Ventura encoded text files + some extra rubbish

[Jacob Schäffer (Grafikhuset)]

Over the years I've had quite a few conversations with Gabor Jahn, Allan
Shearer, Abe Hendin and Paul McGee, to which Jay Maechtlen's FAQ link refer
in many of the FAQ answers. These folks have done a great job and I can
still see their wisdom engulfed in passionate Ventura flames. Consult the
Ventura News Groups if they still are alive. These guys have all provided
plenty of useful information to the Ventura communities.

If one has the option of installing Ventura 10 and is able to apply the
official and *very* important VP10 patch the only reasonable thing to do
with pre-Venrura 5 documents (i.e. 4.2 and older) is to open them in VP10,
modify the para-styles as required (typically only font references and
perhaps tracking/kerning fail), and then, page by page, check that
hyphenation is OK (which it most likely isn't - especially if you work with
a non-English (ie. non-en-US or non-en-GB) languages.

If you are on Windows 7 don't fight the VP10 Installer. It IS possible to
make it run and install VP10, but it's waste of time. Use a VM-Ware (or
similar virtualization method - perhaps the MS Virtual PC, which is free) to
run a Windows XP session with Ventura 10. THAT will work for you.

In my view we today have MANY products that can do ALMOST the same as
Ventura Publisher in regard to automated publishing books. We have NONE that
CAN do the same with regard to automating such bests, and not even InDesign
can deal with for example text frames with different column widths in a text
frame nor with automatically created vertical column lines, that match the
height of balanced text, automatically feathering space above headings etc.
Ventura did that from version 2.0 run under the GEM platform in 1988-89, and
still do in VP10, of course. I think Ventura died because document
portability was extremely poor and the leaning curve was too steep. Sad!

Anyway, from time to time I still use Ventura (10.0 with patch applied) on
some occations, and have just made a 416 pages book ready to print in 3,5
hours with Ventura. The ability to just load "tagged" TXT files marked for
"Export on Save" on the fly simply outmatch other technologies because of
ease of use, simplicty etc. - if you know the "how to". If you still have VP
4.X books alive, then keep them in VP format. NOTHING else makes sense unles
you are willing to undertake a huge amount of superfluous work.

I loved Ventura, but I also love newer technologies for their fantastic
integration with PDF, non-EPS artwork and image handling etc.. But these
"packages" still have a bit to learn from Ventura in many regards, even
though for example the latest FrameMaker, at long last, beats Ventura on
some fronts.

It took almost a human generation for FrameMaker to provide usefull
CMYK/Spot color support. It's here now, and most critical, it also works OK
now - at last. The first CMYK attempts with Adobe trying to get off lightly
by implementing an outdated Linux kernel (Level 1 based PostScript) was a
total disaster, and exporting the FM development to India didn't exactly
make it easy to find common development ground with internal Adobe colour
experts. Anyway, the FM10 (latest edition and patch level) does a great job
with commercial CMYK/Spot colors owing to third party input (Arnis Gubins
and friends - thanks Arnis for unifying the strength of third party
collaboration !!!).
 
VP10, FM10, FM10 ten years after VP10 ten years after Xerox VP. There's a
lot of 10's to keep tally of here, isn't there :-)

Well, I'm actually writing all this rubbish just to anounce, that my colour
conversion products "Colour Chameleon", "CMYK PDF Creator" and "Publi PDF"
is becoming freeware licensed under some sort of GPL as a single product
named "Grafikhuset Publi PDF". All of these variants have helped FrameMaker
users all over the world for years in preparing coloured FM documents for
commercial printing via PDF since January 1996, where the first
International English "Colour Chameleon" was released.

We have now closed the on-line activation service (hosted by InstallShield -
Flexera), and licensed products can NOT be activated anymore. However, we
have a FREE client edition of "Grafikhuset Publi PDF 2.0" prepared that run
on XP, Vista and Windows 7 (32- and 64-bit editions of Windows 7), and is
currently preparing the MSI installer. We expect to provide this new version
for FREE via http://go.grafikhuset.dk approx 5. May 2012.

All the best / Med venlig hilsen
Jacob Schäffer  |  Chief Developer
Grafikhuset (House of Graphics)
Paradis Allé 22, Ramløse
DK-3200 Helsinge, Denmark
Mobile: +45 2021 1958
Email: js at grafikhuset.dk
Web: go.grafikhuset.dk