Zzap!64 is a computer games magazine covering games for computers manufactured by Commodore International , especially the Commodore 64 (C64). It was published in the UK by Newsfield Publications Ltd and later by Europress Impact .
78-630: The magazine launched in April, with the cover date May 1985, as the sister magazine to CRASH . It focused on the C64 for much of its shelf life, but later incorporated Amiga game news and reviews. Like CRASH for the ZX Spectrum , it had a dedicated cult following amongst C64 owners and was well known for its irreverent sense of humour as well as its extensive, detailed coverage of the C64 scene. The magazine adopted an innovative review system that involved
156-555: A kickstarter campaign leading to the new publication by Fusion Retro. Crash was launched in 1983 in Ludlow , Shropshire by Roger Kean, Oliver Frey and Franco Frey. The trio had met the previous year when they were working for newspaper publisher Alan Purnell, learning how to write and produce a magazine from scratch. Franco Frey had worked for an electronics company, and had been asked by one of his business contacts if could get hold of video games. Kean remembers that "The High Street
234-631: A page description . PDF has (as of version 2.0) 25 graphics state properties, of which some of the most important are: As in PostScript, vector graphics in PDF are constructed with paths . Paths are usually composed of lines and cubic Bézier curves , but can also be constructed from the outlines of text. Unlike PostScript, PDF does not allow a single path to mix text outlines with lines and curves. Paths can be stroked, filled, fill then stroked, or used for clipping . Strokes and fills can use any color set in
312-496: A PDF are: In later PDF revisions, a PDF document can also support links (inside document or web page), forms, JavaScript (initially available as a plugin for Acrobat 3.0), or any other types of embedded contents that can be handled using plug-ins. PDF combines three technologies: PostScript is a page description language run in an interpreter to generate an image. It can handle graphics and has standard features of programming languages such as branching and looping . PDF
390-455: A PDF. Within text strings, characters are shown using character codes (integers) that map to glyphs in the current font using an encoding . There are several predefined encodings, including WinAnsi , MacRoman , and many encodings for East Asian languages and a font can have its own built-in encoding. (Although the WinAnsi and MacRoman encodings are derived from the historical properties of
468-420: A PostScript file could be accurately rendered only as the cumulative result of executing all preceding commands to draw all previous pages—any of which could affect subsequent pages—plus the commands to draw that particular page, and there was no easy way to bypass that process to skip around to different pages. Traditionally, to go from PostScript to PDF, a source PostScript file (that is, an executable program)
546-477: A Web browser plugin without waiting for the entire file to download, since all objects required for the first page to display are optimally organized at the start of the file. PDF files may be optimized using Adobe Acrobat software or QPDF . Page dimensions are not limited by the format itself. However, Adobe Acrobat imposes a limit of 15 million by 15 million inches, or 225 trillion in (145,161 km ). The basic design of how graphics are represented in PDF
624-425: A catchy title for the magazine, choosing "Crash" after J. G. Ballard 's novel of the same name . Though he had regularly played video games throughout the 1970s, the middle-aged Kean realised that the target market for the magazine was teenagers and young men, and the writing needed to accommodate this. Consequently, he hired teenage staff writer Matthew Uffindel and the pair recruited local schoolchildren to review
702-507: A conflict with retailers WH Smith it was published in February the following year. The magazine maintained focus squarely on Spectrum gaming. It was an instant hit thanks to Oliver Frey's artwork and Kean's writing, assisted by Uffindel. Kean and the Frey brothers would continue to be involved with the magazine throughout its lifetime. Reviewers would give their direct opinions on whether
780-446: A fixed feature of the magazine in issue 43 (November 1988), when the title was renamed to Zzap!64 Amiga . The magazine experienced controversy in 1989, when three out of four reviewers (Gordon Houghton, Kati Hamza and Maff Evans) were fired and replaced during production of issue 50 (June 1989). The only one remaining, Paul Rand, had been employed at Zzap!64 a mere two months. Issue 50's editorial mentioned nothing of what happened, and
858-399: A free cover-mounted cassette with a number of complete games, which continued as a regular feature. This came at the expense of page count and editorial content, both of which were reduced. Kean was annoyed by having to put tapes on the cover to keep up with the competition, as it increased costs and obscured Frey's cover artwork. Newsfield was suffering increasing financial difficulties by
