Typesetting a book on an Amiga: PageStream

[dandelion]

Hi all,

I shall soon be the proud owner of a MorphOS machine and, full of enthusiasm and optimism, I wondered if it might just manage some fairly simple book typesetting.

These are my requirements:
Non-English and English text mixed.
Frames for notes at the bottom of the page, referenced in the text by number.
Alternate pages blank.

Potentially A5 size.

Software-wise I was thinking PageStream. Most likely latest purchased version, if I feel confident this will do the job. I used ProPage back in my Amiga days, which always seemed like a solid and professional program (PageSetter before that).

Exporting to suitable publication quality PDF for commercial printing (or postscript files? No idea what printers expect these days).

Is this expecting too much? A recipe for headache and risk of disaster?

Any thoughts or suggestions greatly appreciated.

[Matt_H]

PageStream typesetting was fairly common back in the day. A number of Commodore publications and other Amiga books were done on Amigas.

Latest PageStream is fairly buggy, though. But the last stable version 4.1.x should do what you need it to do. If you don't already have it, I believe ordering the current beta will give you access to it.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Latest PageStream is fairly buggy, though. But the last stable version 4.1.x should do what you need it to do. If you don't already have it, I believe ordering the current beta will give you access to it.

He's still plugging away at it, eh?    Boy did I love that software back in the day, that warms my heart to hear he's still working on it.  

[dandelion]

PageStream typesetting was fairly common back in the day. A number of Commodore publications and other Amiga books were done on Amigas.

Latest PageStream is fairly buggy, though. But the last stable version 4.1.x should do what you need it to do. If you don't already have it, I believe ordering the current beta will give you access to it.

Still waiting for my MorphOS machine, so thought I'd trial-run the Windows PageStream demo version. Seems a bit buggy. It hasn't been able to detect any fonts on my system, which means that loading files or typing into a page generates...nothing.

Seems surprising they're using a beta version as the demo version!

Of course, the place to raise this is not here but on the mailing list. Hopefully I can be sorted out with a stable demo for MorphOS. It certainly looks feature rich for the money!

[Matt_H]

It's been a while since I checked, but I believe the demo version and the beta version are not in sync. Meaning, the demo is based on a older version.