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Texts and desktop publishing
Although the text processors have made a long way from the inhospitable screen in black and white of the eighties, a word processor is meant for office documents, correspondence, information, notes... but not for an intensive use of image or special treatments of the text. For example, we could easily write a novel or a book of poetry matching any printed book, but hardly we would be able to lay out a magazine, a colour catalogue or an informative brochure with high graphical content. The most professional solutions for these projects are the DTP programs (from desktop publishing.) These programs have many more features for the design of pages, handling of text blocks, typesetting control, colour management and positioning of images and text blocks.
An additional application that has given a new purpose to this type of programs is the generation of pdf files, in which all the decisions of page design and typography remain faithfully fixed for the reader, the service bureau or print shop.
The way in which programs DTP handle the text is quite different, and much more flexible than in a word processor. The texts and graphs stick as if they were paper cuts that can be moved freely on the page, or from one page to another; to keep them next to the page “on the workspace”. The text that does not fit in a block, flows towards another block whe have indicated to the program. This allows for complex and creative compositions of text and image, like those in the magazines or catalogues; on the other hand, the text flow can also be automated to create more regular and simple distributions (as in the text of a report or a book.)
Page layout software
The programs of desktop publishing or page layout are not, indeed, your typical home applications (with some exceptions), and essentially their scope is in the world of the graphical arts. The most used they are:
Adobe InDesign/Adobe Pagemaker. Pagemaker existed until version 7, but it has been substituted by InDesign, more sophisticated and powerful, best integrated with other graphics programs from the same manufacturer, and sharing with them a similar interface.QuarkXpress is strictly a professional tool, the one that usually used in modern print presses. The program is used only for printed publications: it has offered little or null support for HTML edition in the past. Many limitations of the program are replaced with which they call “Xtensions” —plugins which incorporate new functions and that must be acquired separately.
Corel Ventura es un viejo programa que después de muchas vicisitudes fue adquirido por Corel. Algunas versiones de CorelDraw (como la versión 5 de hace unos años) incluían Ventura, pero ahora se vende por separado. No se utiliza mucho, porque en el pasado, según parece, ha tenido poca fiabilidad (cosa que también ha pasado con algunas versiones del propio Draw.) is an old program that after many vicissitudes was acquired by Corel. Some versions of CorelDraw (as version 5 of years ago) included Ventura, but now they are sold separately. Not a much used program, because in the past, reportedly it was unreliable for professional work (something that also has happened with some versions of Draw.)
The domestic or non-professional user can take advantage of two not very expensive programs that make the task of laying out pages more or less decently: Microsoft Publisher and Serif Page Extra. The second is very economic: a bargain, since it has many more benefits than Publisher: a more professional scope. Publisher, on the other hand, is in many systems because the fact it comes included in different domestic software packages and sometimes is offered itself with the purchase of a PC. Finally, as the border between word processors and desktop publishing programs has blurred in some of the last versions, there is also another alternative in graphic design programs such as CorelDraw, Illustrator, Freehand to do some DTP work. The text functions and graphics incorporated in the mentioned programs make them apt tools for graphic-rich publications production. Of this trio, probably the better suited is Freehand; it is often used for short publications production (catalogues, pamphlets, tryptichs, information brochures.)
Solving problems with texts.
To avoid problems with the paragraphs.
There aresimple ways to avoid common problems with texts, like lines of a paragraph left orphaned of the rest, pages which begin with blank spaces at the top, spaces appearing unsightily when changing the size of the text...
Do use the paragraph attributes to control its separation from other paragraphs, its line height (leading) and gutters; avoid two carriage returns at the end of paragraph. If you want to move text to a specific position, do use tables or tabulators, but never multiple spaces with the spacebar. If you want to pass a word to the following line do not use multiple spaces or tabs: create a soft return, clicking Shift + return. This will create a new line, but inside the same paragraph. If you want to force a new page, the same can be said: never use multiple spaces or tabs. You do it pressing Control + return.
For more suggestions, take a look to the section that deals with basic rules for the text.
