PageMaker 5.0 It Ain’t Your Father’s DTP BY DONALD JENNER SPECIAL TO Corel Magazine Aldus Corp. originated desktop publishing in the Windows environment; many people discovered Windows because it came with early versions of PageMaker. Other players have come (and gone) in that arena; it is still fair to say that PageMaker, now in its 4.0 version for Windows, is the easiest and most general-purpose page-composition tool available to the Windows user. The next release of PageMaker, version 5.0 for both Mac and Windows environments, bids fare to keep that reputation, while providing the tools for the new level of desktop publishing (DTP) that is quickly redefining that part of the graphics workplace. PageMaker 5.0, when it ships, will be more costly than its predecessors. The extra cost matches the extra value, so far as that can be judged from pre-release software. The extra value extends DTP to a level of professional accomplishment which has previously required either very much more advanced products on more expensive hardware, or falling back to pre-electronic publishing techniques. There is something of a "brave new world" sense to that observation.... Turn on PageMaker 5.0, and you get a screen that looks comfortably familiar. But the new version supports Windows multiple document architecture; more than one PageMaker publication can be on-screen in a session. A lot of the new features show up in a new menu, "Utilities." The first menu item, Add-ons, has a 21-item sub-menu. Add-ons add new functionality to PageMaker 5.0, and some of them represent major time-savers for DTP users. Most important: . Balance Columns -- In earlier versions, this needed to be done manually, and if you didn't do it right, the typography looked amateurish. PM5.0 automates this chore. . Build Booklet and Sort Pages represent two approaches to solving page-imposition. In earlier versions, moving from PageMaker's sequential page layout to the two-up or four-up page layout needed for the printer was a tedious manual job. Build Booklet provides automated page imposition for a range of standard layouts. Save your job in an editable version, pick a format for impositions -- say two-up saddle-stitching -- and hit a button. Print the result on a high-resolution laser printer to PaperDirect's LaserGloss coated stock and your printer can shoot directly from your output. Too much? Automatically reordering pages might do the job. Sort Pages puts up a set of drag-and-drop thumbnails -- very much like "slide sorters" used in many presentation graphics programs. Move the pages around as needed; PM5.0 tells you both the new order, and the previous page number of the re-ordered page. . Continuation -- Not only can you reorder pages, but this add-on puts in the continued from... and continued on... legends that makes page-reordering functional. No more manual hunting, then adding in a line of type, and rebalancing the columns. . Zephyr Library -- Think of this as Mosaic for PM5 documents. Put together in a single library all the work that makes up a single job. . Edit tracks and Expert kerning -- Aldus has enhanced its own tracking technology, and added in Agfa Compugraphics expert kerning technology as well. The result is more elegant and more professional typesetting. . Run Script -- Do you have a repetitive job ... a catalogue or periodically publiched newsletter, perhaps? Create a script to automate the job. Ventura users have long enjoyed substantial programmability; Aldus has now added this to PM5.0. According to the manual, every PageMaker 5.0 command is available, using the same language as appears in the menu (no strange new commands to learn). Scripts can be composed in PM5.0, or in a programming editor such as Windows Notepad. Scripts should prove fairly portable between Mac and Windows environments, as the same manual (and command set...) is provided for both versions of the program. This by no means exhausts the list of add-on capabilities. Most were working, though not flawlessly, in the beta version examined for this story. Beyond these obvious new features, PM5.0 adds other, less novel but very clearly production-oriented functionality. Not least among these is direct support for scanning, using the TWAIN interface. If your scanner vendor has a TWAIN driver, install it. PM5.0 will let you scan directly into your publication. This feature was partly implemented in the beta version tested; with some TWAIN drivers, PM5.0 could not scan correctly. Moreover, the interface was decidedly unconventional. According to Aldus representatives, both the incompatibility and user-interface issues are still being worked on. Another user-interface element, the pick-a-font submenu, is also still under development. Gone for sure is the long, skinny run-off-the-screen version of PM4.0. In the beta-5.0 version tested, the pick-a-font list is four columns wide, and easily accommodated the 75 typeface families I commonly use; Aldus says this is still not satisfactory, because for some users, the list is longer still, and would fill the entire working screen. Aldus developers are trying other approaches for the final release. The greatest sign of the change in DTP shows up in PM5.0's impressive color publishing support. DTP has been trying to play in this arena since DTP users discovered that they could work with service bureaux to get beyond the limits of laser printer output. This extends to redefining the colors of some kinds of imported images (notably, EPS files) and adjusting other kinds of colors. By redefining colors, multiple spot color plates can be associated with process color equivlents from within PM5.0. Where illustrations have come from several different programs or workers, with variant color names, a PageMaker user can "clean up" the differences, with a corresponding reduction in the number of plates used in a job. Nor is PM5.0 limited to a single color model. In addition to Pantone spot color charts, PM5.0 builds in support for Pantone process color matching, TruMatch, Focolton, DIC, Toyo and EuroScale systems. In short, every major international color standard is built in. Unlike competing products, PM5.0 can define the thousands of colors necessary for photo-realistic image rendering. A great deal of this color technology was previously available only through Aldus's high-end (and expensive) service bureau products such as ColorWise. Now, a substantial subset -- the parts needed for accurate design and publication specification, in particular -- are in the basic product. The technology is enhanced with additions secured under licenses from a range of companies, notably Kodak. When switching back to the originating program is unavoidable, PM5.0 makes life simpler; it supports OLE. If the original illustration or text object -- such as a Corel Draw picture -- has been brought in as a "linked" object, PageMaker can now call the originating program for an editing session. Adjust color, adjust the drawing, retouch the photo, and return to PageMaker without having disturbed the layout. The new features list for PageMaker 5.0 is impressive; Aldus staff enthusiasm is equally convincing -- and that is no small thing. Buy PageMaker and it is almost like acquiring a permanent graphics