New Programs Give Typeset Look

A printed book has a more professional look than a typewritten manuscript, and a newspaper has a more professional look than a typed newsletter.

It is a small thing: a matter of character spacing to account for the difference between narrow letters and wide, a process known as proportional spacing. Yet minor as it may seem, it is quite complicated to achieve and thus usually limited to publications that have been typeset with expensive, computer-driven equipment.

For as little as $195, however, you can raise the quality of the printed output of your personal computer from typewriter to typeset, from amateur to professional.

The product that makes that difference is appropriately named MagicPrint, published by Computer EdiType Systems, 509 Cathedral Parkway, New York, N.Y. 10025, telephone (212) 222-8148.

MagicPrint is available alone or as the basis for two more comprehensive programs, MagicBind, $250, and MagicIndex, $295. All are the work of Ben H. Jone, a quiet young man who sells his products only by mail.

Printer Needed

They work with nearly all word-processing programs and come in a standard version and a WordStar version. The programs are available in a wide range of formats to work with 16-bit computers using either PC-DOS/MS-DOS or CP/M-86 operating systems and 8-bit computers using the CP/M operating system.

In addition to the Magic software, you must have a Diablo or Diablo-compatible printer or a NEC thimble printer. The NEC, Diablo and most Diablo-compatibles are letter-quality printers producing fully formed characters and capable of proportional character spacing. There also are a few Diablo-compatible dot-matrix printers available with which the programs will work, including the Toshiba 1351, Brother 2024L and Dynax DM40.

The MagicPrint, MagicBind and MagicIndex software is able to control these printers to produce exactly the proper character and word spacing to give typeset quality printing. (Aside from proportional spacing, the quality of dot-matrix printing is not improved beyond what the printer normally produces.)

For instance, the programs give you a choice of three positions each for subscripts and superscripts (like the small numerals that are used to footnote text), allowing you to adjust the appearance to accommodate different line spacings.

Provides ‘Kerning’

The software also gives you true line-centering instead of the approximate centering that practically all commercial word-processing packages offer. Try centering two lines that are one character apart in length and you’ll find that the extra character protrudes from one end or the other. With MagicPrint, the space required for the extra character is evenly divided between each end of the line.

In addition to true proportional character spacing, MagicPrint also provides “kerning”, which allows 10 ways of adjusting the space between characters. You can apply it to the entire document or just to the space between two letters so that, for instance, your boeuf bourguignon comes out just as it would in France, with the “o” placed flush against the “e” in boeuf. And speaking of France, MagicPrint allows you to place foreign accent marks exactly where they belong.

The features go on and on. MagicPrint also automatically numbers pages and chapters, placing the numbers exactly where you want them and alternating positions between even and odd-numbered pages if you wish. It also gives you great control over “headers” at the top of each page and “footers” at the bottom.

Footnotes, up to 15 per page, can also be automatically positioned by MagicPrint.

You can print proportionally spaced, justified columns of type on a page--as many columns as you wish, and each can be a different width. You can also create “windows” in the type to make room for artwork; a half-column picture or one that occupies part of two columns. Imagination and good taste are your only limits.

The more elaborate your layout, the more trial and error will be involved in perfecting it. For instance, the columnar printing works by printing one column then rolling back to the top of the paper, resetting the margin and printing the next. You’ll have to count lines and insert the proper rollback command at the proper point to get it right.

If you purchase MagicBind or MagicIndex, you get all the features of the next lower-priced program plus a series of enhancements.

MagicBind, the first enhancement, adds a sophisticated data file merging capability to MagicPrint, allowing you to customize a wide variety of correspondence by inserting names from a mailing list or inserting “boilerplate” text. It will also pause at designated spots, allowing you to type in whatever you wish.

It also provides a mailing label printing module as well as a feature that will automatically renumber the chapters, sections and pages of a document as you move sections of text around during editing.

Purchase of MagicIndex gives you all the features of MagicPrint and MagicBind plus the ability to automatically generate tables of contents and indexes.

The indexing function is quite powerful, automatically eliminating multiple references to the same page. For example, if George Washington is mentioned three times on a page, the index will have only one reference to George Washington on that page. It also allows you to index information in reverse order from the way it appears in text, so that George Washington can be indexed as “Washington, George.”

The program also allows successive indentations under a single index category. For example, under the category of “presidents,” you can indent references to “Washington, George”. Under “Washington, George”, you can create a second indentation for a reference to “Mount Vernon.”

As should be expected of any program with so many features, it takes time to learn how to use it, and it can be tedious to type in all the coded instructions necessary to create the look you want. The result makes you feel like a craftsman, however.

It Takes Work

The manual is fairly thorough, but could use more examples showing the coding required compared with the finished result. Some points are difficult to understand until you’ve experimented with them a bit.

But if you want the kind of perfection that MagicPrint and its companions allow, you probably are willing to do the work it takes to achieve it.

The real magic of these programs is how they can turn your existing computer system into a professional typesetting system. And it doesn’t take very expensive equipment either.

I tested the programs on an aging Kaypro hooked to an even older C. Itoh daisy-wheel printer and got beautiful results, especially with a carbon Mylar ribbon.

Ben Jone has just announced an upgrade to the program that will be available later this month. Among the new features are provision for automatic sheet and envelope feeders and the ability to print columns automatically, eliminating the present need to count lines.

The Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the authors cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.