More than Word, less than InDesign

D

Durbrow

Registered
Can someone kindly recommend a page layout program (for printing, not web) that has more DPT features than Word but is cheaper and simpler than InDesign? Note that as I used special Croatian/Bosnian fonts with funny accents I cannot use RagTime. I don't think I can use a multilingual program like Nisus Express or Mellel because they are not really for layout. Any help gratefully appreciated. For a good cause (refugee assistance). Thanks.
 
There's not much out there that fits you requirements, sad to say. What will you use it for most of the time? In that I mean is there a specific task that comes to mind?

I'd stick with InDesign. You can gab a copy of ID2 on E-Bay for a good price now-a-days, since it's "older technology". ID2 is pretty easy to use and you don't have to use all the feature is you don't want to.

I was able to teach 2 Realtors® how to use ID2 to create flyers in a matter of an hour. Now, if you've ever done any work for Realtors® (design or technical) you'll understand why that's important. Most of them are generally the least technology savvy people I've meet of any group.
 
Natobasso said:
Real Estate agents designing their own flyers. What has the world come to… :)
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Nah...got sick of them handing me Word docs that looked like U know what and then they expected them to print OK. Now they can hand out nice PDFs to the printer and I can worry about other things than the silly flyers. :D
 
Thanks for suggesting OmniGrapple but I believe it does not have text flow (from one text box to another). Is that correct? Also thanks for pointing me to Create! I think there is a discount for .mac members. Is that correct?
 
As much as i despise microsoft programs...I might suggest microsoft publisher if such a thing exists for mac or mabe pagemaker which i do know is available for the mac as somewhere in between programs for u
 
Guys, he's asking for a DTP/layout program, not a word processor. As sad as it is to admit, Word pretty much beats everything else out there when using it to lay stuff out (which isn't a WP program's strong point).

The only good layout programs for the most part are InDesign, Quark, and PageMaker. He definitely doesn't want to hassle with the learning curves on Quark or PageMaker if he's worried about InDesign being too advanced.

ID can be as simple or as complex as you need/want it to be. As far as the text-flow thing you mentioned, ID-CS is the only program I've used that has it. Previous versions of ID didn't.

After looking at the features in Create and it's price ($149), I'd say forget that. Spend another $30 to $50 and get InDesign.

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ID-CS on ebay, says full unopened unregistered non-acedemic upgrade version. Current price is $99 with $15 for shipping. If you use the buy-it-now at $135, they'll ship free.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=86732&item=7112829007&rd=1

Just buy a copy of 1.0 that's still sealed for (some on ebay for around $40), then buy the CS upgrade. The retail on the upgrade is $169 from Adobe.

http://search.ebay.com/indesign-mac_W0QQsokeywordredirectZ1QQfromZR8

So if you get it for $115 shipped, then have to spend $40 on ver. 1 + say $10 shipping, total cost will be $165. Only $15 more than Create, and 1,000,000 times of a better investment IMO.
 
QuarkXPress has had textbox linking since at least version 4.

As useless as QXP is these days for designers, old versions are perfectly good for people who just want accurate layout functions. Version 4 is perfectly capable, and noone can accuse it of having a complex interface.

If you understand text boxes having text in them, and picture boxes having pictures in them, then you understand QXP for simple things.

Surely you should be able to pick up single-licence copies of v4 on the net for next to nothing now that it's a couple of revisions behind.

Word to the wary: it does require classic unless you can afford v6, which I would assume you cannot. Regardless, it runs fine in classic.
 
Natobasso said:
There's also a cheap app (go to www.machome.com for more info) called OpenOSX Office 1.5, http://openosx.com. Benefits: 95% of Microsoft Office functionality; costs only $35. Drawbacks: A little buggy.

Not bad though, and perfect for your needs! :)
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Do *not* ever buy anything from OpenOSX. Never ever! Never ever ever! Just look around the web and see the comments of customers. Many have never received the product after paying, all get no support and emails go unanswered.

