Serif PagePlus

PPX4 • PPX3 • PPX2 • PP11 • PP10 • PP9 • SE1.0 • Feature Comparison

Aug 2009 • May 2008 • Feb 2007 • Oct 2005 • Oct 2004 • Nov 2003 • Feb 2005

PagePlus X4

Released 3rd August 2009

The latest release of this Serif™ flagship product delivers further enhancements to an already very powerful DTP program. I am sure that it will be a popular upgrade.

Anchored Objects • Text Improvements • Interface Improvement • PDF Import
Dynamic Guides • Stroke Alignment • Polygon Operations • Photo Lab
Picture Frames and Borders • Table Formats • Resource Manager
Word and OpenOffice Import • Conclusions • Recommendations

Anchored Objects

Long awaited and often requested is the ability to use inline frames and tables as well as graphics. Images, Tables, Text Frames, Artistic Text, or groups can be anchored relative to the page, page margins, frame, column, or character.

Text Improvements

• Adaptive Letter Spacing — This new feature improves text justification by con­den­sing or expanding the spacing between characters wherever necessary. Not only does justified text look better, copyfit is improved by as much as 5%
• Finer control over Tracking and Kerning, now in 0.1% increments. In previous versions the 1% increment gave only three or four usable values. To change manual kerning for artistic text, use the slider on the character tab.
• INITIAL WORDS — Format the initial words of a paragraph with Caps, Small Caps, Bold, a different font etc. Very useful in conjunction with Drop Capitals, or without them.
• The enter key now turns off numbered and bulleted lists if the last line is blank.
• The bucket tool can be used to join text frames and create new frames. Click on the overflow icon, then drag with the bucket tool to create a linked frame.
• Revamped default text styles palette to allow different default paragraph styles for different types of text object.
• Improved Table Quick Fill for European languages.
• Show·Special·Characters » » Show/hide·non-printing·characters·such·as·line, column,·frame,·and·pagebreaks,·date·fields·and/or·spaces·in·layout·view.¶
• Insert a zero width space to add optional line-breaks without the hyphen.

Interface Improvements

• Document Tabs — The new Publication Tabs toolbar can be shown automatically if more than one document is open, or left permanently shown or hidden. Tabs can be arranged in any order by dragging, and closed from a context-sensitive menu. The toolbar can be docked vertically on the side of the window, docked at the top or bottom, or left floating.
• The Text Styles Palette now includes a field to show any direct formatting that has been applied on top of the current paragraph style.
• Saving defaults has been made simpler. A dialogue with four checkboxes offers a choice of which defaults to save: document and object defaults, text styles, object styles, and Table/Calendar formats.
• The shortcut customisation dialogue now shows a warning if a shortcut is already used in another context.
• The snapping icon on the hintline has a popup menu to select from the most popular snapping options.
• Rotated Tables can be unrotated for easier editing by double-clicking just outside the resizing handles with the pointer tool. Double-click again after editing to reinstate the original rotation.
• Starting page numbers can be entered as Roman numerals or Alpha characters, not only as integers.

PDF Import

Imported PDF documents have fewer text blocks and greater accuracy. Optimise for accuracy or for text flow. Crop to page area leaving registration marks on the pasteboard. Embed fonts to allow document editing if permitted. With improvements to the manual flowing of text between frames, PagePlus is now a viable choice for editing PDF files if the source document is no longer available.

Dynamic Guides

Easier alignment and positioning of objects using dynamic guides. Align objects to each other, to the page margin or page edges. This is a huge time-saver when laying out pages. Objects just snap into place where they are most likely to be needed. Nudge is also customisable to position objects more accurately.

Stroke Alignment

Alignment of objects to the inside, outside, or centre of strokes. Lines and borders can be inside, outside, or centred on the object’s fill. The screen shot shows a 0.5” square with a 50 % transparent yellow fill, a 6 point cyan border behind the fill, mitred joins, and inner, centre, and outer stroke alignment.

Photo Lab

An image adjustment studio with Quick Artistic effects, adjustment filters, and special effects. This powerful new feature can almost replace PhotoPlus, though you will still need PhotoPlus if you want to import RAW images or for extensive retouching and painting of images.

Filters are non-destructive — by default the original image is stored along with any changes made. This greatly increases the file size though, so you may prefer to disable the option in raster effects to save adjusted bitmaps. This will also speed up document loading.

