Jonathan: Yeah, I remember the days of the floppy. Back in the early days, when making up newspaper ads, we didn't have a good laser printer at the office. (Those 300 dpi monsters were a couple of grand...who could ever afford to get that kind of quality?!) I had to lay out the ads (on a Mac SE, no less) then copy them to the floppy and head out for one of the many copy/printing shops that used to be around the city to print it out.
And it wasn't until recently I decided to find out who Aldus Manutius was. Festina lente! I didn't realize what you said about Xpress was the reason it took over, but it now makes sense why there was so much hoopla about PM 5's addition of style sheets. Until the ticket job I mentioned before, I never had any need for style sheets, but it sure makes life easier. And I can see why Adobe abandoned PM. From what you've said about InDesign, it makes more corporate sense for them to move ahead with it than try to retool an already bloated program. As to OSX, I am a big supporter, but I was never in a rush to upgrade. Just like the OS7 to 8 upgrade and the OS8 to 9 upgrades, I was reluctant to take it up immediately. Like a brand new model car, I felt it was wiser to let the bugs fall out. Plus, the hardware I was using ran painfully slow with 10.0. It wasn't until last Sept that I bit the bullet and upgraded my hardware. I love 10.3 and I'm anxious to move into 10.4 once the finances come back around. Of course, by then, we may be up to OSXII or XIII. (Are there enough cat names?) One of the reasons I went nearly whole hog into OSX was iLife. I needed to move into video production and iMovie and iDVD were the obvious ways to go. I couldn't live without either one of them now. But, and this is the but I use on my friends who are the "OSX Snobs." There's a reason OS9 is included with OSX...there are people out there who need it. And in a brilliant marketing/programming stroke, Apple made sure that the transition would be easy for those people who couldn't afford the hundreds (thousands?) of dollars needed to have full OSX capabilities. And, happily, PM 6.5 runs incredibly well and incredibly fast in Classic mode on my Quicksilver 800. As to Audacity, I've used it, but haven't really embraced it totally. I've also used Amadeus, which has some features Audacity doesn't have and it doesn't crash when setting prefs. For the high-end editing I use Pro Tools, but that's not that often, thank heaven. The only thing I've ever wanted in the multi-track editors is that they incorporate drag & drop for the individual audio samples. Pro Tools does this, but at a pretty high price. But on a regular basis, I do 90% of my editing on my upgraded G3 MT. It came with RCA audio in and out jacks so I use it to record raw audio. I use Macromedia's old Sound Edit 16 combined with Sound Studio for some of the tweaks. (Sound Edit is a holdover from my old LCII, in fact.) If I could get high-quality audion into my Quicksilver, I'd use it. But once again, I have the hardware that works and that works for me. And yes, you're right, OSX is very stable, but sometimes I miss the crashes. There were days that was the only way I would be able to take a break. And as for digging up a Mac Classic, don't bother...I've got my trusty SE/30 sitting right here, running 6.0.8 and acting as an external floppy drive. Nice to have that 16mHz of raw computing power at my fingertips. And nothing runs the old World Builder games better! rob Jonathan Fletcher wrote: > On Sep 14, 2005, at 5:15 PM, Rob Kersting <laffmakr at aye.net> wrote: > >> I first started using it in 1988 (remember those days, guys...the >> entire >> program would fit on a floppy) and used it for brochure and poster >> layouts. > > > With PM 1.0, the system, the app AND the documents all fit on one > [400K] floppy. I remember having to upgrade my original 128K to 512 K > (RAM) Mac and upgrade to an 800K floppy drive to be able to run the > hot, new Pagemaker 1.2. What a disk hog! > > ;;-) > > (Hard drive? We don't need no steekeeng hard drive! Until years > later, anyway. FIVE MEG hard drives were $2 GRAND back then!) > >> >> For some reason, however, newspapers turned to Quark for their layout >> needs. I've only dabbled with Quark, so I don't understand the >> differences, but Pagemaker always seemed easier to me. I've used it for > > > Pagemaker was way better at free-form layout. Drag something here, > click there and type. It was easy. XPress, OTOH, was much better at > documents that needed to be consistent throughout. Style sheets, > multiple master pages and that box-y layout structure were way better > if you were in a production environment. That is why design agencies > and publications went that way, big time. It also did credible color > separations way sooner. > > Pagemaker just was not as powerful, but there is no one who will > argue against the fact that it was way easier to get started in page > layout and create a document in Pagemaker. I used to create > everything in Pagemaker. (It was a BIG improvement over MacDraw! I > actually created brochures for customers in MacDraw. Whoa.) > > That free-form unstructured approach to page layout got many people > in trouble, though. It allowed you to create some horrendously sloppy- > looking