DTP: Using PageMaker

Producing professional DTP destined for commercial

print

Introduction

A few months ago I looked at the steps involved in the creation of a leaflet using the drawing
program Corel Draw. I'm now going to look at what might initially seem like a similar
project, the production of a one-page programme of events. In fact the project is entirely
different and requires a completely different approach. The amount of information to get over
in the leaflet was relatively small and, even then, Corel Draw's text handling was pushed to
the limit. The amount of information to get over in the programme is far higher and so we
must turn to the dedicated text-handling skills of a DTP program.

I've chosen to use the market leader, PageMaker, but the lessons and challenges involved are
equally relevant to any of the professional DTP packages (see Professional DTP box-out).
The fundamental lesson, and the basis of all successful work, is an understanding of what
good design does. The purpose of design is to assist in the communication of information.
This can be broken down into three stages: attract the reader's attention; help the reader to
understand and assimilate the desired information; keep the reader's attention throughout the
process. The ultimate test of a good design is if all the information it contains has been read
and understood.

Design Principles

As such it's clear that simple legibility and clarity are essential, but they aren't enough to grab
the reader's interest in the first place. This interest is attracted by variety, but it can also be
lost by it. A pull-out quote, for example, can draw the eye to an article, but equally it can
distract and disrupt the reading flow and so potentially lose readers. Good design
accommodates this apparent paradox by playing off one element against another: consistency
against contrast, boldness against understatement, symmetry against asymmetry, unity against
division. you get the picture. Good design is built on this internal tension and the balance of
opposites.
Coming down to earth with a bump, it's important to remember that good design doesn't exist
in a vacuum, but is determined by real world considerations. The most important of these are
the intended audience and the intended effect. If you are producing a mail-shot for a bargain-
basement special offer, for example, a left-aligned mono-spaced letter that looks as if it has
been knocked up on a typewriter will almost certainly be more effective than a lavish full
colour brochure. Just as important are the practical considerations of time and money. The
typewriter approach would not only be far cheaper to produce, but also far quicker.

For our project the parameters are clear. The publication is a programme of upcoming,
mainly arts-based events organised by the French Institute in Edinburgh. It's therefore safe to
assume that the intended audience is sophisticated and that, with the events' emphasis on
contemporary art, the programme should be appropriately clean and modern. Budgets are
tight, however, so all of the information must be fitted onto a single double-sided page. Full-
colour is also out of the question, and in any case many of the supplied photos are black and
white, so we'll have to try and maximize the impact of two colours.

OK, we know what we're supposed to do, so how do we go about it? Basically the process
involves six separate stages (see Putting It Together walkthrough). First the layout grid is
created by setting page size, margins and columns. Second the text is roughly laid up and
positioned on the grid. Third the typography, the formatting of the text is determined. Fourth
the graphics are introduced, sized and positioned. Fifth the overall effect of the combined
text, graphics and colour is fine-tuned to create the maximum impact. Finally, when the
design is complete, the separated output is proofed prior to sending out to commercial print.

Preparation

The first decision to be made is the size and shape of paper to be used for the programme.
Often no thought at all is given to this, which is why many beginners find that they have
actually designed their masterpiece to the software's default of US Letter! In many ways,
however, this decision is the single most important one we will make as it determines the
canvas on which we are going to work. Psychological tests have shown that taller layouts
tend to seem formal, while squatter designs seem more informal. They have also shown that a
particular shape, the golden rectangle, tends to be selected as the most aesthetically appealing
- a fact the ancient Greeks discovered long before market research.

This aesthetic ideal is slightly shorter than our typical pages - A4/A3/A5 - but there are
practical reasons for the appeal of the ISO sizes. A0 is exactly twice the size of A1, which is
twice the size of A2 and so on. What this means in practice is that an A4 sheet, for example,
rotated on its side and folded in half will produce two A5 pages. This has huge advantages in
terms of conserving paper and so in keeping costs down. Because the ISO pages are such
universal standards they also have the advantage that they will easily fit into their
corresponding envelope sizes - and into the post box.

Slightly reluctantly then, I think we should fall into line with the vast majority of users and
select A4 as the page size. At least by selecting a landscape orientation we can break out from
the absolute norm. The next step is to set up the grid onto which we will fit our text and
graphics. With a number of separate categories of events to include, together with
background information on the Institute and an eye-catching cover, our single A4 sheet will
have to be divided into sections. Folding in two would only give us four A5 pages, but
folding into three will give us six taller sections. These will be slightly out of the ordinary,
slightly formal and well suited for carrying large amounts of information.

To set up the grid we have to set up the margins and columns. Again many users treat the
software's in-built defaults as if they are givens, but each publication will demand different
settings. The general rule for multiple page layouts is to have a wider bottom margin than top
and a wider inside margin than out, although like most design rules these can be broken for
effect. It's also important to be as generous as possible with margins as the resulting "white
space" should not be seen as wasted, but as a crucial part of the overall look of the document.
Without decent margins your design is always going to feel cramped.

In fact it's often worth shrinking your body copy's point-size to gain space to add to margins,
but that's a luxury we're not able to afford. Instead we're going to have to be comparatively
mean with left, right and top margins of 7mm and a slightly larger bottom margin of 1cm.
The next step is to set the number of columns - three - and the "gutters", the space between
columns. Because each gutter is actually going to be a fold we have to make the width
exactly twice the size of the left and right margins - 14mm - to ensure that each panel is
correctly centred.

Text Handling

With the basic grid ready, we can load up the text to see just what we've got to deal with.
PageMaker automatically picks up styles from supported word processors so features like the
headings are already picked out. With frame-based packages like Ventura, the text would
automatically flow through the columns from beginning to end. That would be fine if we
were producing a book, but for a folded leaflet we need to paste the text in non-consecutive
order so that the pages read correctly when folded. PageMaker allows this to be done easily
with its freeform text blocks which are positioned and sized manually. The process demands
more intervention, but allows more control.

By sizing each text block so that the right text is positioned on the correct panel even if it
runs over the bottom of the page, we can get a good idea of what's involved. At the moment
the text blocks are all linked so that if I drag up the window shade on one block the overflow
text will automatically flow into the next. To break the links, it's necessary to select each
block, cut it and then immediately paste it back. It's an unnecessarily nerve-wracking process
and PageMaker's default of slightly offsetting pasted objects is infuriating - though this can
be avoided by using the power paste shortcut Ctrl + Alt + V.
With all the text in place, it's a good idea to load up all the graphics (shortcut Ctrl + D) onto
the surrounding pasteboard. This is important as we need to know roughly the amount of
space they are going to require before we take the next crucial step of choosing our body
typeface. This decision is determined by a combination of factors. The typeface has to be
appropriate to the intended audience, but also suited to the particular circumstances. In our
case this means a typeface with a contemporary but classic feel which reads well at small
point-sizes. The solution I came up with is the sophisticated but highly legible Optima which
is a modern interpretation of the Roman lettering on triumphal arches - if only it was the
Italian Institute!

With the typeface chosen the next step is to choose the point-size and the interline spacing or
"leading". For easy reading of long sections of text, point-size should be between 10 and 12.
Unfortunately even at 10 point it's clear that there would be no room for white space - or even
the pictures - so I settled on 9.5. In fact on text-heavy jobs like this that's by no means bad
going and it also means that each line contains around 55 letters, within the accepted
maximum for comfortable reading of 65. In terms of leading PageMaker defaults to 1.2 x the
point-size which would be 11.4 points. With our relatively long lines I'd prefer larger leading
to make the travel easier for the eye, so I can afford to round it up to 12 points.

This body copy leading is particularly important because it sets up the horizontal structure of
the grid. To tie the separate columns/panels of our spread together it's important that the lines
of body text actually align across the design. The reader probably wouldn't consciously notice
if they didn't - so long as the bottom of the columns lined up - but subliminally the design is
tighter and has greater internal logic if they do. In other words, if I want my design to win an
award it's a must. The problem is that, as the grid is invisible, it's very hard to work to.
However, this can be overcome with a bit of effort and with the help of PageMaker's Grid
Manager utility to add repeating baseline guidelines (see this month's Real World Publishing
article).

The formatting of our body copy is almost complete with only the indents and alignment to
be decided. In terms of first line indents these are only really necessary to indicate paragraph
breaks, which will be clear enough anyway in our freeform layout, so they can be dispensed
with. Setting the text to be justified produces a more block-like and so modern look and has
the added advantage that it fits in slightly more copy into the given space. It will also allow
us to add variety and to highlight information by using left-aligned bullet points and dates.

Of course all of these formatting decisions could be being applied directly to selected text,
but far more powerful is the ability to group attributes as named styles that can easily be
applied and edited. The easiest way to apply styles within PageMaker is by clicking on the
style name on the Style palette (Ctrl + B). Local overrides can always be added and are then
marked in the palette by a plus symbol after the style name. Existing styles can be edited by
Ctrl-clicking on them in the palette, while new styles can be created with the Ctrl + 3
shortcut.

