QuarkXpress and Adobe Pagemaker have been the two major industry players in the page layout arena to date. Somehow, Quark holds on as industry standard, however many Quark users are disenchanted with their “user-unfriendly” attitude toward customer support and student discounts. Adobe’s Pagemaker has the advantage of being kin to Photoshop and Illustrator, so the interfaces are similar and are coded to work more flawlessly together. Adobe’s recent introduction of InDesign will hopefully send page layout into a competition that will leave us very pleased in the end.

There are a few main factors to understand about any of the page layout programs. Page layout programs are the hub of the production process. They organize and contain text and images and disseminate them to the printer. They link to what they organize, but don’t embed either the fonts to the text or the images they contain in their layout. For this reason, it is necessary to send both screen and printer fonts and images along separately when outputting page layout files to imagesetters outside of the system where the pages are created. QuarkXpress has automated the process of sending images along to be output with its “Collect for Output” feature and add-on extension programs like QX Tools collect fonts automatically. I am not familiar with recent versions of Pagemaker, but I assume it uses a similar collection automation.

Page layout programs send information via PostScript. PostScript is a page description language develoed by Adobe that provides a standardized language method for all items on a page, including text and graphics, points connected by lines, bezier curves filled with defined colors and shades, textural instructions that express mathematical equations for two dimensional locations for paints and objects (via x and y coordinates). A RIP (raster image processor) takes this formula and turns it into dots for the printer to use.

Up until recently, page layout programs have been the receptacle for finished images and not able to create much more sophisticated imagery than simple geometric shapes that could be filled with limited gradients and pasted into with pixel-based pictures. QuarkXpress 4 introduced the ability to draw with vectors and InDesign claims to have incorporated many drawing features and the ability to put type on paths.

Some of the production time-saving features that page layout programs offer include the use of style sheets, master pages, libraries, and indexing. Style sheets set a group of font characteristics that can be applied to a single word or group of text with a click of the mouse. Master pages are templates within the document that can be applied to pages to duplicate a basic layout structure. Libraries contain images and text blocks that can be accessed outside of the layout and dropped into any page or part of a page. Indexing uses tagged references
to headers or words that will automatically create a table of contents or index the word, including the page number. These features are particularly useful when creating books.

Word Processing Programs.
Most designers prefer that text is written by a copywriter and fully proofed before it comes to them. Usually this will be done in a word processing program like Microsoft Word. Word Perfect is still occasionally used, but Word seems to have the majority of the market at this time. It is best if emphasis formatting can be maintained when imported into the page layout program. I usually ask that text be formatted so that emphasis is obviously hierarchal, but created with bold, italic and underlined formatting rather than with all caps. Style sheets can be applied to text within the page layout program set in upper and lower case, but text has to be retyped if all caps have been typed-in during word processing. I usually apply the size and typeface of the majority body style of the type in the word processing program, then import and change header styles once it is in Quark. If you are having trouble importing text directly into the page layout program, make sure that your page layout program contains the import filters for the version of the word processing program you are importing from. Save the word processing file in a version low enough for and on the same platform as your page layout program. Many times editors will work in the latest version of a word processing program on the PC and your page layout program may be a version behind on the Mac. Word processing programs have many “save as” options and are usually backwards compatible.

Fonts.
PostScript and TrueType are basically the two font systems being used in pre-print production at this time. The Mac environment tends to use PostScript fonts most often, TrueType fonts come loaded on many Windows computers, both appear on either platform.

PostScript fonts contain a separate font set for the screen to reference and another for the printer to use. The screen font icon looks like a suitcase and contains the information that appears on yourmonitor. They are called “bitmap” fonts because they contain 72-dpi renderings of every character of a typeface at a particular point size. The printer font icon looks like the letter “A” with lines ora a solid box next to it and contains the scalable, vector-based information that’s sent to a high-res PostScript output device when a file is sent to print. The printer automatically calculates what the character shapes look like, regardless of what size type may be in your documents. They are called “outline” fonts because they are resolution-independent, vector-based characters outlined with bezier curves. This allows PostScript fonts to output smoothly at any size.

