Lotus Ami Pro 4.0 Beta Readme
Lotus Development Corporation Trade Secret
Confidential

Contents
    Using the two sample SmartMasters
    Using the Cleanup After Ami Pro application
    Major Changes
    New Properties Dialog (the Lotus Infobox)
    New Context Sensitive User Interface
    New Named Styles Model
    New SmartMaster Model (stylesheets)
    On-line Documentation, Ask the Expert and Help
    Other New Capabilities and Features
    Macros and Scripting (warning)
    File Format (warning)
    International Use (warning)

Using the two sample SmartMasters

1.  Start Ami Pro
2.  Select the "More SmartMasters" button in the welcome screen
3.  Select the "Browse for More Files" button in the next screen
4.  Select "Ami Pro 4.0 SmartMaster" in the file type combo box
5.  Change to the styles directory and you will find LETTER.SAM and BOOK.SAM
6.  From then on they will appear on the recently used SmartMaster list
    (P.S. this will be much simpler in the shipping version)

Using the Cleanup After Ami Pro application

    Ami Pro has a cleanup tool that will allow you to restart Ami Pro 
    after a crash (or system error), without restarting Windows first.

To use the cleanup tool...

1. After Ami Pro has terminated, double click on the "Cleanup After Ami Pro" 
   icon in the program group containing the Ami Pro icon. 

   It is very important to only run the tool when Ami Pro is not running, 
   as running the cleanup tool will cause Ami Pro to terminate.
2. Depending on the way Ami Pro crashed, you will either see nothing, or you 
   will see a "Serious System Error" warning. If you see the latter, 
   click OK. In either case, after you have run the cleanup tool, you can 
   restart Ami Pro.
3. After several cleanups, it is recommended that you restart Windows, 
   as your system resources may not be fully restored after each cleanup.

Major Changes

    Ami Pro 4.0 has had major changes to its user interface, its
capabilities and the way one uses the product. Below are a few
of the really important changes. Please take a minute to review
them, as they will help you begin to use the Beta version of Ami
Pro 4.0.

New Properties Dialog (the Lotus Infobox)

    All the controls needed to change properties (such as Bold, font
size, named style) are now contained in a single properties
dialog. The Properties dialog will have everything you need to
modify your current selection. The dialog has tabs just under
the titlebar, allowing you to see groups of related controls,
such as font, indention, named styles, etc. The properties
dialog is not modal, meaning that you do not need to close or
click Apply to see changes in the document, and therefore, there
is no preview. 

New Context Sensitive User Interface 

    Ami Pro 4.0 user interface is now "context sensitive." That
means that the user interface changes based on the current
selection. The options provided are the options that can operate
on the selection. Other options are hidden until they are
needed. Ami Pro 4.0 offers nesting contexts, such as text in a
frame. In this case, the products interface changes to show you
options for both text and frame. 

The following components are now context sensitive...

    Menus - The menu between Create and Window is context sensitive
and called the context menu. When the insertion/selection is 
text, the context menu will become Text, and offer commands that
operate on text. When the selection is a frame, the menu will
become Frame. When the selection is text in a frame, the menu
becomes Text and additional context menu Frame is added to the
right of the Text menu.

    Right Mouse Button Pop up Menus - Clicking the mouse's right
button will display a popup menu. This popup menu contains a
subset of the main context menu, plus some common clipboard
commands.

    Iconbars - There are now two types of iconbars, Universal and
context  iconbars. The Universal iconbar contains icons useful
regardless of the selection, such as Open, Save, Cut, Copy,
Paste, etc. The context iconbars consist of icons useful for a
particular type of selection, such as text, or frame. There is a
context iconbar for each type of selection in the document,
including many nested selections (such as text in a table cell).

     Properties Dialog (Infobox) - The properties dialog is a tabbed
dialog, containing controls for settings all the properties of
the selected object. 

New Named Styles Model

    Ami Pro 4.0 has a new named styles model. Like previous version
of Ami Pro, all text is assigned a named style. Unlike previous
version, Ami Pro 4.0 allows you to set any type of property as a
local over-ride of the text's base style. This includes
paragraph spacing, bullet styles, and other properties that
required a named style in previous versions.

    Creating named styles is also different. In Ami Pro 4.0, you
first format your text to look the way you want your new style
to look. Then select the text and create a new style by example.