Polygon Operations

More versatile shapes can be created by combining or intersecting existing shapes, e.g. a quick arrow and a quick donut like this.

Picture Frames and Borders

Create custom borders from bitmaps. A wide selection of artistic picture frames is provided, but you can define your own, and they will be shown at the top of the list. The 1” border on the right was applied to a text frame on an A4 page. Mouse-over the image to see how it looks at 0.75”.

The Picture Frames can be found in the Gallery studio tab. Just drag them onto the page and then insert a picture, or drag and drop them onto a picture to add the border to the picture.

To add them to a text frame, table or Quick Shape, open the Line and Border dialogue from the Format menu, and select a border from the drop list. From this dialogue you can define the border’s width, the edges to apply it to, and whether to scale it with the object.

To define a custom border, create a suitable graphic like the one below with patterns that will repeat on the sides and top, and corners that are used only once. Import the image into the line and border dialogue, and open the widths dialogue to define where the image will be split. Drag the lines to define the areas that will repeat and those that will not. If you want the centre to be drawn too, check the “Draw Centre” option on the border dialogue. I used an image of about 1800 x 1200 pixels @ 300 dpi, but 1200 x 800 pixels would probably have been good enough — 96 dpi was not.

Table Formats

Table and Calendar Autoformat Editor — Create calendar and table formats to apply to any calendar or table. Define table header and footer rows, header and footer columns, and repeating rows/columns. Apply fonts, fills, transparency, and borders as part of the cell definition.

This custom format for a Year Planner has a Header row for the year and title, another Header row (Caption) for the days of the week, a Header Column for the months, and footers for other details. The Weekdays and Saturdays/Sundays repeat, with different cell formatting, until the footer column. The month row repeats until the footer row.

Resource Manager

More flexible management of resources. The picture properties dialogue has been replaced. Instead the Resource Manager opens showing a thumbnail preview of the picture and details about it.

Images can be exported or replaced from the resource manager. Linked files can be embedded, and embedded files can be made linked. To locate the file in the document, double-click the asset name or click on the locate button. Sort document assets by filename, size, etc., by clicking on the column headers.

Word and Open Office Import

Import OpenOffice and Word Docx documents even without either program installed. Import most text formatting, footnotes, graphics, tables with formatting, index marks, and paragraph styles.

Conclusions

This upgrade is well worth having. There is something for everyone. Several powerful new features, greater ease of use, and numerous tweaks and bug fixes that make the program more stable and robust. Authors of long books will still search in vain for cross-references, or footnote continuation leaders, but OpenOffice and Word import are very powerful additions that they will find invaluable. Index marks and footnotes can be imported from Word or OpenOffice Writer. Serif™ deliver great value for money as usual, but they continue to neglect the needs of short-sighted users for larger fonts and bigger icons. See how tiny the text labels are in PhotoLab.

Recommendations After Installation

• Autocorrect entries are still very limited. This is easy to fix — just download my zip file and copy it to %AppData%\Serif\PagePlus\14.0\Data\ (Important: Do not unzip it; just copy the ZIP file).
• Optical Justification (and hung punctuation) has been spoiled for those who do use it due to pressure from those who do not use it. The outdent values have been reduced where they should not have been. This is easy to fix. Edit your text styles and update the program defaults. These are my recommended values: “ ” " ‘ ’ ' , . (100%), ATVWY (20%), OC (10%). The default values for hyphen, en-dash, and em-dash have been improved (75%, 50%, and 25% respectively). These suggested values should be about right for standard body text fonts like Times New Roman, Garamond, or Palatino, but may not be right for other fonts.
• Disable “Allow for Text Advances” in all paragraph text styles, especially body text styles. Edit your style sheet and save the defaults. Format, Text Style Palette, Modify, Paragraph, Alignment and Spacing, Allow for Text Advances. Then Tools, Save Defaults, and make sure that “Text Styles” is checked.
• Create a custom keyboard profile. Go to Tools, Options, User Interface, Shortcuts, and add a new profile. Modify any shortcuts you want for each program context, and save the profile for future use. Make a backup copy of the profile data, which is in %AppData%\Serif\PagePlus\14.0\Accelerators\ To save yourself some time, download my custom Keyboard Profile and copy it to your Accelerators folder, then select it in Options. The shortcuts are shown on the menus.
• Customise the Studios to suit your needs. Set the Option, User Interface, UI Settings, Autoexpand On Full Bar.
• Customise the Toolbars. If you have a monitor resolution higher than 1024x768, try moving the toolbars from the left side to the top of the window. This gives quicker access to the Studios and reduces mouse movement.

