Desktop Publishing (DTP) on the Amiga

[@darrenball4620]

This brought back some memories - I used to use QuarkXpress at work on a Mac II to create advertisements for our newspaper. I tried to replicate the setup at home on my Amiga 500 as close as I could with a printer, hand scanner, processor/RAM upgrade and hi-res multisync monitor using ProPage II. It was a great little setup for a fraction of the cost of the Mac kit we used at work. Those were the days!

[@ChrisJones-pu8gh]

Great to see you continue the "Serious Amiga" series. No-one else is covering this kind of content. As always, your explanations are easy to follow and very interesting. I enjoyed dabbling with this type of process nearly thirty years ago and it is a real nostalgia trip for me. Keep up the good work.

[@MikeyGRetro]

Thanks. Glad you are enjoying them.

[@bigd5090]

PageStream 3 was great! I had to make do with version 2.2 for most of my school/university days though I had to use AmigaWriter instead eventually because of its RTF support to transfer my work to and from the Uni PCs on my 720kb CrossDos 7 enabled disks!

[@dannylgriffin]

What is great about Pagestream is that you can rotate text or graphics any way and any amount you want. 30 years ago!

[@MikeyGRetro]

Yes, very capable software for the task today and sending it out of WinUAE to PDF or a printer makes it usable today. :-)

[@dannylgriffin]

@@MikeyGRetro you could not do that with any Mac or PC desktop publishing software back then. Today I use Microsoft Publisher and other than color I still can't do the things I could do with Pagestream 35 years ago! I remember even before then I helped my ex-wife get her RN degree and typeset documents with diagrams, some self-created within Pagestream, and her professors had never seen anything like that. You're welcome, Michele. Pagestream was so very, very powerful! I did DTP so I know. Mac and PC were laughable they were so anemic. What's really funny is that Mac people think that Macs were the DTP platform of choice back in the late 80's and early 90's. Ha! Yes, you could turn a monitor 90 degrees for page layout which is unnecessary. It's like someone having to turn a paper map to orient in the direction they are going.

[@thischannelwillselfdestruc4977]

Love you showing programs we can use to keep our Amigas going in the 21st century. Lets me see things I've never considered!

[@MrLukealbanese]

This is excellent and I love that you are doing this serious Amiga series. Only you and Doug do this 👍👍👍

[@MikeyGRetro]

Thanks, glad your enjoying them. It's fun for me because I get to play around with new things on the Amiga that aren't games. More stuff to come :-)

[@alphabetaxenonzzzcat]

Both Professional Page and Pagestream were superb DTP programs back in the day. I'd say that they both rivalled Quark Express and Adobe Pagermaker and Ventura back in their heyday.

[@TheThore]

I also used AmigaFox, this was great too. When the Amiga crashed, it automatically restored the work from RAM after reboot.

[@roberthazelby4424]

After many hours of digging around, I’ve finally managed to get Ghostscript installed on my Mac and with it PS2PDF. This converts postscript files to PDF. Now that I’ve got a way of printing on the Amiga I’ve been tinkering around with Pro Page 4.1 on my PiStorm 1200. 30 years on from its release it’s still a nice program to use. The only niggle I have is that it doesn’t seem to save your screen resolution preferences. You have to set that up on initial load. Looking at the icon info I’ve been able to set the default resolution but not screen mode.

[@daishi5571]

I used both Pro Page and Pagestream back in the day but found Final Writer to be so nice to use and there was so much overlap with a DTP that it became my go to. If anyone is interested Pagestream (now up to V5.1) is still available for multiple systems including the Amiga.

[@desiv1170]

Wow! Didn't know they were still selling that! That's pretty cool... Not sure how many Amiga owners will be willing to pay $99 for a DTP app today, but still cool that someone could buy it...

[@jigsey.]

Loved DTP on the Amiga..pagesetter was my goto

[@MikeyGRetro]

Briefly looked at page setter. It looked like it was produced by the same people that did Professional page but I might be wrong.

[@jigsey.]

@@MikeyGRetro I remember using a BBC Archimedes at school in 1988. And was blown away by the DTP program on it.. I remember I had a speccy..I saw an advert for an art package and light pen for the spectrum, so in my 14 yr old wisdom I begged my mum to buy it.. Omg it was awful.. 2 years later I got an a500, the geek in me wanted a dtp, pagesetter was the closet to the BBC Archimedes one

[@MikeyGRetro]

@@jigsey. I have good memories of using Acorn Archimedes at school in the early 90's. There was a good program to lay out circuit boards, print them out of paper then transfer them and make up the board. May have to explore Acorn emulation :-)

[@jigsey.]

@@MikeyGRetro do you know what, I'm gonna do the same 🤣🤣

[@asmserdarsvakc8590]

Thanks!

[@Turrican]

Love these vids! Can you show us how to set up printing to PDF on AMIGA with Ghostrscript? Their website and seems to have changed, is it still easy?

[@MikeyGRetro]

Thanks, I show the printing in a bit more detail on the Spreadsheets video kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIa8hY2EodF2l68 at 9:53 You need to download and install the Ghostscript AGPL Release (x64) from www.ghostscript.com/releases/gsdnld.html Microsoft Print to PDF is built into Windows 10. Should be fairly easy, remember to restart WinUAE after installing Ghostscript.

[@YesiPleb]

I was using PageStream back in 1992.

[@MikeyGRetro]

Nice, what kind of stuff did you make with it out of interest?

[@YesiPleb]

@@MikeyGRetro it was mainly my college work. It was great as I could use Compugraphic and TrueType fonts. I'd got PageStream v2.2 and to print I used my Citizen 120D and later my 120D+ printer. A college mate used it but he had access to a laser printer so exported using PostScript files for it. I had an A500 with 1MB RAM. I later got an A1200 with a 64MB HD and production increased. Double the memory and the hard drive was great but I never had a memory expansion for it. Recently got hold of the latest version and it's like a totally different program.