CompuServe Thread

If your output is going to printed mainly on a dot matrix or nonpostscript laser, than PageStream is probably your best bet because of its clear output… then again, if you're going to output to service bureaus, you will probably find advantages to owning BOTH PageStream and Professional Page (Gold Disk). In either case, be sure to pick up PRO-DRAW (Gold Disk) for creating object oriented images (jaggie-free) and The Srt Dept Pro (ASDG) for manipulating images. (that's was supposed to be "The Art Department") Michael

Tom – Do you have a Hard Drive on your 500? –> "SOUNDS LIKE "PAGESTREAM" OR "PAGE MAKER" ARE THE LEADING CONTENDERS." You must mean PageStream and/or ProPage. Page Maker is not an Amiga program. In my opinion the ProPage software is still the leader and is excellent for DTP. It is a close race between the two, but my vote is in for ProPage. You will probably receive votes for both programs. Both programs are high end though and will cost you about $300 or so. With your A500 you maybe should look at "Pagesetter", it is Gold Disk's entry level DTP software with many of the features of ProPage. What you don't get with "PageSetter" is postscript output and color separations and a few of the features that they just recently added to the new ProPage v2.0 software. PageSetter is price around $120 and is a very good DTP program for entry level and dotmatrix projects. Plus you can always upgrade to the full blown ProPage when your needs increase. I asked about a Hard Drive, cause to do extensive DTP work you will want to start collecting fonts and fonts take up a lot of space and are not very convient without having them readidly available on your hard drive. That is – working with different fonts from Floppies is a Pain in the A**. You didn't mention how much RAM you have either, but it is my Opinion that unless you are prepared to add a HD and more RAM to your system you are better off with PageSetter. I mean why spend $300+ dollars for the High End DTP software, if you cann't afford the Hard Drive and Ram that those programs pretty much require. – Roy Pahnke – Casper, Wyomin' – Crazy Mountain Software –

Thomas, Two of the most popular DTP programs are Pagestream and ProPage. ProPage has been used by a number of people to produce commercial magazines, for instance. PageStream is used in huge numbers of club newsletters – and both are used for lots of professional publications of various sorts. If you want an extremely powerful program, either of them should do the job. If you want something easier to learn, and less expensive you might want to look at PageSetter2 from Gold Disk, the makers of Pro Page. It will give you good output with lots of choices, and can give the same kind of output on dot matrix printers you would get with the others, but it does not do color. It is far less expensive, and considerably easier to learn than either of the others. There are some other programs available – City Desk from MicroProse comes to mind, seems there was one called Shakespeare, and I know that there is another that is quite expensive and powerful, but the name has escaped me – and someone will please be kind enough to tell you. BTW, would you please use lower case in your messages? All caps is very hard to read. Thanks. Betty

As a novice I would recommend getting the software that gives you the most for the least amount of cash outlay. That will more than likely put you off to get the low end DTP package from Gold Disk (the name escapes me at the moment). This program will get you started and not cost a small fortune plus it will run fine on an A-500. Pagestream and/or Professional Page are what you may want later if you choose to expand the hardware and software. Mike