Spotlight on Crawfords the Printers

Gavin Crawford tells us why his printing firm is devoted to using RISC OS

Crawfords the Printers, situated in Southport, Lancashire, is a small family-run printing and commercial stationery business, offering a wide range of services from design and print through to supplying all manner of office stationery and equipment.

The production of business and office stationery, such as letterheads, business cards, compliments slips and invoices, represents the majority of our daily work. We also offer speciality work such as menus, invitations and programmes, including an extensive range of Masonic stationery. We can offer all manner of different print-related services, from large screen-printed signs to trade gifts such as printed pens and key rings, full-colour folders and so on.

The other main area of our business is the retail sales of stationery supplies through our shop. We sell all the usual office stationery, from copier paper, envelopes, listing paper and staples, to larger items such as office machinery, office furniture, filing cabinets etc.

Despite the fact that we are in a hi-tech computer age, it's funny how people still need the humble pen and paper!

How it all began

Crawfords the Printers was established in 1977 by Roy and Dorothy Crawford. It started life as a print agency with a varied customer base stretching across the Northwest of England. By 1984 the company had expanded and its first printing press was installed in the garden shed, with Mitchell, their eldest son, joining the firm in 1985 as press operator, bringing with him a number of years' experience in the print industry. I joined the firm in 1986 and took on the job of origination and artwork. By this time, still operating from home, room was becoming scarce with almost every available space being taken up by equipment. The garage was being used for the office, the lounge was devoted to finishing and origination, and the sideboard was full of paper stock with more stacked on top. Even a bedroom hosted a photocopier and plate-making equipment. It was time to move, and Arbour House was our destination.

Home: where it all began

A new shop, for local people

We relocated in May 1987 to Arbour House, a shop near to Southport town centre, where we remain to this day. There is plenty of easy parking, making it ideal for people to pop in for photocopies or to use the fax service. Having the shop front gives us a presence on the high street and allows customers to discuss their requirements in friendly, convenient surroundings, unlike many print-works where you are confronted by the grumpy press operator who's covered in ink and too busy to be bothered with your small job!

Arbor House

Not long after the move, Allan Aughton joined the team and is now the press room manager.

Over the years the extra space has allowed us to expand and update our range of equipment and facilities, with a new two-colour litho press being installed a few years ago.

Changing times

With the advancement of technology, it is my side of the business, the artwork and origination department, that has seen the most dramatic developments. Going back to the dark ages when I started, all artwork was done by hand. A typical business form was ruled up on a drawing board, with text being cut out and pasted into the required place using cowgum glue or the newfangled 3M Spray Mount. Our text composition was served by an outside typesetting bureau for fancy fonts and headings, and our IBM Selectric Composer, a rather complex electro-mechanical golfball typewriter which had a number of different fonts available, with different golfballs for each separate font and type size. This machine had proportional fonts, and could produce fully-justified text by using an intricate method which involved typing the text passage once and taking note of the mechanical sliding scale after each line. Then the passage was re-typed with a dial set to the previously noted code at the start of each line. The dial adjusted the widths of the spaces throughout the line, ensuring full justification, provided that both lines of text were typed identically. After several years of using this machine, the mere sound of the name 'IBM' would send shivers down my spine.

IBM Selectric Composer, brought out of retirement to make a special appearance

Later we purchased an AM Varityper Compset, a 'fully computerised' photo-typesetter. This monstrous beast was the size of a large chest freezer, and weighed about the same as a small family saloon. Its built-in green-screen monitor and keyboard allowed full text editing capabilities, but as it could only produce text, its output still had to be cut and pasted at the drawing board. Even at this stage we were familiar with the potential that computers could offer, having cut our teeth on a Tangerine Microtan 65 back in 1979/1980 and later progressing to a BBC Micro model B in 1982.

A Beeb was already being put to work in the office after we wrote a label-printing program and an invoicing system: software which forms the basis of the application that is still used today on a Risc PC. Our plan was to connect a Beeb to the photo-typesetter to allow a second user to compose text. However, with a serial port expansion card for the typesetter costing over £2000, it wasn't achieved until a second-hand one was acquired for £600 in 1989. A transfer program was written that allowed WordWise files to be converted and sent to the typesetter.

Enter RISC OS

In 1994 our first RISC OS machine was purchased: an A4000 with 4Mb of RAM and a 60Mb hard drive. The initial plan was to go for an IBM PC clone, but having so many programs and utilities already written in BBC Basic, a RISC OS machine seemed the most obvious solution. The A4000 was originally destined for the office, but it wasn't long before I realised the power and flexibility of RISC OS, and it was duly removed to live in the art room. A 600dpi laser printer was soon purchased and, with the addition of ArtWorks and Impression Style, the change was made from paste-up to 'desktop publishing'. It was apparent that, almost overnight, the £20,000 photo-typesetter had become virtually obsolete.

The next task was to take jobs stored on the typesetter's 8-inch floppy discs and convert them across to the A4000, so a re-write of the Beeb transfer program was in order. Thus, our first Wimp application was created. This received data from the typesetter through the serial port and converted it from its non-ASCII character set into text files. It also allowed the typesetting codes to be mapped to Impression DDF (Document Description Format) codes, so a complete job could be converted and loaded into Impression Style and all font information, including the point size and changes for medium, bold and italic weights etc., was preserved.

