Desktop Publishing Software Recommendations Needed

Hi Scott

Have a look here:

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?t=137&mforum=iworktips ntrick

*Swift Publisher* has real master Pages but doesn't automatically make facing pages, something I find odd. Belight Software tells me it will be in the next version. You can get around that by creating left and right masters.

iCalamus has a lot of the higher end features but the price takes a hike, the trial mode is extremely annoying (something the Germans excel at) and it looks slightly rough around the edges.

Really this is a case of what you pay for. Unless you have Indesign or QuarkXpress you will be stuck with OSX's problematic colorsync filter output. I would not want to be going to commercial color printing with anything less than the big two.

You do realise that, unless you are self publishing, a book usually gets handed over to a graphic designer who will make a professional job of it. Authors are rarely designers as well.

Peter

Please recommend some DTP software that might be useful in creating a book that I've written in Pages. I'm looking for something that might make my workflow more efficient.




These days it would also help to know the method of publication you plan to target — hardcopy books, digital media (e.g., PDF, ePUB, MOBI, AZW, HTML, RTF, DOC, TXT, etc. readers), optical media, etc. or some combination of these and/or other possibilities from a single source documents directly or indirectly to your final distribution medium. Also, is layout at the top of your list of features or can you get along with in-line content if output flexibility is of primary importance? As Peter pointed out, the real question is whether you are self publishing or not and, if so, your specific requirements and preferences for both authoring and publishing your content in a desirable end format or combination of formats.

Scott

We could be in the same boat, except I have all the professional tools.

We at least agree about Pages. Apple applied much more than just lipstick to this sow! Most buyers think they have scored a date with Jennifer Aniston, until they take Pages home and the wraps come off. 🙂

The problem you face is OSX's unusable .pdf output. You are forced to avoid anything with transparency, shadows or reflections or overlapping those objects because it will all get rendered at 72dpi.

Only Adobe Indesign and QuarkXpress bypass Apple's efforts at making your final job a disaster.

lulu.com and blurb.com are finally allowing you to submit .pdfs not just bitmaps as .jpegs but given OSX's bad .pdfs this is a pyrrhic victory. lulu.com is not warning against Pages specifically.

Apple has put us in this position and given their track record against their loyal creative user base, I honestly don't hold any hope for the future.

Peter

Scott,

I hope you will send Feedback to Apple from the Pages Menu. Tell them your story. It may help to determine what features and improvements they add to the next version of Pages.

Jerry

Ready,Set,Go! was in the list.

It was a very old application originally owned by Letraset (anyone remember them?).

Some sentimental person has revived it for OSX.

Most of the things that are wrong in Pages and OSX are just very bad choices which reveal an unfortunate mindset in Apple. It is very clear just how out of touch, or disinterested, they are with their original creative client base. Either that or there is some back room agreement with Adobe, that Apple cripples its software so as not to encroach on the Pro application market.

Whatever it is, Apple has made victims out of all the users who bought into iWork based on Apple's sales pitch only to trip Apple's booby traps one by one.

The US$99 doesn't look so cheap once you have gone through a few print disasters.

Unfortunately they have also dragged down all the other software developers using OSX's quartz filters.

Peter

I remember Arezzo, got caught with wet laundry when the B&B turned the heating off overnight.

That is where my Italian let me down. I asked the Lavendaria if they had a "macchina troccare". She kept saying yes but there was a problem. When I finally came back, she had ironed all my clothes dry, because she had a +Dry Cleaner+ not a Dryer.

Peter

These days it would also help to know the method of publication you plan to target — hardcopy books, digital media

Apple still saves Adobe PDF 1.3. With this version of the document description model, Apple is limited to the standard rendering specification ISO 15930 PDF/X-3 which deals with management of colour information, but not with management of character information (semantic information and structure information). ISO 19005-1:2005 PDF/A is a standard rendering specification based on PDF 1.4 as well for management of colour information as for management of character information (structure information and semantic information).

In other words, the support for management of colour information is there but is truly tough to use and support for management of character information is not there at all.

It is incorrect that QuarkXPress is usable for computerised full character cataloguing with PDF. Quark management mailed the technical press (me and a chief editor) that support for searchable PDF was not intended in version 7.

Adobe had no software whatsoever that supported structure information and semantic information in 2002; that has come trickle by trickle and if e.g. in Adobe InDesign CS (ID39 a searchable PDF is placed in an InDesign page and re-exported, the nested PDF is not searchable.

Henrik

Scott. In your mind, what should the indexing do? List all the words in your document, let you select words, or pick the words relevant to the topic (how?)?