OVER 2 YOU, 161 (23/12/03)

VICTORIAN CLIPART

Does anyone know of any clipart software dedicated to Victorian scenes and designs, or software with a large section of clip art applicable to the Victorian era?

Dave Smee, via email

I can highly recommend Art Explosion from Nova Development www.novadevelopment.co.uk. It comes with a large selection of Victorian images, including people and their activities, cartoons, advertisements, motifs, borders and backgrounds etc.

Jeanette Chadwic, via email

Good old Google! Just go to the home page, click ‘Images’ and type in ‘Victorian’. My search turned up over a hundred and ninety thousand pictures, most of them seem to be photographs but there are plenty of drawings and graphics too. If you want something specific refine your search, ‘Victorian Architecture’ produced a much more manageable twelve hundred pictures.

Cathy Hughes, via email

Dave Smee will find a good source of Victorian clip art scenes and designs on CD at The Dover Bookshop, 18 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LN, Telephone 020 7836 2111, or www.doverbooks.co.uk

Chris Impey, via email

Your correspondent need look no further than Victorian.net (http://victorians.net/clipart.shtml), the website for ‘Absolutely everything Victorian’, it says and that includes a fair selection of free and suitably cheesy clipart. Funny, I didn’t think the Victorians had computers!

Kara Taylor, via email

There is a small selection of images, mostly Victorian style silhouettes, on a website called Designed to a T, which you will find at: http://www.designedtoat.com/victorian.shtml

D.J., via email

Try: http://www.vintageclipart.com/

freevictorianclipart.htm, there’s half a dozen twee colourful drawings there of ladies and cherubic kids. You can download them for free, just right click on the image and save it on your disc drive. I used a couple of them in Christmas cards and they look very good.

Linda Shelly, via email

SIDEWAYS PRINTING

Back in the 1980's the SuperCalc spreadsheet program had a facility called 'Sideways Printing'.  This enabled large spreadsheets to be printed out on dot matrix printers at right angles to the normal direction of printing, i.e. it printed 'by columns' rather than in the conventional way of 'by rows or lines'. Does any know if there is a similar facility, or an add-on that will enable me to print large MS Excel spreadsheets in the same manner?

Simon Taylor, via email

Excel does not print by rows or lines, it prints sub-matrices, i.e. each printed page contains a set of contiguous columns and rows. You can alter the order in which pages are printed and/or you can switch rows into columns and vice versa. The methods of carrying out these changes are:

To change page order select File > Page Setup > Sheet and change page order from ‘Down, then Overto Over, then Down

To switch rows to columns select whole worksheet right-click and Edit > Copy. Create new (temporary) worksheet then Edit > Paste Special > Transpose. Finally Print the new (temporary) worksheet

Brian Hershman, Timoleague, Ireland

I used to be a fan of SuperCalc and then Lotus 123 arrived on the scene but this has, in my opinion, now been overtaken by Excel, which contains nearly everything you could possibly need including a solution to your problem.

You can set up your workbook so that it will print as many columns and rows as you need, complete with column headings and row descriptions on each page by simply clicking on File, Page Setup, Page and then selecting Portrait or Landscape.

You can also change the size of the print from 100% to (say) 80% - but don’t go lower or it will be difficult to read.  Then click on Sheet, make sure there is nothing entered in the “print area” box and then type in the “Rows to repeat at top” box 1:5 (change the 5 to the lowest row in your column headings that you would like to repeat on each page) then click on “Columns to repeat at left” and enter A:C (change the C to the match the number of columns you want to repeat).  Click on OK and print your work.

If you want to join all the pages together with sticky tape to make one big page when you have finished then just leave out the repeat “columns” part of the instruction.

A. E. Hale, Epsom, Surrey

Claris works (now once again Appleworks) gives a choice. From the Print menu go to Page Setup, you then select Portrait or Landscape orientation. Given that Claris has a word-processing, database and a spreadsheet you might be able to import the Excel spread sheet into Claris.
Arthur Robinson, via email

MultiPrint advertises that it can print Databases, Spreadsheets or other wide data, in 1-column format at up to 210 characters per line, sideways, in landscape mode on Epson, LaserJet or DeskJet printers. An evaluation copy is available from its website: http://www.pro-central.com/multi_prn.htm

Ken Capps, Bramhope, Leeds

CARDBOARD BOXES

I need to create around a dozen small cardboard boxes with lettering and graphic designs on four of the six faces. I’ve made a prototype blank template and it fits easily inside the area of an A4 sheet of paper so I can print it on thin card using my PC printer. Can anyone recommend any software that will help me with the layout and printing?

Penny Taylor, via email

CorelDraw has the required features and versions 8 and 9 can now be picked up for a good price. Within the A4 boundaries guidelines can be set up to create the template. Blocks of text can easily be positioned and turned 90, 180 or 270 degrees as required.

Don Perham, via email

FAMILY TREE PROGRAMS

I have started to research my wife’s and my own family histories. I would be grateful for recommendations for suitable software, for a complete beginner to use, particularly when researching information obtained from Public Records Offices etc.

Robert Russell, via email

I have carried out much research on my family (Neame) and use standard software available for recording people.  There are a couple of websites that are particularly useful: www.1837online.com/Trace2web/, which will give you an entire copy of the indexes of births, marriages and deaths from 1837 to 2001.  The next is www.familysearch.org, which has a great search facility.  Once you have researched the immediate family from relatives you can use these websites to finish the task.  Putting you name into a search engine often throws up a lot of leads too.  Check your local library for
information as well.  I would be happy to hear from anyone on the subject.
Martin Fettes-Neame, via email

PASSPORT PHOTO PRINTER

Can anyone suggest software that will automatically generate for printing, a set of 35mm by 45mm passport size photos? My Adobe, Coral, and Ulead programs do not seem able to do this.

Colin Harris, Rugby.

Insert the picture into Word/Excel/PowerPoint – all these have the option to size a picture exactly, by right clicking on the picture and choosing format, then the size tab – it helps if the picture is roughly the right shape to start with. I can get several passport-sized photos onto one printable sheet in this way.

 Haydn Evans, via email

CAN YOU HELP?

A 90-year old ex RAF pilot who I meet on my morning walks often asks me where the all aircraft are going when we see the con-trails on cold days. Assuming that details of air corridors are not secret, is it possible to download this type of information from the Internet?

James Hartley, via email

Can anyone recommend a free web page 'hit' counter that does not involve banners, pop-up boxes or other advertising matter. If it is resettable then so much the better.
Dudley Wheeler, via email