• There is space for a floating Studio tab on top of the menu bar, and a short custom toolbar in line with the context-sensitive toolbar can be used for frequently used commands. Remove any commands that you seldom use and add those that you use frequently. I have added: Update text style, undo/redo, convert to picture, convert to curves, crop to shape, and export as picture.
• Uninstall all of the fonts that you don’t use. PagePlus comes with a load of fonts, many of which are used by the design templates, but if you don’t use them, they just slow you down when selecting fonts. Get a font manager like MainType if you have a lot of fonts.
• Edit the HowTo studio style sheets — default.css and default_ns.css. These are found in C:\Program Files\Serif\PagePlus\X4\Help\Help2057\ The default style sheets use 8 point Tahoma for body text and 7.5 point Tahoma for popup notes. If you have eagle eyes, then that’s fine, but most human beings are more comfortable with 10 point of 12 point body text. Make a copy of the style sheets for backup, then search and replace using a text editor to increase font sizes by 125% or 150% to suit your needs (or just save my versions from the above links).
• Bookmark the Tutorials. The Learning Centre on the Startup Wizard suffers from the same problem as the HowTo tab — the text is too small for normal people to read. From your internet browser, browse to the tutorial folders: C:\Program Files\Serif\PagePlus\X4\Tutorials\UK2057\PDFs\Basics, …Design, and …Projects, and bookmark each PDF Tutorial file. You can open them using a PDF plugin or your preferred PDF Viewer. You can now turn off the Startup Wizard. If you do need it again, from the File menu, select “New from Startup Wizard.”

PagePlus X3

Released 19th May 2008

New Features: Logo Studio • Image Cutout Studio • Serif Metafiles
Improved EPS Import • Table Improvements • Interface Improvements
Customised Menus • Keyboard Shortcuts

The previous release of PagePlus offered some powerful new features and the long awaited ability to customise the keyboard. One of the biggest changes was invisible to the average user — the file format now uses an XML container format similar that used by OpenOffice. This means that future editions of PagePlus will be able to save files that can be opened with PPX3. In the unlikely event that files become corrupted it will also be easier to salvage the content. You can make use of this fact to edit index entries (currently not possible within PagePlus) using find and replace in a text editor.

Logo Studio

The popular, but outdated LogoPlus has been replaced by Logo Studio. Users can edit any group of objects as a Logo within PagePlus, using an alternate interface focused on logo creation. The Logo Studio has its own customisable toolbars, studio tabs, guidelines, and a HowTo tab to help new users learn how to create logos. A wide range of predesigned logos provide the artistically challenged with some design ideas to get them started.

Image Cutout Studio

Any photograph can be edited within PagePlus to remove its background. The intelligent mask discard and keep brushes in the Cutout Studio are faster and easier to use than other  magic wand tools I have used. Even the most intricate backgrounds can be removed quite easily by adjusting the tolerance and size of the brush. Many image backgrounds take just a few strokes of the brush to remove. Zooming and Panning with a scroll-wheel mouse is just as easy as in the main PagePlus window. There is also a zoom slider on the status line with a zoom to fit icon.

The discarded (transparent) background area of the original image can be shown, or replaced with a hash grid or solid background colour, or the discarded and kept areas can be shown as red and green tinted areas. The HowTo help studio explains each step of the process, and can be hidden if no longer needed. The final result can be output as an Alpha-edged bitmap, or as a Vector cropped bitmap.

Serif Metafiles

This new graphic format created by Serif will allow much easier transfer of images and designs between future Serif applications. Serif Metafiles with an *.smf extension can contain text, vector, and bitmap data. High quality is retained while the file size is much smaller than a comparable Windows Metafile.

Improved EPS Import

PagePlus can now rasterize EPS files so that they can now be previewed in the document and output to any printer. They can also be exported as Serif Metafiles.

Table Improvements

A clever innovation is resizing tables by dragging. Instead of using menus and dialogues to add table rows and columns, one can now drag a tab at the top right or bottom left corners of the table to add and remove columns or rows. New columns and rows are the same size as the adjacent ones, and the text cursor is automatically repositioned in the first new cell. When removing rows and columns in this way only empty rows and columns are removed, so you cannot inadvertently lose any data. This new feature is a huge time saver for working with tables.

