Serif PagePlus

PPX7 • PPX6 • PPX5 • PP SE 3.0 • Legacy Features • Wish-list • Tutorials • Support • Features

For reviews of earlier versions see the WayBack Machine Web Archive

PagePlus X7

Released 3rd June 2013

A Significant Step Forward

Almost everything on my wish-list was added in the latest version, plus a few things that I didn’t think of. PPX6 users will find it well worth the upgrade price. The context-sensitive Smart Hints that provide help on newly used features can be turned off once they have been understood. The Learning Zone on the Startup Assistant provides video tutorials and links to detailed help and support for new users.

64-bit Version • Blend Modes • Charts • Complex Fills • Convert to Objects • Export as Picture

Flowing Tables • Improved Studios • Restore Last Session • Serif GDI Rendering • Smart Hints

Startup Assistant • Workspace Enhancements • Recommendations • Conclusions

64-bit Version

I am still using 32-bit Windows XP, so I have not been able to test this. It should provide increased performance when working with large or image-heavy publications. Some users may have problems with finding suitable drivers for scanners. Scan images in another application and insert them using the Insert Picture route. That way, images can be compressed properly, and then linked.

Blend Modes

Added to bring PagePlus into line with DrawPlus and improve PDF import. Creative professionals may find a use for it to save opening another application. Blend Modes are on the Colour Studio Tab.

Charts

Two new studio tabs — the Chart Tab and the Chart Data Tab — support this feature. It is now possible to insert the usual chart types into PagePlus, and link them to a table or to tabular data.

There is a good range of standard Chart types — Area, Bar, Column, Line, Pie, Scatter, 3D Column, etc., — and an almost unlimited range of options for formatting them. 3D charts have all of the controls of other 3D objects.

The Charts category of the Styles tab contains a range of standard chart styles, to which user-defined chart styles can be added.

The chart title, series titles, and labels all use the Chart Body paragraph text style, but user-defined styles can be applied to each text group. Elements within the chart can be resized, moved, and rotated. The illustrated chart has its title moved to the left, and the series text moved to the right. The entire chart object has a drop shadow applied from the Effects Tab.

About the PagePlus Versions Chart

Basic features score 1 point, significant improvements score 2 points, major features like Image Cutout Studio, or OpenType feature support score 5, and powerful features like Publish to PDF, PhotoLab, Print Imposition, a 64-bit version, or Charts score 10 points. See the Feature Comparison table for details.

The latest version gets a bonus of 50 points for full product support, while the previous version gets a bonus of 10 points for 3 months of full support. Users of earlier versions are not entitled to support from Serif, but they can get free help via the support forums. The free PagePlus Starter Edition is given a nominal price of £5 to avoid it being assigned infinite value for money in spite of its limited subset of features. PPX6 has been discounted to £20 now that PPX7 was released. PPX5 is not advertised.

Complex Fills

The swatches tab now contains plasma fills, radial fills, square, and three or four colour fills. Again, not something that is important to a page layout program, but creative professionals will appreciate not having to open another application to creative graphics to import into PagePlus.

Convert to Objects

Similar to “Convert to Curves,” but it preserves text in Serif metafiles or data pasted from DrawPlus via the Windows clipboard, allowing imported vector graphics to be fully editable in PagePlus.

Export as Picture

PagePlus now has the Export as Picture dialogue like DrawPlus, which generates a preview before exporting, and provides options for selecting Super Sampling, Compression, Colour-depth, etc., and shows the projected file size. On older PCs this extra step slows down the export of pictures if you already know the settings that you want to use. Using the “Super Sample” option will slow it down even more, but it does improve the image quality. In the screen shot below you can compare the image quality of fully compressed 32-bit transparent PNG against JPG at a high quality setting of 90%. Because this image is just text and a gradient fill, the PNG image is of a similar size, but sharper than the JPG image, where artefacts can be clearly seen at increased zoom levels.

PagePlus now offers the option to export to SVG — a vector format designed for the web.

Flowing Tables

Tables are no longer limited to a single page, but can be flowed down or to the right onto other pages, or on the same page. Rows or Columns can be selected to repeat in each section. Data from spreadsheets or word-processor tables that are longer than a single page can be cut and pasted into a PagePlus table that flows to more than one page.

