PageMaker vs. InDesign

[Shapermc]

I have been working with PageMaker at work here for a few projects that I am working on and I just finished my first one up last night (go to the download section at my site to see it). Now I know that I had asked earlier (like a few months ago) about what program does best for publishing to pdf format. InDesign came up alot and I ended up fiddling with it for a few moments at my friends desk (like 15 min it was no where near a complete evaluation).

Now that you have the background here is my question. From my small look at the program I did not immeadiatly notice any huge differences. What are the differences? I am not talking like tiny little ones, I mean are there any feature that stream-line your production time? Are there any differnent table making features?

Another small question. . . . How do you make charts in PageMager (I mean like spreadsheet charts).

-Regards

 

[2WS-Steve]

Depending on the version of Pagemaker you might have a little Table maker application. It's pretty bad and I wound up doing all my tables in Illustrator when using PM. InDesign has a robust table layout feature. It also supports gradients on the page, a bunch of transparency effects. I went from PM 7 to Indesign 2 and feel it was a terrific investment.

 

[Shapermc]

Great! Any other input?

 

[JVisgaitis]

It depends on how familiar you are with graphics programs. The most annoying thing to me with both PageMaker and Quark, is that the interface is entirely different. The shortcuts for InDesign work across the entire Adobe platform, and that is a big plus in my book. If you are trying to do tables in PageMaker you may have a program called Adobe Table that you can use. It works pretty well, but InDesign has a built table generator and as far as I know its the only program that supports it. Also, InDesign handles any graphic format directly from Photoshop and is the only program that can do complicated transparency and drop shadows. My info may be a bit outdated as I haven't tried the latest version of Quark (and I have no intention to). InDesign is basically the most flexible and works the best with all of the existing graphics formats. I also find its PDF generator to be far superior to other layout programs. Since we got InDesign I can seamlessly work between Photoshop and Illustrator and I don't have to worry about any color correcting. Also, if you have a lot of fonts, it works great with Font Reserve (I'm running mine on a Mac). Hope that helps!

 

[annadobritt]

Another thing to consider is price of the program. I thought about getting QuarkExpress, until I saw the price. (ack!!) A wee bit pricey. So I looked at InDesign. I managed to find a copy of ID 1.5 on sale, then bought the upgrade. Much easier on the wallet.

InDesign is great for importing tables from a Word document, which is a big plus in my book.