Each Row/Column header label has a context menu button and the header labels move automatically to remain in view if part of a table is currently out of view. Usability is never lost, even when working with full page tables.

Tables now support absolute cell references with the same $ notation used by other spreadsheets.

Table cells accept thousands separators as input, but they become a field that can only be edited in the spreadsheet toolbar. To edit it directly in the cell the only way is to retype the whole figure.

Double tables lines can now be made to intersect correctly by setting the line cap ending to extended. Thick/thin and thin/thick line styles do not work correctly yet, and fills extend to the centre of the line style, so there is still room for improvement in the next version of PagePlus.

Interface Improvements

The pasteboard colour can be changed for Web or Print views, and the guideline colour can be set for each layer in a document.

The number of files listed as Recent Documents on the File menu can be increased from the default of four up to a maximum of sixteen. The list can be cleared by reducing the option to zero.

Perhaps the most significant improvement for many users will be the enhanced interface customisation. This is similar to WebPlus X2. On a 1280 x 1024 display it is possible to fit all of the most useful toolbar icons and menus into just two rows. The context-sensitive toolbar will change in length depending on the object selected, so arrange the layout with a text frame selected as illustrated below. Moving all of the toolbars to the top makes access to the studios at the sides much faster. You can also turn off the hintline to gain fast access to the media bar at the bottom.

I have added a workspace toolbar with undo/redo and align functions to keep at the top right corner of the interface. This is the most frequently accessed area of the work space for me. My Windows taskbar is on autohide at the top of the desktop, so my system tray icons are also in that corner. Keeping the most frequently used controls closely clustered reduces mouse movement and speeds up work flow.

Customised Menus

In earlier versions of PagePlus one could create custom toolbars and add icons, but PPX3 adds the ability to customise the main menus, and one can add toolbar icons to the menu bar. With a little effort, users can create a very compact interface with just the tools that they need most often. Illustrated is a custom graphics menu, with a custom button for the Acquire function. Images can be imported to use as button icons and larger images are automatically resized to 16 x 16 pixels. A button editor is included too for those who like everything to look like it belongs. Adding this menu makes space on the other menus that are becoming too long as PagePlus adds more features with every version.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Custom shortcuts can be assigned in different contexts: menus and toolbars, text editing, Logo Studio, Write Plus, Image Cutout Studio, BookPlus, Print Preview, and Send Mail. A side-effect has been the removal of some of the Ctrl Alt combinations from earlier versions for inserting special characters. There is no option yet to assign individual Unicode characters to shortcuts so I have created a Windows PagePlus keyboard to circumvent this problem because I need lots of accented characters and some special symbols. Please refer to the linked thread on the Serif forum for the latest version, to comment, or make requests for enhancements of this keyboard. Note that this is a Windows keyboard, not a customised PagePlus keyboard setup, so it can be used in any Windows application. It is called the Pageplus keyboard because it was designed primarily for use in PagePlus.

PagePlus X2

Released 19th February 2007

PagePlus X2 doesn’t run on older versions of Windows. You will need to upgrade to Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows Vista to install this upgrade. As usual, old documents can be opened in the new version, but new documents created in PPX2 cannot be opened in older versions of PagePlus.

Serif™ offer fantastic ease of use and power for those on a limited budget. Its graphics handling and creative design tools are superb. Text handling continues to improve, though you may find it best to use a word-processor before importing text for the layout and design stage. The lack of keyboard customisation or any macro language make PPX2 less than ideal for editing long books, but Spell-checking and Proof-reading tools are included, and find and replace is powerful, yet easy to use. Tables have improved, with sorting of rows, better control of resizing, faster calculations, and quick fill of text in all supported languages. A few new spreadsheet functions have been added, but unlike word-processors, tables are limited to a single page.

PagePlus 11

Released 4th October 2005

This version added two major new features: PDF forms and PDF import. The latter is a feature found in very few programs. Publishers of magazines and newspapers will find it invaluable as they can ask customers to supply Advertisements in PDF format, and place them without any reformatting.

Another big change is to the user interface. Docked or floating studio tabs are well implemented making it easy to arrange the interface as one likes. These tabs replace the Change Bar from earlier versions. The paragraph style palette, however, is not included, and the spell-checker could have been made to dock in the studio tab too.

