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From: ba@excelan.COM (Bob Ackerman)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: Ventura/Pagemaker
Keywords: Ventura Pagemaker Choice
Message-ID: <457@excelan.COM>
Date: 22 Sep 89 23:32:39 GMT
References: <52@rsoft.bc.ca>
Sender: news@excelan.COM
Reply-To: ba@na.UUCP (Bob Ackerman)
Organization: Excelan, Inc., San Jose, Califonia
Lines: 32

In article <52@rsoft.bc.ca> frank@rsoft.bc.ca (Frank I. Reiter) writes:
>There seems to be a consensus among people I've talked with that Pagemaker is
>the best choice for pamphlets/ads/other short stuff and Ventura is the better
>choice for longer documents such as books.  We will soon need to do both.
>
>Is it more inconvenient using Ventura for short documents or Pagemaker for
>long ones?
>-- 
The question may not be as much a matter of short vs. long as a matter of 
shelf-life and type of document. For instance, Ventura creates an index
automatically from embedded tags; PageMaker doesn't create an index. Ditto 
with tables of contents. Ventura gives the creator of the document control
over the typeface, stroke weight, line length, margin placement, line leading,
etc., for every type of paragraph in the document by tagging every paragraph,
and defining the tags in a style sheet; creators don't have to create separate
areas on a page and put separate bits of text into those areas to create the
desired typographic/layout effects. Ventura has facilities for handling
multi-part documents easily: it can automatically number consecutive chapters
of a book, for instance.

If the document is something that has to be maintained and revised, Ventura is
much simpler to use. Graphic frames can be attached to text, so that if the
text moves from one page to another, all the graphic frames from that point on
can be moved to their corresponding text references with a single command. 
Because the typographic/layout information for a paragraph is attached to the
paragraph rather than the frame it's in (generally speaking), it can
automatically flow from one page to another after revisions and retain its
desired form.

In some ways, the question is analogous to the question: Is a car better than a
truck? Depends on what you want to do, doesn't it? The analysis should proceed,
like many others in the computer biz, from functional specifications.