documents. In fact, Pagemaker takes MORE work to get a > document looking even and consistent than anything else, except maybe > MS Publisher. > > Then someone handed me a copy of QXP 2.1 and I had what an old > professor of mine used to call "a religious experience." I still had > to use Pagemaker for a lot of things, but once I learned how XPress > did things, I never looked back--and was far more productive for it. > I always prefer to have software that helps me rather than fights me. > > Kinda like why I use a Mac! > > ::-) > > And then InDesign came along with its Leaping Quantum. But, you're > right: not everyone needs that much power. (So why do we buy V-8s > anyway?) > > >> brochures, posters and flyers around the club. I had a template with >> our >> company letterhead and I could print out letters as needed without >> using >> the pre-printed stock. Back in the 90s, I was using it to fax out form >> letters and promotional information along with my trusty USR FaxModem. >> Once or twice a year I have to print out a number of uniquely-numbered >> and designed event tickets. That took a couple of days for the layout, >> but I reuse the template and all I have to change is the date. >> Pagemaker >> wors best for this because of it's simplistically-accurate layout >> capabilities. >> >> And after 20 years, I understand why it's nickname is "Ragemaker." But >> every app has it's ups and downs. >> >> The reason I responded to the comment was that too often people condemn >> classic apps because they're not the "latest and greatest." Everything >> has to be the most up-to-date to make them happy and that thinking is >> too narrow for me. If an app works, use it. From a purely economic >> side, >> I can't see putting a few hundred down for the new stuff if the old >> stuff still does everything I need. I still use an old OS9 only audio >> application because it works great. It will never be upgraded to OSX >> and >> I really don't care. Why? Because it works. > > > Audacity is great, free and works in OS X. You're not much enthralled > with OS X, are you? > >> >> At my old job (which I just left, July 29) I used a PowerMac 7300/200, >> OS 8.6 with two internal drives, an upgraded ethernet card and an old >> "MacWindows" card for the few times I needed to access the evil empire >> (that's a great story in itself!). It was a little slow, but it >> worked fine. >> >> My point is, get off the chauvinistic thinking that classic apps are >> bad. Just because something is older doesn't mean it's worthless. >> Why do >> you think the Street Rod show is such a big draw? I'd take a 67 Mustang >> Conv over any of these junkers they're making today. > > > Rob, I have to take you to task for an, um, inadequate, analogy. > Maybe I can dig up a Mac Classic or something for you to do your work > on. Think about it: There is very little original equipment on those > street rods. They resemble the originals in vague shape only. It's > like taking my 1984 original 128K Mac, "chopping" the case, adding > curvy body extensions, dropping in a G5 and attaching a 23 inch > cinema display to it. Oh, and painting the case a high-gloss candy > apple red. > > BTW, there were a lot of really clunky Mustangs on the road in 67, > too. They may have had sex appeal, but they were NOT very well built. > You still want to rebuild a cheesy two-barrel carburetor every couple > years? Hmm, to each his own. That restored '67 convertible you want > probably has very little of the original sheet metal and probably > emits more pollutants than a Hummer--unless they replaced the engine > with a newer fuel-injected one. > > The point you made correctly was that not everyone needs as much > power as QuarkXPress and Indesign (and for that matter even a dual- > processor G5) have to give. That's why Apple makes Minis. AND dual- > processor G5 towers. > > Many might do very well with Pagemaker and Classic. But after you've > gotten familiar with an OS that almost NEVER crashes, it's hard to go > back. I used to brag that my office full of Macs only crashed once or > twice a day each, rather than the several times a day that a PC did. > Now my 'Book gets restarted only when a software install insists on > it. It typically goes WEEKS or even MONTHS between restarts. NO one > can say that about any flavor of the Classic OS. > > I guess that I why I am "chauvinistic" about OS X. It does the job > like NOTHING else can. Just like I tell my PC-using friends and > relatives: "It's time to switch." > > Yes, I guess SOME things ARE worth less (sometimes even worthless) > because they are older. > > (Quite the opposite with people, though, eh, Marta?) > > If Adobe thought that Pagemaker still had legs, they'd have upgraded > it to OS X and would still be selling it. > >> >> rob > > > jonathan > -- > Jonathan Fletcher > jfletch at newmediaconstco.com > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be September 27 at Pitt Academy, 6010 Preston Highway. > | The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> > | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup> > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be September 27 at Pitt Academy, 6010 Preston Highway. | The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
