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PageMaker has had a chequered history. The application that invented desktop publishing on the Apple Macintosh in the late 1980s, but lost out to the superior typographic and layout tools of QuarkXPress in the 1990s, has been transformed into the power publishing tool of the office.
PageMaker is lucky to be alive at all. Most people wrote it off when Adobe released InDesign. If InDesign was to be Adobe's Quark killer, what role was there for PageMaker?
As it turns out, Adobe still believes there's a market for PageMaker among users who have more sophisticated requirements than can be satisfied by Word, Publisher or similar products, but don't need the professional publishing features of InDesign or XPress.
This upgrade reinforces that role by offering a number of productivity and ease of use enhancements but few new groundbreaking features. It recognises PageMaker's appeal to existing users and sets out to further strengthen its position within its existing market.
A lot of what's new in PageMaker will be familiar to InDesign users. Support for native Photoshop and Illustrator files, import of pdf 1.3 and 1.4 version files and improved facilities for pdf creation, for example, including the ability to export tagged pdf files that conform to the screen dimensions of the viewing device.
One of the drawbacks of working with imported image files is that DTP applications tend to support generic file formats such as tiff or eps, rather than proprietary application formats. This is quite sensible as most image editors can export to generic formats, whereas it would be impractical for layout applications to support all proprietary image editing file formats.
The problem is you often need two copies of every image, one to maintain features such as layers, alpha channels, editable type and effects, and a separate, flattened file in tiff, eps or jpeg format for import into the layout application.
PageMaker 7.0 supports the import of native Photoshop 5.x and 6.x files with layers. As well as obviating the need for multiple image files, this means you only need to update one file to make changes. Getting images on the page is also easier as you can drag and drop directly from Photoshop to PageMaker, assuming you have enough memory to run both apps at once.
PageMaker has supported the import of Illustrator files since version 6.0. Version 7.0 adds support for Illustrator 9.0, although to display or print transparency effects you need to export Illustrator eps files.
Incidentally, PageMaker 7.0 imports PostScript 3 eps files which means that trapping and separation can be left to a professional pre-press bureau.
The Illustrator 9.0 native file format is pdf and so you'd be right in thinking that you can also drag pdf files straight onto PageMaker pages.
This is a huge advantage for companies already using pdf as a means of distribution for company literature, as the pdf is often the only remaining source - original digital artwork and printed copies are often difficult or impossible to locate. Again there's no transparency and placing pdfs can be risky when producing documents for commercial printing because there's no way of knowing what down-sampling and compression has been applied.
However, as the vast majority of PageMaker documents will be destined for in-house mono or colour laser printing, or exported as pdfs, this is unlikely to be a major issue.
PageMaker 7.0's new data-merge capabilities will be welcomed by anyone who needs to produce customised publications using information held in a database. This feature has wide-ranging applications from the production of business cards, contact directories and other company stationery to direct mail and personalised publishing.
The new data merge palette lists entries from a comma-separated file in .csv or .txt format. You then simply drag record fields onto the template page and format that using the styles palette. There are options to include a subset of the records and you can define custom layouts, specifying the number of columns and the horizontal and vertical space between entries.
It would be fair to say that most of PageMaker's new features are aimed at improving the ease with which content can be imported from other applications.
While Adobe is clearly no longer in the business of positioning PageMaker as a competitor to XPress, the need arises to import Quark and other file formats into PageMaker. In fact, according to Adobe, support for conversion of Quark XPress 4.0 and 4.1 documents was one of the most requested features from existing PageMaker users.
Invariably this process involves a degree of post-import processing as, no matter how good the import filter, unsupported features and other incompatibilities throw up inconsistencies.
Nonetheless, PageMaker's XPress converter utility works surprisingly well, and its expansion to include version 4.1 Quark files, the combination of the XPress, and Publisher converters into one utility and the conversion of Publisher widow/orphan and hyphenation control settings are all to be welcomed.
While PageMaker offers numerous enhancements on the input side, it also makes the creation of pdf files a more flexible process with an enhanced interface and direct access to Acrobat Distiller 5.0's Job Options dialog box for automatic creation of links, articles, bookmarks and security settings. You can also access Acrobat's Job Options dialog from here, which allows you to specify compression, font embedding and colour management settings, among other things.
You can produce tagged pdf files in PageMaker 7.0. These re-flow to fit the display characteristics of the viewer, be it a 21in display or a PDA.
A little forethought is required when structuring documents. For example, it pays to used linked text boxes and apply paragraph styles. That way, the structure of the document can be maintained when something more radical than a simple column resize is called for in order to accommodate the text on a smaller screen. Linking a headline, intro and three columns of body copy text on a page would lead to each being displayed sequentially in a single-column format.
Just as integrated pdf tools have made PageMaker a good choice for the production of documents destined for electronic distribution, tagged pdfs extend the range of delivery to handheld devices. Technical guides, service manuals and directories for field use are obvious applications and PageMaker's existing long document features make it ideally suited to this kind of task.
Anyone who has had to manually link a long pdf document will know what a tedious task this is and changes to the original nearly always necessitate a major, if not total, overhaul of the pdf links. You can very easily create tables of contents and indexes in PageMaker that can automatically generate the required links when exported to pdf. This feature, together with the enhancements in Acrobat 5.0, make PageMaker the obvious choice for pdf content creators who aren't already committed to a layout application.
If this is your intention, though, you'll also need to invest in a copy of Acrobat 5.0 - the Acrobat editing application - as only Distiller and the Acrobat 5.0 reader are included.
Existing PageMaker users should also upgrade, if for no other reason than to take advantage of the more compact file sizes and other significant Acrobat 5.0 features. PageMaker's first upgrade for several years breathes new life into a product that many had given up for dead, but it remains to be seen whether Adobe will attract new converts in significant numbers.
For one thing, PageMaker's price puts it out of the picture for individuals and small companies looking for nothing more than stationery, the odd flyer and a handful of pdfs for a website. This market is already well served by the likes of Microsoft Publisher, Serif PagePlus and GSP Power Publisher.
At the other end of the spectrum, QuarkXPress, InDesign and, to a degree, Adobe FrameMaker can do everything PageMaker can and a whole lot more. These professional layout applications don't cost a great deal more than PageMaker, but cost isn't the issue, it's about ease of use.
PageMaker provides the right balance of sophistication and usability for those who need to produce professional looking documents, but don't want a career in graphic design. For example, it offers expert control over kerning and tracking if you want it, but doesn't let it get in the way. It also has one of the best table editors around. It's amazing how other apps have ignored this aspect of layout, given the amount of tabular data that is found in every kind of publication from annual reports to magazines.
Regrettably, Adobe hasn't found it necessary to update the mediocre collection of templates that accompany PageMaker, but you do at least get 57 PostScript Type 1 font families from the Adobe Type Library.
Adobe has integrated the pdf creation process, while providing the same degree of control you get using the standalone Distiller 5.0 application, and offering some useful additions and enhancements without compromising ease of use. This has guaranteed PageMaker's future as a business tool for corporate publishers which value being able to produce documents for print and electronic distribution from the same source.
Price: £475.88 (£405 ex VAT); upgrade £81.46 (£69.33 ex VAT).
Contact: Adobe
020 8606 4001
www.adobe.co.uk
See also:
Packed full of so many new document design features that it can be a bit confusing. 24 Sep 2002
If your work regularly involves other graphics and design tools, you might find InDesign is the program that ties them all together. 11 Apr 2002If you're thinking of making the jump from Quark Xpress, take a look at this software. 05 Mar 2002All Desktop Publishing (DTP)
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