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#1732773089622936-426: A game was good or not, regardless of advertising or any pressure from software houses. Though publishers sometimes tried to bribe the magazine editors to give games good reviews, the children would not do that, and once gave a game a low score of 9%. This honesty gave Crash a good reputation and made it highly influential in the games industry. If a game was awarded a "Crash Smash" (an overall rating of 90% or above),
1014-453: A great deal of new content, including a foreword and articles by former Newsfield director and Zzap!64 editor Roger Kean and new material from former editors Gary Penn and Chris Anderson. The front cover and centerfold featured rare illustrations by Oli Frey from his pre-Newsfield days. Fusion Retro Books licensed the rights to use the ZZAP! and Crash trademarks from Future Publishing, creating
1092-521: A mailbag, which reviewed games with the same style of the original magazine. In 2002, a special "issue 85", dedicated to then recently released games for 8-bit machines, was released in PDF format. In 2021, the Airons cultural association in Vigevano resumed the publication of a new Zzap! magazine, founded by a group of former editors. The magazine is published aperiodically and only sent via mail to
1170-415: A month for the period of January to June were claimed by the magazine to be higher than any other British computer magazine. By 1989, rival Spectrum magazine Your Sinclair regularly came with a free cassette attached to the cover that contained a complete game and various demos . Crash had occasionally featured cassettes on the cover, but began to lag in circulation. It was relaunched that June with
1248-457: A number of ex-Newsfield writers later volunteered to join the project, including former editors Gordon Houghton, Robin Hogg and Paul Glancey . The special issue reflected the C64's continuing popularity in the 21st century as a platform for retro gamers and hobbyists, with the majority of reviews focusing on recently released C64 games. The magazine's design was based on "classic era" Zzap!64 , and
1326-452: A page description as an inline image .) Images are typically filtered for compression purposes. Image filters supported in PDF include the following general-purpose filters: Normally all image content in a PDF is embedded in the file. But PDF allows image data to be stored in external files by the use of external streams or Alternate Images . Standardized subsets of PDF, including PDF/A and PDF/X , prohibit these features. Text in PDF
1404-417: A paper for a project then code-named Camelot, in which he proposed the creation of a simplified version of PostScript called Interchange PostScript (IPS). Unlike traditional PostScript, which was tightly focused on rendering print jobs to output devices, IPS would be optimized for displaying pages to any screen and any platform. Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. In
1482-439: A printing device. PostScript was not intended for long-term storage and real-time interactive rendering of electronic documents to computer monitors , so there was no need to support anything other than consecutive rendering of pages. If there was an error in the final printed output, the user would correct it at the application level and send a new print job in the form of an entirely new PostScript file. Thus, any given page in
1560-469: A result, files that use a small amount of transparency might be viewed acceptably by older viewers, but files making extensive use of transparency could be viewed incorrectly by an older viewer. The transparency extensions are based on the key concepts of transparency groups , blending modes , shape , and alpha . The model is closely aligned with the features of Adobe Illustrator version 9. The blend modes were based on those used by Adobe Photoshop at
1638-469: A series of Annuals funded through Kickstarter and published in time for Christmas. Roger Kean was involved in editing and compiling the issues alongside Chris Wilkins. The Annuals up to 2022 featured new and specially commissioned Oli Frey cover artwork. Fusion Retro Books then negotiated the transfer of the remaining Newsfield trademarks for future use. Since March 2021, a new bimonthly volume of Zzap! 64 has been available through Patreon subscriptions. This
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#17327730896221716-429: A spoof on rival magazine Sinclair User . This led to a successful injunction being taken out against the magazine two days before the official publication date on the grounds of copyright infringement. Copies were withdrawn from newsagents and an apology published in the following issue. Readers were also offered a back issue with the offending pages removed at a reduced price and priority delivery. Starting in 1984,
