with a lot of utility. Will it be a good one for you? That you'll have to decide for yourself. By and large, most commercial programs come with manuals. Some are typeset and handsomely bound while others are only a few pieces of paper stapled together. Manuals vary in size and shape, but one of the more popular sizes is 5.5" wide by 8.5" high. Problems soon arise because many commercial programs that offer subsequent upgrades (to correct bugs or expand the features of the original) will place a text file (often called READ_ME.DOC) covering the changes on the disk. If you print out the file on your printer, the chances are that it will not match the page size of your original manual. In addition, many public domain and shareware manuals are placed on disk as text files and must be printed before they can be employed to help you learn the program. When you print these text files, you'll end up printing on one side of an 8'' x 10.5'' sheet of paper. If you collect programs the way I do, you'll soon run out of convenient storage for the paper. I am forever stuffing loose papers in my desk drawer and then dumping the contents a month later when I can no longer remember what they are for. It's inefficient and expensive and I think Manual Maker may be just what I need to straighten out the mess. Manual Maker is designed to take ascii text files from disk and print them on both sides of the paper on manual-sized pages which can then be stapled together or hole-punched and placed in a notebook. The features of Manual Maker include selectable font sizes, embedded commands for centering, underlining, and bold-facing lines of text, left and full-justified text, and even the printing of a cover sheet using multiple fonts and font sizes. After clicking on the opening screen you will be presented with a dialog box which permits the selection of the font and font-size to be used in the main body of text. After selecting a font, click on done and another dialog box appears which permits page alignment and configuration. The page alignment feature is used to ensure the page is centered on the paper so that when the page is folded, the fold-line runs down the center of the page. A printer alignment test is included to confirm the proper selections. This screen also permits setting the overall page size and margins so you have some control over how the product will look. This is a major change from earlier versions of the program. It is also possible to load and save different configurations. The manual configuration is provided with the program. Make certain you load a configuration or you may have trouble getting your printer to print. There is an apparent bug in the most recent version of the program (1.0) which prevents printing unless a configuration has been loaded. After settling on a configuration click on the "All set to continue..." button and you will be taken to the Options screen. The Options box permits insertion of left and right page headers. They can be identical or different, but they will not override headers embedded in the text file. It also converts tabs to your choice of 4 or 8 spaces, sets the page numbering to begin at whatever number you desire and allows you to select full or left-justified text in the main body of the manual. Clicking on "FINISHED" takes you to The Cover screen which permits the design of a cover for your manual (if you want one) using variable-sized fonts for up to four lines of text. Clicking on either of the buttons at the bottom will start the printing operation. Manual Maker will then print the pages with each page occupying half of an 8'' x 10.5'' sheet of paper. For example, the left side of the sheet might have page 2 and the right side page 7. When the printing is completed on one side, you will see a dialog box which instructs you to turn the pages over for printing on the reverse side. Ensure that the pages will enter the printer in the reverse order that they entered for the front-side printing. Also, if you have a printer with a tractor feed, make certain you leave a blank sheet at the conclusion of front-side printing for threading through the tractor for back-side printing. If you have an Atari laser printer, the sheets go in face up (in reverse order) with the top of the page to the right of the drawer for back-side printing. Once you've satisfied yourself that you're ready to resume, click on the box and the second side will be printed. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when using this program. First, you cannot use it with a formatted word processing file. It must be saved as an ascii file first. Second, if you wish to use the embedded command feature to obtain the available type-styles, you will have to insert them yourself with a word processor or text editor and then save the file again as an ascii file. The embedded commands operate over an entire line of text so you may not underline or bold-face a single word within a line of text. You may, however, combine several attributes for an entire line. An entire line may be centered, underlined, and bold-faced, for example. Embedded commands begin with an ampersand (the flag) and are followed by a capital letter identifier. Therefore, they will not be stripped out along with the control codes when you save an ascii file from a word processor. Keep in mind what the ampersand does in Manual Maker and avoid using it elsewhere in the text file or you may get some unexpected results. In addition to the embedded commands already identified, it is possible to set the left and right-page headers from within the file and to set a forced page-break. Manual printing is just one of the uses for Manual Maker. You can also use it to print your own booklets (or books for that matter since it can handle documents up to 1,000 pages). It might be neat to send a friend a letter in book form, for example. Since the size of the page is variable along with the margins, there are many other unexplored uses for Manual Maker. (screen 7) Craig Daymon (33 Chestnut Valley Drive, Doylestown, PA 18901) has plans to expand Manual Maker in the future. In particular, he intends to add the ability to insert half-page sized graphics (IMG format), multiple fonts, a preview of the printed page(s), and exact TAB locations. Whether he does or not will depend largely on you. Shareware authors depend on contributions to gauge the popularity and worth of their product. If you obtain a shareware product and find yourself using it, send the author a contribution. It encourages him to improve his product. Most of them ask for only a modest sum and Craig would be quite pleased with $10 if you like and use Manual Maker. I think it's a bargain at twice or three times that! My check went out to him this morning. On the downside (for some of you), the system employs GDOS fonts and printer drivers (which must be acquired separately). For those of you who know what that means, no further explanation is necessary. For those of you who are GDOS-ignorant, no further explanation will suffice. However, if you haven't yet wrestled the dreaded GDOS-monster to the ground be aware that the set-up is not a simple matter and, while the results can be extraordinary (depending on the quality of the graphics output of your printer), they can also be very slow. Still, there are a number of GDOS-based programs on the market now including Microsoft Write, WordUp, Easy Draw, Fontz!, and Timeworks Publisher. In addition, the GDOS-replacement program G+Plus makes the set-up considerably easier. So, if you already have one of the above programs and know how to write an ASSIGN.SYS file or have G+Plus to steal the ASSIGN.SYS from another application, Manual Maker may be a useful and welcome addition to your software library. The bottom line: Manual Maker is not an indispensible program, but it is one of the niftiest ideas I have seen lately. If a commercial software house had gotten the idea first (or bought it from the author) you would have had to pay upwards of $30 for it -- and be happy to do so. The fact that it resides in the Current Notes public domain and shareware library (I have also seen it on GEnie [file #8156] and it's probably on Compuserve too) is a stroke of good fortune for the rest of us. Thanks, Craig!