Apart from the body copy, the most important items of text in the design are the headings.
Their relative difference and significance has to be identified which is most easily done by
increasing their point-size, emboldening, and centring. This has to be done while still
ensuring that the following paragraphs fall back onto the interline grid. This means ensuring
that the combination of each heading's leading and its above and below spacing adds up to a
multiple of the 12-point body leading. We also need to clearly identify the separate category
headings but, with absolutely no room for manoeuvre, have to find other ways of marking
them off.

One of the most obvious ways to do this is by using upper case, but this is generally frowned
upon because it interferes with the recognition of word shape that is the basis of easy reading.
For single word category headings, however, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. I've
also marked off the headings from the body copy by using a ruling line below - perversely
this is hidden away as a sub-dialog in PageMaker's Paragraph command (Ctrl + M) - and by
introducing a second typeface, Gill Sans. Used in its bold condensed form this will give the
category headings considerable weight while opening up some surrounding white space.

Graphics Handling

With the grid set up and text formatting established, we're now ready to complete the layout
by bringing in the graphics. It's often said that a picture is worth a thousand words and it's
true that without them it would be very difficult to catch and keep the reader's attention. Even
so there are limits, and I'm baffled by the urge to introduce lame-brained, badly-drawn clipart
on the slightest pretext. If the image adds nothing, drop it. Fortunately that's not a problem as
we have a good range of photos and line art covering a wide range of subjects.
In terms of positioning and sizing the graphics a number of factors come into play. Obviously
the pictures have to be positioned next to their relevant text, but it's important to try and
disperse them equally throughout the spread both horizontally and vertically. Image type -
line art and photos - and image subject - people and buildings - should also be mixed to give
as much contrast as possible. To achieve this it is often necessary to reorder the text. The size
of each image is largely determined by the grid, with graphics either scaled to the full width
of the column or, if text is going to flow around them, to half or a third of the column width.
To get an immediate idea of the impact this will have, make sure that Text Wrap is on (Alt +
Ctrl + E).

At the same time, the actual subject of the images must be taken into account. Don't blow up
a boring photo just to fill up space. On the other hand if you've got an intriguing photo, as we
do for the cover, don't waste it. Mug-shots of people's faces might be commonplace, but they
actually play an important role by humanising a layout. Even so they should only be used at
relatively small sizes. Also think of any subliminal messages the graphics might be giving. If
faces are looking out of design, for example, your readers might well follow suit.

Copyfitting

Ultimately what we are working towards is a layout where all the text and graphics are
seamlessly combined together in a balanced and internally logical whole. In the meantime we
will be happy if we can get them all to fit on the page! In fact there are a number of copy-
fitting tools and options at our disposal. The amount of space an image will take up depends
largely on its orientation, for example, so if we have a choice of portrait and landscape this
gives huge flexibility. Even if we only have one image it's amazing what a difference
cropping can make. Moreover, by intelligent cropping we can often increase the image's
interest.

On the text side too we also have considerable flexibility. If copy seems short on a page that's
not a problem at all as it allows us to add white space around headings and images and
generally to let the design breathe. If we have the odd line or two too much, we still have a
number of options. The spacing around headings can often be squeezed. Text can normally be
slightly rewritten without affecting the meaning though this will generally have to be
approved. Otherwise, if only the odd word has crept onto a new line, this can often be
massaged back onto the line before by adding discretionary hyphens (Shift + Ctrl + -) or by
kerning. Never kern by more than 0.01 of an em (Alt + Left arrow) and make sure that this is
only applied to individual lines not to whole paragraphs.

For more major problems, more extreme measures must be taken. For two pages in the
programme I had to make unwelcome compromises. In one of the events panels I had to run a
number of short separate paragraphs together, marking them off with a Zapf Dingbats bullet
character. At least this ensured that the interline grid was maintained. However, for the page
of general details about the Institute, the sheer amount of text meant that the horizontal grid
had to be sacrificed with 9pt text on a 10.5pt leading. I can live with this as the back panel is
not really part of a spread, but there goes my award!

Fine-Tuning

Eventually, using all the tricks available - and compromises where necessary - a working
layout is achieved. Now we can concentrate on fine-tuning and refining the design to make it
more effective. In particular we want to add impact to both graphics and text to help them to
catch the reader's eye. The cover image of a building sloping at an incredible angle is already
striking, but the effect can be highlighted further by angling the two items of cover text in the
opposite direction. The only way to do this is to skew the text blocks using PageMaker's
control palette.

The same cover image is used again on the main spread's centre panel, but simply repeating
the photo would be a wasted opportunity. Instead new life can be breathed into the image by,
for example, cropping in hard to the image's centre of interest, the building. Instead I decided
to literally give the image a different spin by rotating it which immediately grabs the eye by
breaking out of the grid. Even better, by straightening the building and rotating the
surrounding image, the photo is given a new internal tension and intriguing logic of its own.

Another eye-catching image effect is achieved with the Christian Dior fashion image.
Originally this was a rectangular photo but the image's centre of interest, the figure, is a much
more interesting shape. If the shape was regular, such as triangle, we could isolate it by
drawing a polygon and combining it with the image using PageMaker's masking command
(Ctrl + 6). In fact as the shape is very irregular, I have had to use Photoshop's more advanced
masking controls. To get the text to then flow around the figure, new points can be added and
repositioned on the text-wrap boundary by clicking and then dragging with the select tool.

Looking at the text to see if we can add impact is less fruitful. Normally I would consider
adding dropped capitals or emboldened introductory paragraphs to add interest and colour to
the layout. Each of these "text breaker" features would usually act as entry points, enticing
the reader to start reading. However, as our layout is already broken into sections and full of
interest, they would be more likely to act as distractions and so give an excuse to stop
reading. The one feature I have used is a couple of bullets to mark off small exhibitions.
These have to be added with PageMaker's Bullets and Numbering command - a dialog so
clumsy and dated that it would embarrass a shareware word processor.

Colour

Apart from the management of text and graphics, the designer's third tool for grabbing,
keeping and controlling the reader's interest is colour. Of course full colour opens up the full
armoury, but there's still a lot we can do within our two-colour budget. In fact even if the
budget doesn't stretch this far, there's still a lot that can be done with single-colour printing.
For example, rather than black and white, the publication could be printed in a coloured ink
or on coloured paper. In both cases though you should bear in mind that black and white
offers the most contrast and so the easiest read - in other words avoid lime green on
fluorescent yellow.

Colours are most easily defined with the New command at the bottom of the Colours palette
(Ctrl + J). However, as onscreen hues are never absolutely accurate and cannot show the
important difference between printing on coated (glossy) or uncoated (matt) stock, the colour
should actually be chosen from a swatch book. Almost certainly this will mean choosing
from the thousand or so approved Pantone colours. These can then be simulated within
PageMaker by selecting from the relevant drop-down library list.

Eventually I chose a blue, Pantone 3015. The advantage of a strong colour like this is that it
can be used solid for text, for example, to highlight the category headings and dates. It also
offers enough contrast to enable white dropped out from it - as in the bars on the top of each
spread - to effectively act as another colour. Finally it produces attractive and practical tints.
The fact that black text remains very readable over a 20% tint means that I can break up the
main spread with a central coloured panel and also add colour to the back panel. By turning
the main cover image into a duotone, mixing blue into the black, we really are making the
most of the two colours available to us.

Preparing for Print

The layout is now complete, so the next stage is to prepare it for commercial print. Eventually
the design will be output as colour-separated film from an imagesetter. These imagesetters
are all built on the Postscript page description language so for accurate proofing you really
need to have a Postscript printer. With PageMaker, colour separations are created by
selecting the Print dialog's Colour command, selecting Separation and choosing from the
colours found in the publication - in our case Black and Pantone 3015. You should also
ensure that Printer's marks are on in the dialog's Paper option - you might have to temporarily
shrink output to see these. These crop marks enable pages to be easily overlaid to check
colour registration and bleeds.

That's not quite the end of the road, because we need to get the file to the typesetter in a form
from which they can print it. We could simply redirect the Postscript print to disk and then
send the resulting file to be output. The problem is that there's no flexibility in the system. If
there were any problems with the file, such as the dreaded missing font error, we'd only find
out when the film had been output in Courier. Equally, if there were any last minute changes
there's absolutely no scope for correction, we'd have to recreate the file from scratch.
Instead it's much better to send the bureau the actual PageMaker file. We'll have to make sure
that they have the same, or later version, of the program and also that they have the same
fonts. It's also necessary to make sure that all graphics files are included or they might print at
low resolution. This is most easily done by copying the publication and its graphics into a
new directory with the All Linked option in the Save As dialog. Users of PageMaker 6.5 can
use the Save for Service Provider to automate this final process and copy their masterpiece to
removable media. Either way it's now over to the printer to do their worst.