1794-473: A stream may be used instead of the ASCII cross-reference table and contains the offsets and other information in binary format. The format is flexible in that it allows for integer width specification (using the /W array), so that for example, a document not exceeding 64 KiB in size may dedicate only 2 bytes for object offsets. At the end of a PDF file is a footer containing If a cross-reference stream
1872-502: A variety of content besides flat text and graphics including logical structuring elements, interactive elements such as annotations and form-fields, layers, rich media (including video content), three-dimensional objects using U3D or PRC , and various other data formats . The PDF specification also provides for encryption and digital signatures , file attachments, and metadata to enable workflows requiring these features. The development of PDF began in 1991 when John Warnock wrote
1950-689: A video game competition. The editorial headquarters was in Yeovil , more than 120 miles from Newsfield's headquarters in Ludlow ; the team was relocated to Ludlow after three months to cut costs, and Anderson and Wade left the staff after declining to make the move. Anderson would later found Future Publishing and the TED Conference . As the Amiga gained popularity in the UK, Zzap!64 began to publish occasional reviews of Amiga games. The Amiga coverage became
2028-459: Is a magazine dedicated to the ZX Spectrum home computer , primarily focused on games. It was published from 1984 to 1991 by Newsfield Publications Ltd until their liquidation, and then until 1992 by Europress . It was relaunched as a quarterly A5 magazine in December 2020 with the backing of the original founders. The magazine was launched to cater for the booming Spectrum games market. It
2106-499: Is a 66-page A5 magazine, published bi-monthly by Fusion Retro Books. Original staff member Robin Hogg is part of the reviewing team, with artist Simon Butler contributing the regular Gallery section looking at artwork. The Technical Bit In The Middle now focuses on modern hardware and other upgrades for the computer, with a regular section dedicated to the MEGA65 computer. CRASH (magazine) Crash , stylized as CRASH ,
2184-415: Is a subset of PostScript, simplified to remove such control flow features, while graphics commands remain. PostScript was originally designed for a drastically different use case : transmission of one-way linear print jobs in which the PostScript interpreter would collect a series of commands until it encountered the showpage command, then execute all the commands to render a page as a raster image to
2262-464: Is also a shading pattern , which draws continuously varying colors. There are seven types of shading patterns of which the simplest are the axial shading (Type 2) and radial shading (Type 3). Raster images in PDF (called Image XObjects ) are represented by dictionaries with an associated stream. The dictionary describes the properties of the image, and the stream contains the image data. (Less commonly, small raster images may be embedded directly in
2340-469: Is called an embedded font while the former is called an unembedded font . The font files that may be embedded are based on widely used standard digital font formats: Type 1 (and its compressed variant CFF), TrueType , and (beginning with PDF 1.6) OpenType . Additionally PDF supports the Type 3 variant in which the components of the font are described by PDF graphic operators. Fourteen typefaces, known as
2418-418: Is not being used, the footer is preceded by the trailer keyword followed by a dictionary containing information that would otherwise be contained in the cross-reference stream object's dictionary: Within each page, there are one or multiple content streams that describe the text, vector and images being drawn on the page. The content stream is stack-based , similar to PostScript. There are two layouts to
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2496-544: Is not required in situations where a PDF file is intended only for print. Since the feature is optional, and since the rules for tagged PDF were relatively vague in ISO 32000-1, support for tagged PDF among consuming devices, including assistive technology (AT), is uneven as of 2021. ISO 32000-2, however, includes an improved discussion of tagged PDF which is anticipated to facilitate further adoption. An ISO-standardized subset of PDF specifically targeted at accessibility, PDF/UA ,
2574-434: Is organized using ASCII characters, except for certain elements that may have binary content. The file starts with a header containing a magic number (as a readable string) and the version of the format, for example %PDF-1.7 . The format is a subset of a COS ("Carousel" Object Structure) format. A COS tree file consists primarily of objects , of which there are nine types: Comments using 8-bit characters prefixed with