Improved Studio Tabs

Studio tabs have been a valuable feature of PagePlus for several versions. Three new studio tabs have been added to this version — Charts, Chart Data, and Effects. The HowTo studio tab was removed, and the fx dialogue was replaced with the Effects Tab. The docking and management of Studio tabs has been revamped to increase the options for possible layouts, and to make them easier to use. Auto-hide now allows floating tabs to hide away after use with having to collapse them. As soon as the mouse cursor is over the tab group on auto-hide, it flies open. It can be pinned open using the middle icon of the three on the right, or left unpinned to collapse soon after moving the cursor away. Tab groups can be maximised, minimised, or restored. Tool-tips have been made to match the Toolbar tips.

Restore Last Session

In Tools, Options, General, users can choose from three options on startup: Show Startup Assistant, Restore Last Session, or Create New Document. Restore last session will open PagePlus with the same publications that were previously opened, and each will be displayed at the same page and the same zoom level as last time. If the windows were tiled, or a new document window was opened, the window layout will also be restored. This is a huge time-saver for long books or projects involving more than one publication. Quickly resume work without having to reopen publications and find your place.

N.B. If multi-page view was in use, although this will be restored, the layout and position will not.

SerifGDI Rendering

Improved performance and quality of rendering on the screen. The page tab especially will benefit from this to generate thumbnails of the current publication.

Smart Hints

Like DrawPlus, popup notifications will advise the user when performing certain actions. When no longer needed, they can be disabled in Tools, Options, Smart Hints.

Startup Assistant

This is the Startup Wizard by a new name, but with some new and improved features. It replaces the Browse dialogue that was removed from earlier versions with previews of publications opened in the previous days and weeks. The learning zone provides quick access to videos, help, the manual, the support forums, and Facebook support. A news feed keeps the user informed of recent developments. Templates can also be opened from here.

Workspace Enhancements

Workspaces have been around as long as the Studio Tabs. In previous versions one could save and load customised workspaces to suit different projects. Toolbars and menus could be customised before too, but to backup changes entailed a two-step process of exporting a Windows registry key and copying a file from the %AppData% folder. In PPX7, the toolbars and menus are now saved with the workspace, so the user only needs to copy the relevant *.wtb file from the %AppData%\Workspace Profiles\ folder to an external drive to make a backup. A drop-list on the context toolbar makes it easy to switch workspaces. Tip: Remember to save any changes made to the toolbars, menus, or studio tab layout to a workspace file before selecting another one.

Recommendations After Installation

• Edit the style sheets to check that everything is as you want it before you get to the final stages of your publication. Optionally, remove the 10 point spacing after each paragraph, and use a first line indent instead. Then Tools, Save Defaults, and make sure that “Text Styles” is checked.
• Create a new keyboard profile in Tools, Options, User Interface, Shortcuts. Modify or add shortcuts for each context, and save the keyboard profile. This shortcut data is in:
   %AppData%\Serif\PagePlus\17.0\Accelerators\ which should be copied to a safe place to make a backup. To save time, download my Customised Keyboard Profile and copy it to your Accelerators folder, then select it in Options. The shortcuts are shown on the menus. Download my Cheat Sheet (a PPX7 file) and edit it as you modify your shortcuts to keep track of any changes that you make. (This tip will also work for PPX4 - PPX6, though some of the commands are not available. It won’t work in PagePlus SE because the keyboard is not customisable).
• Customise the Toolbars and menus. If you have a 5:4 or 4:3 aspect ratio monitor, 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. Remove submenus wherever possible. For example, remove the Publications submenu from the View, Toolbars menu, and add items to the Window menu to show or hide the publications toolbar (tabs). If you prefer — show it automatically, then these are not needed. Remove the Toolbars submenu — right-click on any toolbar or the menu will show it. Hide the Rulers too and assign a shortcut to show/hide them. They are not usually needed unless you are setting up guides or tabs. The hintline can be hidden too, and, unlike the ruler setting, its off/on status is included in the workspace.
• Customise the Studios to suit your personal needs. Save your workspace profile for future use or for sharing with others. To see what can be done, install my Compact workspace profile to:
   %AppData%\Serif\PagePlus\17.0\Workspace Profiles\. Be mindful that the toolbars and menus have also been customised in this profile. Its easy to switch back to the default profile.
• There is space for a floating Studio tab on top of the menu bar. With large (24 pixel) icons on my 1280 x 1024 monitor there is enough space for all of the icons I need on one toolbar, with the context toolbar below. I have created a new toolbar called “Standard Plus,” and added an icon for “Update Text Style,” which I use frequently.