The table feature is still far from perfect, and has one serious bug — formulae ignore figures containing commas. If you type £1,234 and add it to £100, you get £100. To use thousand separators, remember to set the option in number format. This bug is fixed in later versions.

The tutorials are now PDF files with a slick but superfluous Flash interface. The HTML tutorials provided with PP10 were quicker to load and easier to use.

Along with the Open Saved Work browser, this trend towards beauty of form and away from practicality of function detracts from the value of PagePlus. Too many hours of programming effort has been wasted on cosmetics rather than fixing the underlying code controlling text formatting and the user interface. The UI should be simplified if possible, reducing the number of keystrokes or mouse-clicks that one needs to use.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

Since PP11 failed to deliver for my multi-lingual needs. I now use Open Office for my books or any other work that needs Unicode. However, most users will not be disappointed. These versions offer a plethora of powerful features combined with relative ease of use. Don’t expect to master PagePlus without some help though. Unless you’re an avid reader of help files, manuals, and tutorials, you will need to visit the Serif Forum to get the best out of these powerful programs.

PagePlus 10

Released 18th October 2004

PagePlus 10 has been removed from the comparison table to make room for PagePlus X4. If you’re looking for a cheap older version then PagePlus 11 is a better choice due to its PDF import capabilities.

PagePlus 9

Released November 2003

This is still one of the best versions of PagePlus. Fast, stable, and easy to use, it has most of the features that you will need. At £10 it cannot be beaten for value.

PagePlus SE 1.0

Released Feb 2005

I use Serif PagePlus for my personal correspondence, business cards, books, booklets, calendars, PDF files, brochures, CD covers, tickets, and posters. For most publications beyond simple text editing (for which I use Jarte) that don’t need Unicode, PagePlus is my first choice.

The free version, PagePlus SE 1.0, is a cut-down version of PP9, missing some key features like PDF Output and Web Publishing mode. It has fewer graphic import filters, but the most important formats are supported. The Free Serif Software Website is beautifully laid out, so for the details I can do little better than point you to Serif's own descriptions of what their software can do.

Why Use PagePlus SE?

DTP vs Word Processing

This software is totally free. You can use it as long as you like without upgrading. To download it, you must register your email address, and Serif will send you promotional emails offering discounted upgrades of PagePlus and other Serif products until you unsubscribe.

What’s the catch? Why do Serif give away such good software for free? Because once you have used it, and seen what it can do, you will realise that the price of the upgrade to the full package is fantastic value for money, whether you compare it to budget DTP software like MS Publisher, or to professional products like PageMaker, InDesign, and Quark Express.

For free software, this is about as good as it gets. Open Office is also an excellent product, but for DTP tasks, PagePlus offers greater graphics power and ease of use.

Feature Comparison

All versions of PagePlus have so many features it would be impossible to list them all. The chart is divided into sections: basic features found in all products and those found in each later versions. The PagePlus 10 and 11 columns have been removed to make space for PPX4 as they are not widely available. PP9 is still available and is recommended for its PDF output, which the free version lacks.

Price

Free

£10

£20

£30

£80

Feature

PPSE

PP9

PPX2

PPX3

PPX4

Paragraph Styles

•

•

•

•

•

Master Pages

•

•

•

•

•

Spell-checking and manual hyphenation

•

•

•

•

•

Stories flow through text frames

•

•

•

•

•

Folded Publications: brochures, booklets

•

•

•

•

•

Tiled Publications: Posters and Banners

•

•

•

•

•

Free Rotation: frames, graphics, and tables

•

•

•

•

•

Artistic text

•

•

•

•

•

Tables for layout

•

•

•

•

•

Import BMP GIF JPG TIF

•

•

•

•

•

Features New in PP9

Feature

PPSE

PP9

PPX2

PPX3

PPX4

Publish as PDF

×

•

•

•

•

Web Publishing Mode

×

•

•

•

•

Artistic text on a curve

×

•

•

•

•

Automated Drop Capitals

×

•

•

•

•

Auto-hyphenation

×

•

•

•

•

Table of Contents and Indexing

×

•

•

•

•

Table formulae

×

•

•

•

•

Mail Merge

×

•

•

•

•

Import TGA PCD RAS PCT IMG DIB FPX WPG

×

•

•

•

•

Import DXF DRW DWG CGM WMF EMF HGL EPS

×

•

•

•

•

Export BMP GIF JPG PCX PNG TIF IMG TGA FPX RAS

×

•

•

•

•

Export WMF

×

•

•

•

•

Features New in PP10

Feature

PPSE

PP9

PPX2

PPX3

PPX4

Photo Merge

×

×

•

•

•

Layers

×

×

•

•

•

Unicode Support

×

×

•

•

•

Find and Replace Formatting

×

×

•

•

•

Master Documents (Book Plus)

