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From: clouds@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Books about Ventura Publisher
Summary: I tell my fave, you tell yours
Keywords: Ventura, book, how-to
Message-ID: <37891@ut-emx.uucp>
Date: 4 Oct 90 01:35:49 GMT
Sender: news@ut-emx.uucp
Reply-To: clouds@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong)
Distribution: usa
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 40

Since I went on the record in an earlier post as preferring PageMaker
to Xpress, let me redeem myself in the eyes of all you control freaks  :-)
by talking about Ventura Publisher.

I can't speak knowledgeably about the LGU (you know, Latest Greatest
Upgrade), but I would like to know--what book would you recommend
on Ventura?

I spent several months last summer preparing technical manuals with
VP. The outfit I was working for had three books on VP, of which only
one was worth a damn, but that one was a GEM <thud>.

   *Ventura Tips and Tricks*, Ted Nace, Peachpit Press

I had the 2nd edition; I understand a third has come out since then. This
book was a dream come true for me--a useful reference manual, but
it also explains the "why"s behind the "what to do"s--for example,
.a lucid discussion of different strategies for directory organization.
  Lots of good            (damn, I hate vi)
examples; no sign of the recent tendency to pretend that a book about
an application program can also teach you design; a good introductory-
level discussion of downloadable fonts for HP LJx (I don't know why
DL fonts are so scary to so many people, but I know they are; Nace
strives, successfully, to dispel the mumbo-jumbo).  After a week, I
stuck the other two books in a bottom drawer and propped the Nace book
next to my copy stand.

Anyone else have kudos or spitwads for Ventura books? Books on other
DTP applications?  DTP references in general?  By the way, do any
of y'all get the Graphic Artists Book Club solicitations? I noticed they
were still peddling the FIRST edition of this book as of a few months ago.

--Kathy


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|  Kathy Strong               |  "Welcome to FUBAR Corp., where there's  |
|  (Clouds moving slowly)     |   never enough time to do a job right,   |
|  clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu  |   but always enough time to do it over." |
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