Besides, the stuff that they're selling is Abiword, Gnumeric and other programs that you can easily get for free. Just install them via fink whic is a very simple process.

Again, never ever buy anything from OpenOSX. I know of no one (apart from the developers themselves?) who has anything good to say abou them.
 
mdnky said:
After looking at the features in Create and it's price ($149), I'd say forget that. Spend another $30 to $50 and get InDesign.

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So if you get it for $115 shipped, then have to spend $40 on ver. 1 + say $10 shipping, total cost will be $165. Only $15 more than Create, and 1,000,000 times of a better investment IMO.
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Well, I'm a long time Create user who teaches people how to use both InDesign and QuarkXPress (and PageMaker, though no one has asked for help with that product in a long time). On my primary system, I do not have a copy of InDesign, QuarkXPress, PageMaker or Illustrator as Create is a functional replacement for all of them.

As someone who knows how to make all these (and more) apps sing, I find it hard to understand how you (someone who has obviously not taken the time to learn Create) would qualify a comment like 1,000,000 times of a better investment IMO.

Create paid for itself in demo mode in one job (web design project) three years ago. I haven't had to pay a single cent for it since then (going from version 10.x to 11.x to 12.x). Stone Design's free upgrades for life mean that you'll never be chasing expensive upgrades, and if you join us at the Stone Design forums, you can talk to the primary designer of the app himself... Andrew Stone, who is very receptive to suggestions. I highly doubt you would get the same reception from Adobe. :rolleyes:

But I would love to see a qualifier for 1,000,000 times of a better investment.
 
Ugh. I think Publisher is worse than Word, and it's support is severely limited these days from what I hear.
 
Viro said:
Do *not* ever buy anything from OpenOSX. Never ever! Never ever ever! Just look around the web and see the comments of customers. Many have never received the product after paying, all get no support and emails go unanswered.

Besides, the stuff that they're selling is Abiword, Gnumeric and other programs that you can easily get for free. Just install them via fink whic is a very simple process.

Again, never ever buy anything from OpenOSX. I know of no one (apart from the developers themselves?) who has anything good to say abou them.
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Point taken. But why would the magazine MacHome do a full review on their product if they were so unreliable? Maybe they didn't do their homework?
 
Maybe they were paid? Who knows? :)

But in any case, I'll mention Scribus a program no one has mentioned yet. It's pretty much the open sourced alternative to QuarkXPress and InDesign. I don't do DTP, so I don't know how feature complete it is but the screenshots I've seen are very nice. You can install this via fink so if you haven't got fink set up, now's the time.
 
RacerX said:
Create paid for itself in demo mode in one job (web design project) three years ago.
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Well in the last 20 years of doing DTP I have used Pagemaker, ReadySetGo, Quark XPress, MsPublisher, Ventura, FrameMaker and even RagTime, Word, AppleWorks and Nisus to lay out publications. So you can say there isn't much I haven't used to layout type.

Out of all of those I can safely say I found Create one of the most oddball and obtuse programs of the lot. It was slow, buggy and generally erratic and plain weird in it's functions. It lacks a pasteboard which means bleeds are impossible and the linking, styling and text flow defeated my best efforts at getting it do what I wanted. Maybe all these things have been fixed in later versions but I doubt it as it showed signs of being designed by a non-designer (an architect though he may have been).

Durbrow would probably be best off with an old 2nd hand version of Pagemaker or Quark XPress (assuming he is on Windows or can run Mac Classic). Simple enough whilst doing the essential layout tasks.

btw I doubt that Ragtime or any DTP program would not do the Croatian/Bosnian which has fairly standard Central European accented characters. It is just a matter of getting the appropriate fonts. The standard set of Windows fonts and OpenType have all the necessary characters inbuilt already. Only the older standard Mac Fonts lack the s, c and z with the hook over. Get EuroTimes and EuroHelvetica to do these in Classic.
 
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