Tom Arah

Top Ten Tips

1. Always think of your design from the reader's point of view. Would you be attracted
by a given layout, keep reading it and understand it? If not start again.
2. Don't try too hard. DTP offers so many design tricks that it is tempting to include
them all, but too many effects are often counter-productive. Generally speaking, less
is more.
3. Good design is not about covering as much of the page as possible. Don't be
frightened of white space.
4. Make the most of the images you are given, but be wary of turning to clipart. A good
image can make a design, a weak one can ruin it.
5. Get to know your fonts. You probably have hundreds on your system, each with
different effects and different practical uses, but how many do you actually use?
6. Within any single job, however, you should stick to only two contrasting but
complementary faces. Use different styles of these fonts (italic, bold and compressed)
to add variety.
7. Get the right hardware. You'll need a powerful computer with plenty of RAM and
disk space. For proofing commercial print you'll also need a Postscript printer.
8. Get the right software. Each DTP program has its own strengths and weaknesses and
caters to a slightly different market (see Professional DTP box out).
9. Time spent on setting up templates and styles will be saved many times over.
10. Be wary of rules and prescriptions (including those above). Design rules are there to
be broken - intelligently.
The Professional DTP Competition
In the master class I've concentrated on using PageMaker because it's pretty dominant on the
PC, but it's by no means the only option. The program's main strength is the simplicity of its
working method. Essentially this is a computerised version of the old manual process where
typeset text and screened images were pasted onto a pre-designed grid. Its other main
strength is that, as the original and current market leader, it is well supported by outputting
bureaux and commercial printers. This reliability is helped further by the fact that
PageMaker's developer, Adobe, is the company behind the industry-standard Postscript
publishing language.

PageMaker used to face severe competition in the early days from the PC-based Ventura.
Rather than offering freeform placement of text and images this took a much more structured
frame-based approach. Combined with a strong emphasis on styles rather than local
formatting this gave Ventura a huge advantage in terms of the automation of document
layout. Over the years both programs have copied features from the other, but the hands-on
versus hands-off approach still separates the two.

Sadly Ventura has had a hard time of it over recent years with unhappy moves first to the
Windows environment and then between various developers. The result has been a lack of
direction, a lot of uncertainty and a haemorrhaging of its previously loyal supporters. Those
users looking for a reliable platform for the production of long structured documents have
tended to turn to FrameMaker. This is also now developed by Adobe and, with features like
conditional printing and in-built drawing tools, it is particularly well suited to the production
of technical work.

Other users, looking for a combination of design-intensive features with strong frame-based
control have turned to Quark XPress. On the Mac, where Ventura never really found a home,
XPress is far and away the professionals' choice. However it was generally felt that the first
PC implementation - version 3.1 - needed to bed down in its new environment before it was
completely reliable. This was especially unfortunate as no major new release has appeared on
either platform for the last three years. All that is about to change, however, with the
imminent and eagerly awaited release of version 4.0.

Overall, it's a simplification but still generally true to say that, while PageMaker is ideal for
publications made up of a few design-intensive pages, for longer work such as books,
manuals and magazines it's better to turn to the likes of Ventura, FrameMaker and XPress.

Tom Arah
PageMaker was the program that invented the whole concept of desktop publishing way back
in 1985. What made the program so revolutionary was the way it took traditional design
methods, involving the paste-up of typeset text and screened images, and simply translated
them to the computer environment. Ironically the secret of PageMaker's early success became
the reason for its later problems as its largely manual approach just wasn't suited to more
advanced requirements such as handling longer documents, Web repurposing and
scriptability.

Adobe's solution was radical. It stopped development of PageMaker - apart from the almost
entirely cosmetic 6.5 Plus - and started again from scratch. The result was the totally new
InDesign, a next-generation DTP application intended to take over from PageMaker and to
take the fight to Quark XPress. But it didn't turn out quite as Adobe planned. The behind-the-
scenes advances in InDesign made little practical difference so, not only did InDesign fail to
challenge XPress, very few PageMaker users made the transition either.

So now with this unexpected upgrade has Adobe recognised the reality of the marketplace? Is
PageMaker back from the dead with a major transfusion of new blood? Or is this just another
cynical attempt to wring as much revenue as possible out of the dying patient?

PageMaker has always recognised that by its nature any DTP application must lie at the heart
of a larger workflow incorporating text and graphics from different sources. As such the first
advance in the new release is the updating of PageMaker's import filters. For text the most
important file format is Microsoft Word and PageMaker 7 now supports Word 2000
documents complete with support for index and table of contents markers and footnotes and
endnotes. There still seems to be trouble importing Word styles however so I was forced to
fall back on the improved RTF import.

More work has gone into improving PageMaker's support for graphics and especially for files
produced with Adobe's own applications. In particular PageMaker 7 now supports files in
Photoshop's native PSD and Illustrator 9's AI format. The support for the bitmap-based PSD
is relatively unproblematic and means that users can now work with a single image file rather
than juggling layered PSD and flattened TIFF versions. Strangely though there is no
command to automatically open the placed PSD back into Photoshop.
PageMaker 7 can place native Photoshop PSD and Illustrator AI files.

Support for Illustrator 9's AI files is rather more complicated. To begin with the dialog is
actually the same dialog as for importing Acrobat PDF files as Illustrator 9's native format is
now PDF-based. However PageMaker doesn't have Illustrator 9's flattening technology so is
unable to display or print transparency effects. Looking at the readme file it's not too hot on
Illustrator 9's spot colour, blends, gradients or feathering either. Generally it looks as if it's
better to stick to the tried and tested EPS route especially as the EPS filter has been updated
to support PostScript Level 3 which is essential if you're intending to produce in-RIP
separations.

As well as supporting the import of Acrobat 5's PDF 1.4 format files, PageMaker 7 can also
now produce them thanks to the bundling of the latest Distiller 5. This ability to quickly
create electronic versions of any project that can then be viewed in the free Acrobat Reader
program has been a great strength of PageMaker since version 6 and is becoming even more
significant as PDF also establishes itself as the preferred medium for commercial print.

PageMaker now offers up-to-date and fully integrated PDF export.

Adobe hasn't just bundled Distiller with PageMaker 7, it has completely incorporated it via
the revamped Export PDF command. This now provides a tabbed dialog in which you can
manage how article threads are handled, set up password security and so on. Using the Edit
Job Options command you can also take control over all Distiller's settings such as colour,
font and compression handling. You can even use the Embed Tags in PDF option to create
PDF files which can reflow depending on the screen size they are viewed on.

It's not all good news. By its manual nature PageMaker isn't ideally suited to creating
reflowable PDFs, one reader has already been in touch to report problems with fonts in
embedded OLE tables and no doubt the next InDesign will go much further with support for
advanced features such as PDF transparency. Even so PDF output remains one of
PageMaker's major strengths and the updated support is definitely version 7's major selling
point.

So apart from its new import and export capabilities what new power does PageMaker 7
offer? Adobe is now pushing PageMaker as a business-oriented solution and is making much
of its new data merge capabilities. Using the new Data Merge palette you can link to an
external source and add variable data to your publications to create personalized publications.
Data can be previewed on screen, empty lines can be removed, custom layouts can be created
and images can be linked to and embedded.

The Data Merge palette offers personalized publications but is extremely clunky.

A bit of inspection though immediately reveals limitations. To begin with you can't link to
actual databases but only to comma-delimited text files. When it comes to merging you also
find that there's no real control with no way of conditionally selecting the records you want to
print. More importantly you can't merge directly to the printer as the system works by
copying and pasting pages to a new file. For short local print runs the data merge will do the
job, but the system isn't scalable and hardly state-of-the-art.

And incredibly that's it for new power! So how can Adobe possibly claim that PageMaker is
a business DTP solution? The obvious competition is Microsoft Publisher - PageMaker 7
even offers a converter updated to support Publisher 2000 files - and at first the comparison
looks embarrassing. PageMaker's templates and clip art are frankly dreadful while features
such as its macro-based data merge look prehistoric compared to the latest Publisher's
ODBC-compliant Mail Merge. There's no doubt which program offers the most power and
the better working experience.

But desktop publishing is a special case in that ultimately it is judged by its output -and here
the tables are turned. Thanks to its PostScript and PDF-based control, PageMaker is able to
offer both simple Acrobat electronic publishing and reliable commercial print. For in-house
print Publisher wins hands-down but it doesn't offer direct PDF support and for colour-
separated work its reliability is suspect whereas thousands of PageMaker projects go to
successful commercial print every day.

