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Corel Ventura 8

Toronto Star Fast Forward column for June 11/98

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© Copyright, Myles White, 1998

Tip of the Week: Managing the Start Menu Documents list

Several weeks ago, I reviewed Microsoft Publisher '98, an application that brings desktop publishing (DTP) - sometimes a complex task - down to a level where home and small business users can approach it. This week, I'm going to look at a more robust alternative, the recently released version 8 of Corel's Ventura Publisher.

First a quick recap, for those interested in history. Ventura was first developed by Xerox at its Palto Alto Research Centre (PARC). The first version arrived before there was anything more than a very rudimentary Microsoft Windows. It actually ran under an operating environment called GEM and at the time was one of the few PC-based graphical alternatives to the equally fledgling Mac. At around the same time, Corel was just a startup company and its first products were companion plugins for Ventura.

Xerox tried a couple of attempts to convert Ventura to the Windows environment and each new attempt seemed to alienate what had become a respectable user base. Eventually, Corel acquired Ventura from Xerox and, in effect closed the circle. Because of the company's long history with Ventura, it was an event that stalwart users greeted with a lot of hope.

Ventura 8 is Corel's third major revision of the program - or at least it's third major version number update - since acquiring it. I've hedged a little in agreeing that this is a major revision, because most of the changes over Ventura 7 are cosmetic.

Before getting to the feature additions and changes, however, I want to compare Ventura 8 to Microsoft's Publisher 98. One of the most obvious differences is price. Publisher 98 is available for about $129 on the street. Ventura is direct-priced from Corel (all prices in Canadian currency) at.$999 for a new purchaser ($282 to upgrade from a previous version or competing product, with a special "loyalty upgrade" price of $139 for registered users of CorelDraw 8 or Ventura 7 until June 30).

That's quite a difference, but Ventura 8 is actually a suite of programs and includes the desktop publishing software, Corel PhotoPaint 8, WordPerfect 8, and Corel Database Publisher 8, as well as a slew of utilities (screen capture, media indexer, font manager, Corel Barista Java compiler) and resources (two CDs of clipart, animations, Web tools and fonts).

Publisher 98 includes the desktop publishing software and a much smaller clipart collection.

I complained in my Publisher 98 review that the result of simplifying the desktop publishing task removed fine controls from users. For example, there were no process colour matching models such as Pantone. Although there are myriad templates to format everything from correspondence and newsletters to paper airplanes and Web sites, a rudimentary feature such as the ability to apply fine adjustments to the amount of space between lines of text (the "leading") is absent. Publisher makes it unnecessary for you to know anything about overprinting and trapping, but if you discover that you do need these features or even to do something as fundamental as printing separations, you're out of luck. Adjust the screen frequency for halftones (i.e., the size or shape of the dots) so you can accommodate a commercial printer's sometimes older equipment? Forget it.

Ventura, like its heavyweight competitors, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe FrameMaker and QuarkXPress, has all these features and more. Spot colour models include RGB (red, green, blue), CMY (cyan, yellow, magenta), CYMK (cyan, yellow, magenta, black), HSB (hue, saturation, brightness), HLS (hue, lightness, saturation), and Grayscale. Advanced spot colour models include LAB (developed by Commission internationale de l'eclairage (CIE). It contains a luminance (or lightness) component (L) and two chromatic components: "a" (green to red) and "b" (blue to yellow). This model is device-independent and encompasses the colour gamuts of both the CMYK and the RGB colour models), YIQ (A colour model used in the North American video standard - NTSC. Colours are split into a luminance value (Y) and two chromaticity values (I and Q)), and Registration colour (a colour from the CMYK model where all values are at 100 percent - useful when doing separations and you want the colour to appear on all plates for such items as company logos).

Process colour matching systems include Pantone and Pantone Hexachrome, Focoltone, Trumatch, Toyo, SpeedMaster, DIC and LAB colours as well as colour palettes matched to Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

If these aren't enough, there's also the option to mix RGB colours at random, using blends, or using colour harmonies.

You have complete control over text. Font size and leading values can be set to within a 10th of a point (one "point" is equal to one 72nd of an inch in height, although changing the point size of a text character will also affect its width as well as its height). Leading is the amount of space between lines of text - the term literally derives from a time when manual typesetters using individual pieces of type placed strips of lead between lines of text to keep them separated.

