Hatrack River Forum: Applications for Page Layout

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Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

Has anyone seen the Shottenstein G'mara lately? Has anyone seen its superb layout? Has anyone recently realised how complex the G'mara's layout is?

I need an application that can lay out a page so beautifully and with such remarkable complexity. Does anyone know any?

Put it this way, I need the following requirements of such an application:

1) The base text.
2) The translation of the text, preferably if I can put it very near-by.
3) The option of dividing much of the page's remainder into little blocks of text, that systematically continue to the next page, etc.
4) Room for footnotes.
5) Optional room for side-references or sidenotes.

I might do the whole thing over two pages, then continue to the next sheet of paper... As long as the programme has the options...

Those of you who know what I'm taking about - I'm referring to a similar thing that was done in Vilna, and what Steinsaltz did in his Gemarra (excellent layout, where each page of the G'mara, due to its different commentary length, is lain out slightly differently, with the references still going on and no need for sophisticated formatting to make every page fit exactly, letting it flow).

A tough thing, but my sincere thanks to all those who have suggestions.

EDIT:

ArtScroll's Chumash; scroll up the numbers (2=>3=>4...)
Note: I need something with more complexity than that.

Jonny

[ January 03, 2005, 12:31 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]

Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :

[Wave]

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

Aha. [Hat]

And then what?

Posted by WheatPuppet (Member # 5142) on :

I've seen my mom do some pretty amazing stuff with Adobe PageMaker. I don't know the specifics of how it works, but she swears by it, and she's been in publications since the '70s.

Me? I'd use complicated LaTeX or HTML to get what I want. It'll be ugly, but I will have written it by hand. GUIs are for nanny-boys. [Wink]

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

Nanny-boys? I'm not one.

I never studied programming. How many 14 y.o.'s start using extremely sophisticated formatting? Besides, I'm only now starting to learn JavaScript.

Jonny

Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :

Why don't you just make a word document with like a zillion tables?

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

I'd use Publisher for that.

But it's too long and annoying. Not comfortable.

Posted by WheatPuppet (Member # 5142) on :

That doesn't change the fact that all the best things on a computer can be done on the command line. [Smile]

OpenOffice has a publishing tool, doesn't it?

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

Probably. But is it THAT sophisticated?

I love command lines, when you know them inside out.

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

Hmmm...

Downloaded PageMaker's trial: doesn't seem to have too much in the way of dynamic layout (except for text boxes and columns), nor references such as footnotes. Anyone knows anything about the Hidden Features?

Note: I'm not searching for graphics, just excellent text layout.

[ January 03, 2005, 02:03 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

PageMaker has always been the cream of the crop when it comes to layout. It has gotten clunkier since Adobe bought it . . . Adobe makes everything clunkier than it needs to be. It can certainly do what you want . . . the issue is figuring out how to make it do it. [Smile]

LaTex . . . ug. It's one thing to use it for simple layout . . . two columns or something. But I wouldn't dream of using it for anything really complicated. That's just for geeks comparing the size of their p--um, their IQs.

EDIT TO ADD: MS Publisher is garbage. IIRC, even Micro$oft no longer supports this product.

ALSO, I haven't seen what you are referring to wanting to emulate. Do you have a link or something? If I'm understanding what you want to do correctly, then Acrobat can do it, but that's pretty expensive. It can do the dynamic links, and you can design the physical layout on other applications. Then anybody can view your finished product, but they can't change it.

[ January 03, 2005, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: Icarus ]

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

FrameMaker?

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

While for smaller things there are a few possible products to consider, there are only two page layout programs one should consider when doing something large like a book, Adobe Indesign and Quark Express. There used to be only one (Quark).

For people learning page layout for the first time, I would go with Indesign in a heartbeat. Quark is old, complex, and losing marketshare rapidly. Places which don't accept native Indesign documents accept PDFs anyways, which Indesign is (of course) excellent at creating.

Indesign is also superb for smaller documents, and Adobe has ceased development on its other page layout programs, though I believe there is an Indesign Pagemaker Edition which is a bit more like Pagemaker (never tried it, not sure).

Posted by WheatPuppet (Member # 5142) on :

I heard Indesign for PC can be really unstable, though. I might be wrong.

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

I haven't heard that on the graphic design forum I hang out on, though it could easily occur; Indesign would of course be very sensitive to low quality memory.

Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :

What forum is that, fugu?

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

http://graphicdesign.about.com/mpboards.htm

A good group, some very experienced and well thought of graphic designers.

Several of them are among the founders (and members, of course) of Creative Latitude, which is a growing force in the design community (and excellent resource).

http://www.creativelatitude.com