• Uninstall all of the fonts that you don’t use. PagePlus comes with a host of fonts, many of which are used by the design templates, but if you don’t use them, they just slow down font selection. The fonts installed with Serif applications (with the suffix SF) are of dubious quality, though the Bitstream fonts (with suffix BT or BTN) are better. Install my free OpenType fonts, which have a wide range of glyphs, or buy some Professional fonts with OpenType features. Get a font manager like MainType if you have a large font collection, or get the free AMP font viewer.
• Open the Fonts Tab, and mark your most used fonts as favourites. Then they will appear at the top of the font select drop list. However, if you set up your styles properly, you should spend less time selecting fonts. Save the relevant Windows registry key (search the registry for “Font Collections”) as a backup. It also saves the most recently used fonts.

Conclusions

Pros:

• Several major new features have been added: Autoflow of Tables, Charts, Restore last session, and the Export Picture dialogue with SVG support and Super Sampling. This should mean that users will rarely need to switch to another application.
• More options for customising the workspace will help power users to become even more efficient.
• These improvements don’t seem to have a detrimental effect on performance for me, and users who use a 64-bit operating system will now be able to make better use of all that RAM.
• The Startup Assistant helps new users to get up and running more easily, and experienced users should be able to find their work more easily.

Cons:

• The HowTo tab was removed instead of being improved in line with DrawPlus to be context-sensitive, although it is still found in the LogoStudio. I can appreciate why maintaining this feature was consuming too much development time. Many users never read help files anyway, but smart hints are just an annoyance for most users that they will soon turn off. HowTo help was a useful reference to open in the workspace while getting to grips with new features.
• Tab animations and auto-hide on full bar are enabled by default. These changes really belong in the Pros section, but I list them here as anyone who changed the tab animations or who didn’t use the auto-hide on full bar setting might consider these changes as negative.
• View index marks will break the page layout and will almost certainly push some text into the overflow area — this feature should have been restricted to WritePlus. I consider this to be a bug. Apparently Word also does this, but must PagePlus do it wrong too!?
• OpenType Standard Ligatures, Contextual Ligatures, and Required Ligatures, are disabled by default. Fonts with contextual and required ligatures won’t work as designed if these features are disabled. Fonts with Standard Ligatures won’t look as good without them. Microsoft’s own recommendation is being ignored by PagePlus. However, it is fairly easy to work around this bug by enabling ligatures in all paragraph styles that use OpenType fonts. The trouble is, those who don’t know a ligature from a tourniquet won’t know that they need to do this.

PagePlus X6

Released 5th December 2011

First Impressions -

Serif™ added many new features to this new version, and improved some existing features. Many will be delighted to find support for E-book publishing, but a few may miss the Web Publishing mode. Publish as HTML is not quite as convenient. Asset management is a powerful new feature, but less convenient than the old Media Bar and Gallery tabs, which are now gone. Medium (18 px) and Large (24 px) icon sets improve accessibility for older users.

Asset Management • Business Sets • E-Book Publishing • Format Painter • Logo Studio Auto Unrotate

Multiple User Dictionaries • PDF Imposition • Quick Dial • Table of Contents and Indexing

User Interface Improvements • Zoom Slider •  Conclusions • Recommendations After Installing

Asset Management -

A new Assets studio tab replaces the Media Bar, Insert Logo dialogue, and Gallery Tab. This requires some relearning, but makes it easier to associate content with publications, and adds the possibility of saving asset packs for sharing content.

Assets can be pinned so that they are always available. The Logos are pinned in the Graphics category in the screen shot of the Assets tab on the right, so they can be dragged to any new document.

Warning: assets are loaded with the document, so pinning too many assets will slow down document loading This may be very significant with large images on old hardware.

Customised borders can be added to the Picture Frames category, but can no longer be saved for quick access from the Line and Border dialogue.

