Issue 50: Dec 2004
Features
- | Foreword
- | Tip of the day
- | CT60 - A Heated Question?
- | Printing Envelopes
- | Merry Mosh 2004 At Cheshunt Computer Club
- | Computer Valeting
M@ilbox
| Printing Envelopes by Edward Baiz Hello to you all. Envelope printing is something that I had in the back of my mind ever since I got a printer for my Atari computer. At that time, there was not really any program I had that would help to do such a thing, so I chose to print address labels instead as you probably know since the MyAtari article I wrote on the printing of my Christmas address labels. Well this was fine since I only needed addressed envelopes at Christmas time, but one thing I do every Christmas season is do a lot of my shopping through catalogs. Many of the companies I do business with do not include an envelope, so I have to use my own. Now I can print pretty good if I do say so myself, but I felt it would be best to have the envelope printed by a computer since that would give it that professional look. Besides, there is no way I could print the PostNet codes. So, I started looking for a way to do it with the use of my computer and printer. While going through the pain of writing my own envelopes a program came off commercial status and was now freeware. Enter GEMvelope. GEMvelope came out in 1996 from Brisk Software, but at that time I had a simple printer and did not make use of fonts. Then I got my Hades and basically forgot about programs like GEMvelope. It was not until I was on an Atari news group and read about GEMvelope's change to freeware, that I remembered its existence. So I quickly went to the URL http://home.kc.rr.com/krzysztow/BRiSK/GEMvelope/index.html and downloaded version 2.96. Since GEMvelope's last update, to my knowledge, was in 1996, I suspected I would have some problems in getting it to work with my Hades. I was right. I tried to bring up the program and my Hades crashed. I use mainly MagiC as my OS and figured that maybe GEMvelope had some problems with it. I was almost right on this one. GEMvelope can either be run as a program or an accessory and it turned out that running it as an accessory is the way to go under MagiC. I did, however, run into another problem. As soon as the program loaded a box came up telling me I did not have a printer loaded and then I was returned to the desktop. This was very frustrating, but I soon found the problem: GEMvelope comes with a version of SpeedoGDOS 5 (and fonts to get you started) and that uses an ASSIGN.SYS file. Well I use NVDI 5 which also uses an ASSIGN.SYS file, so I had no need for the included SpeedoGDOS program. If you look at an ASSIGN.SYS in a word processor, at the end you have lines that have numbers at the beginning that usually range from 21 to 91 and a SYS file. These numbers represent the device ID and the SYS file is a driver that could be for a printer. GEMvelope only looks at device driver ID 21 and nothing else. I use an Epson Photo 700 printer, but in NVDI the device ID for my printer is 22 and not 21. So, in order to get things working I had to remake a copy of my NVDI ASSIGN.SYS file with device ID 21 to include ESCP2.SYS which is NVDI's driver for Epson Stylus and Stylus Color printers. I kept a copy of the file in my GEMvelope folder for only when I used the program. Then after I was done, I just copied my original file onto my C partition. This was sort of a pain, but I had no choice. Now that things were straightened out I loaded GEMvelope and soon the main screen came up. As you can see, you are given a lot of options which give you total control of what is printed, like the positioning of the main address, positioning of the return address, the font and size as well as the dimensions of the envelope. The one thing I like about this program is the fact that it has PostNet code compatibility. I do not think any other Atari program has this right now. The use of this program is quite simple, so I will not go into too much detail. A text file is included which pretty much sums up GEMvelope's use. But I will mention that it is possible to save and load set-ups as well so you do not have re-type everything again. I like that and have used this option many times. So basically, you put in the figures that corresponds to the envelope you are using, choose your font and font size and then print. The first printing job I did with GEMvelope did not turn out as well as I would have liked. Things were not positioned the way I set them, but I figured the authors never intended the program to work on the Hades060. I realized I needed to adjust the settings a little and, after some trials, finally got it to work correctly. I used it a lot in the months after I got it working, but ran into problems like computer crashes and such. If I could not print under MagiC, TOS and Geneva worked fine. Still, there were two things that I was never happy with. After GEMvelope printed one envelope I would have to reset the computer before I could print another one. I also had to reset my printer as the paper light on the printer's front would be flashing like it was out of paper. If I tried to print another envelope, the Hades crashed big time. The other thing was the fact that the main address and the return address had the same font size. I do not know if the author intended for this to happen, but it happened just the same on the Hades. All in all, GEMvelope is