2652-402: Is represented by text elements in page content streams. A text element specifies that characters should be drawn at certain positions. The characters are specified using the encoding of a selected font resource . A font object in PDF is a description of a digital typeface . It may either describe the characteristics of a typeface, or it may include an embedded font file . The latter case
2730-439: Is used as the basis for generating PostScript-like PDF code (see, e.g., Adobe Distiller ). This is done by applying standard compiler techniques like loop unrolling , inlining and removing unused branches, resulting in code that is purely declarative and static. The end result is then packaged into a container format , together with all necessary dependencies for correct rendering (external files, graphics, or fonts to which
2808-447: Is very similar to that of PostScript, except for the use of transparency, which was added in PDF 1.4. PDF graphics use a device-independent Cartesian coordinate system to describe the surface of a page. A PDF page description can use a matrix to scale , rotate , or skew graphical elements. A key concept in PDF is that of the graphics state , which is a collection of graphical parameters that may be changed, saved, and restored by
2886-510: The PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts , vector graphics , raster images and other information needed to display it. PDF has its roots in "The Camelot Project" initiated by Adobe co-founder John Warnock in 1991. PDF was standardized as ISO 32000 in 2008. The last edition as ISO 32000-2:2020 was published in December 2020. PDF files may contain
2964-538: The Windows and Macintosh operating systems, fonts using these encodings work equally well on any platform.) PDF can specify a predefined encoding to use, the font's built-in encoding or provide a lookup table of differences to a predefined or built-in encoding (not recommended with TrueType fonts). The encoding mechanisms in PDF were designed for Type 1 fonts, and the rules for applying them to TrueType fonts are complex. For large fonts or fonts with non-standard glyphs,
3042-419: The standard 14 fonts , have a special significance in PDF documents: These fonts are sometimes called the base fourteen fonts . These fonts, or suitable substitute fonts with the same metrics, should be available in most PDF readers, but they are not guaranteed to be available in the reader, and may only display correctly if the system has them installed. Fonts may be substituted if they are not embedded in
3120-567: The Game ) and The Terminal Man , an original piece of fiction written by Kelvin Gosnell and illustrated by Oliver Frey. Later years would see a brief revival of The Terminal Man , as well as Mel Croucher 's comic story Tamara Knight , both of which ended mid-run. After the closure of Newsfield's short-lived lifestyle magazine LM , Crash inherited its video reviews for a short period. The August 1985 issue of Crash featured "Unclear User",
3198-429: The PDF files: non-linearized (not "optimized") and linearized ("optimized"). Non-linearized PDF files can be smaller than their linear counterparts, though they are slower to access because portions of the data required to assemble pages of the document are scattered throughout the PDF file. Linearized PDF files (also called "optimized" or "web optimized" PDF files) are constructed in a manner that enables them to be read in
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3276-524: The content was translated with the remainder written in Italy. From issue 1 (May 1986) to issue 73 (December 1992) it was released as an actual magazine; with issue 74 (January 1993) it became an inset of the Italian version of The Games Machine until December 1993 when it stopped being published. From 1996 to 1999, Zzap! became an online magazine, a PC gaming website with a different "cover" each month and
3354-508: The contents. PDF 2.0 defines 256-bit AES encryption as the standard for PDF 2.0 files. The PDF Reference also defines ways that third parties can define their own encryption systems for PDF. PDF files may be digitally signed, to provide secure authentication; complete details on implementing digital signatures in PDF are provided in ISO 32000-2. PDF files may also contain embedded DRM restrictions that provide further controls that limit copying, editing, or printing. These restrictions depend on
3432-411: The document refers), and compressed . Modern applications write to printer drivers that directly generate PDF rather than going through PostScript first. As a document format, PDF has several advantages over PostScript: Its disadvantages are: PDF since v1.6 supports embedding of interactive 3D documents: 3D drawings can be embedded using U3D or PRC and various other data formats. A PDF file
3510-411: The document root. This dictionary contains an array of Optional Content Groups (OCGs), each describing a set of information and each of which may be individually displayed or suppressed, plus a set of Optional Content Configuration Dictionaries, which give the status (Displayed or Suppressed) of the given OCGs. A PDF file may be encrypted , for security, in which case a password is needed to view or edit
