Adobe PageMaker 7

It's not all good news, however. By its manual nature, PageMaker isn't ideally suited to creating reflowable PDFs. One reader has already been in touch to report problems with fonts in embedded OLE tables, and no doubt the next InDesign will go much further with support for advanced features such as PDF transparency. Even so, PDF output remains one of PageMaker's major strengths and the updated support is definitely version 7's major selling point.

Adobe is now pushing PageMaker as a business-orientated solution and is making much of its new data-merge capabilities. Using the new Data Merge palette you can link to an external source and add variable data to your publications to create personalised publications. Data can be previewed on screen, empty lines removed, custom layouts created and images linked to and embedded.

A bit of inspection, though, immediately reveals limitations. To begin with, you can't link to actual databases but only to comma-delimited text files. When it comes to merging you also find that there's no real control with no way of conditionally selecting the records you want to print. More importantly, you can't merge directly to the printer as the system works by copying and pasting pages to a new file. For short, local print runs the data merge will do the job, but the system isn't scalable and is hardly state-of-the-art.

And incredibly that's it for new power. So how can Adobe possibly claim that PageMaker is a business DTP solution? The obvious competition is Microsoft Publisher (version 2002 reviewed issue 83, p182), and PageMaker 7 even offers a converter updated to support Publisher 2000 files - and at first the comparison looks embarrassing. PageMaker's templates and clip-art are dreadful, while features such as its macro-based data merge look prehistoric compared to the latest Publisher's ODBC-compliant Mail Merge. There's no doubt which program offers the most power and the better working experience.

But DTP is a special case in that ultimately it's judged by its output, and here the tables are turned. Thanks to its PostScript and PDF-based control, PageMaker is able to offer both simple Acrobat electronic publishing and reliable commercial print. For in-house print, Publisher wins hands-down, but it doesn't offer direct PDF support. And for colour-separated work its reliability is suspect, whereas thousands of PageMaker projects go to successful commercial print every day.

Ultimately the test of any DTP program is whether it produces the goods and, for most simple jobs, I and thousands of others still turn first to PageMaker. Clearly Adobe has moved its development effort elsewhere but, by updating PageMaker's PostScript and PDF support, it's done just enough to keep the program a going concern - and a lot of users will be grateful for that.

Author: Tom Arah