Ultimately the test of any DTP program is whether it produces the goods and for most simple
jobs the program I - and thousands of others - still turn to first is PageMaker. Clearly Adobe
has moved its development effort elsewhere but, by updating PageMaker's PostScript and
PDF support, it has done just enough to keep the program a going concern - and a lot of users
will be grateful for that.

DTP: USING COREL DRAW

Producing a logo and short publication with Corel Draw

This tutorial was produced for Draw 7 but the advice contained is still useful for more
recent versions.

Introduction

Corel Draw was the first of the Windows-based drawing programs and has built on this early
start to become far-and-away the dominant drawing package on the PC. Its biggest strength -
and its biggest potential limitation - is its all-encompassing approach. In the past this has led
to accusations of unfocussed bloating, but with version 7.0 Corel have addressed the
criticisms with a far tighter and better rationalized program. Even so, there's a huge range of
functionality to cover.

Real World Project

Essentially this functionality falls into two main categories: the creation of design-intensive
illustrations and the production of page-based publications. We're going to tackle both
aspects by looking at a typical real world project, the creation of a logo and its incorporation
into a brochure. Designing the logo will cover all the fundamental skills of adding elements
and transforming, arranging and formatting them. Creating the layout will build on these
skills and involve setting up the page grid, managing imported text and graphics and
preparing final output.

Our project is based on the launch of a new scheme called "Building The Future", an
initiative by Volunteer Development Scotland designed to help organisations wanting to
encourage the involvement of young people. Broadly then, our job is to create a logo and
brochure with a young and progressive feel and with overtones of construction and bridge
building. For the logo, we might only have three words to play with, but we need to attract
the eye and also to get over these subliminal messages. Fortunately, the artistic handling of
text through the text tool (F8) is one of the central features that sets Corel Draw apart from
both DTP and bitmap editing rivals.

Type Matters

Typeface is absolutely crucial so it's essential to have a look at our text in a full range of
different typefaces. One of Corel Draw's strengths is the huge range of over 1,000 fonts that it
comes with, provided in both TrueType and Postscript Type 1 format. As our final
publication is going to be typeset, it's preferable to stick to the latter, which will mean having
to install Adobe Type Manager if it is not already set up on your system. Corel Draw's
Format Text dialog (Ctrl + T) previews the first few words of any selected text so it allows
the quick choice of likely contenders. In our case, elaborate or serif faces would obviously
clash with the simple and youthful theme, but that still leaves all the sans serif faces.

By combining the Font command with the Duplicate command (Ctrl + D) it's possible to
quickly build up a page of possibilities to choose from. To ensure that the duplications are
automatically positioned where we want them, their placement can be set with the General
tab of the Options command (Ctrl + J) under the Tools menu. Alternatively, to quickly copy
an object you can simply select it and press the + key on the numeric keypad. It will be easier
to control the process if we first zoom out to the full page (F4) and then hone in on the most
likely choices with the Zoom lasso (F2).

In our case the strong suggestions of engineering and modernity in the phrase "Building The
Future" help pick out two fonts. To stress the most important final word we can use the
condensed and angular - and so bold and futuristic - Fujiyama, while for the others we can
use the lighter and more geometrical - and so more open and inviting - Avalon. For any
design to succeed it must simultaneously offer both variety and contrast and coherence and
balance, and our choice of these complementary but very different fonts does just that. They
are by no means the only fonts that could work, but they do offer the most important principle
of successful design, an internal logic. In other words, they have a good reason for being the
way they are.

Shapes

A lot can be done graphically using just text, but other elements can help to give the design a
unity and to set it apart. The basic shapes are created with the rectangle (F6) and oval (F7)
tools, which can be forced to produce regular squares and circles by holding down Corel's
"constrain" key, the Ctrl key. The Shift key is used to draw the shape outwards from its
centre. Newer tools that are particularly useful for logo work are the polygon, spiral and grid
tools. Version 7's Property Bar is particularly useful for controlling these, for example, to
change the number of points in a polygon to make it into a triangle. To make changes
interactively, to change the indent of the star for example, the Shape tool (F10) is used.

In the past all polygons, such as our triangle, had to be laboriously created on an individual
basis using the line tool (F5). Nowadays the line tool is used far less, but still comes into its
own on less structured work such as illustration. Regular straight lines are produced by
holding down the Ctrl key and clicking end points. Curves can be drawn freehand by simply
dragging on screen, or more accurately by controlling nodes with the Bezier tool. A new and
excellent addition is the natural pen tool which works like a thick marker pen. Rather than
producing vector-based lines, this tool actually produces shapes that can be given a fill. In
practice, this means that it is possible to create much more natural, free flowing designs that
escape from the overly computerised look.

Symbols

With such tools the number of shapes you can produce is literally unlimited, but there is no
harm in having someone else do the work for you. Corel obviously comes with a huge
selection of over 30,000 clipart images that theoretically could be used, but for professional
work the phrase "barge pole" springs to mind. Of course amongst the dross there are still
some areas, such as the design-neutral signs or maps, which can prove handy. Far more
regularly useful though are the range of graphical devices accessed from the Symbols roll-up
(Ctrl + F11). The different categories offered are actually the different symbol fonts that you
have installed on your system. Corel allows any of the characters of each font to be dragged
onto your design and manipulated like any other shape. With general bullet-style fonts, like
Wing Dings or Zapf Dingbats, and dedicated symbol fonts, like Geographic or Sonata, these
are an excellent source of pre-built and ready-to-use graphical elements.

Now that we have the different basic components of our logo, we can get them exactly the
way we want them with the different transformation commands. All elements can be sized
with the handles of their bounding box so that our separate words, for example, can be sized
to reflect their relative importance. Generally speaking, as there will be good aesthetic
reasons why the typeface is the shape it is, the aspect ratio shouldn't be changed so only drag
on the object's corner handles. Holding down the Shift key centres the scaling effect while the
Ctrl key means that the selected object's size can only be doubled, tripled and so on. Holding
down the Ctrl key and dragging a handle through the object is a quick way of mirroring it.

Transforming

Any object can be interactively rotated or skewed by first double clicking on it, which turns
the bounding box handles into arrows. Dragging on the corner arrows rotates the object,
while dragging on the centre arrows skews the object. Again holding down the Ctrl key
constrains the transformation, limiting angles to multiples of 15 degrees. More control and
precision is offered from the Transform roll-up and in particular from the proxy which allows
the centre of rotation or skewing to be set to any of the bounding box handles. The Transform
roll-up also has the major advantage that it offers quick access to all of the major options -
positioning (Alt + F7), rotating (Alt + F8), scaling (Alt + F9), sizing (Alt + F10), and
skewing (Alt + F11),.

Such basic transformations are by far the most useful, but Corel Draw also offers a number of
more advanced effects such as perspective, enveloping, extrusion and contouring. Adding
perspective is an interactive process of dragging corner handles, but each of the other effects
is accessed from a single Effects roll-up. In each case the power is impressive. When creating
a 3D-style effect, for example, there are separate panels for controlling the level of extrusion,
the object's rotation in 3D space, its formatting and lighting and even the bevel of its edges.
Don't let the power go to your head, however. Star Wars-style effects can be striking, but
more often than not they are inappropriate and they are always less legible than straight text.
One of the basic principles of design is "less is more".

One of the most impressive features of Corel Draw is that even after such advanced effects
have been applied, the text remains editable either directly with the text tool or within the
Edit Text dialog (Shift + Ctrl + T). Occasionally though it is desirable to edit the actual
shapes of the letters. To be able to do this the text must first be converted to curves with the
command under the Layout menu (Ctrl + Q) and then broken apart (Ctrl + K) so that each
letter is separate. Using the shape tool (F10) it is then possible to select nodes to control
individual letter shapes to produce one-off logos such as those for Coca Cola and Ferrari.

Composing

Now that all our elements have been added and where necessary transformed, we are ready to
arrange them as a composition. Moving objects is a simple case of dragging and dropping,
with the Ctrl key used to force movement to either the vertical or horizontal. For fine tuning it
is often easier to use the cursor keys to nudge the objects into place, with the Ctrl key's "super
nudge" multiplying the effect to produce larger movements. The distances moved by nudging
are again set with the General tab of the Tool menu's Options command (Ctrl J). Since Corel
Draw's defaults are rather strange it is probably a good idea to change these to more sensible
options such as 1mm and 5mm respectively.

When arranging multiple objects you will often find that one object is concealing another.
This is due to the stacking order whereby recently drawn objects obscure those created
previously. This is easily sorted with the Bring Forward One / Send Back One or the more
conclusive Bring to Front (Shift PgUp) / Send to Back (Shift PgDn) commands under the
Arrange menu. The most common problem is that because an object is completely hidden it is
difficult to select. This can often be overcome by careful lasso selecting or by temporarily
switching to wireframe mode and clicking on the outline of the object you are after. As a last
resort, tabbing will select each element in turn according to the stacking order.