3588-522: The early 1990s. The last edition of Crash published by the company was in September 1991. Following the company's liquidation, the magazine was relaunched by Europress that December, continuing until the final issue in April 1992. After this, Crash was bought by EMAP , publisher of Sinclair User , who merged the two magazines. In practice, this meant little more than the appearance of the Crash logo on
3666-538: The early years PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows, and competed with several other formats, including DjVu , Envoy , Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica and even Adobe's own PostScript format. PDF was a proprietary format controlled by Adobe until it was released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008, at which time control of
3744-515: The front cover was based on an illustration by former Newsfield artist Oli Frey, significantly revised by designer Craig Grannell. Another special issue of Zzap!64 was created in July 2005 to celebrate the magazine's twentieth anniversary. Dubbed The Def Tribute to Zzap!64 , it was professionally printed and given away with issue 18 of Retro Gamer magazine. Although more celebratory and retrospective in design than issue 107, it nevertheless featured
3822-489: The front cover. In May 2016, No. 2 King Street, Ludlow was awarded a Blue plaque as the premises of Newsfield while it was publishing Crash and ZZap!64 from 1984–9, which both hired pupils from Ludlow Church of England School alongside professional journalists. In 2017, the magazine was commemorated in a special exhibition in Ludlow Buttercross Museum documenting Newsfield's contribution to
3900-406: The full implementation of the ISO 32000-1 specification. These proprietary technologies are not standardized, and their specification is published only on Adobe's website. Many of them are not supported by popular third-party implementations of PDF. ISO published version 2.0 of PDF, ISO 32000-2 in 2017, available for purchase, replacing the free specification provided by Adobe. In December 2020,
3978-567: The games, including Ben Stone and Robin Candy. To produce screenshots, a camera was set up to directly capture the television set or monitor that the Spectrum was plugged into. The film was then processed in-house, printed and delivered to a local print shop to prepare the final page. The first issue was intended to be published in November 1983, in time for the pre-Christmas trade, but owing to
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#17327730896224056-402: The graphics state, including patterns . PDF supports several types of patterns. The simplest is the tiling pattern in which a piece of artwork is specified to be drawn repeatedly. This may be a colored tiling pattern , with the colors specified in the pattern object, or an uncolored tiling pattern , which defers color specification to the time the pattern is drawn. Beginning with PDF 1.3 there
4134-494: The imaging model. A tagged PDF (see clause 14.8 in ISO 32000) includes document structure and semantics information to enable reliable text extraction and accessibility . Technically speaking, tagged PDF is a stylized use of the format that builds on the logical structure framework introduced in PDF 1.3. Tagged PDF defines a set of standard structure types and attributes that allow page content (text, graphics, and images) to be extracted and reused for other purposes. Tagged PDF
4212-539: The industry believed it was genuinely good and it would sell well. The logo was used in advertisements for games, big and small. Notable Crash Smashes included Jet Set Willy , Sabre Wulf and Head over Heels . In 1986, Gremlin Graphics published a compilation, Four Crash Smashes , which featured Spy Hunter , Alien 8 , Dun Darach and Night Gunner . In October 1986, Crash reported sales of over 100,000 copies. Its ABC figure of 101,483 copies
4290-491: The issue featured content from the three fired reviewers without discussing their fates. Issue 74 (June 1991) saw the dropping of all Amiga coverage (the word "Amiga" was dropped from the name in 1990), and the magazine became completely devoted to the C64 once more. Four months later the publisher Newsfield declared bankruptcy and publication was suspended for a month. Europress Impact (a satellite company of Europress launched by Roger Kean, Oliver Frey and Jonathan Rignall) became
4368-471: The latter frequently written by Simon N Goodwin. In 1988, a special "Tech Tape" was released, containing utilities and programs associated with this section. Crash included the occasional column which seemed unusual for a computer magazine. Its first year saw the launch of both the Lunar Jetman strip (written and illustrated by John Richardson, based on the character from the games by Ultimate Play
