CONTENTS
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1. APPLE ANNOUNCES G5 MODELS
3. CHALLENGE AND NO RESPONSE
4. GUARDIAN CHANGES
5. BOOK ON MAGAZINE PRINTING
6. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES
8. HINTS
9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
10. LAST WORD
All Format subscribers can get a 10% discount on any of our books ordered from us or our US distributor. Quote the voucher number of 11204101. If ordering on our web site, enter this number in the voucher box and hit the recalculate button; your discount will be shown when the page is revised. See <http://www.worsleypress.com/wpstore/>. Our books are now also available from our new UK distributor, Eyelevel Books, and are now available at Amazon UK, as well as Amazon.com in the US.
1. APPLE ANNOUNCES G5 MODELS
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Announcements of the first 64-bit desktop computers, powered by the IBM-designed PowerPC G5 processor, has put the spotlight back on Apple, while "Panther", the fourth upgrade to Mac OS X (designated OS X v.10.3) in four years promises improvements to overcome criticisms by many who use Macs in publication production.
"Panther" will have its own font manager:. Font Book lets you enable and disable fonts individually or in groups and the Font Panel accesses ligatures, kerning, number spacing, fractions, swashes and more. The Character Palette of the Font Panel gives enables previewing of a character in every active font.
The new OS will features a new Finder with one-click access to a user’s favourite folders, hard drive, network servers and removable media as well as faster searching and colored labels to help organise documents and projects.
3. CHALLENGE AND NO RESPONSE
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"Challenge-response" is a new approach to fighting spam at the level of the ISP rather than the user. It means that when your ISP receives a message that the anti-spam program thinks might be spam, it doesn't deliver it to you. Instead, it sends a reply to the sender asking him or her to prove they are human and not a bulk-mailing program by replying to that message or by going to a special website. If the sender does this to the software's satisfaction, then it will deliver the message to you.
It seems a good idea, in theory, but if your ISP is introducing such a system, we suggest you consider any newsletters or email lists you are a member of. Most such lists find it impossible to reply to an individual from the same address that the list mails from. Usually such "challenge" messages will just count as a bounced message and after a few such responses, you will be automatically unsubscribed.
Therefore, if your ISP is considering such a system, make sure that you take a note of the "From:" or "Reply-to:" addresses used by any newsletters or lists you wish to receive and check how you add those to the antispam software's "whitelist".
Earthlink is one of the major ISPs introducing this service, but there are likely to be many more. It could work quite well, provided that subscribers remember to add us to their whitelist.
4. GUARDIAN CHANGES
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The Guardian, one of the UK's major newspapers, is changing to a system based on InDesign and InCopy in conjunction with WoodWing Software's Smart Connection Pro and Smart Layout components. The system will be built around an internally developed Oracle-based production database. Guardian Newspapers Ltd is best known for its multi-award-winning national newspapers the Guardian and the Observer. It also has one of the most popular newspaper website, Guardian Unlimited <http://www.guardian.co.uk>.
5. BOOK ON MAGAZINE PRINTING
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A new book by Bert N Langford titled "Working With a Magazine Printer" looks interesting but we pass on the following information without comment as no review copies are available and it can only be purchased outside the USA using one specific credit card that we do not possess.
According to an email press release from its author the "Book analyzes presents key issues of printing and production basics, developing a professional production organization, and addresses several comprehensive and advanced topics of today's magazine production, making unique to the industry".
Certainly Bert's background is right; he has a degree in printing management and is the son of a pressman. He has worked for several of the major US magazine printers and publishers and is now a publishing consultant. The detailed biography on his website included a description of how costs were reduced at one firm that is particularly telling. He describes meetings in which he helped them isolate true advertisement scheduling needs against "attempts by salesman to use lateness as a strategy for selling (or due to a sales rep’s procrastination in calling the advertiser or agency)".
He also describes how he lowered costs for printers and got much of this passed on to the publisher. During printing negotiations, Bert obtained follow-on forme pricing, which essentially meant that for any two press formes which were alike except for plate changes, only plate change charges applied if they were able to be printed consecutively.
The book "consists of 316 pages plus a unique wrap-around cover packaged within a spacious 8 x 10-inch trim format". There is a descriptive PDF on the website which lists interesting contents such as Evaluating Printing Bids; pricing vs. other costs of doing business; All About Paper Stock including furnishing your own paper stock; Budgeting; Organizing a Production Department; Inserts; Avoiding vs. Resolving Ad Complaints; Impositions; Versioning; PDF/X Workflow; Press and Finishing Technology; Market Pricing; Stochastic Screening: and Color Reproduction.
The book costs US$79.95 for US destinations including shipping and handling plus an extra $16 for Canada and Mexico and $20.00 for other international destinations. More details at <http://WWW.BNLConsult.com>. We would appreciate comments from those who see a copy.
6. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
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Shelly asked: "Is there a book in the pipeline for users of Pagemaker switching to Indesign 2?" and added that it "would be a hotseller if you choose to do such an book. Or will you publish a book for InDesign? If not; which book on indesign do you recommend?"
