What is LaserMerge Electronic Paper 2.0?

LaserMerge electronic paper, by MindGate Technologies, is a single extension that adds an imposing range of special printing features to any application. With LaserMerge, you can include items such as headers, time stamps, watermarks, and bar codes in your documents when you print them. You can also print multiple pages on a single sheet of paper to create pamphlets, brochures, business cards, and labels. The results can be pretty impressive — if you can figure out the programs complex interface and wade through the verbose documcn ration.

LaserMerge's capabilities go far beyond those of even the most sophisticated printer-driver software. LaserMerge lets you design new paper sizes, adjust the percentage of toner used by your printer, and store custom text and graphics to imprint on each page you output.

LaserMerge Designer is an application that Jets you create templates defining the size of a page and including items such as watermarks, custom fields, and graphics. (The program comes with about 130 predefined templates, including 90 Avery label templates.) The Designer application has basic drawing tools, or you can import PICT and EPS graphics.

A LaserMerge button appears in the Page Layout and Print dialog boxes of your other applications. Clicking on this button lets you select a template. When you print, LaserMerge intercepts the job and combines your original document with the information in the template. You can also permanently link a document to a specific LaserMerge template.

LaserMerge lets you perform some pretty slick printing pyrotechnics. You can, for example, create a template that automatically prints multiple copies of a single document, with different headers, watermarks, or graphics on each copy. You could use this template to print three copies of an invoice — one for a customer, one for shipping, and another for accounting — and label each page. You can also output a document in a variety of formats simply by linking it to ihe appropriate templates. The same document can easily he printed as a two-column newsletter or a three-column brochure.

Another of the program's powerful features is its ability to prompt for information at print time and then merge this information into a document. For example, LaserMerge can ask for a person's name, fax number, and address, and then place them in a fax cover sheet.

Unforunately, the LaserMerge interface is complicated and unintuitive — sometimes painfully so. LaserMerge Designer is powerful but hard to figure out. The numerous tool bars and dialog boxes are overly complex, and getting a template to behave exactly as you expect takes a lot of trial and error.

The program’s 300-plus-page manual is wordy and filled with jargon that actually makes the program sound harder to use than it really is. By using terms like View Domain Tier and Odd Continuum Page, the manual makes some fairly basic concepts unbelievably complicated.

The Last Word

At $95, LaserMerge is reasonably priced. Though learning how to use it takes a lot of time, once you’ve mastered LaserMerge’s tools, you’ll have a tremendous amount of design control over print jobs.

Schorr, Joseph. (September 1996). LaserMerge Electronic Paper 2.0. Macworld. (pg. 87).

Download LaserMerge Electronic Paper 2.0 for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.0

Compatibility notes