4446-464: The local industry. The same year, a special edition of the magazine was issued following a Kickstarter campaign that raised £12,000. Kean, Oliver Frey and Nick Roberts all returned to contribute to this issue. The following year, a similar campaign led to the 2019 Crash annual – issue 100. The magazine was relaunched as an A5 quarterly publication in December 2020. Crash featured distinctive cover art, mostly drawn by Oliver Frey. Much of his work
4524-446: The magazine published an annual readers awards article, based on votes from the readers. Portable Document Format This is an accepted version of this page Portable Document Format ( PDF ), standardized as ISO 32000 , is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents , including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software , hardware , and operating systems . Based on
4602-505: The magazine. Thus, issue 91 of Zzap!64 became issue 1 of Commodore Force , a magazine that itself lasted until March 1994. The first issue of Zzap!64 , dated May 1985, was released on 11 April 1985. Its inaugural editorial team included editor Chris Anderson , Software Editor Bob Wade, freelance writer Steve Cooke (who joined the staff from the recently folded Personal Computer Games ), and reviewers Gary Penn and Julian Rignall , who won their jobs after having placed as finalists at
4680-456: The members; it focuses on retrogaming and new games for 8- and 16-bit systems, still made by enthusiasts and small independent software houses. In March 2002, a special "Issue 107" of Zzap!64 was published digitally in PDF format, later receiving a limited print run of 200 copies. Originally intended as a fan project based on a suggestion by journalist Cameron Davis in a Zzap!64 discussion forum,
4758-475: The new publisher of Zzap!64 , beginning with issue 79 (December 1991). Issue 90 (November 1992) was the last official Zzap!64 issue. From the following month, the magazine was replaced by Commodore Force . The Italian edition (just titled Zzap! ), authorised by the original publisher, was not limited to Commodore 64 games, but it also reviewed games for other 8-bit machines like the ZX Spectrum , MSX , Amstrad CPC , and Atari 8-bit computers . Around 80% of
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#17327730896224836-440: The objects in the file, and also allows for small changes to be made without rewriting the entire file ( incremental update ). Before PDF version 1.5, the table would always be in a special ASCII format, be marked with the xref keyword, and follow the main body composed of indirect objects. Version 1.5 introduced optional cross-reference streams , which have the form of a standard stream object, possibly with filters applied. Such
4914-552: The percent sign ( % ) may be inserted. Objects may be either direct (embedded in another object) or indirect . Indirect objects are numbered with an object number and a generation number and defined between the obj and endobj keywords if residing in the document root. Beginning with PDF version 1.5, indirect objects (except other streams) may also be located in special streams known as object streams (marked /Type /ObjStm ). This technique enables non-stream objects to have standard stream filters applied to them, reduces
4992-502: The second edition of PDF 2.0, ISO 32000-2:2020, was published, with clarifications, corrections, and critical updates to normative references (ISO 32000-2 does not include any proprietary technologies as normative references). In April 2023 the PDF Association made ISO 32000-2 available for download free of charge. A PDF file is often a combination of vector graphics , text, and bitmap graphics . The basic types of content in
5070-553: The section as a self-styled "girlie tipster", establishing a rivalry with fictional Melissa Ravenflame from Computer and Video Games . Nick Roberts began his role in the magazine editing this section after Smith, and stayed for the remainder of its run, working out POKEs (alterations to the game's machine code in memory that allowed a player to cheat) using a Multiface , a Spectrum hardware add-on. The magazine also covered technical information and stories about future hardware and peripherals in its "Tech Niche" and "Tech Tips" sections,
5148-423: The size of files that have large numbers of small indirect objects and is especially useful for Tagged PDF . Object streams do not support specifying an object's generation number (other than 0). An index table, also called the cross-reference table, is located near the end of the file and gives the byte offset of each indirect object from the start of the file. This design allows for efficient random access to
5226-432: The special encodings Identity-H (for horizontal writing) and Identity-V (for vertical) are used. With such fonts, it is necessary to provide a ToUnicode table if semantic information about the characters is to be preserved. A text document which is scanned to PDF without the text being recognised by optical character recognition (OCR) is an image, with no fonts or text properties. The original imaging model of PDF