Later additions to the application included options to save as DOS-format text. Thanks mainly to the engineers who serviced our typesetter, the word about our software spread, and we got many jobs from a number of other typesetting bureaux to convert their files for them, so they could be used on new systems. One in particular was a publisher which had a mass of books that needed to be updated and re-edited so that reprints could be produced.

It wasn't long before the A4000 had proved what was possible, but its 4Mb of memory was becoming a limiting factor for many jobs, and within a year of using the A4000 for origination it was replaced with a Risc PC.

Today we have a wide range of equipment, and RISC OS machines are used for almost all of our computing needs. At work we have three Risc PCs, two of which are used in the art room and the other in the office. The A4000 is still there, but is now only used as a print server to accept PostScript files across the network and serves just a colour laser printer. We also have a couple of PCs; one is used when needing to deal with files sent to us by other people, and its main function is to convert jobs into other formats that can be used on RISC OS. The other PC is used to drive a digital engraving machine which came with its own Windows software. This is full of features but is absolutely awful to use. We haven't had the machine all that long, and as soon as I get some free time I plan to see what can be achieved with a RISC OS machine connected to it.

Right: the digital engraving machine; Below: sample output

We have a number of other Acorn machines at each of our homes. In total, counting the machines at work, we have six Risc PCs, three A4000s, one A3010, two NCs, and one STB1 set-top box that uses a Risc PC motherboard. We have another two Risc PC motherboards and a collection of other bits that will one day live again. So, as you may have guessed, our level of dedication to RISC OS computers is considerable. We find that it is slower, and requires more effort, to achieve the same tasks in Windows on our 2GHz Pentium 4 PC than it does on a Risc PC with a 233MHz StrongARM. Perhaps it's partly to do with overall familiarity, but we find RISC OS to be the most productive operating system.

Tools of the trade

Over the years our range of equipment has increased, and our once-spacious building has become quite full, but all our work is handled in-house. On the pre-press side we have a 3600dpi Agfa imagesetter with an Agfa Hardware RIP which is controlled directly from the RISC OS machines. A Rapiline processor is used to develop the imagesetter film, and a Parker printdown frame handles plate-making. A number of laser printers are also used for producing artwork.

On the press side we have two litho presses, a block foil machine, a high-speed duplex laser printer that is used for small run work, and our most recent addition: the digital engraving machine which is also used for consecutive numbering of aluminium asset plates.

Our finishing department has a guillotine, sheet-fed auto-numbering machine, collating machine, folding machine, a number of drills and punches, perforating machine, and booklet-making facilities with wire, spiral, and comb binding, stapling and saddle stitching. There is also a range of other print finishes that we can achieve such as: thermography (a raised plastic finish applied to the ink), hot foil stamping, foil sublimation and colour laser printing.

Installing and developing

Having had computers for so many years, it has become second nature to strip them down, either to upgrade them or to replace parts. Not one of our machines exists in its original factory condition, with changes occurring all the time. An upgrade in one machine will usually find the part it replaces being moved down the line to the next system. When RISC OS 4 was released we attended RISCOS Ltd's training session to become RISC OS 4 Authorised Installers, allowing us to provide assistance to any local Acorn users needing help with the upgrade. We have the facilities to back-up a system's hard drive onto writable CDs, as well as to reformat hard drives to the E+ (long filename) format and restore the data back to the drive. As our shop is open from 8am to 5.30pm each weekday, it's convenient for people to bring in a system at a time that suits them.

In 1999, when RISCOS Ltd took over the operating system, we also became Registered Developers as a way of showing our support and continued commitment to RISC OS. The decision was taken to use the name of DC Software, this being the name we use for our software developments.

We have a number of software applications currently in development, and it is hoped that the first will be released soon. This is a publishing tool that allows sprite manipulation; it is in daily use in a prototype form, and is constantly being improved.

Looking to the future

Due to its ease of use and flexibility, we will be continuing to use RISC OS machines, as the advantages and benefits that they offer have proved invaluable and superior over alternative systems for our day-to-day operations.

In mid-production with a Risc PC

Risc PC, two monitors and many Ovation Pro boxes

Although we are not the most well-known of the Acorn-based print houses, we have completed a number of jobs for some well-known RISC OS companies. Among the most recent examples are David Pilling's new 300-page Ovation Pro Reference Manual and the printed Script Manual Reference Guide; also R-Comp's Messenger Pro manual, with a stylish cover design by Richard Hallas.

RISC OS software manuals: the Ovation Pro cover was designed to be output on the colour laser printer whilst Messenger Pro's manual was intended for two-colour printing

Our clients range from the odd-job gardener to bigger national organisations; for example, C.M.P.E., Vehicle Inspectorate, Unison, ASDA, BAE Systems, G.P. On-Call and Local Area Health Authorities. But whatever the size or nature of an enquiry, we pride ourselves on the quality of our work and professional approach, and we always strive to ensure that constructive advice is provided to suit the individual requirements of the job.

Our contact details are:

Crawfords the Printers
Arbour House
32 Arbour Street
Southport
PR8 6SQ
England

Telephone: 01704 544701
Fax: 01704 544353

Email: sales@crawford-print.co.uk
Web: www.crawford-print.co.uk