advisor; Aldus does a good job of convincing its customers that the company really wants users to have a wholly successful DTP experience. That conviction starts the moment the package is opened. For example, in the beta evaluation document set, Aldus included a preliminary version of its Commercial Printing Guide. Like earlier versions' Aldus Guide to Basic Design, this is a how-to guide reflecting the state of DTP art. Need to understand what a service buereau expects? It's in here. New to color publishing? The Commercial Printing Guide gives solid, straightforward instructions for such "black arts" as color trapping -- including when it is wise to let your service bureau do the job. Couple this right-in-the-box advice with on-going support from some very able people at Aldus and one of the most interesting house publications in the business (Aldus Magazine is a must-read for DTP users), and it is easy to develop a genuine appreciation of the Aldus approach. Aldus carries through on this in an important way: The on-line help system in PM5.0 is greatly improved. An annoying characteristic of earlier versions was the absence of commonly sought answers, making for trips to the manual - - time consuming when time was short. The new on-line help is more complete, and search-the-index is available directly from the help menu, saving still more steps. Good as the help file was in the beta we examined, it is still not complete; an evaluation cycle support technician was able to answer a question for me by referring to a more recent build of that file, not yet shipped to beta sites. So, PM5.0 has lots of neat new features. How does it work? The answer is, happily, very much like the older versions of PageMaker. Though there are new menu items, and some new menu names, by and large the basic functionality is enough like the older version that it can be used right out of the box by people who know the older product. In our tests, we created a test flyer using pretty much the same techniques we would have used to do the job in PM4.0. We opened 4.0 documents in 5.0; the conversion was fairly smooth -- one font was incorrectly read -- and the result printed correctly. A tester with limited PageMaker 4.0 familiarity, set down in front of the new version, experienced no special difficulties except with the radically new print-time dialogue; a five-minute conversation solved the problem. The best test, from our perspective, was to recreate from scratch a simple document first conceived and executed in PM4.0; the 5.0 version took only slightly longer to paste up, and the differences were as much a factor of un-optimized code taking a trifle longer to do things, as it was a matter of not finding commands in accustomed places. The message is simple: The new PageMaker 5.0 is very like the PageMaker many of us have come to know, and appreciate as a very usable, effective tool for a wide variety of DTP chores. But the range of the program is substantially greater, particularly in support for color printing and professional publishing needs, beyond the usual limits of desktop publishing. Since we were examining beta software, still subject to change in many ways, it is hard to gauge just what might prove a problem in the final version. In describing elements that were not entirely to our taste, keep in mind that these may disappear before you get a shipping product. In the beta version tested, the ability to open multiple document windows did not extend to opening multiple copies of the same document with the same name (which would be nice for comparing two versions of the same document). Even when we made a copy of the file, with a different name, we could not have the two files, referring to the same linked images and text, open on screen at one time. We encountered some evidence of memory management difficulties when other Windows applications were open at the same time as PM5.0. These problems were consistent with beta software, and should be corrected in the shipping version. However, expect to use as much memory as your machine can support. When our nominally 16mb system had its LaserMaster TrueImage software engine loaded (effectively, cutting available memory in half) and we also had WinWord running (admittedly, a program that contains some very old and very flukey code), PM5.0 slowed to a crawl, and would not do some things. This is as much an artifact of Windows- as-we-know-it, and may well not go away until Windows 4 ships (presumably in 1994), along with applications tuned for it -- as PageMaker 5.0 appears to be. One "design philosophy" element in the new PageMaker may prove particularly distressing: Aldus has hitched itself to the PostScript wagon rather more completely than in previous versions. PCL and other Windows printers are supported, but PostScript and Adobe font conventions are the medium of choice. This matches well with the conventional wisdom in the professional printing world; PostScript and Adobe fonts -- and just about nothing else -- are the standard for professional printing and typography. PageMaker takes full advantage of advances in this area, including requiring the new PostScript Printer Description (PPD) files and the latest Microsoft Windows PostScript drivers. What's worrisome in this is the very real chance that some PPDs will not be included in the final release of PM5.0, and will be hard to secure from vendors without additional software upgrading at extra cost. In the pre- release beta used for this first look test, no LaserMaster PPD was included; printing was possible using a different PPD, but it is hard to be sure that all the capability of the LaserMaster WinJet800 (our laser printer of choice) was being used. I was able to solve the problem by downloading a current LaserMaster PPD file, but the company's technical support staff strongly recommended the use of more recent drivers -- not something to download, given the files top out around five megabytes.... In short, PageMaker 5.0's reliance on the latest Adobe PostScript wrinkle -- and PageMaker 5.0 is the first software encountered that embodies such reliance -- may make life difficult for users with older hardware, especially older PostScript printers. The caveat: If you have an older PostScript printer or rely on non-PostScript printing strategies, you may have a support problem. A viable workaround to consider: Zenographics' newest version of SuperPrint, with its ZScript PostScript interpreter. Other products -- notably, Corel Draw 4.0 -- will support a wide range of DTP jobs hitherto the province of PageMaker. PM5.0 takes DTP to a new level of thoroughly professional publishing. PageMaker's new incarnation offers tools right in the box that will make very demanding jobs not merely easier, but even possible on the desktop platform, for the first time. ### Approximately 2400 words Press contacts: Aldus Chris Kent 206-343-4251 Pam Miller 206-644-1390 (Kaufer-Miller Communications) LaserMaster Mike Dreis 612-943-3400 Zenographics Steve Puntolillo 908-577-8303 Donald Jenner has been writing about computer graphics since 1986, in publications both here and abroad. He is the principal of Donald Jenner Consulting in New York and the Technical Editor of Corel Magazine.