Pagemaker vs. Word
Carl B. Johnson
control of image layout and text layout, as well as ease of converting
to PDF files for electronic distribution and the ability to easily post
to the internet, if you so desired. Word is okay for writing letters,
but for page layout, PM would be the better choice.
--
Carl B. Johnson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice about
a woman is their eyes, and women say the first thing they notice about
men is they're a bunch of liars.
www.wuli.com
asquith brian
Currently using Word to write software manuals - many pages and include screen captures. Wondering if Pagemaker is the way to go with this as Word is somewhat frustrating to use...wondered if folks had any opinions/experience of such a switch.
Cheers
Brian
John O
I have a love/hate relationship with Word, too. :-) IMHO Word can do a
decent job if you whack it with a big 2 x 4. That is, shut off the
auto-everything and use its most powerful features properly. (styles,
sections, layers, etc.)
Here's one way to get a feel for PM...PM and ID work like Powerpoint. All
the elements are separate...text frames, images, master pages/slides. (In
Word, the images always seem to have control over text and nothing ever
stays put.) This comparison doesn't hold up much further, but if you're
familiar with Ppt then PM will kinda-sorta be like that, at first. You get
to choose where you'll go today.
Personally, I'd skip PM and go straight to InDesign.
John O
Carl B. Johnson
Having just used ID for the first time, I will never willingly go back
to PM! At least at work, at home I am stuck with PM until I can afford
to upgrade. But ID may be overkill if all they are using it for are user
manuals.
Bob Levine
yet, you should really consider InDesign instead of Pagemaker. PM has
pretty much reached the end of the road and InDesign is just starting to
take off.
You can download a fully functional trial version from Adobe's website.
Bob
John O
> manuals.
Yeah it is, but there are a couple really big features that all Office users
rightfully expect: more than one undo and a direct-to-PDF tool that works.
ID has both. :-) And it costs the same, I think.
John O
Jay Chevako
footnotes in Word. With Pm or ID you have to do them manually. If you use a
lot of footnotes look into Framemaker.
Jay
asquith brian
With regard to ID being an overkill for software manuals - I'd much rather have that than my current situation of frustrated days fighting word...the styles work well but occasionally they are prone to do their own thing...alas it's the "occasionally" that's beating me up.
Cheers
brian
Stu Bloom
In either PageMaker or InDesign, you will be losing a lot of very useful capabilities that Word has for manual creation, many of which have been in Word (and WordPerfect, too, for that matter) since DOS days. A few examples (not by any means a complete list):
-Bullets (PageMaker has clunky bullets, InDesign has none unless you insert each manually - that's right, a $700 page layout program that can't do bullets, fercryinoutloud!)
-Numbered lists (ditto)
-Cross-references (e.g., "see Figure 1" where the "1" would change to "2" if another Figure is inserted before the existing Figure 1)
-Recordable macros
-Auto-correct
-Footnotes
-Revision marking
-Document compare
-Customizable keys (nonexistent in PageMaker, InDesign has them but they are not as flexible as Word's)
-Advanced search-and-replace features (non-existent in PageMaker, some in ID but not to compare with Word's)
-Tables (PM's are a joke, ID's are pretty good but not as good as Word's)
-Robust operation over a network
Also, you're still going to be creating most of your text in your word procdessor, then bringing it into PageMaker or InDesign. PageMaker's text-creation tools are fair, InDesign's are abysmal for anything except very minor edits.
If you definitely need more layout horsepower than Word has, you may want to consider FrameMaker, which was designed to do exactly the kind of work you're doing. Its interface is somewhat arcane, but it has the power, and I have clients who use it quite successfully for both general-purpose word processing and page layout.
Jay Chevako
"Stu Bloom"
I have to disagree on a few points
Bullets
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?5...@24.NLI8abrZOSL.4@.1de8cc84/0 or
check out the faqs under type handling if I have mangled the link.
I hate Words' auto bullets.
And I dislike Words' tables as well, but I go to my own extremes (quark and
ID but not the table function) to make the tables I want.
Search and replace, Word's is better, but Pm's is not bad. check out char
and para attributes.
But Basically what you said is correct, my points may me more of my personal
taste than anything else.
Jay
Bob Levine
it. As far as text creation tools being abysmal, well it's not a word
processor.
Bob
Bob Levine
Word has it, that ID 3.0 will indeed have a story editor.
Bob
Stu Bloom
As far as text creation tools being abysmal, well it's not a word processor.
Nor should it try to be one. But someone coming from a word processor with very good page layout capabilities (for a word processor) is likely to experience paradigm shock the first time they encounter a page layout program.
Angela Bailey
You don't mention how long your documents are, but if they're huge, Adobe FrameMaker might be a better choice. I've always preferred working in PageMaker whenever possible, but if you're going to learn a new software package "from scratch," you may want to investigate Frame. It wasn't quite as easy for me to learn as Page, but then again, I was already a PageMaker junkie before I tried it!
Cheers,
Angela B
Chris La Porte
Here is a PDF which compares the products:
<http://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker/pdfs/idn2_vs_pm7_vs_fm7_ue.pdf>
Chris