Alignment and Grouping

For our logo it is best to optically position the various elements, perhaps to have certain
letters lining up or to make sure that they don't. Often though you will want to use Corel
Draw's Alignment command (Ctrl A). This allows multiple objects to be automatically
aligned both vertically and horizontally, or to be evenly distributed. All elements align
themselves on the last object selected or, if the objects have been lasso selected, on the
bottom element in the stacking order. Alignment is such a common task that it is worth
recognising the shortcuts available within the dialog. Selecting multiple objects and typing
Ctrl A, Alt C, Alt E, Enter, for example, will automatically centre them vertically and
horizontally.

Once the logo elements have been positioned and aligned, they can be grouped together so
that they are then treated as a single unit with the Group command (Ctrl G). In fact it is still
possible to isolate individual objects within a group by holding down the trusty Ctrl key when
selecting. To permanently separate the elements, use the Ungroup command (Ctrl + U).
Groups can be nested so that complex illustrations and designs can be assembled with
multiple grouped building blocks. As it is often difficult to tell whether you have selected an
object or a group, it is always a good idea to keep your eye on the status bar's feedback.

Combining

Combining is very different to grouping as it is used to create a single new object. To produce
a square shape with a round hole in it, for example, you would draw the two shapes and then
use the Combine command (Ctrl + L) to join them into one. Combining creates some very
striking and important effects. For example, combining text with a shape will leave any
overlapping text as black and text within the shape will be a "clipping path" showing any
underlying objects. Corel Draw also now offers a number of variations on the combination
theme for creating new shapes from overlapping objects. As you would expect these options -
intersecting, trimming and welding - are all accessed from another of the ever-present roll-
ups.

Formatting

So far, to add some variety, I've been applying colours to objects using the on-screen palette
down the right hand side of the screen. Now it's time to get a bit more serious about
formatting and look at the options offered by the fill tool. If our final output is going to be
produced on a colour printer or through full colour process separations our choices are
practically unlimited. Uniform fills can be chosen from the palette or mixed to order. There
are nine main mixing models to choose from, but the most common are RGB (red, green,
blue), HLS (hue, lightness, saturation) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, black). Since our work is
going to be output on paper, if we stick to colours created with the CMYK model we will
know that they can be reproduced.

Corel Draw also offers a huge range of other fill types. The Fountain Fill dialog allows linear,
radial, conical and square gradients to be set up between any number of colours with precise
control over parameters such as edge padding and offset. As it's hard to imagine how the
effect will look, it's much better to apply simple gradients with the new interactive fill tool.
Similar but even more striking effects can be created where objects overlap by using the new
interactive transparency tool. This is particularly useful for glass and shadow effects, but does
take a lot longer to print and in any case would be over the top for our logo where simplicity
is crucial.

The same can probably be said for the other advanced fill options on offer, though for other
tasks such as illustration, they can be invaluable. The Pattern dialog hides a wealth of
choices. The default 2-colour bitmap patterns are very simple and useful primarily for
hatching effects. The vector options supplied are universally garish, but your own patterns
can be created by simply loading an existing Draw file. The third bitmap option enables any
external paint file to be used as a fill, which enables amazingly realistic texture fills with
scans of actual wood grain or marbling, for example. The only problem with such effects is
that they are very memory and processor-intensive and so, by preference, Corel offers the
Texture dialog which recreates the irregular fills of nature using fractals.

Spot Colour

Such variety and flexibility is impressive, but coming back to the real world, we have to
recognise our budget limits. Our brochure is going out to commercial print, but we simply
can't afford the costs of full colour separations and printing. Instead we must make do with
spot colour, in other words black and one other colour. We want the colour to be striking,
contrast well with black and add to our modern feel so an obvious choice is yellow. To select
which yellow, it's back to the Uniform Fill dialog and this time to the palettes option.
Clicking on the drop-down list box shows the different libraries on offer ranging from
Focoltone to Userinks. Each refers to an external standard for recreating a set colour
accurately.

Your commercial printer might work with a number of these models, but the one standard
they are certain to accept is Pantone. In fact there are a number of Pantone models, but the
one we are after is the basic Pantone Matching System. Clicking on any of the colours in the
palette will then show its Pantone number, which is all the printer will need to know to mix
up the desired ink. In fact, because the screen representation will never be entirely accurate,
the colour should actually be chosen from the Pantone paper reference which shows all the
2,000 or so available colours on coated and uncoated paper. If you are serious about design
it's also a good idea to get the Pantone tints book which accurately shows how percentage
tints of each of the most popular Pantone colours will turn out.

Outlining

We've been talking about colour with regard to fills, but exactly the same uniform colours are
also available for outlines. Other options include dashes and line endings and line width -
which should normally be measured in points rather than Corel's default of inches! To add a
bit of movement and flow, so that the line is not the same width throughout, it is possible to
produce calligraphic effects by stretching and then angling the nib. Two very important but
often-overlooked options are those for scaling the line with the object and for hiding the
outline behind the fill. The first option is crucial if you want the proportions of your line to
change when an object is resized, the second is particularly useful for outlining text where
you do not want the actual letter shape to be obscured. By default both options are set to off
but, by ensuring that no object is selected when you call up the dialog, it is possible to change
the settings for all new graphical and text objects respectively.

So far we might only have come up with three words, a rotated triangle and a colour, but
we've explored a huge range of Corel Draw's basic functionality. All of these skills will come
in useful in the second half of the job, producing the brochure. The first stage in this is to set
up the page with the Layout menu's Page Setup command. Our brochure is going to be a
standard double-sided A5 leaflet and as such we could design it as four A5 portrait pages.
However, as the reader is always aware of the double page spread, we will take this into
account and design it as a two page, A4, landscape publication.

Setting Up The Page

This means we have to split the single onscreen A4 page into two. In a DTP program this
would be a simple case of setting margins and columns, but in Corel Draw the process is
considerably more laborious and involves individually adding guides. Horizontal and vertical
guides can be dragged from the rulers onto the page where they are indicated as blue dashed
lines. This is fine for optical alignment but we need more precision. Fortunately we can use
the transformation skills learned earlier.

First we need to draw a rectangle the exact size of our page. We could use the Size dialog
(Alt + F10), but in fact this can be done automatically with the Add Page Frame command in
the Page Setup dialog. Now we can select this frame and call up the Scale and Mirror roll-up
(Alt + F9). Using the proxy (click on the dialog's down arrow if this is not visible) we can
select a corner as the origin of the transformation and then set the horizontal scale to 50% and
click Apply. Our page is automatically split into two and, after zooming in (F2), we can drag
a dividing guideline into place. Now selecting our rectangle again, we can set the centre of
the transformation to the centre of the proxy and set both the horizontal and vertical scale to
85% and again click Apply. Now we can drag in four new guidelines to the edges of the
resized rectangle that will act as the A5 page's margins.

In fact, as such regular and symmetrical layouts are hardly eye-catching, we're going to create
a different grid with thin side columns next to the main body copy. Again the process
involved is the same: adding rectangles, scaling them and dragging in guidelines. Making the
most of our two colours we can set one side column to be yellow and the other to be black.
That's a good start but still a bit regular for the young and active feel we are after. To break
up the layout - again adding variety to the symmetry - we can bring in a design motif. The
existing Volunteer Development Scotland logo is based on two simple, bridge-like arcs that
are ideal for the job if stretched across the full double page spread.

Applying Text

Now that the basic layout is ready, it's time to bring in the text. Corel Draw supports a whole
range of WP formats which can be used for importing longer sections of text, while shorter
sections can be typed on-screen or in the Edit Text dialog (Ctrl + Shift + T). Blocks of
"paragraph text" - as opposed to the single lines of "artistic text" we used for the logo - are
created by simply dragging on screen with the text tool. Any text that is then added is
automatically word wrapped within the boundaries of this text box. Resizing the box now
affects the length of the line rather than the point size of the text. In fact Corel Draw 7 now
offers the best of both worlds as, if the Alt key is held down when resizing, the actual size of
the text can still be changed.

This flexibility is excellent for standalone items like addresses, but for our main body copy
the text formatting must obviously remain consistent. To format a whole block it is possible
to select it with the pick tool and then change the point size or typeface, for example, from
the Property Bar. It is also possible to interactively change spacing by selecting a text block
and then the shape tool (F10). Dragging the vertical arrow that appears will change line
spacing while dragging the horizontal arrow will change letter spacing. Holding down the
Ctrl key and dragging will change paragraph and word spacing respectively.

Formatting Text
This is fine if all the text in a block is to be formatted identically, but most text will actually
include a range of different formatting, in our case, to indicate subheadings and bullets.
Remember that, if you do ever regret a change, you can always use Corel's multiple levels of
undo (Ctrl Z) to revert to the way you were. To change the formatting for individual
paragraphs then the text or paragraph must first be selected with the text tool and the Format
Text dialog called (Ctrl T). A typical example would be to automatically add a graphical
bullet.

