1. QUICK NEWSPAPER TRAINING
2. A VIEW OF SEYBOLD
3. SCANNING RESOLUTIONS
4. POSTSCRIPT PRINTERS & WINDOWS 2000
5. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
6. XTENSIONS/PLUGINS/SCRIPTS
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES
8. HINTS
9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
10. LAST WORD
1. QUICK NEWSPAPER TRAINING
===========================
As a result of a query from an instructor at DINFOS, the Defense Information School, Fort Meade, USA, we learned that this school teaches some 700 students each year how to be journalists in the military.
The classes take untrained, mostly high-school graduates who have not attended college, and in 12 weeks turn out basic journalists for service in the military -- and the US military is one of the largest publishers of newspapers, at least in numbers of publications, in the world.
It was suggested that "they probably aren't up to field journalism standards, but then most of them have never even heard of a news lead when they get here, and we only get them for 12 weeks of training before shooting them out for OJT in the field." However, to judge by the example copies on line, they can, in our opinion, hold their head high
For layout and design/DTP training, they use PaceMaker 6.5 as their primary software, and the last thing the students do before they graduate is produce a 32-page newspaper using photos they shoot with digital cameras and enhance in Photoshop, stories they write, and designs they come up with. Then, they export the newspaper as an Adobe Acrobat file from PM 6.5.
The school did have a website but what you found there depended on the time of year and currently is not available at all.
We did "check the pages out" at a time they were available and were more than impressed. The web site also includes some of their training material, and we have to suggest that there are many in the commercial world who could learn at least a little from this aspect of the military. Turning out journalists who can write, sub and create page layouts to this standard in 12 weeks is quite an achievement.
2. A VIEW OF SEYBOLD
====================
There were references to the "end of growth" for the print media, with mentions of several sources particularly a report from the Newspaper Association of America . However while all agree that the outlook would be dim in a non-expanding field, advertisement revenues are booming, so that even with a declining proportion of the market, print revenues could still grow in the foreseeable future. It is just that other forms of media will be growing faster. Another point of agreement is that specialisation is "in" and while the future for general newspapers could be bleak, the market for specialist publications in newspaper format could be bright.
Major impacts at Seybold were made by Macromedia announcing FreeHand 9 <http://www.macromedia.com/software/freehand/>, especially it handling distortion by surrounding an object with a "Live Envelope".
Tim Gill of Quark mentioned several features of the forthcoming QuarkXPress 5 (web and PDF features, tables, and layers), but his announcement was the release of QuarkDMS, a digital media database management system that has been "in development since 'web' meant a type of press". Tim Gill also said that venture capital in publishing was drying up because "we are close to ideal in print production", with no innovation saving us more than 10-20%.
Themes for John Warnock of Adobe were InDesign ("the most successful product launch in Adobe's 17 year history") and PDF. Adobe announced InProduction, for managing PDF files through a print production workflow.
There was no PageMaker pod on the Adobe stand, and the demo CDs they were passing out had demos of InDesign and both PageMill and GoLive, but not PageMaker. There was also no display of type products at the Adobe booth, maybe an indication in this case of a soon-to-come upheaval as OpenType comes in and Multiple Master types go out.
3. SCANNING RESOLUTIONS
=======================
There was a good discussion of the merits and otherwise of scanning resolution "rules of thumb" on the QuarkXPress list recently. There were the usual comments about scanning at various mathematical formulae ranging from pixels-per-inch numbers of from 1.2 to 2 times the eventual printing resolution in lines per inch.
One writer commented that while these are good starting points, those producing scans need to look at what they are scanning: On a scan of an automobile at 2x the lines around the doors may look rastered. The reason? They are made up by a 1 pixel line. Rescan the same original at 4x or 6x lpi and it looks much better. No jaggies. Areas of solid color don't look any better; but fine lines, fine detail, require more resolution to avoid rastering. The writer added: "The formula can't anticipate the subject matter, only the scanner operator can."
On the other hand a picture of clouds would show that 2x, or even 1.44x can be overkill on a soft image.
So 2x or whatever as the working formula should be a starting point. For soft images, you can drop down, but images with fine lines may need to be increased provided it doesn't produce an impossibly large file.
It is also necessary to relate the original size to the final use size.
5. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
========================
Kirk asked about means of included complex graphs in dtp files adding that the graphs will include financial as well as other types of information He asked what sort of graphing software newspaper publishers use.? "I'm using PageMaker 6.52 on Win 98 with a Pentium 450 and 128 of RAM. I have Photoshop 5.5, but not Illustrator. There must be some sort of other software that produces custom graphs. Can you point me in the right direction or know somebody who could?
We replied that we have tended to use whatever seems best at the time --usually FreeHand with some appropriate clipart -- and often just charts from Excel as EPS. Presumably Kirk could print to an EPS from Excel and then rasterise and adapt in Photoshop. Any other suggestions?
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F G Greene wrote: "I am doing two quite complicated newsletters using PageMaker 6.5. I am having problems with "Help" which keeps disappearing, and also some formatting that has taken over and refuses to let go. To load a template script, my book says to 'Open Template' in the Utilities Plug ins but there is no 'Open Template' in that drop down menu."
We replied that we'd seen the disappearing help problem before, but only on Macs -- usually caused by having more than one version of the Mac help system files.
The templates in PM6.5 are stored as scripts, so go to Window>Plug-in palettes>Show Scripts. You'll find a template folder among the scripts subfolders. The next problem is likely to be that they may refuse to run if you didn't install the fonts which are sitting either in a fonts subfolder of PM or on the original CD.
