Note to editors: When I published this article in my newsletter, I set the new PM features in bold type, followed by regular type for my comments, if any. But when I talked about Quark features still missing from PM, I DID NOT bold them, so people scanning the page wouldn’t get the idea that these features were being added to PageMaker. —Terry
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PageMaker 5.0:
The upgrade you’ve been waiting for?
by Terry Wilson
With more than 100 new or enhanced features, Aldus’ PageMaker 5.0 takes a big swipe at Quark.
With PageMaker 5.0, Aldus has finally addressed some major complaints from users. Big wishes like incremental rotation of both text and graphics, the ability to open and work on more than one publication at a time, and built-in process-color separation. In addition to playing catch up to Quark, Aldus has even leapfrogged ahead of Quark in a few areas. XPress 3.2 is due out later this year, so we’ll have to wait and see how Quark responds in its own upgrade. Following is just a partial listing of new features.
Catching up to Quark
I hadn’t realized how far behind PageMaker had gotten. This batch of new PM 5.0 features have been part of the Quark package at least since 1990, and many before then.
Ability to open and work on as many PageMaker publications as your system will allow. I wonder what took Aldus so long?
Rotation and skewing of text and graphics in 0.01 increments. Quark users have been rotating like this for nearly three years, and skewing graphics, too. Skewing text will be a 3.2 feature. (I can hardly wait to see the abuses of text skewing.)
Control palette to position, scale, or crop objects and select the type attributes of individual characters or whole paragraphs. Again, XPress has had a measurements palette since ’90; PageMaker users will love it for the freedom from menus and dialogs it provides, not to mention the instant reporting of type, styles, size, leading, etc.
Numerically exact positioning and rotation of any object, from its center or any handle. Eyeballing elements into position is fine for visual composition, but sometimes this needs to be followed up with precise positioning if you want consistency from page to page.
Specific “nudge” amounts for exact positioning. Quark does it in either 1 point or tenth-point increments.
Incrementally rotated inline graphics. Cropping of rotated objects.
Sophisticated kerning and track editing; numeric kerning. How on earth can you hand-kern without this? I assume this replaces the “pick any five: very loose, loose, etc.” method of typography. You should be able to go pair by pair, kerning from the keyboard, for perfect heads.
Baseline shift. Don’t use it a lot, but when you need it, it’s a godsend.
Process-color separations of PageMaker text and graphics, as well as imported CMYK TIFF(tm), DCS, and EPS images-all without leaving PageMaker.
Overprinting for any spot or process color or tint.
Spot-to-process conversion at printing.
Choice of printing individual inks of process-color separations. This will eliminate the waste of printing all four pages when you only had to make a change on, say, the black plate.
Custom line weights from 0.1 to 800 points. It’s always been inconceivable to me that a major layout program had such limitations on something as fundamental as line weights. Will this also apply to imbedded Rules Before and After?
Ability to create you own color libraries and reuse them.
Spot colors, process colors, or tints of either.
Aldus Additions: In Quark, these features are all part of the basic program.
• Drop Cap.
• Group It. PageMaker was first in allowing multiple selection, but for some reason, up until now, they never allowed grouping.
• Add Cont’d Line. You’ll love this for newsletters, magazines and papers with stories jumping to a later page. Reference page numbers will always be correct, no matter how many times pages and articles get shuffled.
• Balance Columns. Great for justifying columns on those pages with mixed type sizes and leading.
• Find Overset Text.
Ability to “drag and drop” text and objects among open publications. This is a magical feature in Quark. Watching an item being dragged off one document, then pop onto another, is simply amazing. Of course this means having two documents open, which is a breakthrough feature in PM 5.0.
Library palette for storing common images (with “drag and drop”). Quark has this, but I’d be interested in seeing how Aldus implements it. In Quark you can’t open the library as a document to edit its members (both text and graphics, grouped or single). You have to drag your edited version back in as a new object and delete the old one.
Listing of all open publications for easily navigating among open publications.
Ability to edit rotated text directly (even the cursor is rotated).
Automatic text flow, without having to display every page.
Color swatches on the improved Colors palette
Quark, take note!
Yes, I have to admit that there are a few things found in the list of PM 5.0 features still missing from Quark. To give credit where it’s due, I’m mentioning some.
Automatic centering of the page on whatever paper you’re using.
Nonconsecutive page-range printing. With Print Monitor you can work around this, but you have to concentrate on what you’re doing. Quark users would really like this feature.
Horizontal and vertical reflection of objects. We still can’t mirror a graphic; (nor can we assign color to a black and white eps graphic—something do-able in PM for a long time). I would much rather be able to flop a picture than skew it, and if they can figure out skewing, I don’t see why they can’t figure out flopping.
Automatic scaling of the page to the paper size. This would be great for customer proofs of oversized pages. Figuring the reduction percentage by hand is easy enough; but it’s a nuisance to change all those Page Setups.
Ability to embed EPS files in a publication or leave them out, still linked for ease of updating. Sometimes you’d rather have everything in one neat, albeit large, package.
Build Booklet (Addition). Nothing is more horrendous than rearranging all the pages in a document from reader spreads to printer spreads so the finished job can be saddle stitched and folded. Xtensions are available for Quark users, but they aren’t cheap, let alone bundled with the program.
Bullets & Numbering (offered as an Addition).
Helpful suggestions from the PostScript error handler to help solve common printing problems. I wonder if this will be the usual postscript code like <limitcheck error> or something useful, like <not enough memory. Try turning on Unlimited Downloadable fonts>
Automatic appearance of colors used in imported EPS files. In Quark, you have to examine the EPS file to know what colors are used. How nice it will be for PageMaker users to more easily match a headline color to a color in the artwork.
Visual distinction between process colors, spot colors, tints, and imported EPS colors. Since you can’t search and replace for colors, it’s tough to weed out old colors after your document has evolved over time. Sometimes you print out what you think are four process color plates, but get, in addition, a few spot color plates.
A few things Aldus forgot about
And lastly, there are still features missing from PageMaker that I would really rather not be without.
Changeable Master Page items, and multiple Master Pages. In Quark, Master Page items are not set in stone. My master pages typically have placeholders for things like titles and bylines; and I may have more than one master page for different sections of a publication.
Step and repeat. This feature in Quark is indispensible for creating lines on forms and calendars, and setting up a sheet of labels..
Distribute/align. More of a drawing program feature, this is nevertheless useful in design when you want boxes or other items equally spaced out, or when revisions require objects you stepped and repeated earlier to fill a different space.
Simplicity. In Quark, multicolumn text (or art), frame, and fill are a single neat item, not a rag-tag collection of elements to keep aligned and together.
Blends. Assigning a two-part blend to the fill adds flexibility to layouts without chasing you in and out of a drawing program.
Inline text. PageMaker can handle inline graphics, but what about inline text? (No, I’m not kidding.) Since text and graphics reside in boxes in Quark, inline text boxes are as natural as inline graphic boxes. For instance, those little numbers in a box that denote the songs on a CD label? They’re much easier to set up as an inline text box (with frame) preceding the title of the song.
Trapping control, element by element. Within a document, the same pair of colors can overprint in one place, trap in another. Your choice.
Invisibles. I like to see where tabs, carriage returns, column breaks, and spaces are—on the actual page, not a story editor. When copy starts doing weird things, often looking at the invisibles shows the problem. Also, text linkages can be made visible, too.
Document Layout Palette. This allows you to visually rearrange your pages.
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