From the May 1994 Bits of Blue

MINUTES OF 3/9/94 MEETING and PERSONAL COMMENTS

By: Jim Clark

A nice turnout for this meeting, and everything seemed to go very well. There was a good bit of time for an open forum kind of interchange between members, along with presentations briefly reviewing a couple of very nice Abode programs -- one of which most of you will be using in the not-too-distant future: Adobe Acrobat and the Acrobat Reader.

Membership Survey: A membership survey form was created by the Board of Directors (BOD) recently for the purpose of gathering the information from the membership needed to help guide our future efforts and the allocation of some rather slim resources. The survey was handed out to those present and was included in the newsletter for those not present. All members are asked to complete the survey form as soon as practicable and return it to the BOD. or bring it to the next meeting. Your input is very important and will help your BOD a great deal in making the decisions that must be made in the near future. The data will be held in strictest confidence and will only be used as statistical data.

Special Interest Groups (SIGs): Preparation for SIGs on OS/2 and CorelDraw are in their final stages of preparation and all preparations should be complete by the next general meeting. Both will likely be meeting not long after the next general meeting. It is therefore recommended that any members interested in participating in either of these SIGs be sure to attend the next general meeting. It appears that the OS/2 SIG will likely meet in the IBM facility, and the Corel SIG will likely meet at the Dale Mabry campus of the HCC.

Merge Mania: Competition in the software world has led to what seems to be merger mania. In addition to the passing of Word Perfect, recent announcements include Adobe acquiring Aldus, Symantec buying Central Point, and Intuit buying Best Software. Whether the objectives of the companies involved will be achieved is yet to be seen. In the long term, however, this merger mania could have a negative effect on competition, but it would seem the mania has not yet approached that level.

“Simply Tax” Refund For Some: As many know, Computer Associates, a big name in the main frame world for a long time, has been trying to make their name recognized in the PC world by marketing Simply Money and Simply Tax for only S & H charges. Those that acquired Simply Tax before the final version was available had to pay $9.95 for the early bird version, and then another $3.95 to get the final version. After receiving numerous complaints, Computer Associates has agreed to refund the $3.95 charge to those who request same in writing. So, if you want your $3.95 back you will have to contact Computer associates and request it.

MS Maintenance Upgrades: Maintenance upgrades are now out for MS Word For Windows 6.0 and for MS Windows 3.1. The upgrades change the program designations to 6.0a and 3.11, respectively. No charge is involved, and they are available form numerous electronic sources, including the MS BBS and CompuServe. They are also available on our own Bits of Blue BBS as WORD6OA.EXE and WW0981.EXE.

Professional Write Upgrade: Harvey reported that Professional Write 3.0 is available to all present owners of Professional Write, or any competitive DOS word processor, for $65 from Professional Write.

Win Fax PRO Upgrade: Version 4.0 upgrade to that program is available for $49 at 1-800-268-6082.

William C. Lindsay, South Eastern Account Manager for Adobe Corporation, generously agreed to give us a brief overview of two Adobe products: Photoshop 2.5.1 and the Acrobat package. I say “brief” overview because, although Bill spent a good amount of time accomplishing that end, the scope of the power and features of these programs makes anything short of a several hour review “brief”. Bill proved to be a very able representative for Adobe, and he gave an excellent presentation of both packages. I can’t hope to cover, even briefly, all of the features Bill demonstrated, but here are a few:

Photoshop: Adobe says that Photoshop is “The world’s leading photo design and production tool.” I don’t know whether that is accurate or not, but I do know that if there is anything you might want to do with an electronic photograph it would seem that Photoshop will do it very well and very fast. You can create your own, scan images into it, or import from a host of formats. Once an image (negative or positive) is in the program, it can be manipulated in just about any way you can imagine: Change the image to a negative or positive image; change colors (w/16 million available) of any part or all of the image; create duo-, tri- and quadtones; provide for simultaneous viewing of a range of color options applied to the image to aid in making choices; export and import all or any part of an image to other programs and/or as replacement/added components of an image; create any tint/hue changes desired; create and add in graphics created with the versatile and powerful built-in drawing tools; add in any text desired using the large selection of fonts included, or Windows fonts, and manipulate their size, shape, and color to your heart’s content; etc., and then print out or export your finished product to any of a wide variety of formats, including one to create an actual film negative.

Photoshop is truly a very powerful program and can handle 40-50 MB images and includes excellent on-line help. It also includes 100 beautiful licensed images, covering a wide variety of subjects. It handles a large selection of file formats (import and export). Windows 3.1 (or later) is required, of course, and it will run on a 386, but a 486 with 8 MB RAM is recommended. The specific amount of disk space the program requires is unknown, but it is in the several MB range. But one needs a good bit of free disk space to accommodate images, especially when handling the 40-50 MB variety.

Photoshop is available for IBM-compatibles and Mac. It lists for $895, but is available for substantially less. One flyer from a retailer was available at the meeting listing an Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator (also a high end program) package for $679.

Acrobat: Adobe Acrobat is actually a family of related programs, which includes Acrobat Exchange, Acrobat Distiller, Acrobat Reader, and Acrobat Starter Kit. Acrobat Exchange is the starting point. It converts many commonly used document formats into what is called a Portable Document Format (PDF). This common format then can be read by the other components of the Acrobat family. The components are available in DOS/Windows and Mac. Hence, once a file is converted to the common PDF format it can be read by any PC with a Reader, regardless of operating platform or other application software. “Big deal,” you say, “I can do just about that much with ASCII format.” The BIG difference is that Acrobat retains all formatting of the document, including fonts, page layout, graphics, etc., literally all of the features of the original, so that what the reader shows on the screen and prints out to a printer, if desired, is exactly the same as the original document. The host computer need not have the fonts nor graphics used in the original document; Acrobat takes care of that. Acrobat, then, allows the interchange of documents between computers, overcoming the limitations of different hardware, operating systems and application software. Interestingly, in many cases the PDF file is substantially smaller than the application file from which the PDF was created.

Acrobat Exchange allows one to create, view, collate, annotate, manipulate and print PDF documents. Acrobat Reader allows viewing and printing any PDF document, and gives the ability to access any annotations, bookmarks and links that are a part of the PDF file. Acrobat Distiller converts postscript language files into PDF files. Acrobat Starter Kit is a 10-user license package of the Exchange and Distiller components, or everything a workgroup of 10 needs to use Acrobat.

For the DOS/Windows version, a 386 machine with at least 3 MB of hard disk space is needed. The street price for none of the components was available at the meeting. List price is: Exchange - $195; Distiller - $695; Reader - $50; and Starter Kit - $1,395.

Bill and Adobe, thank you very much for a super presentation. You have a couple of very powerful and useful programs in Photoshop and Reader. We will soon be distributing Readers to our members and then using Acrobat Exchange and the Readers to post our newsletter to our members electronically.

AND THE WINNER IS

Thanks to the generosity of Adobe Corporation, which donated all but one of the door prizes, there were some very nice door prizes. Those among us to have the good fortune to win are:

The meeting adjourned at about 8:35 PM. u