New Features

Most of the new features in Ventura 8 bring it up to date with other products in the Corel stable. For example, it now shares spell-as-you go, Grammatik (grammar checker), thesaurus and other writing tools with CorelDraw 8 and WordPerfect 8. Like CorelDraw 8 and PhotoPaint 8, changes to the workspace allow you to use various dockable panes containing style sheets (tag lists) for paragraph and frame styles. Ventura's Navigator is also part of the dockable tools and contains a new drag-and-drop feature that makes setting tables of contents easier.

Right mouse-button functionality is everywhere. Corel has taken many of the context menu tricks it does in Windows Explorer or other compliant 32-bit file dialogues and moved them to the main program. So, for example, if you drag a frame to a new page with the right button, a popup menu appears when you release it, asking if you wish to move or to copy it (or to cancel the operation). Depending on the context, you may also see Apply Tag, Apply Properties, Apply Rules, Apply Fill, and Group as additional commands.

If you don't like Ventura 8's look and feel, you can change it. Customization features let you create your own unique workspaces by placing the menus and commands you use most often at the location of your choice (and workspaces can be saved). You can customize the keyboard shortcut keys, menus, toolbars, and Status Bar by changing their appearance, placement on screen, and more. You can also customize your import/export filters and file associations.

Speaking of import and export, Corel has added support for Portable Network Graphics (PNG) to the filter list and you can now export graphics from Ventura in a variety of formats. Why? Well, Ventura 8 allows you to create new graphics, re-colour bitmaps, convert vector drawings to bitmaps, re-edit vector drawings (either in CorelDraw or in place) and, if you're working in a group, it might be nice to be able to share the results. If you're a little short on memory or hard drive space for virtual memory, you can now also set a limit to the vertical and horizontal resolution of bitmaps as they display on screen to speed up display time and storage requirements.

Publisher 98 has extensive Web page creation support, but lacks some sophistication that would allow you to add more complex Internet features. Its tables, for example, by the time they're translated to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) are pictures of tables, not the real thing - and you never have access to the source code to do any fine tinkering. Ventura 8's Web support makes it the best of the professional-level DTP tools in current release. And the results can be displayed as standard HTML or translated to a Java application through Corel's Barista 2.0. Together with the Database Publisher, it puts some surprisingly robust tools in your hands.

Internal printing is now fully compliant with the Corel 8 print engine and includes support for Adobe PostScript 3. A full suite of colour correction tools for calibrating your monitor, scanner and printer so they all more or less agree is also included.

In short, Corel's Ventura 8 for Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0 is priced above what a casual user may want to pay, but the professional level of its controls and robustness of its feature set make it one of the applications you'll want to seriously consider if you've hit Publisher 98's limits.

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Tip of the Week

Out, darned document!

The Documents item on the Start Menu has a number of things you can do to and with it. Its purpose is to help you start an application quickly with an appropriate recently used document already loaded. To remove all the items on the list, right-click on an open space on the Windows taskbar, then select properties from the popup context menu. Select the Start Menu Programs tab. Half-way down the screen is a button that will clear all items from the Documents menu.

That's all fine and good, but what happens if you only want to remove selected items from the Documents menu? To do so, open Windows Explorer, pull down the View menu, and select Options (Folder Options if you have Internet Explorer4. When the Options dialogue box appears, look under Files and Folders for the Hidden Files section, then select the Show all files radio button. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Look for the C:\Windows\Recent folder.

To remove an item from the Documents menu, simply delete it from the Recent folder in Windows Explorer. When you do, the Documents menu will reflect only those items that are remaining in the Recent folder. If you plan to routinely perform this task, you may want to create a shortcut to the Recent folder on your desktop.

Yeah, but how do I get rid of the darned Documents item, the Recent folder and their potential for security problems entirely?

Darned if I know. Microsoft calls it a feature and hasn't made it either removable or customizable (such as increasing or limiting the number of items it will display). According to the folks at Windows 95 Annoyances (www.annoyances.org/win95/) there is no clean way to remove it, although there is a workaround at their Web site that is only for advanced users to try, as well as some suggestions about how to clear the list automatically each time you start Windows 95.

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