For Position Only: Long Live PageMaker — or Not
When I read the other day that Adobe was upgrading PageMaker to version 7.0, I didn’t have one of my two usual reactions to such news. Normally I’d either shrug it off as business-as-usual or I’d mutter, “About time. We’ve all been waiting.” (This is why I like working alone at home, so people don’t hear me talking to myself.)
But when I read about the PageMaker upgrade, I surprised myself by thinking, “Oh, isn’t that sweet.” That was the yin side of me, which holds affection for the program on which I learned desktop publishing back in the early ’90s. Then my yang side kicked in. “What’s Adobe thinking anyway? Is it planning to have InDesign take over the world or not? How on earth does it expect to do that if it has not one, not two, but three page layout tools?” (FrameMaker completes the trifecta.)
Then I got to thinking about how the page layout market has evolved over the years, how so much has changed and yet so much has remained the same, and whether or not PageMaker still even have a role to play in this performance?
DTP 101
Actually, I started down the road toward digital publishing back in the mid-1980s, when I typeset my college weekly on a Compugraphic MCS 8400. I’d pull long galleys out of the film processor and hang them up to dry, and then input copy editing changes marked in blue highlighter. I became intuitive about line breaks, which I couldn’t see accurately on my little 10-inch monitor.
Little did I know it then, squirreled away pulling all-nighters every Wednesday to prepare our flats, but Apple was putting the finishing touches on the first color Macintosh, PostScript was brewing in Palo Alto, and programs such as Aldus PageMaker, QuarkXPress, and Ventura Publisher were poised to change the way we produce publications.
By the time I got to “PC/Computing” magazine as a copy editor in 1991, Ventura was already an also-ran, and QuarkXPress and PageMaker were duking it out for the growing page-layout market. I went to work every day and sat down at my grayscale Radius monitor and booted up PageMaker on my Quadra. I marveled at WYSIWYG design, dove in and out of Story Editor like a dolphin riding the waves, and tweaked window shades with aplomb.
At that time, the managing editor of “PC/C” (now “Smart Business“) was engaged in a losing battle with the art director to switch from PageMaker for the Mac to QuarkXPress for Windows. Every publication I’ve worked for since has used QuarkXPress (for Mac, not Windows), and over time I’ve come to dismiss other contenders in this field. I’ve clucked to myself as Adobe has upgraded PageMaker over the years, thinking it’s fighting a losing battle but respecting the machinations of a free-market economy where healthy competition drives innovation. Still, some time ago I came to associate PageMaker with church newsletters (perhaps because for most of the last decade, the church where my father-in-law ministered used it on a PC to produce them), and when the last version came out two years ago — 6.5 Plus (isn’t the italicized “Plus” quaint?) — and the hype began to swirl around the “Quark-killer” InDesign, I thought for sure that PageMaker would be doomed for a fate of supported-but-not-actively-marketed.
Keeping up with the Times (Roman?)
But Adobe swears there are three distinct page-design markets, one for each of its applications: technical document publishing (aka “corporate publishing”) with FrameMaker; business and SoHo publishing with PageMaker; and professional publishing with InDesign. I do agree that technical document publishing is its own beast. I also believe that Adobe has to upgrade and beef-up PageMaker unless it wants to lose customers to Microsoft. But I think it’s slicing the pie too thin to say that the needs of business users and graphic designers are so different that they require different page layout tools.
Both Quark and Adobe have rightly plotted the course for all of our futures, and it involves being able to publish anywhere, anytime, to any medium. That means support for XML and PDF for easy data import, export, and exchange; integration with databases and easy file sharing and content management; and systematic and collaborative content creation that minimizes redundant steps in a workflow. You can bet that the forthcoming InDesign 2.0 and QuarkXPress 5.0 will both make tremendous strides down this road.
But the fact is, Adobe could easily retire PageMaker and offer a tantalizing promotion to convert those customers to InDesign, or to a “lite” version of InDesign if it wants to maintain the distinction between professional and prosumer markets a la Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. This would not only give InDesign a tremendous boost in market penetration but would also show Adobe’s faith in and commitment to the product. In fact, I assert that keeping PageMaker alive undermines the fledgling InDesign’s viability. It’s like saying this next-generation publishing tool isn’t ready go out on its own; the parent has to stand at the edge of the playground to make sure its child plays well with others and then intervene when someone throws sand. What does that say about InDesign, much less about Adobe’s vision of the future?
It says that even Adobe thinks InDesign and the whole network-publishing vision is not ready for prime time. Hey, I’ve used InDesign 1.5 and I know it leaves much to be desired, but what incentive do I have to stick with it through its growing pains when QuarkXPress works so much better, and PageMaker is available as a backup? (Forget about Microsoft Publisher. I’ve never touched it, and I doubt its users would convert to XPress, PageMaker, or InDesign. As the Seybold editors so adroitly noted in The Bulletin recently, Publisher is essentially free in Office, and it’s pretty hard to compete with that — much to service providers’ chagrin.)
Over the last 10 years both page layout applications and users have matured, so the truth is that designers and publishers have little tolerance for immature products. At the same time, if there’s one lesson we’ve all learned it’s that we have to be willing to try new tools and technologies if we want to keep benefiting from the efficiencies of digital publishing and serve the world’s ever-changing publishing needs. As sad is it is true, many products go through a life cycle that comes to natural conclusion when the technological landscape changes. I hate to think of such a ground-breaking product as PageMaker hanging around hoping for curtain calls when it has the opportunity to leave the stage with grace and dignity, to make room for up-and-coming stars.
This article was last modified on March 12, 2022
This article was first published on June 21, 2001
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