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Gold Medal Software 5
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Gold Medal Software - Volume 5 (Gold Medal) (1995).iso
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cyberr02.arj
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PUBLISH
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1994-10-18
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Microsoft Publisher
review by
Eliot M. Gelwan
Publisher is the Windows page layout program for the rest of us.
For the beginner, it allows you to rapidly produce
professional-looking documents such as newsletters, flyers,
brochures, and greeting cards easily, with a high degree of
automation. Yet it is powerful enough for the more experienced
publisher. Unless you're a full-time professional, doing
book-length publications or color separation pre-press processing,
you won't miss the expense, the steep learning curve, and the
complexities of the heavyw eight publishing programs like Ventura,
QuarkXpress or Pagemaker. You are, however, limited to loading one
publication at a time, so you'd have to go through the Windows
clipboard to cut and paste between Publisher documents.
Publisher's interface is intuitive, with toolbars and ribbons
changing with the context. Popup balloons explain icons to you when
you move your cursor over them. You'll do fine working with this
program right out of the box and with the on-line help (which is
fortunate, since you have to buy the 400-page manual separately!).
You can import your text from a document prepared with any text
editor or major word processor in any of a wide variety of formats,
or you can enter text directly in Publisher's word processor, which
will be familiar to users of Word for Windows (of course!). The
native word processor supports styles, which can either be defined
and saved within Publisher or imported from major word processors.
I haven't tried producing a major document entirely within
Publisher's word processor since I am a long-time Micr osoft Word
addict, but from playing with it, I'm guessing that you might even
consider it powerful enough to use as your primary word processor
for light use. Such text-processing features as kerning (for 15-pt.
and larger type), drag-and-drop editing, automatic bullets and
numbering, multiple columns, smart quotes and even a spell checker
make it quite robust. When using Publisher for simple projects such
as greeting cards, banners, invitations, or certificates, for which
it is well-suited, you'll certainl y want to enter text directly
rather than take the extra step of creating it in a separate word
processor and then importing it. By the way, I was pleased to see
its support for banners, to which I'd thought I had to bid good-bye
way back when I switched over from dot matrix printing with
continuous feed paper to a page printer. You can also lay out a
poster that prints section-by-section on multiple sheets.
At our home, we now make all our greeting cards for birthdays
and holidays in Publisher. We recently scanned in a picture of our
newborn son and easily used Publisher to make our birth
announcement, which we then reproduced on a fine grade of paper to
much acclaim from those who received it.
For the beginner at desktop publishing, many ease-of-use
features take your hand and guide you through the creation of a
document from conception to printout. The most unique and
sophisticated of these are the Wizards, as appear in the latest
versions of the entire suite of Microsoft applications. These are
essentially complicated macros which magically design your
publication. You select the Wizard for the type of document you
want to create from an opening dialogue box, answer the questions it
asks you a bout stylistic and layout options, then you sit back
while it lays out the document template to your specifications. All
you do to complete the document is enter your text and import your
graphics to the locations laid out for them. Even experienced users
will find the Wizards an efficient shortcut.
You can also enable "Cue Cards" which give you step-by-step
hints while you build your publication. Or, you can choose to skip
the Wizards and other levels of help entirely, in which case you're
presented with a blank page and you start from scratch laying out
the design elements by drawing frames for each graphic or text.
There's also an intelligent "Layout Checker" which gives you design
tips. While Publisher had Wizards in version 1, they were so cutesy
as to be thoroughly obnoxious: "Aye aye, Captain! Publisher is
creating your masterpiece!" and the like. I'm glad Microsoft has
avoided that in this release.
You can link text frames on successive pages so that text
automatically flows from one to the next when imported, and
automatically adjusts itself when you insert or delete additional
text later. Publisher even automates the insertion of "continued
on" and "continued from" messages in the appropriate places.
One of the nicest features of Publisher is WordArt, an included
OLE-based utility which allows you to do typographic tricks similar
to standalone products such as TwistType and Typestry. If you've
used the latest version of Microsoft Word, you're probably already
familiar with the power and ease of this feature in creating text
effects such as shadows, outlines, and bending text along a path.
And Publisher's "Logo Creator" takes it one step further, allowing
you to integrate text effects and clipart into s eals and logos.
In general, Publisher's drawing tools are as convenient and
complete as its text tools. Grouping objects and layering frames
operate as in top-end publishing programs. The ability to crop an
image you've imported without opening up your paint or drawing
program is certainly welcome; you cannot, however, rotate images or
adjust their brightness or contrast from inside Publisher. For
precision layout adjustment, automatic alignment and the ability to
"nudge" any frame (text or graphics) by minute increments are boons.
A clipart gallery allows you to view and select thumbnail sketches
of all your clipart, both that which came with the program and that
which you have on your hard disk from other sources.
You'll probably want to buy this product as the CD-ROM edition,
which includes what Microsoft also sells separately as the Publisher
Special Occasions Design Pack, and is oriented to holidays, seasons
and life events such as births, weddings and birthdays. All in all,
you end up with a collection of more than 400 clipart images, over a
hundred borders and 27 fonts, several extra templates, and previews
of specialty paper you can order from PaperDirect. While I didn't
find the fonts all that useful or uniqu e, given my prior
collection, they would form a pretty adequate and versatile
collection for anyone who had been making do with Windows' Times
Roman and Arial. You'll probably want the CD-ROM edition anyway,
just for the extra thematic clip art and templates. Installation is
flawless, especially with the CD-ROM version, which allows you to
avoid all that initial disk swapping.
Requirements: 386SX or higher
DOS 3.1 or higher
Windows 3.1 or later
CD-ROM drive (double speed suggested)
4 MB of memory
5 MB available hard disk space
VGA or better
Mouse or other pointing device (recommended)
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond WA 98052
(800) 426-9400