    Frames, Table and Cells now have named styles. Like text, modify
your frame and then create a named style. That named style can
now be applied to other frames.

New SmartMaster Model (stylesheets)

    Ami Pro 4.0 now uses stylesheets called SmartMasters.
SmartMasters contain page layouts, named styles and content. All
documents are created using a SmartMaster, including a "plain"
document. The new document copies the SmartMaster on creation,
and is no longer referencing the original SmartMaster. You can
change the SmartMaster the document is using via the File menu.
This Beta release does not come with many SmartMasters. You can
make you own by saving a file with the type "SmartMaster."

On-line Documentation, Ask the Expert and Help

    Ami Pro 4.0 has redesigned on-line documentation. There are now
thousands of task-oriented How Do I topics. The topics display
in a small Help window that you can leave up while following the
steps.

    To help you find help on the capabilities in Ami Pro 4.0, there
is a new feature called Ask the Expert. Using you own words, you
can ask "how do I"  type questions, and the Expert will either
find the appropriate topic, or suggest similar topics. ALL
QUESTIONS ARE LOGGED, and would be very useful to Lotus. So
please use the Expert early and often.

  Returning the log file via Lotus Notes

    To return the log file via Notes, attach the file USERQSTN.LOG
    to a Lotus Notes Mail message, and send it to Jon
    Richards@Lotus@NotesNet.  The USERQSTN.LOG file will be placed
    in the location you indicated when you copied the file.

  Returning the log file via other Electronic Mail

    If you are not using Lotus Notes, you can send the log file via
    the same electronic mail system you are using to report product
    problems to Lotus.  The log file is an ASCII file, so you can
    open it with a Windows editor such as Notepad, copy the file to
    the Clipboard, and then paste it into your standard mail form. 
    Of course, if your mail system allows attachments, you can
    attach the log file to your message.

    Send the log file, or its contents, to
    Jon_Richards@crd.lotus.com.  This is an address which will route
    the file across the Internet.  Follow your mail system's
    protocol to route the message to the Internet.

  Returning the log file via U.S. Mail

    To return the log file via U.S. Mail, copy the log file to a
    diskette, and send it to :

    Jon Richards
    Lotus Development WPD
    1000 Abernathy Road, Suite 1700
    Atlanta, GA  30328

    Thank you for all your assistance in testing the Expert.


Other New Capabilities and Features

    There are thousands of new capabilities and features in Ami Pro
4.0. Here are few of the most interesting and important ones.

    Nested Document Architecture - this allows you to create
anything inside of anything, for example, creating a table
inside a table cell. Also allows drag-and-drop between cells,
text and frames.

    Unlimited Undo/Redo Levels - you set the number of undo to any
number under 32,000. However, each undo does consume some
memory. See File->User Set->Ami Pro Preferences to set number of
undo levels. See Edit->Undo/Redo Special for dialog listing
actions that can be undone/redone.

    Interactive Visual Spell Check - your document is constantly
being checked for spelling in the background. You can view
misspelled words (shown with blue highlighting) while editing
the document. With the Spell Check Bar displayed, you can
correct spelling in way similar to previous versions. See
Edit->Spell Check to display the bar. See
View->Show/Hide->Misspelled Words to highlight misspelled words
as you type.

    Statusbar - more formatting controls are available in the
statusbar, including text color and basic attributes of Bold,
Underline and Italic.

    SmartEditing - selects whole words when selecting more than one
word, and fixes up missing or extra spaces when you paste or
drag-and-drop text.

    SmartCorrect - SmartCorrect can correct commonly misspelled
words, fix common typing errors, such as two capital letter at
the BEginning of a word.

    Divisions - a document can be divided into divisions. Each
division is basically a document, with its own
styles/SmartMaster. The division are shown via Divider tabs, as
in Lotus 1-2-3r4. Divisions can contain other divisions,
allowing you to structure your large document, and like an
outliner, collapse divisions when you are not interested in
seeing their divider tabs. See Create->Division.

    Sections - a division can be divided into section. Each section
can restart paragraph numbering, page layout, header and
footers. See Create->Sections.

    Versions - a single file can have several versions of the
document. You can view old versions of the document to see the
document the way it was before you created a new version.
Versions are very efficient, and do not increase the file size
significantly each time you add a version. Old versions are used
as needed by newer versions, and thus old versions are read
only. See Create->See File->Versions to create and/or review old
versions.

