Download issue 8 - Total Amiga Magazine

REVIEWSREVIEWSPD ParadiseSEAL Members Elliott Bird, Roy Burton and Robert Williams each review oneof their PD favourites.Workbench on WinLicence: FreewareAvailable From:http://www.commodore-ale.com/wow/“Yes, I must confess my sins”, I have aPC, a P200 running win95 (”Repent” butI have two Amigas), so this programcaught my eye.WorkbenchOnWin (WOW) is a Windows95/98 program that emulates the workbenchenvironment; it is freeware andgives the wonderful workbench look tothe sad old desktop of Windows. Thisprogram cannot run Amiga code inanyway, but gives the feel of the Amigaworkbench 3.1 to a PC desktop.HTTP ResumeLicence: FreewareAvailable From: Aminet,http://www.aminet.net/~aminetDirectory comm/wwwEver found it annoying when you’re inthe middle of a download from a websiteor server, and you get disconnected byyour ISP? Or when it’s a large file youwant to download and you don’t want tobe online the whole time to download it?Then HTTPResume is the answer.All you do is enter the URL of thewebsite or server you want to downloadfrom, with the file (e.g.http://www.website.com/file.lha), whichIt also gives Popup menus (LikeMagicMenu) and a program that canchange the look of gadgets. The emulationis very fast, the program is stillunder development and is far from perfect.I believe this program has a lot of potential,and when fully developed will givean insight to the advantages of theAmiga. I immediately felt comfortablewith a workbench type interface andeven if you consider it just a bit fun(which is all it is at present) do try it out,on the old PC.Review By Roy Burtongoes in the first box, the second box iswhere the file name goes, but if you alreadyhave the file name in the URLaddress, then you will be able to doubleclick on the next box and the file namewill automatically come up, or if youhave already have an un-completedownload, then you can click on the “F”button, where a file requester willappear, and you will be able to selectyour unfinished download, and pressstart. It’s that simple!You will also notice a bar above the startand abort buttons, which is where theprogress bars go. It’s two progress barsin one, one shows how much you haveIt really does look like an Amiga, eventhe prefs programs have a Workbenchfeel!downloaded in the current session, andthe other shows how much has beendownloaded in total.The most important thing to remember isto make sure you have the “AutoResume” menu item ticked. There areloads of options in the menus to caterfor different downloads, as well as to suityour needs, such as the ability to dovarious checks of a download and evento add sounds.HTTPResume is definitely a must foranyone who does regular and largedownloads, what’s more it’s totally free!Review By Elliott BirdWant More?HTTPResume’s author has made anenhanced version of the programwhich is called Charon. The programhas more features and a MUI interfaceand is now shareware, check outthe demo at:http://tesla.rcub.bg.ac.yu/~antony/APDFBy: Emmanuel LesueurLicense: GPL (Open Source)Available From: Aminethttp://www.aminet.net/~aminetDirectory gfx/showThe Portable Document Format isa document file format designedby Adobe, and based on theirPostScript page description languagethat is used to drive high-end printersand publishing equipment. PDF has becomea popular Internet format because,unlike a webpage, it allows the publisherto present a document as it wasdesigned complete with fonts, graphicsand page layouts. The document displayedis as close as possible to theoriginal, given the limitations of the computerand software used to display thePDF. PDF files can also be printed, andgive a very high quality output. PDF ismost commonly used to provide electronicversions of printed documents soyou will commonly find user manuals forall types of products, specifications,plans and forms in PDF. PDF files canusually be identified by a .pdf extension,also look out for the “Get AdobeAcrobat” banner on websites, Acrobat isAdobe’s PDF reader which is availablefor several platforms (not Amiga needlessto say) so this is a sure sign thatPDF files are near by.There are several open source utilitiesavailable on Unix like systems whichcan display PDF files and over timeseveral of these have been ported to theAmiga, most of these ports retained theirUnix heritage and are less than easy toAntialiasing means fonts and diagramsrender very smoothly even at screenresolutions.In PDF documents like this one you canclick on linked phrases to jump toanother page, document or URL.use. Then a couple of years agoEmmanuel Lesueur brought out Apdf,although this utility is based on the xpdfrendering engine Emmanuel has given ita MUI interface so Apdf feels like a realAmiga program.PDF documents expect a set ofPostScript fonts to be available on thesystem, any special fonts are embeddedin the document itself. One of the archivesin the Apdf distribution on Aminetcontains these base fonts and thepreferences file supplied is set-up to usethem. In the most recent versions ofApdf display quality has been increasedconsiderably through the addition of optionalantialiasing on fonts, lines andfills. AA smooths out “jaggies” in thescreen display by smoothing sharpedges with intermediate toned pixels thisis particularly noticeable on large fonts,diagonals and curves.All the basic functions you need to comfortablyview a PDF document are available,you can scroll through or jump to aparticular page, go back and forwardthrough the page history and zoom inand out. A search facility searches thedocument for a word or phrase youenter and you can select text on thepage and copy it to the clipboard.Although Apdf does not have pagethumbnail or index lists (which are availablein Acrobat) it does support links inPDF files. There are three types of link:local links (jump to a different page ofthe same document), document links(jump to a page in a different PDF document)and Internet links which open theURL in the browser you choose inApdf’s settings. For the ultimate conveniencea special version is suppliedas a Voyager plug-in so you can viewPDF documents linked from a web pagedirectly within Voyager, other browserscan be set-up to run the Apdf separatelywhen you click on a PDF file.Viewing PDF documents is a memoryand processor intensive business, Apdfhas various versions for different 68kprocessors and supports PowerPCusing PowerUP (and WarpUp usingFrank Wille’s ppc.library emulation) tomake the best of your system. It alsosupports a caching system so it doesnot need to load the entire document atonce to minimise memory usage. Toprint from Apdf you need a Postscriptprinter or software interpreter such asGhostScript which is included withTurboPrint 7, if this is available printingis very high quality with smooth scalablefonts and diagrams.Over the years I’ve found Apdf to bevery widely compatible with PDF filesfound on the Internet and this latest versionseems better than ever coping withthe couple of documents which did notdisplay properly in an earlier version. Ihave tried documents from large corporationssuch as Sony, governmentforms and many others with goodresults. There are a few PDF featureswhich Apdf does not support such as fillinforms and password protecteddocuments but I haven’t found thesecommonly used. By default Apdf cannotread encrypted PDF documents but thiscan be overcome by downloading a separatedecryption module, which is distributedin this way due to French laws onexporting cryptography software.A very polished utility which is essentialfor any on-line Amigan.Review by Robert Williams32 CLUBBED - Issue 8Summer 200133