PageMaker Knowledgebase has moved

[BionicJohn]

Earlier this week on 3rd March, Adobe revised the PageMaker Knowledgebase. It can now be found at:

Adobe PageMaker Support

http://www.adobe.com/support/products/pagemaker.html

All the pages in the knowledgebase have been given a new corporate look, and seem to be more or less as before with a few changes.

However, the pages have been re-indexed, and any link I have pasted in previous messages are now broken.

The search facility for the PM KB (powered by Alta Vista) does not work, making it impossible to find to find anything. In fact, entering any keywords triggers a search of the full knowledgebase, i.e. all products. The PM page no longer distinguishes between PMWin and PMMac either.

I have written to Adobe who have acknowledged the shortcoming. But you may like to have a look and attempt a trial search, and if you find the results meaningless, le Adobe know via:

http://www.adobe.com/misc/webform.html

Many thanks/Diolch yn fawr.

Iechyd da! John
21:11 11/03/03 GMT

 

[jimoblak]

Also notice how PageMaker is not listed in the Adobe Expert Center. Adobe is slowly trying to disorient PageMaker users so they evolve into InDesign.

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, Jim,

Yes, the lack of attention now given to PM by Adobe is ominous. There are several short-comings of PM7 on WinXP -for instance, the inability to handle more than about 150 fonts, weak printer menu (not changed since PM5) and TE3 clearly disastrous with alternative table imports non-existent - and with the absence of any attempt to acknowledge and fix these waknesses, it's clear that development on PM has ceased. I'll put my money on there being no PM8. The critical time will be when MS's next (64-bit?) version of Windows appears.

I believe there is a place in the market for PM, which is for users who want quality business documents but who may also need the option to enter the hi-rez publishing world on occasion. MSPub is not up to the task, and InD is pointed at the heavy weight publishers, so there is a gap for PM. But the now ancient 16-bit roots (witness wekaness with LFNs) need re-writing, and Adobe have probably made the commerical decision not to do it.

Having said all that, I now have my copy of InD2 which should be installed by the end of the week.

I found my PM3/Win2 disks the other day - dated 1989 - and it is still possible to open a PM3 file. That's no mean feat to be able to open a 14 year old file, and I was able to sort out the missing fonts by amending the styles.

Time to go, I can feel the nostalgia taking over.

Iechyd da! John
23:15 12/03/03 GMT

 

[jimoblak]

Congratulations on ID2. You will find it insanely intuitive - - which leads me to the following thought:

I have to take issue with the idea (and Adobe's marketing) that PM is suited for 'business documents' and ID is only for high-end production. PageMaker was marketed for high-end publishing before anybody knew about ID. Give ID a few years of acceptance in the market and it will be promoted for business use as well.

With its now limited feature set, Quark could also be marketed as a business/office-class application.

The ideal office-class page layout program would take into account the cluelessness of the average office user that can't see the difference between aligning text with a bunch of spaces or tabs. PageMaker may be too much for some users. I've seen enough people that can't even use WordPad.

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, Jim,

> PageMaker was marketed for high-end publishing before anybody knew about ID.

So true.

I installed my copy of ID2.0.2 this afternoon - the whole Adobe Design Collection actually - and will have some fun over the weekend finding my way around. I believe importing tables and creating PDFs are a breeze, so I'll play around with them.

> I've seen enough people that can't even use WordPad.

LOL must be related to the person in our office who insists on forcing in floppy disks upside down.

Iechyd da! John
01:22 14/03/03 GMT