Postscript Type1 was the original font language introduced by Adobe when postscript technology began. It contained all of the qualities of predictability and reliable output we have come to appreciate. They held onto the proprietary code and the capital interest which prompted third party developers to create Type 3 fonts. Type3 fonts did not contain the information needed to print to lower-resolution output devices while maintaining printing quality. The resulting output fonts were less reliable with more instances of random misprinting, unaccountable text reflow, and awkward tracking and kerning. Many fun and innovative display fonts were created by Type3 font developers. For a while these fonts were hip and cool. Adobe is now creating Type2 fonts, with more enjoyable appearance. My advice, stay away from Type3 fonts, or plan to do a fair amount of hand massaging.

TrueType fonts are postscript in nature and therefore need only the printer font to render on either the screen or printer. They were originally designed by Apple to compete with Adobe’s PostScript technology, but never really got the market share. Then they stated shipping with Windows. For a while, output bureaus were not able to handle TrueType technology, so we were advised to delete all TrueType fonts from our computers, so as not to design with a font that couldn’t ultimately be used in the final process. When I recently checked with my local service bureau, the RIPping software seems to have caught up with TrueType technology, so either can be used without problems. You can distinguish True Type fonts by the characteristic triple stacked “A” on the font icon.

Multiple Master typefaces give the user control of variations in thickness and condension and expansion. Use them sparingly, for some older laser printers and imagesetter software may be
incompatible and it is still necessary to supply service bureaus with the necessary Multiple Master font files when a job is dropped off for output. Expert collections and extra fonts that accompany certain typefaces help to expand the limited number of characters each font can offer. Expert sets contain special characters, such as fractions, numerals with descenders, and other symbols not found instandard fonts. Adobe fonts sometimes have additional Small Caps and Old Style Figures. Minion is a popular expert collection to use with serif typefaces.

Typefaces fall into two general characteristic sets. They usually contain either serif features or sans serif features. Serifs are the little lines that add a right angle to the tips of the typeface. They are often times more feminine in nature, especially the italic style, and represent a more classical look. They are more often used in body copy as serif fonts tend to be more readable when grouped in blocks. Typical serif typeface families examples would be Times and Palatino. San Serif fonts do not contain serifs and have a more masculine nature. They are used more often in display sizes as they give a striking appearance, especially when bolded. Typical sans serif typeface families examples would be Helvetica and Arial. Variations are widespread and a whole booming business unto itself.

ATM (Adobe Type Manager) is software that effectively combines screen and printer font information to determine what your type should look like on screen using one screen font and the printer font.

Important guidelines for troubleshooting fonts:

• Keep a font’s suitcase file and printer fonts in the same folder. Separating them prevents proper output.
  
  
• Never remove screen fonts from their suitcases. Consider screen fonts in a suitcase as one file, even though the suitcase contains many different fonts.
  
  
• Never combine screen fonts from different families in the some suitcase. Doing so makes it more difficult for both designers and output professionals to keep track of which fonts are available.
  
  
• Never change the names of suitcases or printer fonts. Your type library may be huge and organi-zation is the key.
  

Fonts are platform specific, meaning the Mac platform requires Mac fonts and the Windows environment requires PC fonts. If you need to cross platforms with the same file, use the same font manufacturer’s font named exactly the same name to ensure ease of cross over.

Font Management.
On either platform, fonts that live in the system folder in the fonts folder are loaded at startup and available to any program that uses fonts. If you own or use fewer than 50 fonts; all of your printing is done in-house and from your computer; or you seldom transport or copy fonts to other locations or receive them from outside clients, you are fine managing fonts from the system folder. Otherwise, it is recommended to use a font management utility, such as Symantec Suitcase or the latest version of ATM Deluxe.

Either font utility allows you to store all of your fonts in a resource folder and create sets that the utility tracks according to specific job or client workflow, accessing these fonts only when you turn them on (rather than having them load at startup and use valuable hard disk space, even when you aren’t using the font at that particular moment). ATM Deluxe allows you to drag the font set folder to your transfer disk directly from the utility when sending your files to output, thus keeping the collection process very organized.