We replied: We are planning an InDesign book, but it will be quite a while in the future, certainly not before InD 3 is out next year. It will have a different approach to most InD books so far in following the steps required to produce a publication and using InD to do that, rather than a progressive review of the features in the program and how to use those.
It might complement what we consider to be the best book on InDesign, and the only one that we would unreservedly recommend: "Real World Adobe InDesign 2" by Olav Martin Kvern and David Blatner, published by Peachpit Press. See <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201773171/theworsleypre-20>
Sandy Cohen's Visual Quickstart Guide on InDesign is good for the complete beginner.
This may also be a good place to mention some on line tutorials: On the Adobe site you'll find one at <http://www.adobe.com/products/tips/indesign.html>. Another is at <http://www.creativepro.com/software/home/1423.html>
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Anne Burgi wrote from nearby North Melbourne: "I run a small contract publishing business using PageMaker (still 6.5). We've just replaced one machine and it's now running Windows XP (others on Windows 98). PageMaker's 'Save for Service Provider' function has been affected. It appears to be in the font management ... instead of just checking that the fonts used are okay, it checks whether each of all the loaded fonts is used on each page. Instead of being an operation of a matter of a minute or so, it's (literally) hours. The Microsoft website says it's a known fault, but won't be 'fixed' because PM65 is 'legacy software'. I'm a great believer in "if it does what you want don't upgrade software just 'cause it's available". I'm getting very sick of being tricked into it like this. Any suggestions? PS: Thoroughly enjoy the newsletter!"
We replied: There are a few problems with PM6.5 and WinXP, and I notice that the S4SP addition is one of those few which had to be updated for PM7. Coincidentally, there has long been a problem with the Mac version of this plugin, in which it takes ages to process the fonts when the Story Editor font is a system font, cured by changing the font used in Story Editor. Unfortunately that isn't a solution with Windows.
For most purposes you might gain as much by doing a Save As... to a separate folder with "files required for remote printing" selected and then manually copying required fonts. This really depends on whether they are regular jobs using a somewhat similar range of fonts, in which case once a set of fonts has been selected and saved to a folder, that set could be reused.
This is not a satisfactory answer, and we wonder if anyone has a better one.
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In the previous Format we mentioned Jennifer's problem in getting one blank page at the end when printing some files to a Hewlett Packard printer, and the only suggestion that the answer might be to try a different driver. Jeff Rankin-Lowe from London in Canada, wondered if it might be printing a separator sheet. "There should be a way to control that in the printer's Properties dialogue box and it may also be in the application's setting or preferences."
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Also in Format 75, Colin van der Pauw asked "Any way of getting color WMF vector graphic files (available on clipart libraries) to color separate (CMYK) in PageMaker. They only want to print out on the black plate."
Mac Townsend of Fairfield, California, suggested: "CorelDraw 11 (betcha 9 and 10 would work as well, maybe earlier too). I just tested with some of the Microsoft Office clipart: imported into Draw, selected the object (a "thought balloon" in one case and a badly drawn kittie in the other-- or maybe it was just of the Scottish Curl breed, they have "funny ears"<G>). Exported to eps with ICC profile enabled (separations printer). Imported these two into PM7; they then printed to separations just fine (Kodak Color Mangling was OFF). The images did not require all 4 colors, but distilling the PS file showed what sure looked like the correct plates for the image."
Of course, if you don't use Corel Draw...(that's almost a political question, so I won't go there<G>)
Brian Pylant, electronic prepress manager with Disc Makers, also suggested to copy and paste the offending graphics one at a time into CorelDRAW, and then export as EPS. He added: "if you need an accurate on-screen preview for Windows use WMF as the preview format; if you're sending this EPS to a Mac use TIFF instead since most Macs dislike WMF to say the least. Sometimes the graphic pastes into DRAW somewhat differently than it appeared in PageMaker; you may have to "fix up" the graphic, either in CorelDRAW (if the editing is significant) or in the layout app (if it's a simple resizing issue).
"While the element is still in CorelDRAW you can also take the opportunity to make any necessary changes (applying CMYK or spot color fills, etc). Almost all vector WMFs and a large percentage of WordArt graphics paste into DRAW as native vectors, so editing them is a snap.
"(And as an aside, before anyone 'poo-poos' CorelDRAW as an unprofessional tool for prepress, let me remind you that CD has a wider set of import and export filters than Freehand and Illustrator combined, and if for nothing else I've found CorelDRAW to be an indispensable tool for converting graphic files from one format to another.)
"Now of course it's best to advise your clients not to use WMF or WordArt, but that's another story entirely! 8^)"
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Mac Townsend also replied to Tom Kostes' question on problems with JPEG files in PageMaker: "Jpegs will often not separate from PageMaker (which you may have explained), especially Photoshop eps made with jpeg encoding. In the past we've either had to open, then resave with Binary encoding or output as composite and let our RIP handle the separation."