The backgrounds category is new and offers a quick and easy way to add a background layer to a publication or web site.

The Pictures category replaces the Media Bar tab from PPX5.

Business Sets

Use different User Details for different publications.  If you are designing publications for more than one customer, you can store and assign different sets of business user details for each. Think of a business set as a profile, storing a unique set of user details under a chosen name.

E-Book Publishing -

I anticipate that this exciting new feature will encourage many to upgrade or migrate to PagePlus. I also expect that it will generate a storm of questions on the support forums as new users struggle with new concepts. Some may be frustrated if they expect to just open any existing publication, choose the publish to E-book option, and expect it to just work. Publishing for hand-held E-readers like the Kindle requires an entirely different design approach to print or PDF publishing. If, like me, you have no previous experience in designing E-books, be prepared to read the manual, and to redesign your publications to suit the free-flowing layout used by this format.

Format Painter -

The format painter tool makes it easier to copy formatting from one object to another. Select an object, select the format painter, and click on another object to copy the formatting from the first.

Logo Studio Auto Unrotate

Any groups on the page that are rotated are automatically unrotated when opened in the Logo Studio. This makes them easier to edit.

Multiple User Dictionaries

Create as many custom user dictionaries as you need, and associate them with different publications.

PDF Imposition

The page imposition features previously used for paper publishing can now be used for PDF output.

Quick Dial

A new Quick Dial quick shape was added for creating dials for clocks, speedometers, etc. The number of dials, the enclosed angle, the mark angle, and the inner radius can all be changed. N.B. If you use this new quick shape in any publication, the publication won’t open in PPX5. Convert it to curves first if you need to do that.

Tables of Contents and Indexing

Publications can now contain more than one table of contents, for example, one for each chapter instead of only one for the entire book. Hyperlinks can be included automatically — unfortunately, these are only applied to the page numbers and not to the heading text, which is pretty useless. It is much more practical to use PDF Bookmarks. A new Table of Contents Studio tab makes it easier to modify and update the TOC, without running through a whole series of dialogues on the TOC wizard, which has been removed.

Indexing is now quicker and easier to use. Mark all similar entries at once instead of one at a time. Editing index entries is much easier than before by using the new Index Studio tab. Multiple index entries on consecutive pages are merged with a hyphen, e.g. 136-140, and hyperlinks can be included from each page number.

User Interface Improvements

A new Colours Toolbar makes it easier to apply Fill, Line, and Text colours. At long last, there is a large icon set so that older users or those with high resolution monitors can read the icons without having to guess what they do from their position on the toolbar. The registry hack to set LargeIcons=1 still gives double-sized 32 pixel icons if your eyesight is very weak or if you have a 1600 x 1200 pixel monitor resolution, but most users will find that the large 24 pixel icons are adequate on standard monitor resolutions. On my 1280 x 1024, 17” monitor I can fit all of the tools that I need on a single row, with the context-sensitive toolbar below that.

Zoom Slider

For compatibility with DrawPlus, a zoom slider control was added to the hintline, along with a “Zoom to current” button, a Zoom tool, a Pan tool, a View Options popup, and a Special Characters popup. The Snapping popup, the Trimmed Page Mode icon, and the Show/hide Studio Tabs icon were removed.

PagePlus X5

Released 18th October 2010

This was a major upgrade with many of the features that were on the wish-list for a long time. This new version is more powerful than PPX4, but still easy to use. Common tasks, like rotating and selecting objects, or editing master page content have been made easier for new users. Experienced and professional users will appreciate the OpenType support, powerful print imposition options and enhanced PDF output. Many old bugs have been fixed, and performance has been improved. The spell-check dialogue was fixed so that it does not move when checking a story.

OpenType Features • Cross-references • Variables • Word Count

Mixed Page Numbers • Mixed Page Orientation • Page Imposition

Autocorrect Improvements • Multi-level Image Loading • Hover Selections

Line Fills • Improved Text Wrap • Improved PDF Output • Object Management

Edit Masterpage Objects • Import Settings • Improved Colour Management

OpenType Feature Support

The implementation of OpenType features is particularly slick. For example, enabling Small Capitals, ligatures, or fractions in the Character formatting dialogue will use OpenType features automatically if those features exist in a font. If not, PagePlus will create Small Capitals by scaling capitals in the usual way, use ligatures if they exist in the font, and generate fractions using bold superscripts/subscripts. Times New Roman contains ligatures for fi and fl. Any fraction will be auto-generated, including fractions with text like 1/x.

