====================================================================== EDUCATION:Gerry Austin ====================================================================== RECENTLY I BRIEFLY DISCUSSED the concept of 'magnetic books' available for the PCW series. This month, because of their revolutionary effect, I want to further highlight INFORMATION EDUCATION and show what other goodies they have on offer for the Academic, Teacher, Author and Librarian, to name the main beneficiaries. Available for Amstrad PCW's, BBC's and IBM PC's and compatibles, Information Education's software is breaking new ground with its approach to educational authoring systems. This new breed of software, termed 'Bookware', will facilitate publishing a whole range of 'information', in book format, on disk. This is now possible due to the advances in microcomputer technology giving larger memories and storage capacities to quickly retrieve information. VIEWBOOK.AUTHOR VIEWBOOK.AUTHOR is a powerful 'content-free' program that imports standard ASCII files - paged or unpaged, as created by LocoScript and most good word processors - into a uniform book-like shell. The Viewbook structure is already defined with Contents, Chapters, Pages, Index etc. all ready to be specified. It really is an information retrieval system, hypertext and database all rolled into one. Viewbook.Author isn't just for authors wanting to inexpensively publish. It's good for collaborative projects written by several people as well. Teachers and Trainers will find Viewbook.Author a useful information resource for students and a handy timesaving 'database' for course notes, handouts and lesson guides. Everyone that records facts for future reference will find Viewbook.Author's cross referencing ability useful too. Once created, Viewbooks offer a high degree of power to the user enabling him to read, browse or systematically search the data stored on the book. You may even retrace your path through the Viewbook or easily lookup cross references. The beauty of Viewbooks is their ease of use and familiar booklike structure but with the power of a wordprocessor and a database. A system such as this would be ideal for Libraries to allow end users to easily interrogate any particular textbook without the need to understand complex database or wordprocessor use. Simple on-screen Help pages are available that describe the options available and how to use them. Relevant pages may be printed from the Viewbook or sent to the M: drive - in ASCII format - ready for storage onto disk and subsequent word processing. A facility is provided to jot down, on-screen, notes for later use too. Creating Viewbooks is delightfully simple as well. The program comes with a ring-bound manual, which describes the Viewbook concept and use, machine specific details concerning installation and operation are to be found in an appendix. Because Viewbook.Author is menu driven and requires simple one key selection responses, the manual, which is intended for a range of other micros, appears dedicated to the PCW. Basically the sequence involved in creating a fully fledged Viewbook is as follows. Load the Viewbook.Author program and load the Viewbook shell (this is your Viewbook structure). Next select the Load option and your ASCII files are loaded into the empty Viewbook. You can't just load in an ASCII file in 'any old' layout. The margins and page lengths need to be defined to suit Viewbook.Author. Viewbooks are indexed by a keyword system. These keywords are located at the head of the page and can easily be included in your text whilst at the editing stage. When your ASCII file(s) have been loaded into your new Viewbook shell you are able to edit the book. This facility isn't intended to give you full word processing ability as major changes at this stage would be likely to alter the Viewbook structure. To preserve this structure you are able to alter one line of text at a time. Major changes are best done on the Parent file and subsequently re-loaded into the Viewbook. Editing is intended to make minor alterations to the text or to enter keywords or cross references. You also use the Edit feature to enter the author's name, Viewbook title and Chapter and appendix titles. Viewbook.Author has its own index creation utility which works on the keywords entered at the head of each page. Once created your index appears - sorted alphabetically and by chapter - at the end of your book. There is a useful analysis routine that analyses the Viewbook structure. This gives the starting page for each Chapter and section, the page title cross references and keywords for each page. Viewbook.Author's manual has a Chapter on "Publishing your own Information" which is full of helpful advice for intending Viewbook authors. The manual may be used as a tutorial as you are talked through and encouraged to create a simple example from start to finish. CONCLUSION Information Education are to be commended for revolutionising the textbook and creating a medium to allow users to easily select the information they require. Although primarily aimed at 'A' level and University students, Viewbooks deserve to become a part of everyday fact storage and retrieval for the man and woman in the street, via Public, Academic and specialised Libraries. If you are an expert writing specialised texts that may be suitable for publishing as a Viewbook you may find this medium an ideal way of going about it. Viewbooks could usefully be used as a means of publishing catalogues and reports too. For further details contact INFORMATION EDUCATION LIMITED, Unit 33, Enterprise Centre, Bedford Street, Stoke-on-Trent. ST1 4PZ Telephone: (0782) 281643 NEWS - M.O.P BUGGED? If you have an early version (pre version 1.07D) of Database Software's "Mini Office Professional" which is 'bugged' you should write to Database Software describing the bug and request a free upgrade to the latest version. You will need to send your original master discs to Diane O'Brien, Sales & Marketing, Database Software, Europa House, Adlington Park, Adlington, Macclesfield. SK10 4NP