Desktop publishing for everyone - overview of five evaluations of eight desktop publishing software - individual evaluation records searchable under "Desktop Publishing for Everyone" - includes related articles on the best buy and on Serif's PagePlus - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, July, 1994 by William Harrel

YOU WANT TO PROMOTE YOUR COMPANY'S SERVICES with a newsletter, but you don't want the project to become a full-time job.... You've just had an inspiration for a Fourth of July sales special, but it's June 28 and you have to create and post a flier to advertise it.... You're ready to do your first direct mailing, but you haven't a clue about how to put together a visually pleasing brochure.

You can solve all these problems with a desktop publishing package for the nonprofessional DTPer--the rookie, not the dynamo. If your main concern is creating a monthly newsletter, company stationery, or the like, you may not need a professional DTP package such as PageMaker or QuarkXPress.

Choosing a midrange program doesn't mean going without powerful features that ease any DTP task, such as rotating text at any angle for a sophisticated look; real quotes and long dashes instead of typewriter-like ditto marks and double hyphens; automatic "Continued on page..." jump lines; multiple columns and shaded boxes; and special text effects such as shadows and outlines. When you lay out a story in a newsletter, you may arrange it so that text runs from one column to another or from one page to another. Being able to link two or more such pieces (boxes or frames) of text has many advantages--for example, when you delete some text from the middle of the story, all other text linked to that piece will automatically adjust to flow gracefully within the connecting frames.

Of course, these Windows and Macintosh products--Aldus's HomePublisher, GST's Pressworks and 1st Press, Microsoft Publisher, SoftKey's Easy Working Desktop Publisher and PFS:Publisher, and Timeworks's Publish It! and Publish It! Easy--can't match more sophisticated products feature for feature. In general, nonprofessional programs can't compete with such products as QuarkXPress and PageMaker in long document (books, manuals, catalogs) handling and professional printing options. (Serif's $60 PagePlus--see "PagePlus 3.0: One Step Beyond"--pushes the envelope here. So, to an extent, does Ready, Set, Go for the Mac--an Editor's Pick in our January 1994 issue--which at $395 was priced too high for inclusion in this review.)

But the high-end packages can't beat products such as Microsoft Publisher and HomePublisher when it comes to encouraging people with features that make creating a layout easy--some as simple as answering questions about your design preferences. And because midrange DTP packages are not cluttered with commands and options, they're easy to learn and navigate. They're inexpensive, too: PageMaker and QuarkXPress list for $895, but these reviewed products are priced at $150 or less.

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The Long and Short of It In desktop publishing, a long document usually refers to multiple text files that divide a longer work--such as a 200-page technical manual--into chapters or sections. High-end packages let you compile chapters into longer works. PageMaker's Book feature, for example, arranges documents in order, then renumbers pages in sequence with one section picking up where another ends. You can then create indices or tables of contents across the entire book.

SoftKey's Easy Working Desktop Publisher and PFS:Publisher provide automated talbe of contents and index features, but they do not work across several document files to update page numbering. Instead, you must store the entire document in one gigantic file. These two packages are better than some competitors for lengthy documents, but we don't recommend them for projects longer than 25 pages or so. Working with an enormous file is cumbersome and hard on system resources.

Going to the Print Shop In some cases, you won't need to look beyond your laser printer for outputting DTP projects. But when you're doing large print runs (maybe 50 or more copies), it's easier to let a print shop handle the work. When DTP files contain color, you should supply color separations to the printer.

Four-color separations are used for reproducing color photographs you've scanned into your computer, but none of these programs supports such separations. If you need them, you can let the print shop or service bureau separate and strip them into the layout manually. The two Mac products, however, HomePublisher and Publish It! Easy, do support spot-color separations, which can be useful for printing some clip art images, for example, or for tinting boxes or backgrounds.

None of the Windows products support any kind of color separations. So for large runs that include such images, you may have to opt for the high-resolution black-and-white output your professional printer can deliver or, if color is supported in other ways, be prepared for a hassle.

Lack of support for color separations doesn't mean you can't get color output from your own color printer (for small print runs). But there may be drawbacks--for example, a low-cost, color ink jet can handle shaded backgrounds or a clip art image, but it won't produce the same quality of a color photograph as a print shop can.