Corel Ventura 10: Powerhouse Publishing for PCs
It was the original desktop publishing program for the IBM PC, and early users of Ventura Publisher were fierce adherents, despite the program’s certain quirkiness. Over the years, Ventura became smarter and more sophisticated, but it lost ground against the competition — PageMaker, QuarkXPress, FrameMaker, and now InDesign. Currently in the hands of Corel, the goal of Version 10 is to reverse that trend by aiming Ventura at both the creative electronic publisher and the enterprise audience who wants to repurpose XML documents.
Like its earlier incarnations, Ventura Publisher 10 is immense in both size and scope. Weighing in at 250 MB for a full install, this is not an application for dainty storage systems. If you have the space though, you’ll find a soup-to-nuts desktop publishing program that now supports XML import.
A Touch of XML
XML is the newest darling technology of the desktop publishing set. Basically, XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a system for organizing and tagging document elements (headings, tables, and so on). XML is used extensively inside organizations that have multiple authors working on the same document. That’s because the rules for style and document structure are set by the designer in the DTD (Document Type Definition), thus allowing the authors to concentrate on writing, but the final result will adhere to the formatting rules defined in the DTD.
Having said all that, while we’re enthusiastic about XML in general, we were disappointed with Ventura’s XML support. Unlike FrameMaker, which lets you create structured documents from scratch, define the elements that become part of a DTD, and work in either document or XML outline mode, Ventura merely allows you to import XML files. Thus, there’s no “round-tripping,” that is, you can’t actually edit the XML file or export it as XML. The program includes a mapping editor for translating DTD files into Ventura tags (see figure 1). If you want to fiddle with the XML source document, you need to invest in an XML authoring application such as Corel XMetaL 3. Furthermore, you can’t export Ventura documents to XML format, although you can save them as CSS or HTML files.
Figure 1: Experienced XML authors will understand how to use Publisher’s mapping editor to translate DTD rules into Ventura tags (shown here, cropped — for a larger view of this screen shot click here).
Sublime Interface
On the brighter side, we did love Ventura’s customizable interface and versatile navigator window that lets you easily zip around multiple publications; drag and drop elements between documents; and view and edit tables of contents, indexes, cross-references, markers, and page tags (like master pages in other DTP programs). From the Navigator window, you can check the state of all linked or embedded files and inspect their properties (see figure 2).
Figure 2: The cool Navigator palette shows you all the elements in your publication in a neat hierarchical structure.
Tags, or styles, are managed from a Tag window, a beautifully designed palette that lets you: override an attribute (such as font size); import tags from another document; create and modify styles; and apply tags to a range of selected objects (which do not have to be contiguous as in other DTP programs) via drag and drop (see figure 3). Ventura supports both paragraph and character styles, as well as table styles (as in FrameMaker), but goes one better with frame tags. So, for example, if you have several types of containers for text or graphics, you can use frame tags to make them consistent.
Figure 3: Ventura provides superb control over document elements such as frames and tables.
We found an amazing range of functionality in Ventura. For example, there’s a neat equation editor that includes lots of presets, should you need to insert Euler’s formula into your document, and you can place functions in tables, just as with a spreadsheet application. Stealing a little thunder from Corel Photo-Paint (part of the CorelDraw Graphics Suite, Ventura includes a useful selection of features for image editing, including 50 special-effects filters and the ability to set color mode and resolution (see figure 4).
Figure 4: You don’t need an external image editor to tweak your images in Ventura.
Perfect Output
One of the reasons that Ventura fell out of favor with desktop publishers was its cranky output. Before PDF became the de facto standard, final files were sent to service bureaus in EPS format — and Ventura’s EPS format often caused the typesetting machines to balk. Version 10 fully supports PDF output and you don’t need to purchase Acrobat Distiller to use this feature, as you do with QuarkXPress (see figure 5). You have full control over all the output parameters — compression, downsampling, bookmark/thumbnail embedding, job tickets; color management; and prepress options such as crop marks and calibration bars.
