Ventura’s Complete Publishing Solution -- Maybe... BY DAVID ALSBERG & DONALD JENNER SPECIAL TO Corel Magazine Once upon a time, Xerox nearly owned computer-based publishing -- on dedicated terminals. Microcomputers changed the picture dramatically, and -- in various incarnations -- Xerox's response has been Ventura Publisher. Most recently, Xerox's Ventura Software subsidiary has been promoting a bundle, adding the company's database publishing software, AdPro drawing package and PicturePro bitmap editing and painting program to the flagship Ventura Publisher. In our examination, David Alsberg looks at the publishing portions of the bundle, and Don Jenner critiques the graphics portions. * * * [Ventura Publisher] Ventura Publisher for Windows 4.1 is Xerox/Ventura's upgrade into the Windows 3.1 desktop publishing world, resting comfortably between the high-end word processors and the high-end professional packages. Its functionality and performance will serve existing Ventura users well, though the interface will cause problems both for training and for ongoing usage, and new Ventura adopters may have some obstacles in using data as they'd wish. The biggest change is in that interface. Ventura's new two-row button bar is very different from industry standard: it has a left side of function keys, a center section of two drop boxes for picking files and tags (their name for styles), and a right section of tools. That tool section is the most problematic. The upper level of main tools stays fixed, but the lower level will change based on which upper tool is chosen, and what's selected in the document, creating essentially a menu structure of icons. A description of what a tool is doing appears in the status bar at the bottom of the screen, unfortunately only after the button has been pressed (sort of an "oops" interface that has nothing to do with being object- oriented). The effect is to leave you reaching for the Quick Reference Card as a key to the 97 button icons they've included. The bar can be easily customized by a separated utility included, the icons are meaningful and attractively designed, and if you turn the button bar off, you 'll be presented with the standard Ventura interface from versions past, complete with Toolbox window, Tag List window and File List window. If you have the button bar on, the previous interface is unavailable. Other interface innovations are more successful. The lower left corner has 5 zoom buttons: a menu button allowing you to select from 10 different magnifications, and buttons for 200%, 100%, fit to sides, and fit to top/bottom, which are very convenient. The lower right side has page buttons to advance a single page easily. The right mouse button presents the appropriate menu from the menu bar floating for easy access, as many spreadsheets are now using it. (The right mouse button function was included very late in the release cycle, and isn't mentioned in the manual, online help or extra features list, so you'll have be a bit more inquisitive to explore it.) Ventura adds features not standard in desktop publishing packages: full support for tables, a more flexible approach to frame placement using anchors rather than the PageMaker inline graphic approach, and frame tags to manage attributes of frames automatically. The package also adds features to permit managing the document as a word processor: spell checking, search and replace not only through the document but also by attributes of frames (called frame tags and new with 4.1), and tab adjustment on the ruler. The ease of managing headers and footers in the publishing package becomes much clearer, though the fact that the material is disconnected from the original document could cause the material to be out of sync with the headers. (Ventura may have been bit by this themselves: the header letters on the appendices don't match the actual letter used by the appendix.) 24-bit color TIFF files and PANTONE color specification is now supported, and color printing in both 4-color separations and spot printing is available; the package is bundled with a color separation utility. The program supports standard Windows fonts (TrueType, Bitstream, Zenographics), but not fonts generated for Ventura Publisher in the DOS/GEM version. There is a new Equation Editor for laying out sophisticated mathematical formulas, with a somewhat arcane specification language. This is one of those features you'd do better to use with the new button bar, editing the formulas automatically generated. Compatibility is somewhat more of an issue. Ventura fully supports TrueType fonts. GIF, WPG, BMP and DIB are among the common graphics formats that aren't supported. While Windows Metafiles are supported, an imbedded graphic in a Word document won't import into Ventura. Ventura will import text from many word processors, including WinWord 1.x and 2.x, and Ami Pro 2.0 and 3.0 files (Ami support is new in 4.1), but won't import the styles from either. Other forms of data import can be implemented through the clipboard; apart from the standard paste, you can either imbed or link to objects placed on the clipboard by other applications. It varies slightly from the Windows printing standard in being unable to change the default printer from within the program, though any other printer can be selected for current use. Ventura is compact in its system requirements. I tested the program on a slow 386 with 4 MB of RAM and got acceptable performance. About 5 MB of disk space was needed, with a 6 MB swapfile required during printing (less than half the needs of the major word processors). Loading times are painfully slow, partially because of Ventura's strategy of maintaining component files separately in their original format: graphic files are translated to GEM format on the fly, and text files must be rehyphenated on loading. This also means that external files loaded into a chapter file should be managed within the program as well as externally, since Ventura is maintaining additional configuration files that could easily be pointing to non- existing text or graphics files. If component files are deleted, Ventura requires manual updating of the configurations to reflect the new situation. The manual is clearly written, and well organized. With the previously mentioned exception of the right mouse button feature which was added after the manual was printed, features were easy to find, and the explanations were easy to follow. Where the effect to be performed was a workaround, like text reversal or flowing text around graphics, there was an explanation of what was being done as well as a recipe of steps to do it. [Ventura Database Publisher] Ventura Database Publisher 4.0 is a useful intermediate tool for creating heavily formatted reports from most major databases, using the most common desktop publishing tools. The easiest