Page VS MS Publisher

I'm not a huge Publisher fan, but it has its uses. I too used it to do brochures.. here is a link to a brochure I did up in Publisher:

http://www.cherith.ca/camps/2005Brochure.pdf

Some of the fonts we used refuse to be embedded in PDF so it'll look a little strange on your machine, but you get the idea.

I suppose I could use Pages to do something like that, but I'd shudder to think how slowly it would operate even on my 1 GHz G4 Powerbook.

I tried to switch to InDesign but I just couldn't get the hang of it quickly enough (during the 30-day Tryout ) so I just reused last year's brochure again to save time. Next year I hope to leave Publisher and redo the brochure completely using something else.

YS2003 said:

For this question, let's forget the brand name as some of us have not-so-positive perception toward MS products.

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Well, if you want honest opinions (without brand bias), then you should really not limit the choices.

First, there is no MS Publisher for Mac... given that, Publisher is a nonexistent app from my point of view.

For doing page layout on a Mac, I'm not sure that Pages is really the best choice of applications. It is a template driven app for people who don't want to come up with a layout of their own. So for that reason, Pages is below the threshold of what I would consider a page layout app.

Now, for Macs there are a number of alternatives.

My personal recommendation is Create by Stone Design. What is nice about Create is that it is not just a page layout app, it can also be used for illustrations and web design. It is running about $150.

On the lower end, there is Desktop Publisher Pro (there is also a Windows version of this app) which is very much (feature wise) like early versions of PageMaker. It is running $19.95.

I have had clients make newsletters using AppleWorks (in the drawing section). While not the best app for the task, it can make nice documents. And it comes free with consumer Macs.

As you work your way up the list of more expensive apps, you have Canvas, InDesign, Illustrator (can be used for these tasks) and QuarkXPress.

So, it is not that I don't have a positive perception towards Microsoft products in this area, it is just that there is a complete void of Microsoft products in this area.

notjustjay said:

I'm not a huge Publisher fan, but it has its uses. I too used it to do brochures.. here is a link to a brochure I did up in Publisher:

http://www.cherith.ca/camps/2005Brochure.pdf

Some of the fonts we used refuse to be embedded in PDF so it'll look a little strange on your machine, but you get the idea.

I suppose I could use Pages to do something like that, but I'd shudder to think how slowly it would operate even on my 1 GHz G4 Powerbook.

I tried to switch to InDesign but I just couldn't get the hang of it quickly enough (during the 30-day Tryout ) so I just reused last year's brochure again to save time. Next year I hope to leave Publisher and redo the brochure completely using something else.

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Nice product you have there. I used Publisher for a while to create ads for my company for the Washington Post. It required some work arounds. Though life got easier when I switched to InDesign.

The text layout functions under Publisher don't allow much room for play. With ID you could lay text layers on top of each other if you really wanted to (don't know why you would, but you could). And the integration to PDF's saves so much time and effort.

RacerX said:

First, there is no MS Publisher for Mac...

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Actually there is a program that others have mentioned in other threads here - Ragtime. I have not tried it, but it does seem to have its fans.

Chip NoVaMac said:

Actually there is a program that others have mentioned in other threads here - Ragtime. I have not tried it, but it does seem to have its fans.

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Maybe I missed something? Why quote me saying "First, there is no MS Publisher for Mac..."?

RagTime isn't by Microsoft, and it isn't Publisher.

It is another alternative, but I seem to be missing the reason for quoting me? Specially that selection of text.

Some things will always remain a mystery.


And MS Publisher from 1995 still only creates a product that's as good as a current version of Publisher. It doesn't seem to have advanced that much, judging by the Notjustjay's PDF example. Its not a personal offense to NotJustJay. Don't get me wrong. I just meant that I could have created something like that in 1995, which means that even a better version of Publisher can't help you out very much. In fact, I'm convinced that its mostly due to the skills of the user who's doing the page layout.

With Pages, even a novice can make something that looks great. That's why it stands out more than Publisher, in my opinion, because no matter what version of Publisher you use, it doesn't matter so much.

notjustjay said:

I suppose I could use Pages to do something like that, but I'd shudder to think how slowly it would operate even on my 1 GHz G4 Powerbook.

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Your processor can handle it just fine. It will not get bogged down at all. I ran Pages on a 1ghz g4 iBook with no problems at all. The only thing that may slow you down is a lack of ram in a system like that. The bottom line is ... your computer is more than adequate for Pages. Pages is much better when compared against Publisher than it is against Word. With Pages v. Publisher, Pages actually has a chance. If Pages is pitted against Word, there is no competition. As for the processor, yours has more than enough power.

RacerX said:

Maybe I missed something? Why quote me saying "First, there is no MS Publisher for Mac..."?

RagTime isn't by Microsoft, and it isn't Publisher.

It is another alternative, but I seem to be missing the reason for quoting me? Specially that selection of text.

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Sorry there. Don't see how/why you took such offense to my post. I read your comment as more general to the type of program, rather then the specific program. Since you did, I apologize to have ruffled your feathers.

One advantage of Ragtime Solo is that it's free (for non-commercial use)

Free...

Chip NoVaMac said:

...I apologize to have ruffled your feathers.

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No apology needed... I was just more curious than anything.

ldburroughs said:

Your processor can handle it just fine. It will not get bogged down at all. I ran Pages on a 1ghz g4 iBook with no problems at all. The only thing that may slow you down is a lack of ram in a system like that.

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Well, I have 512 MB in here. And I do own pages, I used it to create a few test things using the templates and I just found it to be kind of slow once you started working with lots of graphics. I'll give it a shot sometime.

As for the "shot against my design skills" -- I happily admit I have none I was trying to be simple, not blow-you-out-of-the-water amazing. But you're probably right about publisher. Even some of those elements in my brochure were hacked. Like the curved text with drop-shadow on the front panel... that's actually part of the graphic (the boat). The camp logo overlaid on top of the graphic, with image transparency, is also something I had a hard time with in Publisher (could be just me) so I did it all in Photoshop.

Have any Pages users ever used Ragtime? Because I've done some work in Ragtime, and I wouldn't exactly call it a great program. If Pages can't do any better than that, it definitely isn't worth the money.

notjustjay said:

Well, I have 512 MB in here. And I do own pages, I used it to create a few test things using the templates and I just found it to be kind of slow once you started working with lots of graphics. I'll give it a shot sometime.

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I run Pages on a G4/450 Cube. I agree, it's "kind of slow" for large documents, but hardly unusable. Turning off spell check as-you-type helps some.

I don't use MS Publisher (no Mac version), but somehow I doubt it's got the sophisticated text and graphics handling that comes with Pages courtesy of Quartz and OSX.

I've tried Ragtime (in an earlier version) and found it too complicated.