Those Other Publishing Programs

by Val F. DeCot

You know which ones they are. You've actually used them, and many still do. Those other personal
publishing programs, in addition to GEOS, that are available for your use on the Commodore
computer.

It all started with the Print Shop, by Broderbund. The Print Shop could be used to design greeting
cards, banners, stationary and signs. This was the very first program to really popularize home
publishing. You see the results everywhere today; there is a Print Shop program for just about
every computer platform. The program is simple to use, foolproof, and we have an immense
collection of additional graphics available for use with it. In addition to the Print Shop there is the
Print Shop Companion, which allows you to edit and create graphics, borders, and fonts, and even
design and make your own monthly calendar.

PrintMaster and PrintMaster+ are two programs from Unison that are very similar to Print Shop
and offer many of the same features. PrintMaster lets you add multiple fonts to a page and includes
an on screen preview of your finished work. With either PrintMaster or PrintMaster + you can also
view your graphics on screen. A large collection of graphics are available, along with programs to
convert the graphics between Print Shop and PrintMaster format.

The Newsroom from Springboard lets you create you own newsletter and include graphics of your
own design or from the Newsroom's extensive library of graphics disk. This program is very easy
to use. Text will fit and flow around your graphics, and you can add headlines and just about any
other touches you might find in a regular news paper.

Certificate Maker is another product by Springboard and it can be used to make any one of over
200 different awards. Each certificate can be customized by selecting different borders and fonts of
various sizes. Your creations can be saved as a file on a disk for future use.

Awardware by Hi-Tech Expressions will do everything that Certificate Maker will do and more.
You can create award ribbons, tickets, coupons checks, and more. Hi-Tech Expressions also
produces Print Power which is another Print Shop clone that will help you create and print signs,
cards, stationary, and banners. This company is also responsible for a series of personal publishing
programs such as Partyware, which will print out banners, party hats, ribbons, place mats, cards,
and more. It will also maintain a data base of names and phone numbers, birth dates and other
important information. Heartware is used to produce friendship cards and love notes. While
Cardware, well! you guessed it, creates greeting cards.

There are two other desktop publishing programs that deserve mention, but both need articles of
their own to explain their many uses and features. The first is Outrageous Pages by Batteries
Included. Outrageous Pages can be used to create and print invitations, calendars, name tags,
certificates, and newsletters. The other program by Batteries Included is Paperclip Publisher. This
program is for the serious Desktop Publisher. It comes with its own utilities, demo, hints, and tons
of clip art. 

There are many other programs out there that do many of the publishing and printing jobs that I've
already written about. Some of them are Let's Make Greeting Cards, Let's Make Signs and
Banners, and Let's Make Stationary and Calendars by Melody Hall (remember them?). There's
Button and Badge Maker by IntraCorp. For our younger members we have the Muppets Print Kit,
Looney Tune Print Kit, Sesame Street Print Kit, and the Jetsons / Flintstones Print Kit, all by Hi-
Tech Expressions.

Believe me when I say that I've just scratched the surface when it comes to great
publishing/productivity programs for our venerable C-64's and C-128's. As you can see, there are
some good to excellent non-GEOS publishing programs still available for our machines and many
are available from individuals and even businesses which still carry Commodore products.

(From The Interface, newsletter of Fresno Commodore User Group via Input Output, newsletter of the Arizona
Commodore Users Group, 11/96, via the Commodore Information Center
http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html)