packages for managing databases are legendary for their awkward report generation tools, while the high-end word processors can be very difficult to set up with controlled breaks (custom headers). Ventura's product takes output from Dbase or Paradox files directly, and from Lotus 123W files by Dynamic Data Exchange; if you have a copy of Q&E (bundled with Excel), it can also deal with Excel and SQL databases. It creates a database report, and formats it as a document in any of five packages: Ventura Publisher, PageMaker, Ami Pro, Word Perfect for Windows, or Word for Windows, using style sheets from the publishing program to control formatting. The general approach is to present the user with step by step icons in 8 steps. The database and process are selected first, then records are chosen and sorted, followed by selecting fields for the body and headers. The key dialog box for the program is the Field Attributes step, which essentially defines the output form for each record. You'll want to create a mockup of a sample page in advance, preferably using your output program; you'll need to have set up your style sheets before using Ventura, and it gives no visual cues on what your final design will be like. Ventura uses a macro language to produce particularly highly customized reports, with special functions to support PageMaker and Ventura Publisher. User-defined dictionaries control the flow of reports, handle exceptions and ease managing abbreviations and codes. As a nice feature, there's specific support for printing tables that makes them especially simple to deal with. The system works quite easily once you get used to it, but you'll definitely want to go through the tutorial carefully (in spite of some unfortunate organization that could confuse you about midway through the first exercise). The integration with Ventura Publisher is understandably the strongest among the various output packages, and the connection with Word for Windows is the most troublesome. WinWord styles must be saved in RTF (Rich Text Format) to be used by Database Publisher, and the resulting document is produced in RTF for import (with at least one documented bug where the user may have to enter an additional line in the RTF file to get the file to import properly). Further, in one of their sample files, I was unable to link a small graphics file as part of the merged output and bring it into WinWord. Ami Pro files work directly with Database Publisher, and had no problem with graphics. For all this, I'll note that I designed a report that gave perfect WinWord output in under 10 minutes which had caused me a few hours trying vainly to control varying headers using WinWord's own macro processing. [Ventura AdPro & Picture Pro] Ventura bundles AdPro and PicturePro with Ventura Publisher and Database Publisher as a complete desktop publishing package at a special price. It seemed useful to take a quick look at the graphics part of this package just to see if the bundle represents a good deal for Corel Magazine readers. The short answer is, while Ventura Publisher fills a very specific desktop publishing need -- and has a lot of fans used to its special ways... -- AdPro and PicturePro are probably not something for Corel Magazine readers. What these programs do, is better done by Corel Draw 4.0 and its associated programs. AdPro is a drawing program specifically tuned for laying out what seem to be low-end ads -- the kind associated with circulars you pick up in the supermarket, to judge from the manual. Open the program and call for a new layout; you have a choice of single-page or two-page spread. In a separate window next to the workspace window, a box lists things you can put on the page. These include various kinds of line drawing options (Bezier curves, rules), boxes and polygons, and some special objects such as starbursts and coupons (the latter, complete with your choice of line- dotting and always with the corners properly in place). AdPro comes with Pantone color matching, and is clearly intended to support output to standard phototypesetting equipment -- among other things, it simply doesn't even recognize TrueType fonts. This clearly limits options for proofing work in progress; either you run a very costly and rather slow PostScript color printer, or you "insert" a PostScript emulator (such as Zenographics' new Zscript option for SuperPrint) between you and something less dear. A substantially less trivial "gotcha" is the interface on this program. For example, insert a starburst -- you want the line nice and wide. There is no line-width command; you must turn on the command-line option, which creates a modify-the-object dialogue at the bottom of the workplace window. Not necessarily a bad way to do it (though rather CAD-like) -- but no other illustration program does it this way; this is a completely counter- intuitive way of doing things, and it is typical of the program. Another example: You draw Bezier lines or polygon lines; you can click-point-click-point to your heart's content; but to end the drawing process, you must control- click the left mouse button. This is not obvious from the program interface; it is not obvious from the on-line help file. You need to read the manual -- carefully! Finally, Archetype -- from which company Ventura bought this program -- seems to have committed the ultimate Windows graphics solecism: AdPro does not cut and paste to the Windows clipboard. In some ways, PicturePro is a good deal more likeable than AdPro. The problem here is that it is not a stand-out product. Like Corel PhotoPaint, it acquires images using TWAIN; like PhotoPaint, it does a good job editing the bitmap. The whistles here are the addition of a vector-type drawing layer and a masking "alpha" layer. The latter is harder to use than standard masking techniques; the former seems to vary from its documented function. For example, the manual seems to say that the paintbucket tool, used with objects created on the vector-drawing layer, will fill them. PicturePro does not offer the facilities of a truly high-end bitmap editor such as Picture Publisher. It is not as "painterly" as Fractal Painter. It is not as facile or technically adroit as CA/Cricket Paint. In short, it is a good bitmap editor if nothing else is around -- but if you have other things already known, you will probably not find yourself changing over to this paint program. ### Approximately 2200 words Press Contact: Clark & Westlund (PR agency) - David Thie 714-724-5050 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. David Alsberg is based in New York, where he is an independent technology marketing consultant to major corporations. Prior to his consulting activities, Alsberg was an officer and project manager in CitiBank’s Humanware Division, developing new computer-based banking products and interface designs.