5304-577: The specification passed to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts. In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe necessary to make, use, sell, and distribute PDF-compliant implementations. PDF 1.7, the sixth edition of the PDF specification that became ISO 32000-1, includes some proprietary technologies defined only by Adobe, such as Adobe XML Forms Architecture (XFA) and JavaScript extension for Acrobat, which are referenced by ISO 32000-1 as normative and indispensable for
5382-448: The time. When the PDF 1.4 specification was published, the formulas for calculating blend modes were kept secret by Adobe. They have since been published. The concept of a transparency group in PDF specification is independent of existing notions of "group" or "layer" in applications such as Adobe Illustrator. Those groupings reflect logical relationships among objects that are meaningful when editing those objects, but they are not part of
5460-515: The use of the reviewers' faces, artistically rendered by in-house artists Oli Frey and Mark Kendrick, to express their reaction to the games. These eventually evolved into static cartoons as the magazine began catering for a younger market. High-quality games were indicated in reviews via the "Gold Medal" award, the logo was used as a selling point for games, big and small. By 1992, the magazine had changed so dramatically in design and editorial direction that then-publisher Europress decided to relaunch
5538-481: Was opaque, similar to PostScript, where each object drawn on the page completely replaced anything previously marked in the same location. In PDF 1.4 the imaging model was extended to allow transparency. When transparency is used, new objects interact with previously marked objects to produce blending effects. The addition of transparency to PDF was done by means of new extensions that were designed to be ignored in products written to PDF 1.3 and earlier specifications. As
5616-419: Was a particularly violent image depicting two barbarians fighting, with one about to slit the throat of another. The picture was deemed too strong by W H Smith and that issue was relegated to the top shelves. However, these controversial covers helped boost the sales of Crash , particularly doubling the circulation from 1985 to 1986. Much editorial content (such as previews and responses to readers' letters)
5694-437: Was credited to Lloyd Mangram, a fictional character, although written by members of the editorial staff. He was created by the team simply to make the magazine look more important and professional by appearing to have a greater number of writers, and named after golfer Lloyd Mangrum . On one occasion, Mangram was depicted visually in the magazine by a sketch of a man wearing a paper bag over his head with holes cut for eyes, and
5772-514: Was first published in 2012. With the introduction of PDF version 1.5 (2003) came the concept of Layers. Layers, more formally known as Optional Content Groups (OCGs), refer to sections of content in a PDF document that can be selectively viewed or hidden by document authors or viewers. This capability is useful in CAD drawings, layered artwork, maps, multi-language documents, etc. Basically, it consists of an Optional Content Properties Dictionary added to
5850-402: Was ignorant of computer games" and they wanted to source titles and sell them. They set up a mail order catalogue called Crash Micro Games Action and advertised in contemporary computer magazines such as Computer and Video Games . It was immediately successful, so by late 1983, they decided to launch a dedicated magazine, forming the company Newsfield to do so. Kean and Oliver Frey wanted
5928-421: Was immediately popular owing to its quality of writing and distinctive, though occasionally controversial, artwork created by Oliver Frey . By 1986 it had become the biggest-selling British computer magazine with over 100,000 copies sold monthly, but struggled towards the end of the decade after other magazines put cassettes of games on the front cover. In the 2010s, a number of retrospective issues were created via
6006-479: Was published in book form for the first time in 2006. The cover of issue 18, July 1985, which depicted a scantily clad sorceress with a man on his knees in collar and chains, was considered provocative by some shops who moved it to the top shelf. Issue 31 in August 1986 was criticised for the front cover featuring staff writer Hannah Smith in a swimsuit mud wrestling with an alien. The cover of issue 41, June 1987,
6084-482: Was reported to work on a Hermes typewriter. The "Playing Tips" section featured solutions to games cheats to make them easier. Candy was a regular host of this section in its early years. Issue 27 in April 1986 included a special "Robin Candy's Playing Tips" supplement of cheats and game modifications, including a room editor for the Crash Smash game Sweevo's World . Following Candy's departure, Hannah Smith ran
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