(Or the two or four pack, depending on which edition)
A new version of TextEase is now available from Elesar Ltd. Originally from Softease and aimed at the award winning software consists of a suite of up to six applications, and is available from Elesar in either Home, Educational, or Professional editions – with the first containing two of the applications, the second a further two, and the last all six.
Those applications are TextEase DTP, a very easy to use desktop publishing application, and TextEase Paint, for creating graphics – which together make up the Home edition (which costs £60.00 including VAT). The Education edition (£78.00) adds TextEase Turtle, to introduce programming with Logo, and TextEase Branch, which provides a way to create trees that show how things can be classified and relate to one another. Finally, the Professional edition at £96.00 includes a spreadsheet application called TextEase Table, along with TextEase Show, which can be used to create presentations.
Version 6.0 of the software brings support to all six applications for PNG files, allowing them to be imported directly into documents in much the same way as other formats, such as the native RISC OS Sprite format, JPEGs, and so on. When a document is exported as a Draw file, PNG files are automatically converted to Sprites, allowing the resulting file to be easily loaded into Draw, even on a different machine.
HTML support has been improved in a number of ways – with the simplest and most obvious being those PNG files, which are preserved for the purpose of HTML export. When exporting presentations, the ‘previous’ and ‘next’ button graphics weren’t being included, but they now are, and when exporting presentations, the HTML no longer includes unused or obsolete frames and JavaScript that may get blocked in some modern browsers as a potential security risk. Instead, the slides are exported using plain HTML and CSS – and the results will even display in NetSurf.
And not entirely unrelated to HTML, as well as linking objects within a page so that clicking on them opens a file, it’s now also possible to use URLs so that clicking on the object launches a web browser.
The presentation side of things has seen some notable improvements of its own with, for example, support for wireless ‘clickers’ added, which means moving from one slide to the next doesn’t need the computer mouse or keyboard to be used, and where there isn’t a laser pointer available to highlight key elements of the displayed slide, the software can now simulate one.
Other changes in TextEase Show include the ability to superimpose markers that highlight which parts of a slide would be shown, and which parts hidden, when displaying it on screens with different aspect ratios, and to display slide times in the storyboard view for timed presentations.
The software is fully 32-bit, which means it can be run on modern RISC OS computers, and is good on 26-bit platforms from RISC OS 3.60 onwards, and it comes with a 154 page manual. Existing users can get the latest version simply be re-running the installer application, and trading up from one edition to the next is possible for the difference in price – simply visit the TextEase page on the Elesar shop website, linked above.