Dancing lines.
This surely has happened to you sometimes. When opening a text document in the text processor, the lines are cut where they want. There are manual returns throughout the text. This happens when a) Whoever has written the text does not know that the computer fits the width of the lines automatically, or b) the text comes from a page Web or a different format, and has placed carriage returns where they appeared originally.
There is a fast solution for this tangle. But, please, you do not correct yourselves the four hundred pages of a document line by line. You read this first. Theeasiest way to fix this is to use a program like NoteTab, which automatically solves it with a click of the mouse. I consider it essential for a person who writes or handles texts frequently. Almost all the people who I know!
Well, you say you do not have NoteTab and you want to fix it within Word, or your favourite text processor. It can be done automatically as well, but it will take some more work. You go to edit>replace. In the option Search for (it will appear a dialog box like the one of the image), you type in ^p. This character means a carriage return. Substitute it with a space in the target box. Problem solved.
But, to complicate things a bit, many people separate paragraphs with two or more returns (something you must not do, as we insist on.) Then, how to distinguish the separations between paragraphs which we want to change from those we want to keep? A possibility is to repeat the previous trick, paragraph after paragraph, and to decide what we want to change and what not. But if the document is rather long, this will be an eternal chore. It is preferable to make one double substitution. First, we suppress the multiple returns between paragraphs. Observe if they are double, triple or whatever. You go to edit>replace and type in the to look for box: ^P^P (we suppose here that the spaces are double) and in the replace with box: you write a short sequence of characters that do not appear in the document, for example the symbol of the dollar twice or thrice, $$ (evidently, if it does not appear like this in the document!)
See the figure to see the dialogue box. Now we will make the substitution within each paragraph (^p for spaces), like we did before, and finally, we will replace the $$ sequence by a single carriage return to have regular paragraphs. Solved!.
Insistimos de nuevo en que para separar los párrafos en un procesador de textos, no debe hacerse nunca con múltiples retornos. Ésta es realmente una chapuza que debe evitarse, puesto que todos los procesadores tienen una opción para controlar la separación entre párrafos, o la sangría de la primera línea: ésta es la herramienta que debe utilizarse. We repeat it: to separate paragraphs in a text processor, never use multiple returns. This is a lousy way of doing it that must be avoided, since all the processors have an option to control the separation between paragraphs, or the gutters in the first line or other lines. Always use the right tools for the job!Note Tab
It is very important to keep a version from your texts without formatting (txt). This text can be opened from any program and in different operating systems, without problems.
In order to apply the wished style to the texts (fonts, bold, cursive...) it can be made within the word processor, while you review the content.
Any text processor can save in this format (with the option save as... or export...) If we want to publish text without format directly, we can do it with the utility that includes Windows, the “notepad ”. If we use it frequently, it is a good idea to create a shortcut in the desktop or promote it to an upper branch in your programs start menu. The main limitations of the notepad of Windows are 1) it does not allow to open archives of a certain size; 2) it has miserable edition capacities. Solution: use the WordPad (also included in Windows) or a more serious text processor like Word or StarWrite, and to save like text without format (txt). But I will suggest a far better program for this. It is free and I will never get tired to recommend it, because it has saved me long time of tedious tasks and it has more benefits of those than you can imagine. I believe that I use a mini part of his options, and even so saving a truckload of work. This wonder is called NoteTab Light, and can download it for free. A program that enters the category of the essential ones. Mac users swears by their BBEdit, and there are probably quite a few good text editors, but in our opinion, NoteTab is unique and hence very recommended. Note Tab is great for arranging texts, and as an all-purpose text editor, css and xhtml editor, and more, with an unending list of good features. Extremely fast, user-friendly and robust, you should have it already.
NoteTab automatically corrects the incorrect separations between paragraphs, and many other problems when moving text from one program to another. You can extend its features with several clip libraries, and once you get used to it, it becomes your editor of choice even for web building, with its excellent multi-file operations such as search and replace, convert to and from html, tidy html, etc.