×

×

•

•

•

Automatic Footnotes/Endnotes

×

×

•

•

•

Features New in PP11

Feature

PPSE

PP9

PPX2

PPX3

PPX4

Import/Open PDF

×

×

•

•

•

Create PDF Forms

×

×

•

•

•

Import Database and Excel Spreadsheet

×

×

•

•

•

Rotation of text in table cells

×

×

•

•

•

Edit in Photo Plus

×

×

•

•

•

Multilingual Spell-checking: Danish, Dutch, English UK/US/Canada, Finnish, French, German, German (pre-reform), Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish.

×

×

•

•

•

Features New in PPX2

Feature

PPSE

PP9

PPX2

PPX3

PPX4

Publish as PDF Slideshow

×

×

•

•

•

Publish as HTML Email

×

×

•

•

•

Connector Lines for Charts

×

×

•

•

•

Detect and Install Missing Fonts

×

×

•

•

•

Trimmed Preview Mode

×

×

•

•

•

Unicode Text Output

×

×

•

•

•

Unicode Text Spell-check

×

×

•

•

•

Multiple Text Selections

×

×

•

•

•

Leading as Percentage of Point Size

×

×

•

•

•

Multilevel Bullets and Numbering

×

×

•

•

•

Optical Justification (Margin Alignment)

×

×

•

•

•

Text Selection Highlighting

×

×

•

•

•

Autohide Studio Tabs

×

×

•

•

•

Dock Studio and Toolbars on Any Side

×

×

•

•

•

Improved Instant 3D

×

×

•

•

•

Improved Line Endings and Arrowheads

×

×

•

•

•

Sticky Guides

×

×

•

•

•

Live Calendars for Any Year

×

×

•

•

•

Sort Table Rows/Columns, and Text

×

×

•

•

•

Improved Table Resizing

×

×

•

•

•

Additional Spreadsheet Functions

×

×

•

•

•

Search Documents in Windows Vista

×

×

•

•

•

Features New in PPX3

Feature

PP SE

PP9

PPX2

PPX3

PPX4

Customise Keyboard Shortcuts

×

×

×

•

•

Customise Toolbar Buttons

×

×

×

•

•

Customise Menus

×

×

×

•

•

Custom pasteboard colours

×

×

×

•

•

Custom guideline colours/layer

×

×

×

•

•

Customisable nudge distance

×

×

×

•

•

Logo Studio

×

×

×

•

•

Image Cutout Studio

×

×

×

•

•

Import and Interpret EPS Images

×

×

×

•

•

Import High Definition Images

×

×

×

•

•

Import/Export Serif Metafiles

×

×

×

•

•

Place multiple images at once

×

×

×

•

•

Rotate objects with pointer tool

×

×

×

•

•

Drag to Add/Remove Table Rows/Columns

×

×

×

•

•

Absolute Table Cell References

×

×

×

•

•

Improved double-line borders

×

×

×

•

•

Package files including content

×

×

×

•

•

Manual Duplex Wizard

×

×

×

•

•

Reflection filter effects

×

×

×

•

•

Resize snapped objects from centre

×

×

×

•

•

Object Handles (easier to select objects)

×

×

×

•

•

Autofit stories to frames

×

×

×

•

•

Gradient fills for frame text

×

×

×

•

•

Ticket Numbering (leading zeros)

×

×

×

•

•

Favourite fonts filter

×

×

×

•

•

Features New in PPX4

Adaptive Letter Spacing

×

×

×

×

•

Alignment of Strokes

×

×

×

×

•

Anchored Objects

×

×

×

×

•

Customised Borders

×

×

×

×

•

Document Tabs

×

×

×

×

•

Dynamic Guides

×

×

×

×

•

Initial Words of Paragraph

×

×

×

×

•

PDF Import Text Flow

×

×

×

×

•

Photo Lab

×

×

×

×

•

Polygon Operations

×

×

×

×

•

Resource Management

×

×

×

×

•

Show Special Characters (Layout View)

×

×

×

×

•

Table and Calendar Autoformat Editor

×

×

×

×

•

Word and OpenOffice Import

×

×

×

×

•

×

×

×

×

•

Performance

Task

PP SE

PP9

PPX2

PPX3

PPX4

Program Start from Cold (seconds)

5

5

13

15

23

Program Restart

3

1

3

2

4

Load Ten Files (about 4 Mbytes)

n/a

n/a

12

15

15

Times are only approximate. Your results may vary.

