CONTENTS
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1. MANAGING EDITORIAL WITH OUTLOOK
2. PHOTOSHOP 5.5
3. QXP5, INDESIGN & PAGEMAKER
4. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
5. SCRIPTING
6. UTILITIES/UPDATES
7. HINTS
8. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
9. LAST WORD
1. MANAGING EDITORIAL WITH OUTLOOK
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Andrew Demack writes from Queensland, Australia: "I discovered recently that Microsoft Outlook 98 has a very customisable directory/file viewer which I found to be a better way of assessing copy for a newspaper than either the Place window in PageMaker, or the standard Windows Explorer.
"To use the directory viewer, you add the folder as a shortcut in 'My Shortcuts' in the Outlook bar. The view of a particular directory or folder can be customised, and can display the standard attributes of a Windows file, plus any of the built-in properties of a MS Word document.
"I have mine set up to show: filename, author, category, last modified and keywords.
"Category tells me what section of the newspaper the story is intended for.
"Keywords shows a rough centimetre count for the file, which is simply a factor of its character count (for my standard column width, typeface and point size, its character count * 0.019, rounded off to an integer).
"Unfortunately for me, I'm still using PM6, so I can't drag direct from this window onto a PM page. Might be a good enough reason to finally get 6.5.
"The other aspect of this which is still less than ideal is that you can't display custom properties in Word. Or at least, I haven't yet worked out how to do this."
2. PHOTOSHOP 5.5
================
Photoshop 5.5 is really a version of Photoshop that will do all that 5.0.2 does, but which is aimed at web production specialists and includes Adobe ImageReady 2.0, which is no longer a separate application.
There are new features for optimising web graphics and for tasks such as creating JavaScript rollovers, animation, and image slicing. A "jump to" icon transfers the image to ImageReady when necessary. Compression options including the new Lossy GIF.
In the ImageReady component, you can slice large graphics into HTML tables with a new Slice tool and create JavaScript rollovers without writing code. Layer-based animations and image maps are easier and a new Background Eraser and Extract Image command addresses the tedious task of image-masking. Photoshop 5.5 is expected to be available this month for US$609.
There's a special offer for those in North America, who can upgrade for US$129 until October 31.
ImageReady will no longer be a separate product, but the simpler ImageStyler will continue to be aimed at the business market and Adobe say that features in ImageStyler which were not previously available in Photoshop and which would appeal to the professional web designer have been added to Photoshop 5.5.
3. QXP5, INDESIGN & PAGEMAKER
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New features in Quark XPress 5, due out in 2000 according to Quark partner Tim Gill at London's Olympia exhibition centre for Total Publishing 99, will include a multi-line composer and hung punctuation. But it will not open InDesign files according to MacWeek.
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A quote from David Evans, Adobe's product manager for InDesign:
"PageMaker is not a dead product. We have an engineering team at work on the next version of PageMaker now... I don't think there is any risk of anyone becoming a PageMaker 'orphan'. PageMaker will continue to be a powerful publishing application, targeted at the business user in future versions. We would like to see PageMaker become a logical choice for frustrated Microsoft Publisher users in future versions. That's not to say it won't be fully-featured, but instead, it will be more template- and wizard-driven in its next release. PageMaker 6.52 is very powerful software - it does many things XPress 4 can't do. If it's a great tool for you now, we hope you'll continue to use it."
4. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
========================
S. O'Connor wrote: "Word Perfect offers a feature that allows you to print in booklet form. We have switched to Word '97 and the feature is not there. Would you recommend a program that would make this possible."
We had to admit we didn't know and could only offer the suggestion that PageMaker has a BuildBooklet plugin and a commercial simple imposition plugin is available for Acrobat <http://www.quite.com>. Any other ideas?
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One of our subscribers noted that he hadn't received a previous issue of Format and we were happy to email a copy. Some well behaved mail servers advise of delivery problems and these are usually passed back to us by the listserv software. In such cases we send an individual email asking if there was a problem. This system is by no means perfect, so if you miss an issue, let us know and we'll send any back issue. We also put back issues on our web site at <http://www.worsleypress.com/format/> though that sometimes runs up to two issues behind. All issues up to No.26 are there now.
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Mike Koewler queried our item last issue on waxers: "I like your newsletter a lot. It has useful information in it, even though I don't use PageMaker or Quark to put together my weekly tabloid-sized 16-24 page newspaper. I use PagePlus, a product of Serif.
"You lost me completely in your snippet about waxers. I can go into the page that needs changed, make the edit and print it in a couple of minutes. Using an imagesetter to create film would be worse than ludicrous - it would bankrupt me. I furnish laser pages, generated by a Minolta PageWorks 20, set to print at 600 dpi and 72 lpi. The results are excellent, even when compared to the large daily paper.
