In Memory of the remarkably
brave crew of sts-107 and their fantastic machine Columbia, they will all
be missed !
The
home of
Version 5.0ß prerelease
The development of a spare time project should
be fun, and I was getting tired of only working on C-Side, so for some
time I have been working on other projects, and some none computer projects.
Now I'm back, and I have been working a lot on
C-side V.5.0 lately.
The program is in a late development state, some
new functions has been hidden as they still are too buggy !
Please observe : As this is a work in progress
I cannot guarantee that the final version 5.0 will be able to read v.5.0ß
files. I will do my best but you never knows !
C-Side is
a native OS/2 WYSIWYG (What You
See
Is
What
You
Get)
CD-cover and label editor, capable of color text and graphics design, and
print.
C-Side has
been developed in my spare time in most of the year 1999, it was originally
planned as a private 'my eyes only' project, partly because i needed this
sort of program, partly as a way to learn how to manipulate fonts,graphics
and printers under OS/2.
C-Side has
been developed in SpeedSoft's Sibyl-Pascal for OS/2, and even though it
is a great development tool, it still has some weird problems now and then.
In an attempt to solve some of these problems i turned to the 'Speedpascal/2
Mailing list' where i got a lot of help (thanks guys, when I truly needed
the help, you was there - the true living OS/2 spirit !). In my plea for
help I had to describe my problems, and in doing so, I mentioned what my
project was all about, this caused Tony White to contact me, and request
a commercial release of my project.
OK, Tony here
you have it !
Tony has come
up with a lot of good ideas, most of which has been implemented, helping
develop the program from very primitive, to quite usable !
C-Side
has a lot of functionality packed in a fairly small package, most functions
are easy to understand and use. In the following I will give you a rough
introduction to a few functions, to let you get a feeling for the idea
behind the program.
C-Side has three parts, called 'CD', 'Front'
and 'Back' (selectable by the tabs in the bottom of the window), each representing
a part of the CD/cover layout.
With the buttons to the right, you can insert new images (OS/2 and M$
W****** BMP and GIF) and texts, this can also be done via Tools on the
menu bar, more about this later.
This page represents the CD-label, by default it is transparent (ie.
no color is printed).
By using the 'Edit' menu, you can define a background color, and the
position of the label on the page when printing.
You can have up to four labels on one sheet (you probably couldn't but
you can define their position on the sheet, if you could !).
This page represents the front cover of
the crystal box, just like the CD-label, this page is transparent, but
a background color can be set, as well as some printing properties.
Everything you can place on a page is called an 'object', you can get
a list of all objects on a page, by clicking on the 'Object' menu.
You can get the settings of an object by right-clicking on the object,
or via the 'Edit' menu.
You can move an object by moving the cursor over the object until the
cursor changes to a 'arrow-cross', then hold down the left mouse button,
and drag, where ever you releases the mouse button the object will be positioned.
This page represents the back cover of
the crystal box, as with the two previous pages it defaults to transparent,
but you can set background color, and some printing properties.
If you would like to re size an object, move the mouse cursor over the
object until it becomes an double-arrow, hold down the left mouse button,
and drag, wherever you releases the mouse button, will define the size
of the object.
To delete an object, click (once) on the object with the left mouse
button, and press delete, or select 'Edit' and 'Delete object' from the
menu bar
When you inserts an image, you'll get a window asking
you to select the image file, that's all. you can not change this
selection when it has been accepted (you'll have to delete the object and
insert a new one), this may come one day.
Inserting a text is somewhat more complex. To the left you see the text
settings page. You can always recall this page by right clicking on an
text object
At the top of the page you edit the text, below you see the text with
the currently selected attributes.
Further down you can select the font, color and evt. background color
of the text.
Further down yet, and to the left, you select the alignment of the text,
and to the right you can change the direction of the text
Capability
for using a text file as text area. File are loaded during load of the
cd layout, or when selecting a new file.
The
code of the text area have been cleaned somewhat up.
An
error freezing the desktop while printing printing the CD-cover from a
previously saved cd-layout has been corrected.
If
you load a layout containing fonts not installed on the system, the load
process is no longer aborted, the missing font is substituted by the default
font.
The
value for height of back cover insert, was not saved (was always 121 mm
)
The
following limitations and problems are known :
There
is a minor vertical displacement of texts, when printing, this can show
as missing 'below the line' parts of some characters, I do not know how
to correct this problem, but I'm working on it ! (may
be corrected in version 3.0)
For
some reason (probably M$ W****** compatibility in Sibyl) the '&' character
will now and then be converted to '~' (always when recalling the text settings)
You
can download the latest shareware version (4.01 of 20-May-2001) here,
this is the unregistered version, with some limitations, if you already
have a registered version of C-Side then this is the upgrade !
If
you have downloaded the shareware version, and would like to register for
the full version, you can register online at BMT-micro,
they will send you an temporary registration key (they may insist the version
is 3, but don't panic, the registration is valid for any version !), and
within one to two weeks you will receive the final key from me.
To
register go to the about menu and click on 'Register', here you can enter
name and registration number. For the temporary registration code, your
name is not required, but when you receive your full registration, you
will find a registration- name and code to enter exactly
as written in your registration mail.