Wealth Of Dtp Packages Makes For A Hard Choice
The Age
Monday July 4, 1994
WE ARE a small commercial printer firm in the process of publishing a weekly newspaper with an expected circulation of approximately 1300.
We are running an IBM-compatible 486DX 66MHz computer with 12MB RAM, and a HP 4M Plus printer. We have Aldus PageMaker and Corel Draw, but it has been suggested that we update to Quark XPress. Can you explain the main difference between these programs and could you recommend either.
S. Ciavola Port Fairy.
THE QUESTION you should ask yourself is, ``What features are lacking at present?" and then determine if the proposed package will add these features without eliminating anything else. Keep in mind that a program such as Quark XPress cannot be properly evaluated in one or two hours. A considerable amount of use or training is required to find out if some features that may be required are missing, or can be implemented in other ways if it looks clumsy.
Quark Xpress has been converted from the Mac environment and, as yet, is not that widely used by Windows users. I have not used it but the Windows Magazine gave it only a ``C" in ``long one-colour documents" and in ``long spot-color documents" while PageMaker version 5.0 scored ``A" in these categories, did not score lower than ``B" in any category and was the recommended DTP software along with the much lower-cost PagePlus ver 2.0.
Other good DTP software packages are Ventura and Framemaker, but I would recommend that you stay with PageMaker as you are already using it.
WP font trouble.
MY PROBLEM is that my laser printer prints fonts specified as large or extra large as regular fonts. I use an HP IIP Laser printer, NCR PC386SX with 6MB of RAM and Wordperfect 5.1 for Windows. The WP is set-up for WP printer drivers. The HP IIP does not have any font cartridges but has a 2MB memory expansion. What is the least-expensive solution to get the HP to print the specified font sizes? Also, could you let me know whether major improvements are gained going from version 5.1 to 5.2? N. Avkiran Melbourne.
THE REASON for the laser not printing large fonts is that the HP IIP does not have anything larger than 12-point fonts. The cheapest solution, zero cost, is to use the Windows printer drivers to get large fonts.
In regard to WordPerfect 5.2, probably the biggest addition to WP version 5.1 is the Quick Finder, allowing a search on every word in every document, providing very rapid location of documents. This feature can be great value if you have hundreds of documents in numerous sub directories. There are many minor enhancements and bug fixes. Version 6.0 is not very stable at the moment and having used it, I would not recommend it. A bug fix version, 6.0a, is coming real soon.
THE TEXT on the button bar of WordPerfect for Windows 5.2 has shrunk to almost illegible size. I am running with the text-only option from button bar setup. Is there any way of telling WP what font and what size to use? The change occurred at a time when I changed from an ET4000-based video card to a Video 7 card and also cleaned up some fonts that I wasn't using. I used Windows Fonts section in Control Panel to delete and remove fonts. Restoring what I think are my original *.INI files does not solve the situation.
AS YOU may have guessed, you probably have deleted a font that is used by Wordperfect for its displays. This can be restored by altering a font name in the substitution section in a file called WIN.INI in the Windows sub-directory. The table should look similar to the following: (FontSubstitutes) Helvetica=Arial Times=Times New Roman Tms Rmn=MS Serif Helv=MS Sans Serif These entries specify what font to use if the required font is not available. Alter it to use one of your existing fonts that corresponds most closely to the expected font.
WP, Word conversion.
I USE Microsoft Word at the office but I have WordPerfect at home. Is there any way I can transfer my files between both places? T. Chalk Huntingdale.
IT CAN be easily done by using the ``Save As" option under the ``File" option in both products and then selecting the other format from the list of formats at the bottom of the screen. The old DOS versions of WordPerfect (WP) will not recognise new Word files such as Word 6.0, therefore, from Word, save as WP 5.1. When transferring files into Word, Word will automatically recognise the older WP formats and automatically convert the file. However, Word does not recognise WP 6.0, therefore if you are using WP version 6.0, save as version 5.1.
If you have complex documents with lots of graphics there may be some slight differences after conversion. If corresponding fonts are not available on the other computer, then the pagination will differ.
If you would like your questions answered, fax them to George Skarbek on (03)8665486 or write to him care of Computer Age, 250 Spencer Street, Melbourne, 3000. He can also be contacted via the Internet as gskarbek(AT)melbpc.org.au, but please be aware that due to the volume of inquiries it is not possible to reply individually to users.
© 1994 The Age