Snippets from Previous Meetings
Barry gave a brief outline of AMUG for the three visitors, explaining about the morning and evening meetings - see below for the next meeting dates.
Barry reported on his visit to Christchurch, where the attended the recent meeting of the Apple Users Group of Canterbury. Paul Johnson of Apple NZ spoke of the new iMac model, and explained that distribution had been delayed due to both demand and difficulty in the supply of the flat screens. Other parts of the presentation included explanations about MacOS X.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Some members asked for more details of the Apple Roadshow in Christchurch (May 2nd at Hotel Grand Chancellor, 161 Cashel Street): a presentation by Apple NZ of up-to-date hardware and software, accompanied by trade supporters (scanners, printers, etc).
RAY BRANSGROVE : MACS AT THE TIMARU HERALD
Ray gave a very interesting account of his work at the Timaru Herald, which uses some 19 Macs, as well as other computers. He told us about the various departments, and explained how each used computers to produce newspapers and other printed items.
The departments of the Herald are:
- Art Dept, in which Ray works (see below).
- Advertisement Setting Dept, which prepares newspaper advertisements.
- Photo-Litho Dept, which prepares newspaper pictures.
- Photographic Dept, which takes and prepares photos (since recently, entirely digitally).
- Editorial Dept, responsible for newspaper content.
- The newspaper was one of the first in NZ to use computers for all aspects of its production.
- As well as the Herald, four other newspapers are printed there, sourced by e-mail.
- Most computer workstations are used by 2 shifts, so they are occupied through each workday until the early hours of the next morning.
- Using digital cameras now saves each of the photographic staff up to 2 hours each day.
- Because of computer usage, the final appearance of the front page can be changed (due to late-breaking news) until 10 minutes before press-time..
- The Timaru Herald press can print an entire run of the newspaper in 20 minutes, in necessary.
- 5 artists (including Ray) are occupied with design work, 90% of which is not for the Herald.
- brochures, magazines, calendars, catalogues, business cards, reports... anything in print form can be designed and produced.
- much of the work is sourced from outside South Canterbury (via e-mail), including some from overseas.
- G4 Macs are used, and many of the files are in PDF format.
- Quark Express, Photoshop and Pagemaker are some of the principal applications used.
- Photographs need to be of high resolution be suitable for artistic and design work.
- All files are backed up and archived on CD.
- The Art Dept also does some website design, but does not promote this aspect.
Thank you Ray... your talk was much appreciated.
MAC BASICS - USING APPLEWORKS DRAWING
Tony gave a basic overview of the Drawing module in ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, explaining some of the features which can be used to illustrate or decorate documents to add interest. The drawing and fill tools were introduced, and handling of graphic objects was demonstrated. A useful inbuilt feature of ClarisWorks 4/AppleWorks 5 is the library of clip-art graphics which may be inserted into either word processing, painting or drawing documents. In AppleWorks 6 this is renamed as Clippings, and has the added facility to search for a desired image by keywords, or to automatically connect to the internet to search a much more extensive graphics library, from which images may be downloaded.
REMINDER
Next meeting is on 31 May at 7:30 pm - ALL WELCOME - BRING A FRIEND
Next Morning Meeting is on Tuesday 21 May at 10:30 am, at David Balfour's home, S.H.1, Washdyke. Please phone Barry (03) 688 3612 or Lea (03) 686 0735
prior to the meeting.
[Committee Meeting on Mactropolis: Tuesday 21 May at 9:00pm.]
Happy MacComputing..... Regards to all....
Tony Climo
Secretary, Aoraki MacIntosh Users Group