** 2 page tutorial / 1583 words ** Sticky Labels! Michael High offers tips for avoiding getting stuck with Papyrus label printing... Papyrus is very good at creating labels, once you understand how it does it. However, the manuals give little guidance, and it can take hours of experimentation to crack the mysteries of this secret art. If you have not yet played with the "label" technique then read on. It can create more than just things to stick on envelopes. Examples include business cards, place names for a formal meal, even serial numbered slips for the office sweepstake. The process has become more sophisticated with later versions of Papyrus, so I am giving version 5 examples to cover all the possibilities. Setting up ** DISPLAY.IMG here ** There are three dialogs involved in the process, and they all interact. The easiest way to explain it is to read this article with your Atari turned on and Papyrus running. Seeing the changes is better than several pages of screen dumps. It will help if you use the Document > Screen display command to show the object frames and to display According to paper format. The two main dialogs ** P_FORMAT.IMG here ** ** Caption ** Figure 1 ** /caption ** Open a new document and use the Document > Paper format... command to select the 3.5" disk label large. The dot beside the name means that it is one of the default layouts that is always available. Adjust the settings if necessary to those shown in figure 1. Close the dialog and try typing in some text. ** 1ST_TRY.IMG here ** At first, the label layout is probably trying to force all the text into a small square in the middle, shown by the dotted line. The reason is that the wide text margins inherited from your default template settings are too generous for labels. So use the Document > Page layout... command to open the second of the label design dialogs. Set the text area margins to a small figure, such as 10mm, and the area available for text on your label layout will open up. The label layout probably still displays one or more dashed lines. These are the margins set by the printer. This becomes more obvious when more than one label is displayed. Enter a couple of page breaks so that a complete row of three labels is displayed. Their combined width is 210mm, the same as an A4 sheet. The layout settings have no margins or gaps set. However, my printer can not print within 6mm of the edge of an A4 page. As a result, the printer can not reach the left hand and top 6mm in the first label. Similarly the top 6mm is out of bounds in the second label, and so on. Papyrus warns you of the problem on every label, since label design normally only uses the one Master Page layout. With some label layouts, you may see a dashed line excluding text from the bottom of the label. The reason for this is that Papyrus calculates the amount of text that can be physically printed on the last row of labels before a form feed is sent to start a new sheet. It takes into account the number of rows of labels, their dimensions and spacings. In our example, there may be no problem, since the four labels total 275mm, which is 22mm less than an A4 backing sheet. However, if the number of rows is increased to 5 or a row gap introduced, we are immediately shown to have a problem. The important points to remember are: Providing the text area shown by the dotted line does not extend outside the printable area shown by the dashed line there is no problem. If it does, Papyrus will display the text but will not be able to print it. It gives no warning of the problem. If you need to print right up to the edge of the labels, then the top and left margins in the Paper Format dialog have to be increased until they exceed the mechanical margins set by the printer. In the example of the 70mm wide labels, it is not possible with my printer to print right to the edge of three labels across a page. I would have to reduce the label settings to 2 columns. The third dialog ** PRINT_DI.IMG here ** The Print Document dialog has a strong influence on the label layout long before you actually think of printing. The printer margins are set by the type of printer selected. For example, pin printers often give a choice of sheet feed and continuous (or tractor) feed. My old pin printer had a bottom printer margin of 20mm in sheet feed mode. But there was no bottom margin for continuous feed. So if you have a choice, remember to select the appropriate printer definition before beginning label layout design. The undocumented trick that Papyrus has up its sleeve is to be found when the Copies quantity is increased above 1. Papyrus does not use the code used by some page printers to print multiple sheets. Selecting multiple copies simply causes the program to calculate and transmit the data to the printer several times. However, with label printing, Papyrus gets clever. In the disk label example, it knows it can fit 12 labels on the one sheet. So when asked for 12 copies of a single label, it will print them all on the one sheet. There is no need to create multiple copies of the label before printing. Similarly, if you have created 6 labels, but need 2 copies, Papyrus will print the first set in the first two rows, and then the second set in rows three and four. If you want to create business cards, bookmarks, invitations or any small item needing multiple copies, design it as a single label and set the number of copies need in the Print Document dialog. Papyrus will work out how many can be cut from each sheet. Saving the settings Having designed a particular label, you should always save a copy as a template. As well as saving rulers and styles, templates also store the name of the chosen paper format. So the setting up process only has to be done once. To do this, create your label and save it as an ordinary file. The delete any text that you do not require again, change the Document Type to Template, and save the file again in your template folder. Your layout design will already have a paper format name, such as 3.5" disk label large, and this is saved in the template. When you call up this template in future, it will automatically call up the Paper Format settings associated with the paper format name. Saving the actual Paper Format settings is not so straight forward. This is because not all the buttons in the Paper Format dialog work as expected. Create new format does what it says it does, giving a blank set of settings to edit. Delete format only deletes the selected format from memory. Unless you use the Options > Save options command, the deleted format will reappear next time you load Papyrus. Similarly the Save format... command only works to memory. You have to Save options to save your precious work to disk. They are kept in the Papyrus.inf file. ** CRC_WARN.IMG here ** The Load format... button has absolutely no effect whatsoever. I can only assume that the save and load part of the Paper Format dialog were designed for functionality that has yet to be coded into the actual program. However, if you use Avery or Avery compatible labels, the Gary Bainbridge utility comes to the rescue. Autolab 3 was included as a Beta release on the AC#10 Reader Disk. It works by modifying the Papyrus settings file. Run the program, select the label or labels you use, hit the Modify INF file button, and the settings are made. The only hint, on my system, why this is a beta release comes when you load Papyrus. Up comes a nasty looking dialog warning of dire things because of a CRC checksum error. Fear not. Save your settings again, and next time you load Papyrus all will be well. Your Avery labels will be available in the Paper Format dialog. Now the fun begins Label design can use the whole armoury of Papyrus features. They can have headers and footers, multiple columns, background pictures in master pages, and so on. Here are a few ideas to play with: Next time... We will have a go at mail merging some addresses onto our labels.