Product Reviews

If the Harper Valley PTA had brought out a newsletter, it would probably have consisted of two pieces of A4 paper, carelessly stapled together, printed on one side only, all in one font, with text flowing in straggling, unjustified paragraphs. It doesn't have to be like this. With a decent desktop publishing (DTP) package, you can use your PC to design and layout pages that will look as if they belong in a glossy magazine. With the release of a new PDF-compatible version, we decided it was time to put PagePlus though its paces.

When you open PagePlus 8, it offers you the choice of either using a step-by-step 'wizard' to help complete a certain task, or to start with a blank page. This means that novice users are given the help they need to get started, but the more experienced or adventurous aren't prevented from getting at the program's standard DTP tools. This isn't the case in PagePlus's arch-rival, Microsoft Publisher, which is much more heavily wizard-based, making its standard controls more difficult to find. Don't worry if you are a novice, though. Along with its wizards, PagePlus has 2,000 templates for different kinds of projects.

Once you've gained a little more confidence, however, you'll be pleasantly

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surprised at the powerful tools that PagePlus offers. The software's drawing tools allow you to do complex tasks like freehand curve drawing or 'Bezier' curve editing. This is the kind of thing we'd expect of a dedicated drawing program. You can easily create and manipulate customised shapes using the QuickShapes tools. You can then use the fill option to shade these shapes with a number of colours and textures. More impressive still is the fact that you can make vector graphics or bitmap pictures semi-transparent, so that you can use them in diagrams or as a background for text. The only other DTP program that can do this is Adobe's InDesign - and that costs around £700!

PagePlus's text-editing tools are pretty awesome too. You can create linked text frames or a standalone Artistic Text (new in version 8). Text styles let you standardise on regularly-used fonts and sizes, and you can also generate tables of contents from the headings in your document. PagePlus 8 has a spellchecker and thesaurus, and Microsoft Word-style auto-correct options that will fix common typing and spelling errors. Text handling has also been improved in this edition, making it much easier to edit text directly on the page.

The main point about the new PDF edition, of course, is that it can export PDF files directly for electronic rather than printed distribution. PDF files are small in size, easy to e-mail and, once you've created them, they can't be altered. This is a great format for sending documents over the Web. Although it doesn't offer all the sophisticated options a professional program would have for creating PDFs, it still handles the job well.

None of PagePlus's competitors can cope with the nitty-gritty of desktop publishing as effectively as this package does. And at this price, it's unbeatable.