"I can see where waxers are nice to have. We get 2-3 camera ready ads per week. I leave space on the page for them, then tape them on. If an ad is used weekly, the tape causes a problem."
We replied: "The point about printing patches rather than whole pages only starts to apply when pages get very complex -- such as with ads that have huge graphics. We had one recently that took more than 15 minutes to print the page despite our laserprinter having 64mb of memory. As we were reprinting it to correct a misspelling, another was spotted (so the only page that had to be reprinted twice was the only one which took more than a minute to print; I suppose that's Murphy's Law at its worst).
It takes 15 minutes to warm up our waxer but at that stage I turned it on, cancelled the print, reprinted just the problem paragraph and the job was heading to the camera in a few seconds over 15 minutes.
Maybe a handheld waxer would be the answer -- a lot cheaper, they heat quickly, and waxed ads can be used several times without getting dirty edges.
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Mike also commented on our description of how you can achieve a box with two round and two square corners "I cannot help but notice how you give tips on how to accomplish something simple, but with PageMaker it is complicated. With PagePlus, draw a rectangle, deselect 'keep all sides the same' and make the changes. I can set the amount of curve, invert a square, whatever I need."
We have said previously that it would be good if all the nice features were in a single program -- but they're not. We have ignored Serif PagePlus but not deliberately. Take a look at <http://www.serif.com>. And it's a US$59.95 program.
5. SCRIPTING
============
A good comment on the InDesign email list that those writing scripts should not expect users to have to open the scripts to make changes. In most cases scripts, for whatever program, can have dialog boxes which will allow any choices to be made. It is also possible, for example, in PageMaker scripts, to have a script create another script, so you can have any options chosen in a setup script which then writes these options to another script.
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One thing you can't do in PageMaker other than via a script is to reset the environment for fonts, so that the program recognises fonts which have been started since a file was opened. It takes just a one line script. Open the script palette, select new script from the flyout menu, give it a name, and type in the following line:
ChangeEnv installedfonts
To make it a really well behaved script you should add a second line with just one word:
return.
Now save it and you'll find your new script highlighted in the palette (you may have to scroll down to find it).
6. UTILITIES/UPDATES
====================
Enhanced Font List is a free VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) plugin for Word 97 which lets you select a font with its name displayed as they will look in your document. A left mouse click will apply that font to the current selection, right mouse click will take you to Word's font dialog. Instructions, install and uninstall all included in the self installing download. Requires: Microsoft Word 97 / Office 97. Versions are also available for Excel and PowerPoint. It's a 421kb download from Woody's Office Portal <http://www.wopr.com>. There are a lot of other useful items at this site and you can sign on for their email newsletter.
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We're sure most PageMaker users will produce their own templates for their publications, but if you also use PM for brochures, forms, calendars, even pop-up cards, baseball caps, tent cards, jar labels etc, then have a look at <http://www.ideabook.com/prepage.htm>. PrePage has 300 templates for PageMaker 6 and higher plus a fully indexed, 120 page guidebook for US$99.
This pointer came from the fairly new Deezin Studios Graphic Design Resources Center <http://deezin.com/>.
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The use of WMF files is not recommended, but sometimes there's no option, and it seems the WMF filters were left out of the first release of Illustrator 8 for the Mac. You can get them with the 8.0.1 update from the Adobe site <http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/ilmac.htm>. For a short term fix, install the filters from AI7.
7. HINTS
========
Hold down shift on either platform while clicking Open in the Get Picture dialog box of Quark XPress and you'll get a 36dpi preview, making for a smaller file -- it doesn't affect the dpi of the TIF on printout, only the preview.
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If you are having trouble with Find/Change in PageMaker on the Mac, especially if you are getting some strange dialog boxes, try removing the In-Rip trapping addition, which may have been installed as part of some versions of the 6.52 update. Unless you have a printer with PostScript 3, it is unlikely you'll need the plugin, and it can cause some problems on either platform. You may also need to delete the PM preferences file.
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Want to convert a PDF to a text file or to HTML code? Adobe will retrieve a text version of any .pdf document for you. Send a message with no subject to pdf2txt@adobe.com. In the BODY of the message, put the full URL of the acrobat document (including http://). Use the same procedure to retrieve a document in html format, except address the message to pdf2html@adobe.com.
9. LAST WORD
============
Remember Visicalc? This was said to be the first business tool for the personal computer and was the best selling computer program of the early 1980s. The creator of this first electronic spreadsheet, Dan Bricklin, says he has "finally gotten permission from Lotus to put a copy of the original VisiCalc for the IBM PC (an internal Software Arts version with copy protection removed) on my site for download (but only if you read the license first)." It's very similar to the old Apple II program from 1979 and is at: <http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm> and it is 27kb complete... it takes longer to download the reference card ... or just remember that the command to quit is /SQY
Gordon Woolf
The Worsley Press
Hastings, Australia.
====================