Figure 5: You can control all aspects of PDF output from a single dialog box..
We ran a sample PDF through Enfocus’s PitStop preflight program and found no problems. To ensure that all your output is pristine, Ventura has a wonderful built-in preflight engine that catches common (and not so common) errors such as RGB and CMYK in the same document (see figure 6). You don’t have to worry overmuch about color shifts either. Version 10 uses industry standard ColorSync technology, including ICC profiles, for color management. Users of other Corel products such as CorelDraw will see the same intuitive color management dialog box that helps you set up color management profiles in plain English, rather than technical jargon.
Figure 6: You can customize the preflight engine to catch specific types of output errors.
Ventura is remarkably versatile when it comes to importing files — it can handle close to 100 different text and image formats. And in version 10, text styles (for example, from a Microsoft Word file) are retained with all the formatting attributes of the original document. However, you can choose to override or ignore the styles in the imported text.
Conclusion
For such a typographically savvy program, it’s surprising that Ventura 10 doesn’t support OpenType and, even worse, cannot interface with a Windows IME (Input Method Editor, used to enter foreign language characters). This is the only Windows program we’ve encountered that can’t do that (even humble Notepad supports IME), which means Ventura cannot be used to set two-byte language fonts such as Japanese. One other quibble: There’s no easy way to set up a simple numbered list, although there are ample provisions for numbering figures, tables, pages, and sections.
Like other Corel products, Ventura ships with extra utilities — a database publisher that integrates with the central application; a barcode wizard, a screen-capture program, and 1500 fonts in both TrueType and Type 1 format — that make this program a good value at $699. We think Ventura is the most flexible of desktop publishing programs — it has ample long document features but doesn’t neglect high-end prepress features such as sophisticated typography and color management.
 |
Ventura 10 very definitely does numbered lists. Personally, I find Ventura’s method vastly preferable to the more common approach of treating the number as a bullet. In Ventura, in the Chapter Properties dialog on the AutoNumber tab, you specify the number of levels and the tag associated with each level. Ventura automatically creates a separate paragraph and tag for the number.
Not only does this approach provide more consistent results, it opens up wide possibilities for formatting. (n addition, you don’t have to contend with the system insisting on creating number bullets any time you begin a paragraph with a number.)
As for Framemaker’s XML “roundtripping”, everything I’ve read indicates that under the hood it isn’t nearly as functional or usable as it appears on the surface. Perhaps Ventura’s “single tripping” isn’t so far behind after all. :>)
Once a worthy page layout program, it is now abandoned by its makers and support for it is negligible at best. I have yet to find a third-party support book for Version 10. I would emphasize right HERE that this program is NOT for novices!
True, all of the ‘features’ may have cost $10,000 extra for Quark Express – in 1998 – but today these features (and many, many others) are standard in both Quark Express and InDesign, which are both widely used and supported. It is more stable than Quark 4.0, I will give it that – but Quark last put that out in 1999. Even a modern version of MS Word can create a business report that is equal to Ventura’s capabilities.
Like Corel’s other offerings, many commonly used features are buried within menus. The more useful panels, which control the frames and tables, are buried in the menus, and cover a good section of the screen – and the portions of the work you are adjusting. If you need to adjust another part of the page – close the panel, and open it up again. All very tedious and time-consuming compared to other programs.
Another annoyance is the “Tags” – in every other program, style sheets. If you need to bold one word, using the standard “click the B icon” the entire tag for paragraphs gets change to reflect that one minor change. So you have to create a new paragraph or character style sheet EVERY time you want to make a minor variation to text – even to see if it “works”. The other text handling features are rudimentary at best.
In short, this, like many other Corel products is guaranteed to waste endless hours of time and will have you tearing your hair out by the end of any project exceeding three pages. Stick with the real players – Adobe, Microsoft and Quark – if you want to get any real creative, stable work done.
_DO NOT BUY_