To ensure consistency, so that all bullets are exactly the same for example, Corel Draw's use
of styles comes into play. The idea for these has been imported from word processors and
DTP programs, but the implementation is slightly different and comparatively awkward as
styles can be applied just as easily to objects as to text. Rather than defining a style from
scratch it is easier to format a paragraph the way you want it and then to right-click to call up
the shortcut menu. This has a Save Style Properties option which allows you to name the
style and to choose exactly which attributes, from font and effects through to outline and fill,
that you want to be saved in it. To then apply those attributes to any other paragraph you
simply right-click again and this time choose the Apply Style option.

Watch Out

Such control is impressive, especially when you add in advanced word processing features
such as background spell checking, a thesaurus and automatic correction of typing errors.
Even so a strong warning has to be made. Corel Draw has taken a full seven versions to get
anywhere near acceptable in its text handling and even now at times it seems unable to cope.
Small bugs include obviously incorrect point sizes on the Property Bar and the insistence on
changing defaults even when you only want to change the particular selected text. Such
failures are irritating but can be worked around unlike the regular but mysterious GPFs.
Essentially remember to save repeatedly when working with text and appreciate the
program's limitations. For any job over a couple of pages I would always turn to a DTP
program.

With logo, layout and text now sorted we're on the home stretch, looking to make fine
adjustments and perhaps to catch the eye a bit more. We could try and bring in some clipart,
but after all this work we don't want to spoil things with a gratuitous American "celebrity" or
Victorian woodcut. Instead we can build on the modern look and clean lines of our existing
design by reusing the simple triangle from the logo and making it into a repeating device. On
the outside pages this can be used in yellow to highlight the all-important address while on
the inside it can be used in white against a yellow tint to give some variety and also to make
the most out of our colour options.

Photographs are another matter entirely and it would certainly be nice to incorporate one.
Basically people like looking at people and, as it stands, our design is a little impersonal.
Corel Draw 7's handling of imported bitmaps is excellent with all the DTP-style options such
as resizing and cropping and text wrap. Even better though are the new photo-editing features
such as the advanced colour correction and special effect filters that approach and, in many
cases, outdo dedicated packages. Corel Draw comes with its own partner program Photo-
Paint (see box-out) for pixel level control, but more and more power is now being built
directly into the drawing module.

Text on Curves
Unfortunately for our design this is all rather academic. Since the brochure is for a scheme
that is still being set up, there aren't any appropriate images to include. The best we can do is
to try and find another way of adding a bit of life. Text on a curve is relatively unusual and
striking and by crossing our double page spread will help tie the layout together. First the
artistic text is added and its letter spacing stretched to give the effect room to work. Next the
curve is created. To make sure it is accurate the existing arc is copied and then using the
Knife tool the relevant section isolated. To combine the two they are selected and the Fit Text
To Path command chosen. This calls up a roll-up for setting overall positioning, while the
Shape tool can be used for interactive fine-tuning.

Preparing for Output

Our design is now ready for proofing. Corel Draw offers comprehensive control over the
printing process with options for scaling and tiling, for example, that could be useful if we
wanted to reproduce the centre pages for an exhibition board. For our brochure though the
most relevant options - only available when printing to Postscript printers - are those for
producing separations. For process output we would ensure that all colours were converted to
CMYK, while for spot colour we can just select our two colours.

Normally colours are set to "knock out" those beneath them to prevent a yellow object over a
green background printing as blue for example. Although this solves one problem it leads to
another because, unless the press registration is perfect, tiny areas of white will now appear
around the coloured object. The way around this is to "trap" them, to imperceptibly expand
the colour in areas of overlap. Corel Draw can do this automatically with its auto-spreading
capability. While this works well in most cases, it is best to check exactly what is happening
by setting a very high auto-spread width and printing proofs. If there are problem areas, these
can normally be solved by judicious use of hairline outlines on the objects involved.

Thankfully, for our design we can set black to automatically overprint which avoids these
problems at a stroke and leaves our finished master work ready to go for final output and
commercial print. That's not quite the end of the job as the typesetter/printer still has to output
separations, check them against our proofs, and produce the final printing plates. With
everything ready for final print though our job is finished.

At one stage the CorelDRAW Graphics suite had the PC graphics world to itself and each
year's new release was a major event. Even when its Mac-based rivals FreeHand and
Illustrator converted to the PC platform, CorelDRAW had such a head start that there was no
real comparison. However, over the years Corel lost its graphics focus and allowed DRAW's
rivals to make up lost ground. With Corel's recent forced sale to venture capitalists, DRAW's
loyal users want to know whether the suite still has a future.

The emphasis in this latest release is on making DRAW a more intelligent and more helpful
drawing environment. As such, top of the new features list is the new Smart Drawing tool.
This intelligently guesses the shapes you are trying to create such as circles, triangles and
arrows, and automatically straightens sketched lines and smooths curves. From the way that
Corel is hyping this, you'd think that the Smart Drawing tool replaces all others and is now
the only one you need to produce your designs. In practice though the program can't really
second guess what you want to achieve and in most cases correcting its attempts takes far
longer than using the existing tools.

Much more helpful are Draw's new snapping features. You can now choose to have the
mouse snap to existing nodes, intersections, midpoints, quadrants, tangents, perpendiculars,
the edge or centres of objects, the baselines of text and the printable area and these snap
points are all now highlighted as tooltips as you mouse over them. The new snapping doesn't
just work with the drawing tools, it also works with the Import Cursor which makes it easier
to position imported bitmaps especially as the cursor gives feedback on both the original and
current image size.

DRAW's enhanced snapping is great if the new object you want to add overlaps or touches an
existing one, but often you want to align separate objects. That's where the new Dynamic
Guides come in. Switch these on and you can drag out temporary guidelines from any
existing snap point so that you can precisely move, align and draw objects relative to others.
The constant feedback with snap points and dynamic guides flashing on and off as you move
your mouse over the image can be disconcerting, but it really does help you get things right
first time as you draw.

Other features that help boost efficiency and productivity include the revamped Eyedropper
tool. This can now be used to pick up properties, transformations and effects as well as
colours and can also now sample colours not just from your image but from the wider
desktop. Completely new is the Virtual Segment Delete tool which works across objects so
that you can remove implied segments where lines overlap. Quickly draw a noughts and
crosses grid, for example, and you can then delete the ends of lines to leave the central
rectangle. This is particularly useful when you are manually tracing existing artwork.

Another tool that has been enhanced is the Text tool. DRAW's text handling and multi-page
DTP-style layouts have long been one of the program's major strengths, but the capabilities
haven't been seriously touched for years. As such I was especially interested to see talk of
"enhanced text layout flexibility" in the launch press release. What this boils down to in
practice is a new option in the Align and Distribute dialog to align text objects based on their
bounding box or first or last baseline. It's hardly going to set the world on fire. And neither is
the new improved display of type onscreen which means that you can now see comparatively
minor text changes such as kerning and leading even when viewed at low zoom levels -
especially as you'll still have to zoom in to check that they look right at 100%.

Much more useful when it comes to handling text is Draw's new Unicode support which
means that you can now use up to 65,000 unique characters in your projects. This is
especially useful when working with foreign languages such as Japanese, Chinese and Greek
and to reinforce its new multilingual capabilities, CorelDRAW now lets you install multiple
languages on one system and set the language for the user interface and Help files. The new
Unicode support is also useful with the Insert Character docker window as this now lets you
access all the extended characters and symbols in extended OpenType fonts.

Another docker window that has been enhanced is the former Library palette now renamed
the Symbol Manager. This is used for storing items that are regularly repeated in your
drawings and has now been redesigned to make it possible to store symbols locally within
each drawing and externally to be shared between drawings and users. It's also now easier to
edit your symbols and to tell when you're working with them as the selection handles are now
coloured blue. As well as being more convenient, symbol-based handling helps ensure
consistency, enables single edits to update multiple objects and drawings and, when exporting
to Flash SWF format, can cut file sizes dramatically.

Import and export capabilities have always been one of CorelDRAW's biggest strengths and
again this has been enhanced. The main improvements are apparent when it comes to
technical drawing with new import support for HPGL 2, CGM 4 and Microsoft Visio 2000
and 2002 files and improved export to CGM 1 and 3 formats. The import/export support for
the crucial AutoCAD DXF/DWG standard has also been improved including line style and
fill mapping and enhanced text handling. CorelDRAW also boasts complete compatibility
with the Corel DESIGNER DES format which isn't really surprising as the latter is actually
just a reworked version of DRAW.

