From: G6JPG@255soft.uk   
      
   On 2026/1/9 19:49:52, Paul wrote:   
      
   []   
      
   > Depending on whether the alternative offerings are freeware or paid   
   > products, you should consider acquiring a copy of the free one...   
   > in case it disappears at a later date.   
      
   Good advice.   
      
   >   
   > Scribus is supposed to be a lot more complicated, and may not be   
   > everyones cup of tea.   
   >   
   > In some cases, when companies have dropped out of a market, wonderful   
   > pieces of software were made available just for the downloading,   
   > and today... only archive.org has a copy :-) (And that's not via an   
   > official request to archive it, it's the elves who hang around   
   > archive.org, who "upload stuff" who do things like that.)   
      
   There was a major suite (not so by modern standards, but I think it cost   
   hundreds originally) like that; officially, the company that gave it   
   away (was it Adobe?) said it was only supposed to be for those who'd   
   bought previous versions and they didn't want the hassle of doing the   
   authentication checks or something like that, but of course everyone   
   downloaded it. Including me - I don't think I ever installed it. (IIRR,   
   it was about three CDs worth.)   
      
   >   
   > The instructions Microsoft offers for "translating" the works, are just   
      
   I presume you are _not_ referring to Works, a somewhat maligned office   
   suite that MS at one time released - a lot cheaper than Word (this was   
   in Windows 3 days, when Word and the other parts of Office were still   
   being sold separately); as well as lower price, it was also less   
   demanding hardware-wise. I'm convinced they killed it off because it was   
   eating into the sales of Office/Word, since it was more than adequate   
   for what a lot of people needed (and better than Write, though even that   
   was better than many claimed).   
      
   > silly. The Print To PDF which comes standard with the OS, only   
   > offers Letter and Tabloid, and is not nearly rich enough to prepare   
   > media for all printing devices (like the 36" wide inkjet we had at work).   
      
   Oh, that's standard with the OS, is it? I'd sort of assumed it came with   
   (some versions of) Office. I have continued using pdf995, since that's   
   what I've been using since the year dot - mainly with my genealogy   
   software, Brother's Keeper (John Steed, BK's author, also uses pdf995).   
   I haven't found a size limit on it yet. I didn't know the MS one was   
   limited to two paper sizes. (Genealogy needs big - and, often,   
   oddly-shaped, if you're not going to have acres of unused paper - sizes,   
   for the assorted charts it can produce.)   
      
   >   
   > The largest media we could make at work, was 10 feet by 10 feet,   
   > and typically it was run at 6 feet by 6 feet (so a plot could   
   > hang in a hallway for random people to analyze as they walked by).   
   > I've worked a couple places, that had the same machine. That machine   
   > is dangerous, as the print head is a chunk of metal, with considerable   
      
   Inkjet is it?   
      
   > acceleration, and we were warned "stick your hand in there, it'll break   
   > the bones in your hand". Which seemed fair enough as a warning. No   
   > guard rails to keep you from doing that.   
   >   
   > I used to keep a driver here for making large media, but I don't think   
   > that would work any more on W10/W11, so my options here for large scale   
   > plots are pretty limited. The more modern drivers, resort to using an   
      
   PDF995 as I say can do arbitrary sizes (you select I think it's called   
   "postscript custom size", and set the size - in inches, mm, or something   
   else - points maybe?).   
      
   > image instead of a vector representation, meaning that large format PDF   
   > cannot be repurposed (as part of a workflow). I like my artworks to be   
   > digestible by other tools, later. Dead end artworks are dead end.   
      
   Of course, I don't have anything that can actually _print_ that big (at   
   present I only have an A4 [or possibly letter] size printer, though it   
   can do both sides]. For printing large sheets, I use a relatively recent   
   version of Adobe Acrobat reader - I'm not keen on it for general PDF   
   use, but its printing functions are very good - it can scale more or   
   less any way you want, and split into individual sheets to be put   
   together - I think even with specifiable overlap - or, force big sheets   
   to print on one sheet of A4. It can also do booklets (printing sides 1   
   and 4 on one side of a sheet, 2 and 3 on the other - including more   
   complicated versions if your document has more than 4 sides).   
      
   >   
   > When the WinXP machined died, I lost a lot of weird options for doing   
   > stuff. The replacements just aren't the same.   
   >   
   >    Paul   
   >   
   I miss things with each "up"grade. Though to be honest I can't usually   
   remember what they were, once a year or two has passed. :-)   
      
   --   
   J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf   
      
   "Bother," said Pooh, as Windows crashed into piglet.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)