    Access and Editing Rights - using Document Control, you can
limit access to some users, and those users can open the file
with out a password, while all other users will not be given
access. Additionally, each user can be given editing rights,
restricting their edits to a new version, always revision
marked, or even limit them to only reading the document with
Copy, Print and Save As disabled. See File->Document
Properties->Document Control.

    Multiple Document Compare - using TeamConsolidate, you can
compare more than 2 copies of a document, and in the results,
see copies of paragraphs edited by more than one user. See
File->TeamConsolidate.

    Mode-less Dialog Bars - Spell Check, Find and Replace, Revision
Review, Grammar Check, Mark as TOC/Index, Envelope, Merge are
now mode-less dialog bars that allow you access to their
capabilities without preventing your editing of the document.
You can have multiple bars displayed simultaneously. See the
above features, most are in the Edit menu.

    Better Commenting Tools -  Comment Notes are now just like your
main body of text, and can contain formatted text, frames,
tables, even parallel columns. You can also have more than one
Comment Note open at a time. See View->Show/Hide->Review and
Comment Tools.

    Highlighter - you can shade the background behind text with a
highlighter pen. From the View menu's Show/Hide, display the
Review and Comment Tools.

    Better Revision Marking - Marked edits are now styled per
editor. You can even have your deletions hidden. The Review
Revisions bar is mode-less, and can even tell you who typed what
in a sentence. See Edit->Markup Edits to turn on revision
marking. See Edit->Review Marked Edits to display the review bar.

    Format Check - checks your document against common typing
conventions, such as using symbols for (R), 10% smaller caps in
acronyms, etc. See Edit->Format Check.

Even More New Features To Check Out

    Auto timed save of untitled documents. Saves into a temporary
file, without interupting you or requiring a filename. The temp
file can be recovered if Windows or Ami Pro should crash before
you actually save your file. See File->User Setup->Ami Pro
Preferences.

    Continuous page scrolling between more than one page.

    Print selected ranges of pages. See File->Print, and click
Selected Pages. You can enter individual and or ranges of pages.

    Perform Image Processing on color images.

    Easier to use envelope function. See Create->Other Document Part.

    Print mutiple layout changes and orientations in Duplex
printing. 

    New View SmartIcons allow you easily switch between different
view levels.

    New Table Grid Create SmartIcon allows you to easily create a
table by clicking and draging.

    Preview all graphic images before importing, no matter of
graphic format. See File->Import Picture

    Easily add background fills and patterns to selected text or an
entire page. See the properties dialog for what you want to fill.

    User definable file extension (.sam is no longer required). Ami
Pro now senses the file format, so you can use the extension for
your own file management needs.

    Improved funtionality of Tables.



Macros and Scripting (warning)

Ami Pro 3.0 Macros will not work

    You will not be able to create, edit or run macros with Ami Pro
4.0 Beta. Ami Pro 4.0 will use LotusScript as its macro
language. In the final release of Ami Pro 4.0, you will be able
to run many of your Ami Pro 3.0 macros, but not in this Beta
version.

LotusScript (under construction)

    You can experiment with LotusScript in this Beta version. The
best way is to record some actions. Scripts from the Edit menu
will allow you to record and edit scripts. The scripting tools
and language will be changing, but this is a good introduction.
Sorry, there is no help available on script tools or language at
this time.



File Format (warning)

Beta version file format will change

    The file format used by this Beta version will change. Do not
use this product for documents that need to be opened by future
versions of Ami Pro 4.0. 

    If you like what you wrote, export to an existing file format
for future use. Documents exported to other file formats (such
as Ami Pro 3.0) may lose some data, if the data took advantage
of new features in Ami Pro 4.0, such as a table in a comment
note, or multiple versions in a file.

International Use (warning)

    This Beta version of Ami Pro 4.0 works best with US English 
versions of Windows. If you must run Ami Pro 4.0 with a different
language version of Windows, you must avoid the following:

    Do not use the right mouse button menu (do not click with the 
right mouse)

    Do not use the properties box (InfoBox). This limitation will
seriously impair your use of the product, as the InfoBox is used to 
set most properties in the product.

Thank you

