From layout to printout - reviews of six DTP software packages - includes related articles on overall scores and high-end DTP programs - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, April, 1997 by William Harrel

We Test Six DTP Packages That Will Have You Designing Painlessly and Inexpensively

With all the clamor about the World Wide Web these days, it's easy to forget the real meat and potatoes of marketing your business--hard-copy brochures, newsletters, and fliers. Regardless of the time and resources you spend advertising electronically, you can't afford to ignore these essential promotional tools. Desktop publishing has become so common for many business needs that it's something we all do without a lot of pomp and circumstance. You probably perform rudimentary DTP tasks without even realizing it.

Your word processor ships with a variety of fonts, templates, and clip art for creating striking, attention-getting printouts. Despite these hidden goodies, you'll soon need more options and features, items found in a good, inexpensive page layout program--one that does nearly all the work for you and contains all the fonts and clip art images you'll ever need. Most of today's accessible DTP programs aimed at small businesses cost considerably less than $100, and they have all of the bells and whistles designed to get your documents published without wasting your time.

The Selection Process A decade ago, the DTP software category boasted as many as 12 to 15 programs for Windows and eight or so for the Mac. Many haven't survived. Now, there are only a handful of Windows programs and even fewer Macintosh applications. The good news is that this seems to be a category where the strong truly survive.

In addition, the line between professional DTP software applications and so-called small-business packages is now more clearly delineated. In the professional DTP program arena, two packages, Adobe PageMaker and QuarkXPress, have clearly established themselves as industry standards, with Corel Ventura bringing up the rear and gaining ground.

For this buyer's guide, we set out to review half a dozen friendly yet powerful DTP applications with price tags under $150 street. We looked at Microsoft Publisher 97, IMSI Master Publisher, and Software Publishing's (formerly Allegro New Media and Serif before that) PagePlus and Publishing Power Suite, all for Windows; for the Mac we saw Adobe HomePublisher Deluxe 2.1 and Abbott Systems Ready, Set, Go 7.0.

Our Testbed For this review, we put these six packages through their paces in a small-business environment. We followed the tutorials, heeded the advice of the wizards, and created banners, ads, newsletters, fliers, and so forth. Although a high-end DTP program can easily lay out a 400-page report with charts and graphics, we kept our sights on smaller but equally vital tasks. If you think you might need more publishing power, check out the accompanying box, "Professional High-End DTP Programs: When Economy and Ease of Use Won't Do." But for most small-business needs, these mainstream DTP applications will make your work look more polished, professional, and presentable.

HomePublisher Deluxe 2.1

RATING: * * *

MAC

If you need a small-business publishing solution for your Mac, Adobe HomePublisher Deluxe 2.1 is your only real choice. Hands-down, it's easier to use and a much better value than Ready, Set, Go--the other Mac application in this review. Adobe has made significant improvements to this program since acquiring it from Aldus--most notably by adding 12 fonts, 1,500 clip art images, templates, and AutoCreate wizards.

The AutoCreate wizards are useful for stepping you through DTP chores, but they're not nearly as well-developed as those found in Windows applications. Granted, HomePublisher's wizards did a good job of walking us through the initial layout of a document, including adding titles, headers, footers, newsletter banners, folios, and more. Most would do a reasonable job of displaying previews of how the document will look when adding graphics and text. Once you finish with the wizard, however, the resulting document turns out to be a mere shell with no dummy text and graphics. If you're new to desktop publishing, this could be confusing as you figure out what goes where.

We liked the AutoCreate feature for setting automatic jumplines ("Continued on page 7") in newsletters. If you've ever tried doing this manually, especially in multipage documents, you know that it's a chore trying to keep track of which stories jump to what pages. We also found HomePublisher's clip art images were more appropriate for business on the whole than those found in some of the other programs. Many of the templates that come with this program are also more suited to business applications, rather than the often fancy and frilly documents found in Microsoft Publisher 97, for instance.

Although HomePublisher doesn't have the Cue Cards, Quick Tips, or help boxes used in most Windows programs, Adobe makes excellent use of the Mac's Bubble Help. Hover your mouse over a menu, command, or tool and a description of the item appears. There's also a highly useful document on the CD-ROM that provides three pages of tips, or Dos and Don'ts for successful document design. On the other hand, we've seen the design guides that ship with Adobe's high-end PageMaker and Illustrator--come on, Adobe, you can do better for the small-business desktop publisher.