Tag: Aldus Pagemaker

June 28th, 2025

Today, Bill Contento installed Pagemaker 3 and showed me how to use it. The colors are different, and the logo. For much of the day I stayed in the back office with Bill and Faren, getting the hang of Pagemaker’s new autoflow feature, so it occaionally got a bit crowded. Charlie, who was in a good mood now that another issue is under his belt, kept coming back to see how things were going, then darting away because he couldn’t stand watching it any more.

Late in the afternoon I drove Charlie down to Berkeley to leave some galleys and a book cover at The Other Change of Hobbit. Lisa Goldstein was there. Then we went to Andronico’s where we both did a little shopping. By the time we got back to Locus it was time to go home.

Charlie was blind in one eye, which screwed up his depth perception, so our duties included chauffering. Sometimes that meant visiting the local bookstores — The Other Change of Hobbit and Dark Carnival in Berkeley, Fantasy Etc. in San Francisco… The Other Change of Hobbit has, alas, gone the way of many bookstores and no longer has a corporeal form. At that time it was in a little shopping complex on Shattuck, always brightly lit, never cluttered or shadowy, but well-stocked with the latest and best in fantasy and science fiction. It was, as all important bookstores should be, a social center where part of the visit was pausing to gossip with the owners, Debbie Notkin and Tom Whitmore, or the writers who freqented it. Lisa Goldstein, the author of THE RED MAGICIAN, was at that time a small, blackhaired, pretty woman of about my own age, and everything I aspired to be in a writer. She still is. Wish I could remember what we talked about.

Andronico’s back then was the ne plus ultra of high end supermarkets — soft lighting, with soothing music, wide aisles, and an amazing selection of produce, etc. It has since been swallowed up by Safeway.

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June 26th, 2025

Today, Bill Contento installed Pagemaker 3 and showed me how to use it. The colors are different, and the logo. For much of the day I stayed in the back office with Bill and Faren, getting the hang of Pagemaker’s new autoflow feature, so it occaionally got a bit crowded. Charlie, who was in a good mood now that another issue is under his belt, kept coming back to see how things were going, then darting away because he couldn’t stand watching it any more.

Late in the afternoon I drove Charlie down to Berkeley to leave some galleys and a book cover at The Other Change of Hobbit. Lisa Goldstein was there. Then we went to Andronico’s where we both did a little shopping. By the time we got back to Locus it was time to go home.

Charlie was blind in one eye, which screwed up his depth perception, so our duties included chauffering. Sometimes that meant visiting the local bookstores — The Other Change of Hobbit and Dark Carnival in Berkeley, Fantasy Etc. in San Francisco… The Other Change of Hobbit has, alas, gone the way of many bookstores and no longer has a corporeal form. At that time it was in a little shopping complex on Shattuck, always brightly lit, never cluttered or shadowy, but well-stocked with the latest and best in fantasy and science fiction. It was, as all important bookstores should be, a social center where part of the visit was pausing to gossip with the owners, Debbie Notkin and Tom Whitmore, or the writers who freqented it. Lisa Goldstein, the author of THE RED MAGICIAN, was at that time a small, blackhaired, pretty woman of about my own age, and everything I aspired to be in a writer. She still is. Wish I could remember what we talked about.

Andronico’s back then was the ne plus ultra of high end supermarkets — soft lighting, with soothing music, wide aisles, and an amazing selection of produce, etc. It has since been swallowed up by Safeway.

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June 5th, 2025

Clear but cold. The issue, thank God and all His angels, will go out tonight.

Faren is on edge. Charlie wants her to learn Pagemaker, but the fact that she knows next to nothing about pasteup will make it difficult for her to extrapolate the process onto the screen. There were some tense conversations with Charlie in the back. Feel sometimes like I’m locked in a cage with them.

Was he thinking of firing me? That would have been dumb beyond belief, not because I was some super-competent employee, but because I was the one person in that office who knew Pagemaker . Faren was an editor and writer. Asking her to move from that to wrestling with a DTP program was insanity.

I had learned Pagemaker in spite of Charlie, who seemed to think computer programs could be acquired by a sort of osmosis. He’d downloaded it onto the computer, then expected me to know it just by turning on the computer and exporting Wordstar files. Fortunately, shortly after purchasing Pagemaker, he left town for a convention during a long weekend. While he was away, I literally broke into his house/office every morning, climbing in through his kitchen window and clambering over the sink. For three days, the bulk of my time was spent sitting in that back office, poring over documentation and practicing. By the time he returned I was, if not proficient, at least competent.

I still wonder if he ever put two-and-two together and figured out how I did that. Charlie could be stubborn and madly unreasonable, but he was not stupid.

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June 4th, 2025

Gray, gray, wet misty day. Awful morning. I got to work at 8:09 as I promised Charlie. He was in a terrible mood. Richard Curtis called and said his copy of Fritz’ manuscript arrived without a last page. God only knows how that happened. I was embarrassed and Charlie was livid. We express-mailed Richard the last chapter, which is only two pages.

The day got no brighter. I felt as though I were running in place. Finally, I managed to jam in both Heinlein’s and Simak’s obits and appreciations. By the end of the day, Charlie had mellowed enough for me to ask him if I could have Thursday and Friday off for the trip with my parents. “Sure,” he said, “as long as the issue is out.” I think it will be.

Because of the Heinlein additions, the issue was so big I had a hard time backing it up. Had to squash it. Also discovered that someone had obliterated the floppy back-up by overwriting another file onto it. At least I think that’s what happened.

First one in, last one to leave.

Not sure what “squashing it” meant here. Possibly doing a Save As, which seems obvious now and wasn’t back then. It might have been risky given the bugginess of Aldus Pagemaker, could have resulted in the entire file being overwritten and then erased.

Backing up was no simple matter. It involved, as I recall, a mysterious black device and some DOS commands.

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June 3rd, 2025

A lot of tension at work, most of it centered around Charlie and Frank Robinson. I overheard Charlie apologizing to him. Still don’t know for what, exactly, but likely connected to Heinlein’s obit.

The first section of the issue is finally done, though it was a long, irritating process. The computer crashed every few minutes, and it took me more than three hours just to get out pages 57, 58, and 59.

Somewhat to my amazement, I was able to start home a little after six. I gave Robinson a ride home. “Locus is a high pressure place, isn’t it?” he commented in the car.

The computer crashes were likely the result of using Aldus Pagemaker, an unbearably buggy early DTP program.

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December 13th, 2023

Egad. Only about $275 in the checking account. At least we know the rent check went through.

Charlie’s plum tree is beginning to bloom. Last year he had a party to celebrate it but I’m not sure he will this year. Since they built the house next door and spoiled his view, bitterness has filled his soul. He keeps the drapes on that side of his house closed, and last week I saw him leaning on the rail of his porch and staring gloomily down at the construction. It’s a big, handsome house, painted gray with white trim, and it’s pretty seen through the branches of the plum tree.

Still, it’s a pity. When I was still doing paste-up, I used to watch for deer, which would walk into the empty lot where the house is now standing and look for windfall plums. I will miss them.

When I began at Locus in 1986, we were still using old-fashioned paste-up, and I worked mainly at a table in the living room, against the broad picture windows looking out onto the deck and the plum tree and the woodsy East Bay Hills. Charlie would sit at his desk against the same window on the other side of the room, usually on the phone. There was a tone he used when he said people’s first name to notify anyone listening he was speaking to someone important. “Bob!” said in a certain way was not any old “Bob” but Robert Silverberg.

“Poul!” (Anderson) “Greg!” (Benford), “Pat!” (Murphy) , ” Chip!” (Delaney), and I could swear, on one amazing occasion, “Stephen!”

My own table typically had a paste-up board, a hot roller and wax, carefully cropped word-processed paragraphs I’d typed up and run out in the back office, red tape for where photos went, and an open magazine (usually VOGUE) to use as a base when waxing the little paragraphs before affixing them to the board. I enjoyed my job. If Charlie wasn’t conversing with someone interesting on the phone — or better yet, in person — he played good music on his stereo, and the view from the window into the plum tree was relaxing. I remember watching several deer, three does and two fawns, browsing below in the shade, nuzzling the grass for fallen fruit. If you walked out onto the deck they would not run away, but look up with interest and move forward hopefully, in case you dropped something edible.

By this entry, we had abandoned paste-up for Aldus Pagemaker, I was permanently at the computer in the back office, and Shelly was at my old desk by the window.

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Pam Troy

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Tag: Aldus Pagemaker