For non-technical users Corel is heavily promoting two new export capabilities. The first is
the enhanced support for the round-tripping of web-oriented XML-based SVG images with
better text embedding and support for symbols and bitmaps. The second is the new Export for
Office command. This is a large dialog built around a central preview in which you make a
few simple choices: whether you're targeting Microsoft Office or WordPerfect Office;
whether compatibility or editability is more important; and whether the results should be
optimized for presentation, desktop print or commercial print. In practice the command is just
a front end to guide the user to one of three formats - WPG, EMF or, nine times out of ten,
PNG - and to then set the bitmap resolution depending on the desired output.

That's about it for new power in the main DRAW module, but the CorelDRAW Graphics
Suite has always offered more than just vector drawing. In fact in its heyday the suite also
provided separate applications to handle bitmap editing, business presentation, charting,
animation, 3D and professional DTP along with a whole host of supporting utilities. Since the
version 10 release however, Corel has chosen to concentrate on just two other major modules,
the bitmap editor PHOTO-PAINT and the Flash web animator R.A.V.E., both of which share
the same DRAW look-and-feel.

DTP: USING MICROSOFT PUBLISHER

Back in 1991 the first version of Publisher stood out from the crowd for its wizard-driven
design. Twelve years later it's this automated approach that still distinguishes its eighth
release.

Nowadays wizards are less apparent as all templates and automated features such as colour
and font schemes are handled through the ever-present task pane. This has been redesigned
with a new simplified Start panel offering drill-down access to project types split into print,
web and themed sets. Another ten co-ordinated and attractive master sets have been added
making a total of 45. New project types have also been added including personal stationery
sets, DVD and CD cases. The range of greetings cards and invitations has also been seriously
expanded producing more than a million possible - though not necessarily desirable -
combinations of different verses, layouts, colours and designs. And, if that's not enough,
Publisher 2003 will also offer access to further downloadable projects over time.

Publisher 2003 offers a range of new designs - including e-mail.

In terms of new design power, Publisher 2003 offers a number of new features inspired by
Word. The changes are partly cosmetic, such as the rationalization of former dialogs into
more familiar Format > Paragraph and Bullets and Numbering commands, but there's also
more control over line and paragraph breaks, such as the crucial widow and orphan control.
Publisher 2003's new task-pane based Find and Replace command has also been revamped to
work across multiple stories.

Catching up with Word is hardly pushing back the boundaries of DTP, but Publisher 2003
does add some advanced design capabilities of its own. By setting up baseline guides it's now
possible to ensure that text aligns across columns. You can also add empty picture frames and
select objects behind text boxes, two minor changes that make a big practical difference. The
most welcome advances are the support for multiple master page backgrounds and the ability
to drag and drop the page icons on the status bar to reorder your publication.

Publisher 2003 also moves into two entirely new areas of design. The first is data-driven
publications. This uses the new Catalog Merge command to combine pictures and text from a
data source to produce anything from an address book or directory through to a product
catalogue. The second is e-mail publications. Publisher 2003 offers six different HTML-
based e-mail publication types matching each of the 45 master styles. Used sensibly and in
moderation this could be a great publishing tool; more realistically, it's time to prepare
yourself for yet more download-heavy spam.

Improved DTP features include better control over images and pages.

Publisher 2003 opens a new front with its e-mail capabilities, but it's still primarily going to
be judged on its print and Web output. In terms of print, Publisher has always been happy
producing internal documents, but has found it hard to step up to the greater demands of
commercial print. This latest release again makes moves in the right direction with an
enhanced Design Checker to spot potential problems, an improved Graphics Manager task
pane for checking embedded graphics, the ability to convert from spot colour to process and
vice versa and to convert RGB colours to CMYK. Most important of all, it can create CMYK
composite PostScript files ready for colour separation. The obvious and telling omission is
the inability to output to Acrobat PDF which is the standard for simple and reliable
commercial output.

In terms of Web design and output, this is one area where Publisher scores over all other
design packages with its comprehensive dedicated tools and ability to re-purpose print
publications. New capabilities include the new Web Site Builder wizard which lets you
specify what you want your site to do and then sets up the pages to help you achieve it. Using
the Insert > Page command you can always add extra pages such as calendars, employee lists,
FAQs and so on as needs dictate. Further improvements include more control over navigation
bars, the ability to quickly name your pages and support for incremental uploading so only
those pages that have been changed need to be posted to your server.

Publisher can produce surprisingly impressive web results but it's important to recognize its
limitations. In particular the publication-based approach is only suited to sites with a dozen or
so pages and there's no direct HTML control. You can see why if you take a look at the code
that Publisher produces as the HTML tags are few and far between lurking amongst reams of
application-specific XML. The pages will display correctly in Internet Explorer but it goes
against the whole spirit of the streamlined and HTML-based Web.

It's typical of Publisher as a whole. With its off-the-shelf approach you can produce
impressive in-house results quickly but when it comes to professional print and web design
you're better looking elsewhere.

Microsoft's publishing solutions?

Tom Arah looks at the publishing power offered by Microsoft and tries to work out what the
software giant is up to.

In my last article I argued, amongst other things, that the major Mac-inspired publishing
programs should take a leaf out of their arch rival's book and learn from the new flexibility
and power shown by the programs in Microsoft Office. It used to be that when you moved
from your word processor to your DTP or graphics program you felt that you were stepping
up in power, but now there is a definite step-down effect. When moving from Word in
particular, you instantly lose a whole host of still relevant features such as outlining, multiple
undo, autocorrect, table editing, automatic indexing and background spell checking.
Hopefully the main publishing programs will take up the challenge and offer similar features
soon, but if not there is a strong possibility of a Microsoft take-over similar to those that have
already happened in the fields of word processing, spreadsheet and database management.
Given this, it seems a good time to take a look at what Microsoft currently offers the serious
publisher and to see if any patterns can be made out for the future.

Publisher

The most obvious candidate to look at is Publisher. I have to admit that in the past I haven't
paid the program too much attention, but after a press briefing on Office 97 I thought I better
have another look. The briefing made three important claims: that Publisher 97 was going to
be far more integrated with Office; that it would become a centre of Web publishing; and that
it would develop its professional printing capabilities. This sounded ideal: a natural extension
of the Office suite that would encompass electronic and paper publishing.

On first loading the program, there was a slight feeling of anti-climax with the interface still
too friendly to inspire confidence - OK I'm a professional snob - but two features did stand
out. Publisher can load Office files directly from its Open dialog and Word itself is used as
the text editor. If this worked as I hoped then the step-down effect would be entirely avoided.
I could prepare the text and most of the formatting in Word, use Publisher for adding the
necessary design finesse and then still use Word for any editing changes.

First signs were good with the simple test Word document not only importing all the
paragraph formatting and styles, but also the double column layout. Closer inspection,
however, showed that the margins and gutters were completely different to the original and
that, in any case, from the second page on the publication had unilaterally reverted to a single
column layout. Opening a more serious 2Mb test file proved even more disappointing with all
the inline graphics and tables piling up on each other on the first page. In fact Adobe's
PageMaker makes a far better job of importing the document than Microsoft does with its
own file format.

At least the imported file could still be edited with Word from within Publisher. To begin
with I was again impressed. Being able to reorder a long document using outline view, to
check its grammar, or to use the thesaurus represents seriously attractive power. Again
though, more investigation proved disappointing. Creating a table with Word 97's excellent
new table painter tool is possible, for example, but when you return to Publisher all the latest
features, like joined vertical cells, have been lost. Also for shorter documents and basic
editing the need to open the file in Word is overkill and a bit of a drag.

Publisher's new Web features are well integrated, as you would expect from Microsoft. Users
can select a Home Page wizard to help create an attractive multiple page web site right down
to the best-viewed-with-Internet-Explorer logo. All very easy. Alternatively, with existing
publications, the user can turn text or graphics into hypertext links and then simply choose
the Create Web Site From Current Publication command from the File menu. Once done, the
pages can be automatically previewed in your browser.

First impressions were very positive. The layout produced with the Wizard was more than
good enough for a first home page. The results from converting an existing newsletter were
even better with the columnar format, gradient fills and both vector and bitmap pictures
brought through perfectly. Even the different typefaces were correct which fortunately made
me suspicious. The entire page had been rendered as a 160k GIF graphic! This would not
have been a popular download.

This conversion to bitmap certainly isn't inevitable - it turned out it had happened because my
layout involved overlapping frames - but it still highlights the problems with using Publisher
as a Web page creator. With little feedback, no site management and no direct HTML editing,
there is no possibility of fine tuning your work. In most cases Publisher's defaults will prove
more than adequate, but if the end results aren't what you wanted there is little you can do
about it apart from turn to a dedicated HTML authoring package.