Wish-list for PPX5

Improve Accessibility

As monitor resolution increases, the 16x16 pixel icons that were designed for use on 800x600 monitors are beoming ridiculously small. Small fonts in dialogue boxes and HowTo help files make some features useless for older users. I don’t need to read the help, and I can guess what the icons do from their position on the toolbar, but new users do need to read help, and they are not yet familiar with the interface. Icon sets of 24x24 and 32x32 pixels are needed, larger font sizes need to be used by default, with an option to increase the font size too. The current 8 point Tahoma is way too small for anything other than a tooltip or hintline text. I would suggest 10 point for small, 12 point as the default, and 14 point for large text.

OpenType Support

Top of my personal wish-list is support for OpenType features such as Small Capitals, Old Style Figures, Discretionary Ligatures, Stacking Fractions, etc. I develop my own fonts, but there is little incentive for adding OpenType support since I have no applications that support them. It is possible using my custom fonts only by inserting the extra glyphs in Private Use Area from the Insert Symbol dialogue, which is far from an ideal solution. Read more about OpenType Features.

Autocorrect Entries

Due to the limited number of Autocorrect entries in PagePlus X4 I imported a word list from OpenOffice. You can copy AutoCorrect.zip over the version in the %AppData% folder at \Application Data\Serif\PagePlus\14.0\Data\

Remember Workspace, Files, and Folders

The workspace (studio tabs) can be saved and recalled, and the recent documents list is now customisable between 0 and 16 files. However, the cursor position is not stored in the document. Rather than the nearly useless Open Saved Work file browser, which is just a bloated file open dialogue, what PagePlus needs is the ability to save the current work space with open documents including the cursor position, and the size and position of any tiled or cascaded windows. The Startup Wizard should include an option to resume from last time.

It should also be possible to pin favourite files to the recent files list. See how neatly Jarte manages favourite files and folders. I would love to see this feature in PagePlus. PDF-XChange has something similar — pinning favourite files, resume from last time, and a button to clear the recent files list.

Mixed Page Numbering

This feature is available using Book Plus, which is the master document feature used by PagePlus. It would be better if one could mix roman and Arabic page numbering in the same document. Similarly, mixed page orientation is a basic requirement of many publications. It is not difficult to work around these little problems, but it would be better not to need work-arounds.

Flow Tables Across Pages

Though I would not regard this as essential in a Page Layout program, allowing tables to extend beyond a single page would be useful.

References

PagePlus has no cross-reference feature, editing of indexes is difficult, footnotes and newsletter stories that break across pages need continuation leaders.

Improved Indexing

The current index is difficult to edit, and there is no concordance file option. Every index entry has to be marked individually. Ideally, the index entries would be fully editable within WritePlus when the option to show field codes is enabled. Find and Replace could then be used to edit multiple index entries in one simple operation.

Improve Memory Management

Notice how the launch time of PagePlus is getting longer with each new version. Other operations such as resizing large images are also getting slower and fail in some cases, where they worked in earlier versions. As cameras produce ever larger images, PagePlus needs to improve its memory handling. It can produce large posters, but users sometimes have problems with placing images or with printing.

Skewing Objects

In CorelDraw it is very easy to skew objects by dragging selection handles. In PagePlus one can drag a corner handle with the Alter key held down or use the Rotate tool, but skewing is not an option. DrawPlus X2 already had this.

Resizing Objects

One can resize objects from the centre, but this only works if the object’s centre is snapped to a guideline. It would better if the guidelines were not needed.

Writing Tools Studio Tab

Jumping dialogue boxes when spell-checking or proof-reading text are a common cause of errors. The writing tools should be in their own studio tab at the bottom of the window, alongside the media bar. WordPerfect got that right many years ago.