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Rick Holbert added to the comments on imposing PDF files: "Another way to impose pdf files is by using the Pdfpages package for LaTeX."
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES/PLUGINS
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TypeStyler, a venerable type-into-graphics manipulation program, is still around and creator Dave Stillman says he is working away on his OS X version. See <http://www.typestyler.com/> and click through to the OS X page for a more graphic idea of what this program can do easily. Sadly it is Mac only (though a PC version is said to be "in the works"), and there is a download for OS up to 9.2 (60-day trial)
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ALAP have just released ShadowCaster 3.1 for Macintosh and Windows QXP users, free to all ShadowCaster 3.0 users. This is a maintenance update which resolves a number of issues and contains some new features, such as the ability to add noise to both shadow and glow effects. Also added is a "Place" action button at the bottom of the Create and Preview palettes making it more convenient to apply ShadowCaster effects to your QuarkXPress document more quickly. The Mac update is available at <ftp://alap:alap@ftp.redwire.net/qxp/mac/SHDW3.hqx> and the Windows version at <ftp://alap:alap@ftp.redwire.net/qxp/win/SHDW3.zip>
Before you update be sure to export any effect styles created with ShadowCaster 3.0. You will be able to re-import these after updating.
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Extensis has a special offer on Mask Pro 3 and PhotoFrame 2.5 plugins for US$219.95 that also includes one month's AbleStock membership allowing downloading of up to 150 professional quality, 28MB images. The offer ends on July 11, 2003. See <http://www.extensis.com/web/b73>
8. HINTS
========
Having trouble knowing just how much you need to resize a text frame in InDesign. One suggestion: select your text frame, then highlight the Height field in the Transform palette. Now use the arrow keys on your keyboard to see the frame getting scaled with realtime textflow. The up and down arrows work in either the Width or Height boxes.
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What could produce a wrong automatic page number in a PageMaker layout? It could be a grouped item moved or pasted from another page, including a master page. Ungroup, and it should correct itself, then regroup if necessary.
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How do you move an object which is beneath another object in InDesign? One trick is to use the arrow keys once the lower object is selected or to select the middle control point of the object. Otherwise InDesign thinks you are making another click and you just get the original top object again. Another answer is to control-click and then hold. Don't let go of the mouse button and you will be able to move the lower object. It is counterintuitive as, for a moment until you actually move the clicked-on object, both objects appear selected.
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In QuarkXPress you can duplicate (not copy) a text box in the middle of linked boxes and you will get a new unlinked text box containing just the text that was within the original box.
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A suggestion on overcoming the dfonts problems in Mac OS X (i.e. deactivating them so similarly named postscript fonts take precedence for most programs, and activating them for programs such as TextEdit which won;t work without them: Make the dfonts a separate set in FontReserve or equivalent. You just then have to remember to activate or deactivate the set.
9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
=========================
Photoshop list: <http://www.listmoms.net/lists/photoshop/> All this source's lists at: <http://www.listmoms.net/lists/>
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In late May, the most recent revisions of the PDF/X standards -- prepress-oriented subsets of PDF -- were approved, and new tools for authoring and verifying the newly named PDF/X-1a:2001 and PDF/X-3:2002 are expected to become available soon.
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Enfocus has launched its prepress PDF Web site CertfiedPDF.net which offers a subscription service to provide printers and others who receive or send PDFs for publication, such as bureaus and agencies to verify the printing specs. See <http://www.certifiedpdf.net/home.php>. There will be some access to information and tips without registering.
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Lots of DTP tips, some useful, some not so useful at <http://www.graphic-design.com/letters/tips/default.html>
10. LAST WORD
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A major book printer was having trouble with a client's file. It was a PDF and it just would not spool to their output device, though they were used to dealing with books with many more and larger graphics than this and certainly much larger files. Seems the client's workflow was a little unusual. Every page had the entire text converted to curves and then output as an EPS, at around 20 to 30MB each. Then each page was distilled and added to the original PDF in Acrobat. The printer's question to a print forum: Is this a normal way of producing a file? Maybe it'll join the urban legends like the magazine layout done in Excel!
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Quark is boasting it now has a 48 x 48-inch page available? Canvas 9 can take page size up to 2000 x 2000 MILES! I can just see their help desk now, with a "client" who says: "I just set the poster to maximum page size and clicked on 'tile' and 'print'..."
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Adobe's website has a "customer story" about The Worsley Press at <http://www.adobe.com/products/pagemaker/customerstories.html>. Bottom of the the page. A direct link to the 261kb PDF is: <http://www.adobe.com/products/pagemaker/pdfs/worsley_cs_fnl.pdf>. It's even better when someone else writes your publicity... so special thanks to the writer working for Adobe who wasn't put off by the odd times he had to phone (late Friday evening for him, early Saturday morning for us) -- or by the early morning honks from our guard geese (though he did ask "Do you have animals there?")
Gordon Woolf
The Worsley Press
Hastings, Australia.