NWA-PCUG 05/2000 NewsLetter Article 18861 N. Hwy 112, Springdale, AR 72762-9303 Ken's Korner 'One Size Fits All' Not True When Choosing DTP Tools By Ken Fermoyle As a writer specializing in specific areas-cars and RVs during the '50s, '60s and '70s, to computers since 1984-I've been asked the same thing time and again: "What is the best ______? Fill in the blank with car, van, camper, computer or whatever. Since I began writing a desktop publishing (DTP) column for Computer Currents back in the mid-1980s, the most common query has been: "What is the best DTP program?" My stock answer in all cases: "There is no one best of anything; one size does not fit all. A single person might be happy with a sporty roadster but a family of five needs a roomy sedan or minivan. By the same token, a publishing professional needs very different tools than the average computer owner." In fact, in some cases, a full-featured word processing program might serve all of a user's DTP needs. Let's look at typical uses for publishing software, then try to match them with the tools available. (One note: Things are complicated today by the growth of online publishing, which involves such things as hypertext markup language (HTML) coding and Acrobat portable document format (PDF) files. I will cover this area in a future column. For now, I'll concentrate hardcopy print output.) First comes what I call "personal publishing." This includes creating greeting cards, holiday season letters, simple 2- or 4-page newsletters, and 1-page bulletins or flyers. Microsoft Home Publishing, any of the Print Shop-type programs or Microsoft Word let you combine formatted text and clipart or digital images, including photos, and flow text from column to column to produce this kind of work. Mac versions of Word and Print Shop are available. If you want to explore Linux platform possibilities, check out Corel's offerings. Next step up is production of more complex documents: 8- to 32-page newsletters or journals; long reports that require footnoting or indexing; trifold brochures; and anything that includes imbedded tables. I've long recommended Microsoft Publisher for such midlevel DTP work. It does everything that entry-level programs can, and it offers a lot of the features that high-end programs do. I began experimenting with Publisher when it first came out. At the time, I was editing and producing newsletters for five clients, ranging from a Maritime Museum and large mobile home park to a retail store, bicycle organization and high-tech firm specializing in printer and fax testing software suites. I was a devoted Ventura Publisher fan in those days, having used it since serving as a beta tester before Version 1.0 was released. Switching the retail store and bicycle publications to Publisher was easy. I continued to use Ventura for the other newsletters because they demanded special pagination or other features that the first version of Publisher didn't offer. From the mid- to late-1990s, I found myself using Publisher for more and more newsletters as Microsoft added to its capabilities. I recommend Publisher regularly in my presentations to DTP SIGs and Media Workshops. It is well-suited for User Group (UG) newsletters, and it is widely used for that purpose. The majority of the 100-plus UG publications I receive each month from groups that use my Ken's Korner column are produced by editors using MS Publisher. In fact, if pressed, I would have to admit that Publisher comes closest to the "one size fits all" concept for the usual DTP chores of most SOHO users. And the price is right, about $100 for Publisher 2000 and $129 for Publisher Deluxe 2000, with rebates of $20 in the retail boxed programs for users of earlier Publisher versions. If your goal is to produce long documents, Microsoft Word may well do the trick. Recent versions include many of the features that made Ventura Publisher the program of choice for books, theses and lengthy reports during the '80s. Microsoft Publisher is not the tool for professional publishing chores, and it is neither meant nor advertised to be the right choice for such work. When you move up to this level, suitable applications cost much more and are more difficult to master. Prices start at about $500 and escalate from there. Add plug-ins that facilitate specialized tasks, and cost of a complete publishing package can run $2,000 and more. Companion software, such as high-end graphics applications (and their plug-ins), can more than double that figure. Programs in this category include Adobe's PageMaker 6.5 Plus, FrameMaker and InDesign; Quark XPress; and Corel's Ventura 8. The Adobe products and Quark XPress come in both Windows and Macintosh versions but Ventura is available for Windows only.