NEWSMAKER 128

A Review, by Cheryn Nunn for MCUC Magazine

The MCUC Club purchased Newsmaker 128 in the hopes that it would be a useful tool in producing the newsletter for future editors (I prefer the way I do it for right now) and an alternative to using GeoPublish, considering the whole GEOS environment is hard to use because of all the protection.  Well....

This program is for the 128 and requires the 64k video ram.  The author did an excellent job on the program.  You can import text created on word processors and "flow" it into columns.  You have four choices of column formats:  3 columns and header, 2 columns, 3 columns and 4 columns.  You can insert graphics within your text and let the text flow around or over it.  You have a wide choice of font sizes.  The drawback comes in the selection of fonts.  The only decent one is IBM.  All of the fonts have very small descenders, the little hangy downs on letters such as p and g.  This makes a font very difficult to read and trying to read 16 to 20 pages done with fonts in Newsmaker 128 would soon put you at the eye doctor's office.  If someone could do some work on the fonts, or fonts could be borrowed from PrintShop or other programs, this program would be excellent.

The program is very disk intensive due to the memory limitations on the C128.  It is copyable to a 1581 format or even a hard drive and disk access time lessens accordingly.

For producing a one or two page flyer, bulletin or newsletter, I would highly recommend it over GeoPublish, if only because it isn't protected. It would be great to use for signs and such because you can place your text on the page where you want it and mix fonts and sizes on a page, unlike such programs as PrintShop and PrintMaster.  You can use PrintShop graphics (non-Commodore) with it.  The mouse driver is better than the one for Geos.

The program contains a simplified paint/draw program.  This could be used to draw a box around a graphic, or do a simple sketch within your document.

Overall, I would recommend this program for someone wanting to produce small amounts of material, but not pages upon pages.  It is easy to learn to use and although the documentation is not extensive it is, for the most part, adequate.  Keep in mind, when producing printed material to impart information to the reader, it is important to catch their eye, but even more important, it should be easy on the eyes to read.
 
PS It sucks big time don't waste your money (Bob Nunn)