[geeks] Desktop Publishing a la Pagemaker

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 10:25:23PM -0500, James Sharp wrote:
> Any recommendations on some Unix based desktop publishing software sort of
> like Adobe Pagemaker?  I'm going to be needing to make some sales slicks
> for different products (lots of pictures & graphics & suitspeak).  Will
> TeX/LaTeX handle this easily...and not that I'm against learning them, are
> there any good front ends for them?

Well, you have been the most specific about what you are doing.  There
are a few programs that might do the job, but there isn't anything for
unix that is really like pagemaker.

Now, if you are doing 1 or 2 pages, adobe illustrator for irix would
be up to the job.  But it is perhaps not the best choice to get the
irix version over a mac and the mac version.  The libre software just
ain't up to snuff in my book when compared against illustrator.

Otherwise there is Adobe Framemaker (is it still supported on any unix
though?).  But that is really meant for really long documents, and
probrably isn't the best choice for sales brocures.

Latex can do the job, but if you mean anything close to what I think
you mean (short page counts, design intensive, lots of color, etc),
then it is going to be extremely labor intensive.

Photoshop and/or the gimp are also possibilities.  The inability of
the gimp to do CMYK is likely to be a problem for you though.  And
photoshop for irix is again probably not worth it.  Really, I'd
probably recommend that you should just get a mac.  Design work
usually doesn't stress machines all that much anymore (except for
certain photoshop users).  The biggest thing to worry about on a mac
is that you get a good video card (I'd aim for at least 8 megs and
from ATI or better), a decent amount of ram (unless you are really
going wild with photoshop, 192 would probably be good), and a decent
CPU (decent meaing that anything better than a 601 or 603 is fine).
Such a machine could easily be not much more than $150, and the
software can be bought NOS (new old stock) for dirt cheap.  An
unregistered copy of illustrator 5.5 just set me back a whopping $15
(I lost my media).  Photoshop is about as cheap for older versions, as
are other programs (I have quark, not pagemaker though).  

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd