PERSONAL PRESS, lazy man's PageMaker?



Author: Kevin Savetz

Date: August, 1993

Keywords: aldus press application software review page layout
newsletter pagemaker

Text:
Aldus Personal Press is best described as the lazy man's PageMaker. It
is a page layout application that helps the user along by allowing you
to create layouts from built-in templates. For instance, rather than
having to build a newsletter from scratch -- choosing fonts and point
sizes, sizing graphics, adding jumps and so on -- Personal Press builds
it for you, based on the template of your choice. All you're supposed
to do is tell it what text and graphics to use and let Personal Press
do all the dirty work. Aldus touts Personal Press as a package to
create professional-looking publications quickly and with little
expertise -- sort of ''page layout for the rest of us.'' It is not
intended to be a high end program, or to compete with of Pagemaker.
PP includes templates (used via a function called AutoCreate) to create
newsletters, brochures, letterheads, business cards, flyers, greeting
cards, facsimile forms, invoices, calendars, labels and certificates.
If you want to create another type of document -- or you wish to depart
from the constraints of a template -- you can build your document from
scratch. For each type of document, there are multiple templates to
suit your style -- including ''traditional'' (uncomplicated, formal
documents,) ''contemporary'' (more modern than the traditional style,
but still formal,) and ''new wave'' (for bold documents, with modern
styling and large. graphics.)  Some type of documents include modern,
elegant, fun, or personal templates as well. With all the types of
templates, and erratic naming of the styles (I still don't know the
difference between ''contemporary,'' and ''traditonal'' without
checking the manual) choosing the right template can be confusing.
Personal Press tries to do too many things, and in doing so it doesn't
do everything very well. Even though the idea of creating layouts from
templates is exciting, Personal Press spreads itself too thin and
doesn't deliver. Although it can produce calendars, greetings cards and
certificates, for instance, other software exists specifically for
doing each of these things -- and those packages can offer more
functionality. While it seems like a good idea to have one application
for all these things -- as Personal Press tries to do -- in the end,
the ''core'' of each feature is there without any of the nicities you
might expect.

Case in point: if you want to print a year's worth of calendars, you
must AutoCreate each month's calendar individually. It's impossible to
automatically create calendars for a range of months. If daily, weekly,
or even annual calendars are your thing, you're out of luck because
PP's templates only do monthly calendars.
If you want graphics in any of your documents, you had better bring
your own clip art. Personal Press doesn't claim to be a clip art
repository. But if you want to make artful flyers, greeting cards and
certificates, you will need to have your own art on hand. There are
about 25 samples of clip art in various formats the PP package.
Personal Press may be perfect for a user with the occasional need to
layout a page, but it lacks the versatility needed for more complex
applications. For example, AutoCreate can't help you create a
four-column newsletter, although it will produce two- and three-column
ones.

Especially annoying problems: 5 megabytes isn't enough memory to print
a moderately complex page under system 7. (I needed to enable
background printing, select ''print,'' then quickly quit Personal Press
to free up enough memory.) Personal Press can be very slow, especially
when it is AutoCreating a document. 
Some bugs are unforgivable -- when I printed the contemporary and new
wave greeting cards on my DeskWriter 550C, what should have been snazzy
grayscale graphics backgrounds (built into PP's templates) came out as
nothing more than solid gray blotches that completely obscured the text
behind it. (Perhaps I should feel lucky, because the same cards
wouldn't even print on a friend's StyleWriter.) Another bug was
revealed when I tried to AutoCreate one style of business card --
Personal Press told me ''that function could not be completed due to an
error.'' Other business card templates worked properly, however.
Personal Press' product manager couldn't explain my problems with the
business cards, but said that the Stylewriter printing problem is a
known bug. She said that version 2.0.1 of Personal Press will be
shipping shortly to registered users.
Personal Press does offer some interesting features -- an automatic
timed save reminder (which you can turn off,) thumbnail previews of how
your document will look and AutoCreate's ''headline scan'' which tries
to pick a newsletter's headline from the beginning of the document. PP
also performs copyfitting, adjusting the font size and spacing of your
article text to best fill its space. If your article is reasonably
within the size of the space for it, copyfitting saves page layout
time. PP also includes a built-in word processor with a 100,000-word
spelling checker and a thesaurus. If you prefer to work in another word
processor, it will import the file.
The cost of Personal Press is one of its redeeming values. PP costs as
little as $98 via mail-order, compared to PageMaker's $494 for version
4.2. The documentation is very good. The user manual clearly explains
the program's functions so even layout novices will understand. A
thinner book, the AutoCreate guide, shows examples of layouts using
PP's template files. Aldus offers free technical support by telephone
(long distance to San Diego,) fax, e-mail and U.S. mail.
Personal Press version 2.0 comes on four double-density disks. It will
run on any Mac since the Mac Plus running system 6.0.3 or later.
(System 6.0.5 or newer is recommended.) It requires 2MB of RAM and a
whopping 4.8 megabytes of hard disk space. PP is System 7 savvy,
including subscribe (but not publish,) 32-bit addressing, TrueType
compatibility, and virtual memory support. PP also offers balloon help,
but some functions in the AutoCreate menus lack balloons. 
Aldus is known for offering high quality software. Given their track
record, Personal Press is surprisingly disappointing. Better luck next
version.
Available from Aldus Corp., 5120 Shoreham Place, San Diego CA 92122    
 619-558-6000

Copyright © august, 1993 by Kevin Savetz