Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus

Last month we took a look at InDesign, Adobe's attack on QuarkXPress's section of the page layout market. This month, we get our hands on PageMaker 6.5 Plus, aimed fairly and squarely at luring users away from Microsoft Publisher and other home DTP packages. For this reason PageMaker, which can handle between 1 and 999 pages with ease, includes filters for importing Microsoft Publisher files.

Not only has the Getting Started guide been rewritten to include tips on using fonts, colours and clip-rt sensibly, but 300 templates have also been bundled to save the first-time user from having to create documents from scratch. There's no need to find art to brighten the pages either - almost 5,000 images have been thrown in gratis, along with a copy of Photoshop 5 LE for editing. This is accompanied by a copy of Acrobat Distiller (What PC?, May 1999) that will turn your publication into a cross-platform compatible PDF file for distribution on the Net.

Distiller is not PageMaker's only Web tool - it also includes an option to export your work as HTML, although you shouldn't base your buying decision on this aspect alone. The pages it produces are very basic, and images cropped to interesting shapes on paper will return to regular boxes on the Net rather than being recreated on-the-fly. Another image-related limitation is its apparent inability to flow text accurately around elliptical image frames. As the screen shot shows, text flow follows a rectangular path instead.

Users of rival products, or earlier versions of PageMaker, will be impressed by the new time-saving features.

An Auto Layout facility allows you to change the media type and leave the repositioning of on-page elements to the software. This works particularly well when you switch from portrait to landscape pages of the same size, leaving you to do minimal retouching; PageMaker will not, for example, resize your images - that bit's up to you.

It also makes use of layers, allowing you to place various page elements on separate levels. The layers are presented in their own palette as a cut-through cross-section, allowing you to drag them up and down through the stacking order, minimising the need to resort to the tiresome 'send to back' and 'bring forward' commands common in other packages. As layers can also be hidden and revealed at will, PageMaker is particularly suited to producing multiple versions of the same document in various languages, with every language occupying the same frame space, so they can be switched on and off in turn when it comes to printing localised versions.

Up to 256 master pages can be defined as templates for use within your document. It's possible that you may define master pages for a double-page spread of sheets but in some instances want to apply only the left or right side of the spread to your document and leave the facing page blank. Clicking a master page while holding down ALT now does just that, making it easy to break the flow of your document for a special page - perhaps a full-page advert in a newsletter, for example.

PageMaker now gives you a much greater sense of space, even on otherwise pokey 15in monitors. The right mouse button reveals a context-sensitive menu that mirrors the functions of many of the palettes used within the program, allowing them to be closed to maximise screen real-estate.

In all, this is a hugely impressive package that allows you to create professional-looking documents faster than ever before. There are some areas that could be improved upon, but PageMaker 6.5 Plus still stands head and shoulders above the competition.

SPECIFICATIONS
Award-winning interface
Industry-standard file formats
Excellent text handling
Context-sensitive menus
Generous application bundle
5,000 stock images
300 page templates
£351.33 (inc VAT)
Adobe Systems: 0181 606 4000
www.adobe.com

ADOBE PAGEMAKER 6.5 PLUS
Features ****
Ease of use *****
Performance ****
Value for money ****
Overall *****
Minimum requirements: Pentium processor, Windows 95, 24-bit VGA graphics card, 16Mb of RAM, 175Mb free hard drive space, CD ROM drive.

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