GeoPublish Tutorial - Introduction

Do you want to exercise your freedom of the press? Are you one of the people who has tried geoPublish but have become frustrated by the complexity of the program? Have you been able to produce a simple flyer but want to learn how to make really impressive publications? Do you want to learn how to access PostScript printers to get the best output possible from your 20 year old computer? Would you be interested in a series of articles, a prolonged tutorial, to show you how to use all of the features of geoPublish?

My aim with this series of articles is to provide a single source of information that you can have close at hand to refer to when working with GeoPublish (gP). The articles will provide the details of the project including step-by-step instructions and will be used to create the finished product. You will be able to work through the examples as we go, put together the gP documents (there will be more than one) and print off your own copy that will be suitable for binding.

While the main objective is a big one it will be made up of smaller projects. During the course of this series we will learn about page layout and design, we will plan ahead to have a consistent look to a big project, we will see how to use gP to create a quick party invitation poster, we will work with plenty of GEOS programs that make using gP easier, and we will use all of the tools that gP has.

You may wonder if there is a need for this kind of project. I believe there is and that now is the best time to start this. To begin with, more and more people are getting turned on to the power of gP due to the COPS Mailing List and the availability of low-cost PostScript-equipped Printers. These people need help to get the most out of gP. I have been using gP for 15 years and have used it to create posters, newsletters and business cards as well as publishing a book. I doubt there is something that can be done with gP that I haven't done. I like to help others increase their productivity and enjoyment of their time at the computer so this project was born.

I am going to make some assumptions during this series. First off I am going to assume that you know how to use GEOS, that you own a copy of gP and that you have read the manual. I am going to assume that you have at least 2 drives to work with - preferably one is a large RAM Disk (if you don't you can still work through this but you will have to do a lot more work to juggle files on multiple disks).

I am going to assume that you have the two-disk version of gP that is dated 10/4/88. There were a number of versions of gP and this two-disk version has some important bug-fixes in it. If you don't have the same version of gP then you won't be able to load and print off my documents as there are some incompatibilities between the versions. The two-disk version also includes a manual addendum, the Graphics Grabber program and some Clip Art that we will make use of in the examples. To get the manual addendum or the 2-Disk version visit the Click Here Software web site and contact Maurice Randall.

I am also going to assume that you have internet access. This series will be Internet-based. Announcements will go out on the COPS Mailing List when new articles are available (about every 3-4 weeks). The COPS list (Commodore Only PostScript) is a mailing list for people who want to know how to get the most out of GeoPublish using PostScript equipped printers and learn about geoPublish as well.

The articles and support files will be available for download from the CUE Web Site so you can work through the process and create your own copy of the Tutorial as you learn. If you have any questions feel free to contact me via e-mail at cue64(at)shaw.ca.

So, with these thoughts in mind, let's get started learning how to get the most out of geoPublish.

Bruce Thomas
July 2003

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