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Joe O'Keeffe of Independent Newspapers Ireland asked: "Has anybody had any problems with the loss of spread, chokes knockouts, etc when using Quark generated files in a composite workflow."
We replied: We presume you are referring to Quark files (of ads or whatever) copied into other QXP files (such as pages). The main problems in this kind of workflow seems to be in ensuring that styles, settings etc are the same across all templates. It's one reason why PDFs seem to be gaining ground.
Any other comments? Joe confirmed that the files would be Quark saved as EPS and then imported into pages for inclusion in the make up.
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Jeff Greensmith writes from Spain: "I need free/shareware/cheap software to catalog photos and graphics files :on :both Mac and PC. The database will be a resource shared between a small group of freelance designers each working from home, so the eventual aim would be to put it on a :web page and consult/update it from there. I have tried Quicknailer for Mac, and ThumbsPlus for Mac and Win. I found ThumbsPlus unstable on the Mac,but this was some time ago."
We replied: The most common database seems to be ThumbsPlus and we haven't had any practical experience of others except for the old Fetch (which became Extensis Portfolio).
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Brett Phillips wrote: "You mentioned in the last newsletter that some fax software has trouble printing certain elements from PageMaker, such as reverse text, screens/tints etc. I'm having that trouble with my non-postscript HP LaserJet 6L using PageMaker 6.5 on Windows 98. I was wondering if anyone else out there uses this printer for greyscale proofing etc, and how they overcome the problem? I'd rather not have to export to PDF every single time that I make a change do a document and print a proof.
We replied: We'll include your question in the next Format issue, but in the meantime suggested experimenting with the raster and/or bitmap settings in the HP driver. Sometimes this can produce some reasonable results, provided you aren't using too many features in PM like angled graphics, masks, etc. Maybe even older HP drivers which used a simpler form of the PCL language.
The main problem seems to be that the PCL language used by HP doesn't have equivalents for a lot of the commands which are in PostScript. Programs like Word and Excel would not use many of these commands.
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Marc Zeedar (well known for his PageMaker scripting wrote: "I noted with interest your "question with no answer" (Humberto Hernandez's problem of PageMaker running too fast). There are several solutions. Mac programs are supposed to work like this: if you have an overlong menu, placing your pointer just one line below the down arrow should scroll the menu slowly, while placing your pointer far below the down arrow scrolls the menu as fast as possible. I confirmed that this works correctly on PageMaker's standard font menu (the one off the Type menu), but it does not work with the font menu on the control palette (it always scrolls at maximum speed).
"The solutions? Use the standard font menu or type the first few letters of the font name on the control palette. Another option is to purchase a font organizing program like Power On Software's Action WYSIWYG <http://www.poweronsoftware.com/> which combines fonts into families and shortens your font menu considerably (mine now rarely exceeds the height of my 1280x1024 pixel display)."
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES
====================
Quark say that QXP 4.1 works with Windows 2000 without problems other than a need to ensure that all device drivers are updated. However they add that they can't support QXP3.3 with Win2000: "QuarkXPress 3.3x for Windows is a 16-bit application designed for Windows 3.1. Windows 2000 is a 32-bit operating system which has very limited support for 16-bit applications."
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The Acrobat Accessibility plug-in (around 1.2 Mb) will get your text (both TXT and HTML) files right out of Acrobat Reader 4. It is available in a Windows version from <http://access.adobe.com>) and is at: <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobatreader/win/4.x/plugins/accs405.exe>
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The new StuffIt Deluxe 5.5 is fully compatible with Mac OS 9 and sending files over the Internet has never been easier, whether it's to another Macintosh or to a PC. The Aladdin development team has improved the compression and expansion speed by an average of 20% over previous versions, and the program now handles more file formats.
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Additional printers now supported for Adobe PressReady are the Epson 900 and 1200. Details are at: <http://www.adobe.com/products/pressready/main.html>.
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ALAP's ImagePort 1.0.1 is now available. Current Macintosh ImagePort customers can download either the new installer and reinstall, or download the ImagePort 1.0.1 Updater. The updater will also update the Print Only version. Existing Windows customers should download the new installer. Details at <http://www.alap.com/>
8. HINTS
========
Quark point out that the Mac OS9 ability to program the function keys easily may cause conflicts with programs, such as QXP, which have long made use of these keys. You can clear all the OS "hot function keys" in the Keyboard control panel or you can require the use of the option key to activate the OS hot function keys. The latter method will however cause problems with those QXP short cuts which also use the option key.
9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
=========================
Bitstream has launched MyFonts.com, <http://www.myfonts.com> a showcase of fonts from many font foundries via one portal. The site is to include Identafont, which allows users to scan images of typefaces and upload them for identification. There are several other ways of searching for that mystery font or one like it.
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There is a mailing list for users of the PC version of MS Word. Details are at <http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/word-pc.html>
10. LAST WORD
============
Admitting that I'd been attacked by an inkjet printer which screamed at me after picking up multiple sheets of paper, and then, when opened, shot a two-inch rod past my head, I was told on an email list: "you really should have known better, trying to approach an angry, vicious, and possibly rabid wild printer. Call the local printer control officer, who can safely stun it from a distance first."
Another email list recalled the "bad old days" of X-Acto knives for page makeup with several horror stories. I admire the dedication of one comp who finished the page, then looked down, saw how far it was embedded in her foot, and fainted.
Gordon Woolf
The Worsley Press
Hastings, Australia.
====================