1. MORE ABOUT INDESIGN
3. EMAIL ATTACHMENTSS
4. GETTING ON LINE
6. ANSWERS: PDF FILTER AND CLEANING TEXT
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES
8. HINTS
9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
10. LAST WORD
1. MORE ABOUT INDESIGN
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Several of the magazine reviews of InDesign seem to have missed the point, with some reviewers making much of "new" features that have in fact been part of PageMaker for some time. The following is a quote from Olav Martin Kvern, one of the most respected PageMaker and Freehand writers and users, on the PageMakr List:
"So what's actually great about InDesign? Type--the best typesetting tools in desktop publishing. Scripting--very nice implementation. Ability to edit the content of placed graphics (some formats). Reasonably good drawing tools (with arrowhead/tailfeathers). A solid file format (please!). Good 3rd party software development support. Fantastic on-screen display thanks to PostScript spin-off technologies. A very smooth "feel"--like PageMaker. It's a lot of subtle big things and very nice small things that are hard to describe quickly. Think *evolution*, not *revolution*."
Even the latest PDF on the Adobe site which deals with the page design abilities of InDesign, does little to clear the air, with several sections which could as easily be written about PM6.5. Although these features may be new to QXP users, they are not "new" in a general sense.
However, the following are a couple of the items in that PDF which we feel will be important to those producing formatted publications.
Master pages take on a new degree of usefulness. You would, for example, be able to set up a parent master page that sets overall newspaper style, and then have a number of child masters which work for different sections. Major changes to the parent will flow through to the child master pages.
A big improvement is that empty frames on the master pages will be containers on individual pages based on that master -- so text and graphics can be put in those frames on individual pages. If you make a change to one of those frames, like changing a fill or stroke setting, that will not be overridden by changes to the master page -- any attribute from the master page which is changed on an individual page breaks the link for that attribute, but only for that attribute. And attributes include size and positiion as well as the more obvious ones like colour, stroke etc.
While sections in a newspaper will mostly be dealt with as separate files, the ability to break up a document into sections within the one file may help considerably if you have a number of one or two page sections. A master-page frame can be defined as a section, so content, such as a section title, can be specified for each section rather than having to apply either to a whole document or to be pasted on to individual pages. You can also apply different page numbering and page number prefixes to sections within the same document.
Frames can also contain columns, and a frame with several columns can be set to act in different ways if it is changed in size -- you can specify fixed width columns and the frame will jump to the next closest number of columns, or you can specify adjustable width columns, in which case the number of columns will stay the same but their width will vary. There will also be page-based columns as now, which act in a similar way to margins.
You will also be able to paste frames within frames, to as many levels as you like, but a close reading of the issued material so far leaves us unsure whether frames can be placed as inline graphics -- able to reflow with text. This is essential for classified advertising pages, and we would be surprised if they cannot work in this way, since any drawn item, even those drawn with the new bezier tool can become frames, and you can currently paste PageMaker boxes (though not frames) as inline graphics.
3. EMAIL ATTACHMENTS
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We had another of those strange email attachment problems in the past week -- and, as we have experienced previously, the cause seemed to be that it was sent from Outlook Express. We received it in Pegasus as a one-part data file (files sent from other mail programs always arrive in several parts, one of which is the actual program or file that was sent, which can be immediately saved under its original name).
This time we knew it was a PageMaker file, so we opened an existing PageMaker file in a text editor and looked at the first few characters, then did a search in the data file for those characters, deleted everything from there to the beginning, renamed the file with a .p65 extension, and, to our amazement, it opened.
4. GETTING ON LINE
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How do I put it on the web? That is a problem faced by many publishers of small newspapers and newsletters? Implied in the question is that the answer must be both cheap and easy... few small publishers (and many large publishers) are yet convinced that producing a web version will bring a measurable return. However, they also do not want to be left behind when other publishers are promoting their web sites.
Paper publications do not translate easily to the web -- you can produce a PDF file, but that requires Acrobat Reader to view and is more likely to appeal to the former resident of an area who still wants to see their local paper rather than to the casual browser.
HTML output from PageMaker or XPress is painful if you wish to retain any kind of formatting, so the usual answer is to cut-and-paste the major stories, and maybe the classified ads, into a sepcialised web editor (and no two people seem to agree on which is the best program -- we tend to go with a combination of some basic scripting in PageMaker and pasting the result into Windows Notepad).
One answer could be the Hyperpaper program being created by Cornado that was aimed at US College newspapers. The present disadvantage for many of our readers would be that you need to stay on line for the period in which you are preparing the on-line edition, cutting and pasting into a set of dialog boxes that is then handled by a database program running on the server to produce the final pages. A means of batch upload is in the works.
We put several questions to Philip Olson of Cornado and it seems their program will eventually enable you to produce a web page with great control of story and ad placement in columns, but that it is still in the stage of being modified to produce publishers' needs.
