PFS:First Publisher, Version 3.0 Copyright 1990 David Batterson Many PC users (including me) got their first DTP experience with PFS:First Publisher. It was a low-end product, but was fine for simple newsletters, signs and flyers. The latest upgrade is Version 3.0, and it's gone through quite a welcome changeover since Ver. 2.1. One of the major complaints about older versions was the poor resolution of fonts and clip art (72 dpi). Ver. 3.0 has moved up to the big-league world of 300 dpi now, and it's long overdue. As far as supplied typefaces, they've outdone the competition like Publish It! and Finesse (also reviewed in PC REVIEWS). It includes the scalable (9 to 70 points) high-resolution Bitstream typefaces Swiss and Dutch in the usual styles: Roman, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic. [Quick trivia question: who designed italic?.....it was Aldus Manutius in 1501 A.D.] There are five additional Bitstream fixed-point typefaces: Amerigo, Zurich, Goudy, Broadway and Cloister Black in different sizes, 22 in all. These also output up to 300 dpi, depending on your printer. To really speed up font generation ("up to five times faster than with competing technologies"), Ver. 3.0 uses the Bitstream Speedo method. I definitely noticed the improvement, especially when building the larger (36, 48, 60) Swiss and Dutch sizes. These usually take calendar pages! Remember when you had to exit to DOS to add/delete fonts? Now it's right in the Font pull-down menu. That's a thoughtful addition. While Ver. 3.0 retains the old 72 dpi clip art (now called standard), it now supports the huge amount of 300 dpi images available. The 21 high-res images provided are from Metro ImageBase. These can be resized, flipped, rotated, cropped and inverted. You can use scanned images too, or graphics created by such programs as PC Paintbrush and Microsoft Windows Paint. As long as the images are saved in the .TIF, .PCX, .PIC or .MSP formats, you can use them. Preparing layouts was always a hassle in PFS:First Publisher. Now they have cleaned up their act by providing the Layout Gallery, 21 custom-designed layouts. These can be further refined by changing the column lengths and widths to suit your requirements. You can import text in most popular WP formats, including WordStar 5.0, WordPerfect 5.0, Microsoft Word 5.0, Professional Write, MultiMate, Wang PC, and several others. I was happy to see they've now included landscape printing. Landscape and portrait pages can be combined in your publication, if you want. Legal and A4 paper sizes are now supported. There's a Customize section in the File pull-down menu. Here you can set the units of measurement to inches or centimeters. There are three color display sets (I preferred the blue background). You can also set paths for your publication, text and art files. You can now draw circles and ovals (not possible previously). Context- sensitive help has been added, and there's increased printer support. A previous feature, the SNAPSHOT screen capture program, needs revamping. The problem is that it still doesn't save the entire screen, but only what's inside a flashing box. System requirements: 512K RAM minimum; hard drive and mouse highly recommended (running it without both is unproductive); and Hercules, CGA, EGA or VGA graphics card. PFS:First Publisher Ver. 3.0 has a suggested list price of $149, but you'll pay less from discounters. Owners of PFS:First Publisher 1.0, 2.0 or 2.1 can upgrade for $45. Those who purchased Ver. 2.1 after February 19, 1990, cam get a FREE upgrade with proof of purchase. For more information, contact Software Publishing Corp., 1901 Landings Drive, P. O. Box 7210, Mountain View, CA 94039-7210; 415-962-8910. # David Batterson writes about various PC applications. Contact him via MCI Mail: DBATTERSON.