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Ed McGlone gets his hands on Calamus SL98, one of the most eagerly awaited upgrades to one of the Atari platform's oldest professional quality software packages...
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Back in the eighties, Calamus was released for the Atari ST and revolutionised Desktop Publishing on our favourite platform. Up until that time, desktop publishing software had used bitmapped fonts for the text shown on screen. Suddenly, Calamus burst onto the scene with its use of vector font technology and DTP would never be the same again.
Calamus was the first true WYSIWYG desktop publisher on any platform. It was the fastest printing package under most circumstances and, indeed, when combined with the Atari SLM804 Laser Printer, was unbeatable with a "click to print" time of about six seconds!
I remember being given the latest version of (at that time) Aldus Pagemaker to do a bit of desktop publishing on at work and just about tearing my hair out with frustration at that program's lack of capabilities compared to my beloved Calamus at home. And that has been Calamus' trump card over the years. It has been said on many occasions Calamus has a steep learning curve and a quirky interface - which is true, but once you're hooked on Calamus, nothing else will do! That is why many Calamus 1.09 users upgraded to Calamus SL when the full colour version was released and remain loyal Calamus users to this day.
So, what does the new Calamus SL98 have to offer? Well, the answer is more of everything. New features, smoother interface, more flexibility, better stability and increased functionality. Here's just a few of the new features:
Buttons, Bars and Panels
To start with the interface, when you open up Calamus SL98, it looks very familiar but some subtle improvements begin to intrude on your consciousness.
A typical Calamus command tree. These are normally displayed one at a time by selecting between the top row of icons
Calamus has become more modular in nature. some commands which were previously located in the left hand command panels have moved up to the external modules toolbar. This toolbar can now be resized and re-positioned to accommodate more external modules and the basic zoom and view toolbar can also be moved to allow for that. If the external modules toolbar is kept too small to show all of the modules available, it displays scroll arrows like before. This is a boon particularly for users of large screens with enough space to expand their toolbar displays. On my usual 800x600 display, there is room across the top for about 30 external module buttons - far more than I think anyone would ever need.
The links between modules is now much smoother. For example, if you select Special Options for a frame type which has no commands under that heading, a dialog box pops up to offer you the chance to go straight in to the module which deals with that frame type. Also, if you click on a module, for example, Vector Graphics, without having first selected a frame of that type, the Frames Module is switched to that frame type and you can immediately draw one onto the page. Little features like this make the latest version easier to use but without losing the Calamus feel.