Fancy Borders

Supplied by SD Microsystems - £12.50

It's a pity that the PcW 16's word-processor is limited when it comes to graphics. Apart from the symbols that are listed at the back of the manual, there's little that can be done to spice up the appearance of a document. However, SD Micro's release of Fancy Borders, which runs on the new CP/M emulator, can change that. It's a program to print patterned borders round the outside of a page, so you could write your text in the '16's word-processor and print it in the middle.

The package

Supplied is a single floppy disk, which contains the main program together with a variety of patterns. There's also many pictures, including a book, Christmas images and others. These would be useful to create a theme for a document.

Also included is a comprehensive 10-page manual, which covers setting up the printer and describes each menu item. The guide contains pictures of the images and borders as well, so you can make a choice without having to test each one out.

Using Fancy Borders

The program displays a simple menu, from which you can choose to set up your printer, test-print an image, print a full border, and perform disk operations. The test-print option is a great help, as you can see how an image will look before printing the whole border.

The border can be printed in various colours (providing your printer supports it), and the layout on the page can be changed to position the border in different ways. For example, you could print a rectangular pattern going right round the edges of the page, or just print the images as 'L' shapes in the corners.

Comment

Fancy Borders is easy to use and the variety of images is excellent. While not quite as versatile as Super Labeller, there's a good range of layout options and the ability to print in colour is a great bonus. The manual is thorough and detailed, and the whole package is a superb complement to Super Labeller. With Fancy Borders, and a bit of creativity with the word-processor, the '16 can become a competent DTP tool.

Rating: 8/10