a fine program that does what it says, but like I said, it is in desperate need of an upgrade. Let's hope it gets one. Another option open to computer users is to use a word processor to print envelopes. Well there are many nice word processors out there for the Atari user to choose. The one I use, and my favorite, is Papyrus which is now up to version 10. I use it to write my articles and almost anything else that has to do with text. It is an excellent program and I highly reccommend it to anybody who has an Atari computer. Setting up a Papyrus document for the envelope I use was fairly simple. I measured the envelope which turned out to be 4.125" x 9.5". The next thing I had to do was to input these measurements into Papyrus. I loaded a letter document that I had already set up which is the usual 8.5" x 11". I then went to the Document drop-down menu and then Paper Format. Here you get a list of the paper formats that Papyrus has to offer. Clicking on them, I found out that none of the included formats had the same dimensions as my envelope. I needed to create my own, so I clicked on the New format button which allowed me to create a new paper format in my envelope's size. With that done the rest was fairly simple. In the upper left-hand corner I typed in my return address. I wanted to change the text font which is easy. Papyrus displays the font and font size on its menu bar. I first highlighted the text the usual way (holding the left mouse button and then dragging it over the text) and then clicked on the font name and size buttons and chose what I liked. Next was the main address. Here I decided to do something different. Because this part changed, I decided to use a text frame which in the long run makes it easy to control and manipulate. To make a text I went to the Graphics menu then Graphic Objects and then chose Text Frame. This frame appeared on the document. I adjusted its size and moved it where I wanted it. Of course the font I used was same as the one I had chosen for my return address but the size was larger. It now looks like this: You will notice that I have a PostNet code in this document. More later on how I accomplished this. With the document done, I decided to print it out. Well, it did work to a point. It printed out the envelope just fine and it looked great. However, again my printer's paper light came on, but it was not as bad as what I encountered when using GEMvelope. I just turned the printer off for about 20 seconds and then turned it back on again. I was then able to print another envelope with no problems except for the red paper light on the printer. Another option is to use a desktop publisher and the best one for Atari users is Calamus. I will not go too deep into the use of Calamus as Dave Barkin is the Calamus expert here at MyAtari, but I will just lightly touch on its operation. For me, it turned out to be the best way to go. To start, like in Papyrus, I had to create a document with the correct dimensions as the envelope I was going to use. To do this is simple. Just go into the File menu, click on New file and then on the button under Paper format. Like in Papyrus, this will bring up a list of the various paper formats available. The one I needed, 4.125" x 9.5" was not on the list, so I needed to click on the User-defined paper format option. Here I am allowed to put in my own dimensions. That worked out just fine. OK, now before I go on I must talk about something that is very important. I will also jump ahead and say that after I had finished with the Calamus document and printed an envelope, I got the same result as with GEMvelope and Papyrus. I was only able to print one envelope and the paper light on my printer came on. I went to the Calamus forum and was informed by Ulf Dunkel on something that I totally forgot. I use NVDI 5 for my fonts and printer. NVDI has a huge list of printers it supports of which most of them are outdated. Calamus has the means to load printers for its own use, but in order to use the same printers that NVDI uses, I need a Calamus printer driver called VDIPRINT. This means that any printer I have loaded into NVDI using the CPX file that comes with NVDI, will have its driver automatically loaded into Calamus if it is running the VDIPRINT file. When I load in a printer driver in NVDI and then bring up the printer CPX file in the COPS control panel, I get a list of paper formats that I can choose from. If I am using a small envelope in my printer and I have the paper format set to Letter which is 8.5" x 11", the printer is still thinking I am using an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper no matter how I have it set in the program. When it gets to the end of the envelope the paper light comes on and the printer thinks it is out of paper even though it may have printed all the data. This could be solved by putting another envelope in the printer. Then I would get one envelope printed and one blank. Calamus has a unique option to display the area of a document that it will print. Anything outside this area is not printed. To illustrate this here are two screen shots of Calamus documents. Both are Letter size documents, but in the top one I have the paper format in the NVDI CPX file to be Letter which in bottom one I have set to be Card 5" x 8". Notice the red square/rectangle in each document. These are the printable areas. You really need to