CompuServe Thread

We use both Aldus Pagemaker on the Mac and PC, and Professional Page on the Amiga. Aldus for the PC is quite impressive. Mac-based DTP software generally is mature and therefore feature-laden. This is especially true of Quark Express. As for the Amiga, ProPage is an excellent program, especially for the street price. Don't let the recent comments here (including from me) dissuade you. There are some quirks in the latest upgrade, but that's perhaps not surprising since the program is becoming pretty sophisticated, and I'm confident Gold Disk will rectify them shortly, as has been true in the past. The upgrades have been coming swiftly, which suggests that the Amiga DTP market is quite competitive and on the cutting edge. I think Saxon Publisher, Pagestream and Pagesetter III (Professional Page's little brother) are all high-quality programs, each with its strengths. All handle color (and color separations) and are pretty much full-featured. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, as do the packages on other platforms. But the underlying platform, the Amiga, has few weakenesses, as I'll expound upon later. If Amiga DTP has one drawback, it is that some service bureaus (which provide high-end output, e.g., to a Linotronic typesetter) are reluctant to deal with Amiga files. However, they can be won over with patience, and there are shops that do handle Amiga stuff. This is mostly a perception problem, not a real technical problem. After all, you can output in Postscript on the Amiga high-end DTP packages, just like on the other platforms, and PS is pretty much PS, period. It's simply a matter of getting your output to the bureau on the proper media. Going over a phone line via modem solves much of this problem. If you're going to do DTP at home and you have a Postscript laser printer attached to your Amiga, you'll find the system extremely capable and fast. If you think you're going to be big into graphics as part of your DTP operation, the Mac perhaps has the widest array of tools. However, the smaller collection of Amiga image manipulation tools are extraordinary in their power. I don't think anything on any other platform can touch Imagemaster, feature for feature. Art Department Professional is quite powerful, as well, and now we have ImageFX. Amiga scanner options are second to none. Finally, compare costs. The drawback of going Amiga, as I said, is that you will be talking a slightly different language than many outside DTP operations. But if you're self-contained, the advantage is that you get more platform for less money. The latest Amigas are aggressively priced given their performance capabilities. And, Amiga software tends to be priced lower, feature for feature, than the other platforms. This is becoming less true but it remains the case. As for the hardware, the Amiga is still the only desktop computer that multitasks with ease. Indeed, it is common practice for many ProPage users to have its companion program, Professional Draw (a powerful structured drawing program now ported over to Windows) running simultaneously. You can point to a piece of art in a ProPage window, click on a menu item, and instantly export it to ProDraw for fine tuning, then send it back just as fast. Also, text editing in ProPage is fast, because you can instantly leap to and from a handy text editor that's faster than working within the WYSIWIG environment of ProPage itself. Seconds count in DTP, and if you spend a lot of time on other platforms waiting for screen re-draws or watching the cursor poke along, you'll appreciate the Amiga's high performance ratio.

For the last 2.5 years I have published a monthly homebrewing newsletter on the Amiga. I also help out on a newsletter for clinical nurse specialists. I use PageStream, Art Expression, DPIV, and AdPro (Pro not version). I am quite happy with the system. The Amiga OS can't be beat. I enter most of my text via Word Perfect; the weakest link in the system. Writers contribute via Internet, Email, modem and PC/Mac disk. I do the Mac and high density PC conversions at work. My only requirement I set for those with other systems is to supply me with either ASCII or a WordPerfect 4.2 file. Some folks try giving me a Word file which after some editing is usable. I just wish someone would write a word processor convert program. I don't have too much experience with DTPs on PC's. A couple of years back I used PageMaker for the PC. It was horribly slow, the poor ole PC just could not keep up. Things have changed and are probably better. As for the Mac, I have used one for scanning images. It works.

Commercial bureaus here tend to rank in order Mac, Amiga, clones. IMO it's between Macs and Amigas, I find clones too clunky and needing too more add-ons. Both Macs and Amigas have + & -'s but to me Amigas are cheaper and have a little more variety.