Electronic publishing is increasingly important, but any DTP package is still going to be
primarily judged on its output to paper. In terms of layout power Publisher is not exactly
exciting, for example there are no options for vertical justification, irregular frames or
graphics anchored to text. Also there are some bizarre interface features with leading, for
example, measured in "spaces", which Microsoft helpfully explains "depends on the size of
the font". Even so, with all the help available, it is certainly possible to produce a basic
newsletter or brochure design.

Publisher's Inability to Publish

The real test though is to successfully get your design printed commercially. At first sight,
this seems to be well catered for with the File menu's Outside Print dialog. This offers black
and white, spot or full colour print all of which are based on using a Microsoft supplied
Postscript printer driver. As you would expect from Microsoft there are some nice usability
features. If you have selected a spot colour, for example, you are automatically given a range
of relevant tints and graduated effects whenever you go to apply a fill.

Against this though, the choice of spot colour model is frankly pathetic, chosen from a
meagre selection of thirty pre-set, on-screen colours. This is completely bizarre with no
support for the various matching models, most obviously Pantone, which must be the
standard for 95% of all spot colour work. Looking through the manual doesn't help much
with brain-dead suggestions such as "find out if your printers only print certain colours on
specific days." You begin to wonder how Microsoft ever manages to output its own manuals.

Spot colour handling is lame, but it turns out that full colour handling is virtually non-
existent. There is a full colour option on the Outside Print dialog but it is qualified as being
for "colour printers of less than 1200dpi". Initially I didn't grasp what this meant at all and
continued to explore to see how well the program coped with colour separations. Eventually
it began to dawn on me that that it simply doesn't. External full colour printing is only an
option to single-pass digital printers such as colour lasers.

Of course Microsoft would say that it is simply protecting its users from the complexities of
pre-press, but that's just not convincing. A program called "Publisher" should be able to
produce process output or, at the very least, explain honestly that it can't. Instead both
Publisher's interface and its manual have been deliberately designed to obscure this huge area
of weakness. It's no coincidence that an otherwise comprehensive manual and help file both
manage to avoid even mentioning the terms "Pantone" or "process colour".

Being able to commercially output work is not an optional extra for a serious DTP program
and Publisher is simply not up to it. It is significant that the user is strongly steered towards
the first option on the Outside Print dialog, "I've decided not to use a commercial printing
service, thanks." Well that certainly does make things a lot easier, but surely it should be
Microsoft thanking the user rather than the other way around!

Overall then the promise is there, but Publisher 97 certainly doesn't deliver on the extravagant
claims being made for it. The integration with Office and Word-based text editing is a mixed
bag. Having seen the potential, I want the power, but the current Publisher implementation
isn't adequate. Likewise, while the new Web features can produce impressive results, unless
everything works perfectly first time your options are limited. The final nail in the coffin is
the lack of commercial print output. When this comes in a package that doesn't come near the
new Office interface - no multiple undo, MDI, customisation or Visual Basic programming -
it's clear that the attempt to push Publisher as the new centre of Office publishing is a major
con.

What About Word?

At this stage it looks like the dream of a truly modern, high end, Office-style, web and paper-
based publisher is as far off as ever and that I'll just have to accept the step-down effect when
turning from Word to the final DTP or Web outputting program. The alternative, of course, is
to turn the question around and instead see if Word itself can fit the criteria for the ideal
publishing program. How does Word 97 shape up if we ask the same questions of it as we did
of Publisher? Obviously, in terms of Office integration and the all-important text handling,
Word has unbeatable advantages, but what about the design and output options for both
electronic and paper-based publishing?

In fact, in terms of electronic distribution, Word could always claim to be the world's most
important publishing program. After all the *.doc file is effectively the most common
exchange standard after ASCII. Word 97 though takes things far further. As with Publisher,
the new power is primarily accessed through a Save As HTML option under the File menu.
This automatically converts the text into HTML and any placed graphics into GIFs or JPGs.
The huge difference is that the file remains open and can continue to be edited. The menus
and toolbars reflect the new HTML status with the options for inserting footnotes and index
markers replaced by new commands for inserting rules and background sounds.

Word 97 is by no means perfect as an HTML author, for example, after conversion its own
heading styles were formatted but not tagged correctly. Other limitations, such as the inability
to handle frames or multiple page sites, mean that the professional web page creator is going
to have to look elsewhere. Crucially, though, it is possible to view and edit the HTML source
code directly to see and sort out any mistakes and all from within an environment that still
offers advanced features like background spell and grammar checking.

Even more important for the future is the new ability built into Explorer 3 to open Word
*.doc files directly. At first this a rather bizarre experience, but essentially the only difference
to opening the file within Word itself is the presence of the Explorer button bar and the
addition of its Go and Favorites menus. Otherwise all the usual functioning of Word is there
from its usual menus and toolbars. The potential benefits are huge. For the reader the text is
easily browsable and searchable and also fully formatted and ready to be printed or edited.
For the producer there is the invaluable advantage that files do not have to be specially
authored, just made available.
With this two pronged attack, it's difficult to see how Word can fail to become the most
important Web-based publishing program. This is especially so when you throw in the tight
integration with FrontPage and the ability to embed ActiveX controls to add interactivity -
owning the browser doesn't do any harm either. But what about Word 97's paper-based
publishing power? Has this been upgraded to the same extent?

Near DTP?

In the past Microsoft promoted Word quite heavily on its "near-DTP" features, but more
recently - and effectively since the launch of Publisher - this side of things has gone
comparatively quiet. The accepted wisdom is that there is an unbridgeable gulf between word
processing and DTP. After all there is a huge difference between a letter and a newsletter,
between text flowing automatically from top to bottom within a document's margins and text
and graphics positioned anywhere on the page to create the most effective design.

This is all true, but most users have little idea of just how advanced Word can be in these
areas. There are two major hurdles to jump. The first is the realisation that Page Layout view
is not just a quick print preview to make sure that you have the right number of columns and
that all the text is fitting on the page. Instead it is a fully editable view in which all the
commands are available from the menus and button bars just as they are in Normal view. If
your system is up to it, there is no reason why you shouldn't always run Word in a DTP-style
WYSIWYG layout view.

The second realisation is that Word can indeed place text and graphics anywhere on the page.
In fact the control of text blocks is now comprehensive with exact positioning and sizing and,
in Word 97, the crucial new ability to link text boxes so that copy can flow anywhere you
want on the page. The control of imported images is even more impressive. Pictures can be
accurately sized, positioned, cropped, their contrast and brightness can be changed and their
text wrap set automatically or interactively. When you add in the improved Word Art for
creating logos and text effects and the new AutoShapes that allow the creation of advanced
3D objects complete with realistic shading, there really is no reason to think of Word as just a
text editor.

Of course there are limitations, most obviously the fact that text frames cannot be set to have
multiple columns, but the same criticism can be - and is - levelled at market leader
PageMaker. In the final analysis, more or less any layout that could be produced with
Publisher or PageMaker could also be produced with Word. In fact, thanks to features like
movable pictures and text boxes anchored to flowing copy, many publications such as
manuals and reports would in fact be far easier to produce in Word.

In-built limitations

Saying that you could produce such publications within Word, however, doesn't mean that
you would want to - at least not as the program currently stands. To a large extent this comes
down to superficial, interface-based features. Easier access to the style settings, for example,
and a new paragraph dialog that made it clear that leading can be set to fractions of a point,
would both help design freedom. More importantly, there are a number of idiosyncracies that
- perish the thought - could almost have been designed to put users off DTP-style work.
Changing from page layout to normal view, for example, dumps the user back at the top of
the document rather than where they were editing. More fundamentally any text placed in
text boxes is mysteriously unavailable for editing in any view apart from page layout.

Since these problems would probably have taken Microsoft's programmers an afternoon to
sort out, the question has to be asked why weren't they? Microsoft could claim that it is
protecting the user from unnecessary overload, but again this isn't convincing. Microsoft
certainly hasn't put the same amount of effort into improving Word's paper-based publishing
as it has into its electronic publishing and virtually no effort at all into letting users know
about, and access, the considerable power that is there.

With Publisher, Microsoft seems to be deliberately hiding the program's failings, while with
Word it seems to be deliberately limiting the program's potential. I might be being cynical,
but whose interests are best served by encouraging users to buy another piece of software
when they already have one that could actually be far more capable?

So where does all this leave us? Well certainly Publisher has failed to live up to the claims
made for it. Word, on the other hand, has - almost - stepped in to take up the role of modern,
Office-style program seamlessly integrating electronic and paper-based publishing.
Ultimately, however, the lack of spot colour or CMYK process output still remains to rule the
program out for anything but digital print. In the medium term this will undoubtedly prove to
be a huge market, but for the moment it leaves us back to square one. To produce
professional separated output we'll just have to live with the step-down effect until the market
leaders learn from Microsoft or, maybe, vice versa.

REFERENCE
Tom Arah (2005) Designer-Infor.com. Online Design, Edinburgh, U.K