be aware of this area when you are entering your data. I have received many shocks of partially-printed documents in my time. OK, back to it. I have my document defined as 4.125" x 9.5". I found the best paper format in the NVDI CPX file was Card 5" x 8" which is the one I used in the demo above. If you will notice how the printable area looks, I decided to make my document go the same way. Getting ahead again, I had tried rotating the printable area and fitting a document onto it, but for some reason it did not work when I tried to print it. The next thing to do was to make my text frames. I clicked on the frame editing module which has the symbol shown on the left, giving you the selections. The one square that has the ABCDEFG is used for creating a text frame and the one next to it is used for creating a graphics frame (we use that later). So to create a text frame we need to highlight the ABC-DEFG square and this symbol. Then just move the pointer to the document, hold down the left mouse, point and draw a frame. For my purposes I drew two rectangles. One small for my return address and the other larger for the main addresses. Next I set the text flow by using the Text-Edit module and picked my font and font size using the Text-Style module which is right next to the text edit module. Now that my text frames are drawn and ready, all that needs to be done is rotate them so they align with my document. It you look at the frame (text or graphic), you will see two arrows coming together that form a circle. All you have to do is to click on this and you will be able to rotate the frame in any position. After I did that and positioned the frames, my document looked like this: Now you I would imagine that you have three questions. First, what is that yellow box on the document? This is a part of a module called Notio. It allows you to make notes about the document and store them right in the document. Notio has to be loaded into memory in order for this to work. If I highlight this yellow box and then go into Notio and load it, I get this: Second, how do I type the address into the frame with it at this angle? Well I could do it, but it is best to use a text editor module called Eddie (I love the name!). All you have to do is to highlight the frame and then called up Eddie. It looks like this: From here all I would have to do is to type in the address into this text editor and tell Eddie to replace the text already in the frame with the new text that I have typed. Believe me, it works like a charm. Third, just how did I get the PostNet code onto the document? Well let me say the way I did it is the same for Calamus and Papyrus. Basically, the job was easier than it looks. First I had to find an on-line barcode generator that also included a PostNet option and one that could be used by either CAB or Highwire. It took me a long time, but I finally found one. It is at the following address: http://www.bokai.com/Barcode.Net/LiveWebDemo.aspx This web page creates a GIF image of whatever zip code you type. So all I had to do was to create a graphics frame, size it up and then import the GIF image into my frame. Now the image will have the words "Bokai Demo" on it, too. To get rid of that all I did was create a graphics frame that contained nothing but a white background. Then I just put it on top of the words being careful not to cover any of the PostNet code. If you want to check to see if you have the correct code go to this address: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/ webmain/8867C90A424D6DFD86256B4F007ABF5D This site describes the PostNet code and teaches you how to read it. I sent this same address to the people at Invers with hopes they would include the PostNet code in their barcode generator module. This would really simplify things. OK, I was then ready to print my envelope. Because of the way Calamus prints and the way the Epson Photo 700 prints, I positioned the envelope with the side to be printed on top and the flap pointing to the right. The first printing was a total success and the red paper light on my printer did not come on. I was thrilled. Then I said could I print more than one envelope. The Photo 700 can hold up to ten envelopes and I knew that was plenty for me. If you look at the bottom of the screen shot of my Calamus document, you will see pages with the numbers 1 through 6. Well I used the page module and its copying function to copy the first page of my document five times. I doubt I will need more, but if I do, then I can go higher. The multiple printing was again a success. I only had to add an extra extra envelope to get it to work. Let me also just say that Calamus worked the best and I will stick with it, but Papyrus also did a good job. I plan on going back and trying again to get things to work better. I admit I did not spend as much time on it as I did on Calamus. Besides, I actually have Papyrus Office which has a built-in database that I have not even used yet. Both programs are excellent and I can see me using both of them until the day I die. GEMvelope needs an upgrade, plain and simple. I hope this article has helped or enlightened you in some way. I am sure there are other and better ways to print envelopes on an Atari. If you feel you need to, e-mail me and we can talk about it. Take care all until next time. edward@myatari.net
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