Common OpenType features can be toggled on/off using an icon on the context toolbar, and formatting attributes have a new icon to replace the underline icon, which can toggle the last used character attribute on/off with one click. These formatting fly-outs are both detachable as floating palettes.

Cross-references

Insert automatic cross-references to other pages, headings, bookmarks, or footnotes, with or without a prefix, suffix, or hyperlink. Go to the target or edit the cross-reference easily. There is a lot to learn here, but more than enough options to satisfy most users.

Variables

Create global or publication variables that can be inserted anywhere and updated throughout your documents without the need for find and replace operations. Great if you move house, or change your business contact details. Just edit your User Details and all of your templates will be updated to match.

Word Count

Formerly available only in WritePlus, Word Count is now accessible directly from PagePlus. It has been enhanced to count words in the current selection, and an option has been added to count hyphenated words as separate words or as one word.

Mixed Page Numbers

Mix Roman and Arabic page numbers in the same document. Start a new section at any point; restart page numbering or continue from the last page. The publication page number is displayed in the Page Manager, hintline, and Pages Tab.

Mixed Page Orientation

Documents may be either portrait or landscape as before, but pages of the opposite orientation may be used within the same publication. Add a spreadsheet or illustration in landscape mode within a portrait publication for easier editing. Facing pages are treated as one spread though, and you cannot mix orientations on the same spread.

Page Imposition

One of the biggest changes is to print preview. As before, this can simply be used to see how the publication will look on your chosen printer before committing it to print, but Print Preview includes many options for page imposition. A document that was set up as a standard A4 portrait document, can be imposed as a booklet, scaled up and tiled on multiple sheets, scaled down and printed as thumbnails, etc.

Staple-fold booklets can be automatically adjusted to allow for page creep. Professionals do this with positive creep allowance on over-sized paper, but home users can use negative creep on standard paper to reduce the gutter for centre spreads so that the outside margins remain constant, avoiding the situation where text on centre spreads can get cropped if the paper is not perfectly aligned when it is stapled.

Autocorrect Improvements

The list of predefined autocorrect entries now matches LibreOffice Writer, and the tab key can be used to change paragraph indentation.

Multi-level Image Loading

PagePlus now uses low resolution proxy images for display at normal zoom levels. This saves memory and improves performance when working with high resolution images. However, if the user zooms in, the images are displayed at full resolution.

Hover Selections

Objects on the page are highlighted as the mouse cursor passes over them, making it easier to identify which object will be selected on clicking. Although this may be useful if there are dozens of small objects close together and overlapping, for normal publications with just one text frame on a page, it annoys more than it helps. Fortunately, a shortcut key can be assigned to toggle it on and off quickly.

Line Fills

The full range of sold, gradient, and bitmap fills can now be applied to lines as well as to fills, expanding the creative options.

Improved Text Wrap

The text wrap generator has been rewritten, resulting in more accurate wrap outline generation. This could sometimes affect text flow so check that it hasn’t changed when opening old publications. The changes are subtle, so in most cases text flow will be the same.

Improved PDF Output -

This will please the professional users. Greyscale PDF output is much better, and output to FOGRA colour standards are now supported. PDF output can be scaled to produce different sized PDF files from the same PagePlus source file.

Object Management

The Layers tab now shows every object on the page, as in DrawPlus, allowing easier management of objects on layers, and rearrangement of an object’s z-order. By default, the layers tab shows the object tree collapsed, so this extra level of control is not obtrusive. It is an extra option for those who need it, but managing layers is just as it was before.

Edit Masterpage Objects

Objects on master pages are now accessible from the normal page view. Either edit the object on the master page, or promote the master page object to the normal page. Modify the promoted object, e.g. to move a page number to bottom centre for the current page, without affecting the master page objects for all other pages that use it.

Import Settings

Import settings from PagePlus X4 to get up and running quickly with the new version. Import: Gallery files, Keyboard shortcuts, Workspace profiles, Object styles, PDF profiles, Attributes (Option settings), Templates, Colour schemes, Palettes, Autocorrect entries, User dictionaries, Recent file list, Calendar Events and Table formats.

Improved Colour Management

Manage colour for two or more images with different embedded ICC profiles. Convert images to the RGB monitor profile for RGB images and the CMYK printer profile for CMYK images.

PagePlus Starter Edition 3.0

Released 24th Feb 2012

This is based on PagePlus X6, but with some key features like PhotoLab, Cutout Studio, PDF Import/Export, and Image Export removed. Nevertheless, it contains all of the latest improvements in areas where it matters most such as fine control of text justification and tracking, and some new features like Dynamic Guides and Custom Borders. Although OpenType features cannot be applied or edited, features applied in PPX6 are retained when opened in PPSE 3.0.

It can open and save files from PagePlus X6 so it is very useful for sharing with colleagues who might be working on the same projects, but who don’t have the full version. Instead of sending them a PDF, you can send them the source file for editing, and ask them to download this free version of PagePlus. Although it is limited to creating documents of five pages or less, it can open and save longer documents, so it is a viable choice where team collaboration is the goal, without the cost of providing a full version for everyone.

Don’t confuse this free version with PagePlus Essentials, which is designed for home users on a tight budget, but who don’t need professional output.

Serif Community Toolbar

Do take care when installing PagePlus Starter Edition, or any of the other free software offerings from Serif. The installers will add this browser toolbar by default, unless you clear the checkbox. Ignore any message telling you to reboot. Just install the Serif™ Starter Edition software, it is the toolbar that wants you to reboot so that it can hijack your browsers. Spyware sites say that search.conduit.com is not malicious, but in my opinion, any software that is this much trouble to remove is malicious.

If you do install it by mistake, see this knowledge-base article on how to remove it.

Legacy Features

From PagePlus X4 or Earlier

Anchored Objects • Text Improvements • Interface Improvements • Improved PDF Import

Polygon Operations • Dynamic Guides • Stroke Alignment • Photo Lab

Picture Frames and Borders • Table and Calendar Formats • Resource Manager

Word and OpenOffice Import • Legacy Features • Image Cutout Studio • Customising

Anchored Objects

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 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·page breaks,·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.

Improved 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.

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.

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.

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 Assets tab (the Gallery before PPX6). 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 OpenOffice Import

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

Image Cutout Studio -

Any photograph can be edited within PagePlus to remove its background. The intelligent masking 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 brushes. Hold the Alt key o toggle the brush function between remove and add. 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, so for detailed work one doesn’t need to keep changing tools.

After removing the background you can preview how it looks with a transparent background, or a uniform tint. The mask can be saved as a Vector-cropped Bitmap, or as an Alpha-edged Bitmap. The HowTo help in the Image Cutout Studio guides new users through the process.

Customising Toolbars, Menus, and the Keyboard

Since PPX3 it has been possible to customise the toolbars and menus. Right-click on any toolbar or the menu to open the customise dialogue. Right-click again on the menu to customise it, or on any toolbar button to change the button, paste a new image from the clipboard, or edit the button image.

Create new menus, new toolbars, or new flyouts to have all the commands that you use most frequently wherever you want them. WebPlus uses the same interface for customising the GUI.

The icon for scanning was pasted from the Windows clipboard to the Acquire command, then opened in the button editor to make the background transparent using the flood-fill tool. Transparent PNG images can be opened from the folder icon. Use *.png in the dialogue.

The keyboard can be customised too, greatly increasing the speed of use for these powerful applications. Please read my Tutorials for more details.

Wish-list

Almost everything on my wish-list has been added in PPX7. All I really want for the next version is a faster and more stable version with a few minor improvements. Everything I really need can now be done with the help of a work-around if it is not directly available.

Grid-fitting

This feature, which some consider basic to desktop publishing, is still missing from PagePlus. In LibreOffice it is called “Register True.” What it does is fit the baselines of text to a grid so that the baselines of facing pages are aligned visually, even if the page includes subheadings, callouts, or other paragraph styles other than standard body text. My tutorial on grid-fitting explains how to do it by careful editing of paragraph styles, but it is not 100% reliable, and quite labour intensive. Fortunately, style sheets can be reused for many documents.

Running Headers

Running header will change automatically to match the first or last heading on a page. In PagePlus, this is a time-consuming manual task of promoting master page objects and editing their content. Its all too easy to forget to update the headers after making editorial changes.

Fix Double Line Styles

There are two problems with double lines: they are wider than their reported weight because the width is measured between the centre-lines of each line, and double table lines do not connect accurately at the corners.  

Skewing Objects

In DrawPlus it is 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. A mesh-warp can be used to get a similar result, but it it difficult and the text is no longer editable.

Guidelines Improvements

More important in DrawPlus, but also useful in PagePlus. Allow rotation of guidelines to any angle by using the shift modifier key. Double-click any guide to open the guideline setup dialogue. Ctrl Drag to copy a guideline. Support parallel guidelines with a variable spacing for use in floor-plans or maps. Move locked guidelines by holding down the Alt key modifier.

Improve Quick Shapes

The current Quick Cog looks nothing like a cog-wheel and the teeth would not mesh. There could also be additional Quick Cog types for circular saw blades or sprockets. Other quick shapes need synchronising across all Serif applications so that users can switch more easily between them without getting lost. Lock Geometry should be added for more quick shapes on DrawPlus, and tool-tips on nodes should be more helpful, showing radii in ruler measurements instead of percentages. The context toolbar should include a quick shapes list as in DrawPlus, which can be used to change one quick shape to another type. Node Feedback and Ease of Use settings allow for larger nodes or tool-tips.

Improved Proofing and Spell-checking

The Wintertree software currently used by the spell-checker has some drawbacks. It would be better to make use of the excellent Hunspell checker, which already has dictionary support for many languages. Full support for Latin Extended character sets is required by many users — not only for users in Eastern Europe, but for anyone doing business with the Eastern Bloc countries. • Double-spaces should be removed automatically or at least marked as a spelling error as in LibreOffice. • Users should be able to define hyphenation breaks for words added to dictionaries. • Autocorrect should default to plain text. • There should be Autocorrect item on the Tools menu, and on the Customise dialogues.

Writing Tools Studio Tab

The spell-check dialogue should be replaced with a Studio tab. Although the dialogue no longer moves while spell-checking (the text moves instead so that the highlighted word always remains visible), it would be better to have an uninterrupted view of the publication with suggestions shown in a studio tab at the bottom of the window. The panel could also be used for proof-reading as in WordPerfect.

Improved Text Formatting

Disable hyphenation for the last line of a text frame. • Set justification limits for the last line of paragraphs. • Highlight loose lines • Glyph fallback: if text uses characters unsupported by the current font, format it using a fall-back font. • Format Title Case in all supported languages.

OpenType Feature Support for Asian Fonts

Asian languages like Burmese, Bengali, Hindi, and Tibetan, require OpenType features that are currently unsupported. Full support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK), would be good eventually, but at least PagePlus (and DrawPlus/WebPlus) should be able to support all Left to Right scripts. Updates are need for Unicode 6.2 released in Sept 2012. Only Unicode 5.2, released in October 2009, is currently supported. Unicode 6.3 is scheduled for release in Q3 of 2013.

Full screen Mode

PhotoPlus has had this for some time, but PagePlus needs it more than ever now with so many toolbars and studio tabs. One simple shortcut (F11) should hide all toolbars. The fullscreen mode should also be customisable, so that users can show at least one toolbar. The scroll bars are almost obsolete, but they are always on screen, taking up space, even when not needed.

Export Settings as Backup

Export user-defined settings to backup custom workspaces, keyboards, and options, or to transfer settings to other computers or to restore them after reinstalling or resetting the software.

Tutorials

I have added this tutorial section with tips and tricks to get the most out of PagePlus using some of its more advanced features. The program’s help menu includes a link to the Online Product Support page where you can find both Video and Text Tutorials on many of each program’s features.

All of these tutorials presented as PDF files were produced using PagePlus. Most are also relevant to earlier versions of PagePlus, and some also to the free Starter Edition.

• Adding Captions to Images — Using paragraph numbering or endnotes as captions for illustrations automatically, and generate a list of illustrations.
• Advanced Typography — How to use Optical Justification, Tracking, Kerning and Adaptive Letter Spacing to improve the appearance of printed text, and to save paper.
• Custom Borders — Importing borders from PagePlus X3 or earlier and saving them for reuse in more recent versions. Creating and importing custom borders for PPX4 or PPX5. Using custom borders to create column rules. Using the Assets Tab to add borders in PPX6 or PPX7.
• Customising PagePlus — Some tips on how to get the most out of PagePlus by customising the interface. Most of the advice is also relevant to other Serif™ applications like WebPlus and PhotoPlus. (Updated for PPX7)
• Customising Keyboard Shortcuts — This tutorial is in PagePlus X7 format as it contains tables that you can modify to record your own keyboard customisations.
• Formatting Footnotes — If you’re creating a document with lots of brief footnote references, each note takes a full line on the page, even if it is just a few words. This tutorial shows you how to format footnotes in columns at the bottom of the page.
• Grid Fitting — To ensure that lines of text on facing pages line up, the line-spacing of headings and body text need to be matched to fit an imaginary grid of horizontal guidelines.
• Headers, Footers, and Page Numbering — How to set up running headers, bottom centre page numbers on title pages, and define separate page numbering sections for long books.
• Looking Inside Documents — How to extract a PagePlus document, perhaps to repair or extract the contents of a corrupted file.
• OpenType Features — An explanation of the OpenType features that are supported in PagePlus X5 and X6. If the extra glyphs are mapped to a code-point they can be accessed from the Insert Symbol dialogue in earlier versions too. You can find several free fonts with OpenType features on my fonts page.
• Styles — Learning to use styles is a great time-saver in the long run, since editing publications is much quicker if they are systematically formatted using paragraph styles and text styles. PagePlus also supports Object Styles, which work in much the same way.
• Vertical text — Create vertical text for signs that read downwards using artistic text or paragraph text.
• Working With Fractions — Using OpenType features, or using autocorrect to enter the precomposed fractions found in other fonts. How to get the best looking results.
• Working With Indexes — Adding multiple entries, Locating and Editing Entries, Adding an Index of Proper Names, Formatting Index Entries using Find and Replace with RegEx.
• Working With Pictures — Inserting multiple images, using picture frames, adding frame borders, and creating custom borders. Resizing, exporting, and manipulating images.

Support

The official Serif Software Forum is currently still the best place to get program support. The launch of Serif CommunityPlus marks the beginning of the end for the support forums. I have decided to revive the Serif Users Group on the My Opera forums which will become my preferred place for providing support. There are several reasons for this:

1. It is my opinion that CommunityPlus will not be an effective way to get or provide support. If it woks well, that is one less thing for me to do, but I have no intention of learning how to use it.
2. Spam attacks are sometimes a problem — no doubt this is due to the popularity of the forums.
3. A few disgruntled customers use the forums to complain about Sales or Customer Services. Their disruptive behaviour can make the forums an unpleasant place to visit.
4. Some members use the forums as a place to socialise. If you're just trying to get help, this is irritating, and even more so if you're trying to provide help. A few users treat the forum as a soapbox to complain about whatever happens to be their pet peeve. The signal to noise ratio makes it hard to remain focused on the purpose of the forums.
5. Moderation is too lax. Off-topic posts and disruptive threads continue far too long. If a thread is locked, someone is sure to complain about censorship, resulting in further disruption.
6. The size of attachments is limited to 250 K. The maximum file size that can be uploaded to a user’s file space on My Opera is 63 Mbytes, which is adequate for most purposes. Although a fair range of file formats are supported on the Serif Support Forum, My Opera only restricts a few risky formats like EXE and RAR. I recommend using 7-Zip (*7z archives) for high compression.

The Serif User Group forums will be managed strictly. Meaningless thread titles or rambling posts will be edited. Off-topic posts or threads will just be removed without explanation or discussion. Anyone causing disruption will be blocked. Offensive language, SHOUTING, or flame-bait will be removed. Persistent offenders will be warned and then blocked if they don’t reform their behaviour.  

I will provide support primarily for PagePlus, as that is the product I know best, having used it for many years for my own publications. I hope that other users will join the group to provide help for DrawPlus, WebPlus, PhotoPlus, and other products, as my knowledge of them is only basic.