Philip wrote: "The Hyperpaper is being developed right now. We have a version but it's mainly for colleges or schools that don't want to customize their content or have no need for advertising. Right now it's cut-n-paste and that's it. Well, it of course archives, manages journalists and allows some online editing but we're working on a much more robust system.
"Rather than waiting for the hyperpaper to be finished, I'll list a few links on what the current looks like and a demo. Again, please take in account that we're working on a much more customizable commercial version."
A working site is the Walla Walla College Collegian <http://as.wwc.edu/collegian/> of which Philip says: "Completely automated. Cut-n-paste text, that's it."
"So, that's where we're at..."
It looks to us like the beginning of a great idea, and, for basic work, the present College version would be all that many need.
What you will need is an ISP which supports any SQL database (the preference is MySQL) and support for PHP, which is a web programming language that many ISPs already offer and which many more would install to suit a prominent client.
There will be additional modules which would add things such as voting polls wherever you'd like one, but the base price, according to Eric Hanson, a co-owner of Cornado, is likely to be in the region of US$500.
6. ANSWERS: PDF FILTER AND CLEANING TEXT
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The PDF import filter for PageMaker brings up a box asking if you want the entire page or just the image, and, if it is a multi-page file, which page you want.
With more newspapers realising the advantages of PDFs over EPS files, particularly in overcoming font problems, we needed to find a way of scripting the import process, and so we went to the source, Vladimir Samarskiy, who wrote the scripting engine.
Sadly, his answer was brief: "Yes, it looks like PDF filter defaults are not scriptable. - sorry"
Our workaround has been to ask users of our scripts to make sure that the import filter is set up in the way they will most likely want to use it (as it retains those defaults after one use until they are reset).
We also suggest that PDFs for import into PageMaker files be single page PDFs (Acrobat Exchange can easily make a copy of a multi-page PDF with just the page that is needed).
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In Format No.21, Jeff Greensmith wrote from Spain: "...but I would like to know if there are available any Mac or PC word processors (Tex? BBB Edit?) with search and replace routines..." about pre-processing data files for placing in PM or QXP.
Owen Watson replied from New Zealand: "I don't know whether I've raved on to you about this before, but we use Nisus (Mac-only) which has a great GREP-like ability with text (and styled text). We use it to clean up scientific manuscripts before laying them out in PM. Things like. . putting an em space placemarker between bold and roman text; delete excess returns and spaces; replace spaces between digits and units such as mm with thin space placemarkers. I even wrote a macro where if I spotted a word that should be italicised throughout the text, I hilited it, pressed a key combo, and. . bingo! Getting stuff into PM is a bit more longwinded than I'd like (convert original doc to Nisus using MacLink, process in Nisus, run Nisus file thru MacLink to convert to Word format, then import into PM). "
We have nothing against a form on a web site which asks basic "who are you" questions before giving you a trial version of a program, but the Nisus form proved impossible to fill in -- we gave up at around the 10th attempt, so we are unable to give a personal view on the free "lite" version of the program.
Owen was also among several people who thanked Dave Stewart for his PDF primer (which is still on our Format web page).
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES
====================
Mapsoft have launched PageForm which improves the PDF forms output capabilities of PageMaker. The PageForm Plug-in for PageMaker allows you to create forms within PageMaker that contain text fields, check boxes, radio buttons and other types of controls typically found within PDF on-line forms. These forms can be converted to PDF format for electronic distribution and filling in on-line and printing via the standard Export PDF function in PageMaker. You can also print these forms for filling-in manually on paper.
PageMaker files that contain PageForm information can be distributed and PDF can be created including forms output without the need to have the PageForm plug-in installed. PageForm is currently in beta and is available for Windows 95/98 and NT. There will be a Mac version, but for InDesign rather than PageMaker and this is promised for later in the year.
More details can be found at <http://www.mapsoft.com/pageform.htm> where you can download a beta version, though our attempts to submit the form to do so -- a much more reasonable form than the Nisus one mentioned above -- produced only error messages. However, before we could contact them, we received an email from Michael Peters at Mapsoft noting our problems and offering help in getting the file. We'll take a closer look at it now we have it and report next issue. If you install it, note that it puts a 59-page PDF manual in the PageMaker plugins folder.
8. HINTS
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Setting your own defaults in PageMaker is fine if you are the sole user of a computer, but if it is used by others, these changes can be annoying and can reduce productivity instead of increasing it. The easiest way of returning PM to its original state is to delete the configuration file, which, in Windows, is the file PM65.CNF (for version 6.5). If, as is most likely, you have overall defaults which are different to PM's original defaults, then keep a good copy of this file and use this to replace the changed file... you could even do a copy via Autoexec.bat. On a Mac it's the Adobe PageMaker 6.5P Prefs file in :System Folder:Preferences.
The same principle applies to Word, where the defaults are in the template file normal.dot in the templates subfolder.
10. LAST WORD
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Along with the Melissa virus watch out for the Economist Virus (Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine), the Gallup Virus (60 per cent of PCs infected lose 38 per cent of their data 14 percent of the time) or the Kevorkian Virus (Helps your computer shut down as an act of mercy).
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