The arrival of PageMaker 4.2 will be met with praise from current users of the program, but with yawns from the rest of us. Aldus is playing catchup with the competition with this release, but there are definite improvements.
The new version is System 7-savvy and gives improved performance in several areas. There is support for Publish and Subscribe, which gives improved linking to imported graphics files
Everywhere you look in the program, you’ll find Quark ideas. The first thing you’ll notice in the new PageMaker is a floating “Control Palette.” The second thing you’ll notice is that it isn’t nearly as powerful or flexible as Quark’s Measurements palette. PageMaker’s version does let you (finally) adjust page elements by number, but it doesn’t allow very much control.
Another “major” new feature is called Aldus Additions. This corresponds to Quark’s Extensions, and allows for the addition of new features from third-party vendors. Additions are installed by simply placing them in the Aldus folder. Once installed they show up as menu or submenu additions within the program.
To show that this idea really works, Aldus has included six Additions—Balance Columns, Display Publication Info, Drop Cap, Sort Pages, Make Booklet, and Run Script. Most of the functionality of these additions is already available in competing page layout programs such as QuarkXPress and DesignStudio. In several instances, the competition does it better. Aldus’ Drop Caps is particularly limited; after making a drop cap for a paragraph, you’d better be sure you don’t edit the text, or it will fall completely apart. (See illustration.)
Balance Columns merely adjusts the window shades on text boxes to the same height. It does not provide true feathering or vertical justification (as do similar features in Quark and DesignStudio).
Page Sorter and Display Pub Info both do things which have been around for some time in the competition, and a scripting language has long been available for DesignStudio.
One major new feature that will be appreciated by designers is true baseline-to-baseline leading. Finally, PageMaker has come in line with the rest of the world. Other typographic controls remain largely unchanged.
PageMaker still can’t do process color separations from within the program (as can Quark and DesignStudio), but Aldus now includes PrePrint in the package, saving new users several hundred dollars. Nevertheless, a PageMaker document must be printed to disk and then manipulated by a separate application in order to achieve what is built in to the other programs.
Perhaps the biggest news about PageMaker 4.2 is what it still cannot do. It is the only major Mac program which still cannot open more than one document at a time. It is the only major page layout program that cannot rotate graphics. It is the only one that limits text rotation to 90° increments. (The competition offers rotation of both text and graphics in fractions of a degree.) It is the only one that does not offer a way to group objects.
Version 4.2 may be a giant step forward for current PageMaker users, but it has a long way to go to catch up to QuarkXPress and DesignStudio.
Caption for Drop Caps illustration: “Oops: PageMaker 4.2’s new Drop Caps, after minor editing.”
_________________________________________
The article above is reprinted from Mac Monitor, the newsletter of The Savannah Macintosh Users Group. It may be reprinted in a single issue of newsletters published by non-profit user groups. Payment shall consist of a single issue of the newsletter in which the article appears, sent to the following address:
