The Best of Both Phone, and Tablet
The Data Merge feature is also far from automatic. If you change the original worksheet or database, you must reexport it as a comma-separated file. And since PageMaker's HTML export is so imprecise, you'd use Data Merge only for print catalogs. The whole process is crude: you can't skip a record on the fly but must instead specify records to include in a dialog just before you run the merge. Data Merge is better than creating a catalog from scratch when some of the data is already in digital format--we built a small parts catalog using Excel data without problems--but it's no panacea.
Tweener publisher
Adobe is trying to make PageMaker play better with other applications. Version 7.0 imports Microsoft Word documents (including those in Word 2000/2002 for Windows and 2001 for Mac) directly into publications, converts QuarkXPress 4.1 (Windows) and 4.0 (Mac) files, and translates Microsoft Publisher 97/98/2000 (but not Publisher 2002) files into PageMaker format. Our Publisher 2000 test newsletter made it to PageMaker in nearly pristine condition; all we had to do was reformat some text to make it fit. One downside: PageMaker can't export files in any of the above formats.
If you work on a Mac or in a mixed-platform setting with both PCs and Macs, PageMaker is really your only affordable choice. One gripe about the Mac version: it hasn't been rewritten to run in OS X's much faster native mode, and it works only in the slower Classic environment.
PageMaker 7.0 doesn't give professional designers a reason to turn in their copies of QuarkXPress, nor can it compete with Publisher's price. But small and midsized businesses that need to crank out publications, especially catalogs and PDF documents, or that require high-quality printing and color control should invest in PageMaker. It's the best desktop publishing tweener there is.
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