Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!mmdf
From: fhwri%CONNCOLL.BITNET@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: Re: Desk Top Publishing
Message-ID: <52000@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 27 Apr 91 04:55:46 GMT
Sender: mmdf@ee.udel.edu
Lines: 62

>
> Hi.
>
> I'm looking into buying a DTP package.   Price is not a problem.
> Which one would you recommend and for what reason(s)?
>
> Thanks for any info.
>
> ##############################################################################
>  jol@sei.cmu.edu                      "Life not worth dying for           //
>  (412) 268-7602                               isn't worth living for".
>  Software Engineering Institute                                  AMIGA \X/
>
There are three major DTP packages available:

1: Professional Page 2.0 is $395 list. It's the upgrade of the first serious
DTP package for the Amiga.
Advantages:     Compugraphic Fonts
                Import ProDraw clips
                The Text Editor, which allows you to rapidly edit text
Disadvantages:  You have to create a box to hold anything
                Gold Disk's customer support is abysmal
                Slow at printing
                The CGCache takes up enormous (>5 meg) amounts of
                hard drive space

2: Pagestream 2.1 is $295 list
Advantages:     Compugraphic fonts
                Proprietary fonts (20 disks or so)
                Adobe Type 1 fonts to dot matrix (!)
                The *best* font handling, and the *most* styles
                Superb structured graphics tools
                Multiple documents open at once
                Probably the best manual of the three (MUCH improved over
                their first manual)
                Soft-Logik's customer support is excellent
                Import ProDraw clips
                etc.
Disadvantages:  Still locks up on occasion
                can take a while to display a large font list

3: Saxon Publisher is $*** (can't remember the price)
Advantages:     Allows nonrectangular columns (a unique feature, but I
                question how often you'd use it...)
                Nice tagging functions
Disadvantages:  Postscript output only at present (I think)
                No Compugraphic support?

        I am a Pagestream fan, I must admit. I use a HP Deskjet and the
output is first-rate. The printing is speedy and I can use my hard drive to
hold FONTS, and not the enormous CGCache that ProPage requires. If I need to
edit text rapidly, I can multitask Transwrite with it, select text, output
ASCII to RAM:, delete the selected text, edit the text in RAM:, and import
ASCII right back. Not as convenient as ProPage, but just as useful.
Pagestream also imports more different types of graphics than any other
program. Its structured graphics tools are the most intuitive I have seen,
and they work very well. Variable zoom, too, and you'll be glad you have it.
The big new features in ProPage 2.0 were tagging and rotation of objects,
something that Pagestream always has had.

                                                --Rick Wrigley
                                                fhwri@conncoll.bitnet