PageStream Features

This page is a work in progress

Features

To see all of what PageStream is capable of you can read the PageStream documentation which is available here.

New Features in PageStream4.1

Tables!
Built in Mail Merge!
Shift-cursor text selection!
Apply text attributes to using the object or reshape tool!
PDF export control over compression and encoding
Custom column widths and gutters inside text frames
Text inset from column edges!
Move pages between chapters
Duplicate/Transform objects across pages
Duplicate/Transform objects behind the original
Fade duplicated objects to a specified line and/or fill
Speed improvements
and more!

New Features in PageStream4.0

Native Indexing
PDF export
Multilevel chapter/page numbering/names (ie 6.8.1)
Highlight Page Number/Data/Time etc to edit
Defined styletags & variables at chapter level
Native signature printing (many pages on 1)
Business card/label printing (many copies of a page on 1)
Configurable FPO size
HTML text import/export
Definable default text attributes
Colors/Styles in use toggle
Layers
Drag & Drop text
Find & Replace improvements
- insert special characters
- wildcards
- attributes
Trapping
Automatic before and after paragraph rules
True smallcaps
Table of contents generation
Figure numbering
Table of figure generation
Paragraph numbering
Definable Kerning Pairs
Definable Tracking Tables
Optical alignment/Hanging punctuation
Edit mask in place
Page Setup for spreads/range of pages
Bookmarks
Collect for output
Lasso select
Distributed on CD-Rom
and much, much more!

Native Indexing
Long document publishers will welcome this much anticipated feature. Insert Index Marks throughout the document detailing the topics to be indexed. Need subtopics? No problem! Create as many sub levels as you need separated by a slash. When inserting, you can choose from a list of previously created index topics or insert a new index topic. Define similar cross references with links to actual index topics such as "Car see Automobile" or link two similar index topics such as "Blue, see also Green". When the document is written, the index marks inserted, and the cross references entered, let Generate Index create an index with or without headings ("A", "B",...,"Z"), using the chosen styles.

PDF export
Document publishing is no longer limited to printed form in this day of electronic medium. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and was created by Adobe to serve as a feature rich document exchange and display format. Documents output to a PDF file will remain true to the original design. Output the whole document or selection of pages either in color or grayscale. The PDF files can than be displayed on another users screen using products such as Acrobat, or printed on their printer.

HTML text import/export
The most common electronic method of passing information with the sweeping popularity of the Internet, HTML is an important end product. The design capabilities of HTML limit what can be reproduced from a PageStream document, but is a big step above straight text. With HTML import capability, taking a web document and dressing it up for paper has never been easier.

Multilevel chapter/page numbering/names (i.e. 6.8.1)
When referencing pages in a long document, PageStream can now refer to "Chapter 2, Page 40" as 2.40. Define a "-" as the separator, and it will be displayed as 2-40.

Highlight Page Number/Data/Time etc to edit
In the past, changing an inserted number, date, or time variable meant guessing what parameters had been chosen.With PageStream4, highlight the variable, and select the matching "insert" command. The existing variable's parameters will be filled in, waiting to be changed.

Defined styletags & variables at chapter level
When designing long documents, often there is a need to give the reader a visual cue that he is in a different chapter. Now text & object styletags, colors, and variables are set to the closest definition to the chapter it is used in. For example, if Body Text is defined at the document level and in Chapter 1, text anywhere but Chapter 1 will use the Body Text style defined at the document level, but text in Chapter 1 will use the Body Text style defined in Chapter 1. Text copied from Chapter 1 to another location will use the document level defined Body Text style.

Native signature printing (many pages on 1)
Creating double sided, multiple page documents has always been easy in PageStream. However, arranging it for printing was never simple.With PageStream 4.0, it couldn't be any easier. Specify the number of pages to print on a sheet of paper, how many pages total there are, and PageStream will do the rest. For example, in a 20 page document, printing 2 pages per signature, pages 1 and 20 will be on one sheet, 2 and 19 on another, etc. When folded together into final booklet form, pages will be with their natural partners (i.e., 2 & 3, 4 & 5). Page number will be preserved as will the on screen facing pages spreads.

Business card/label printing (many copies of a page on 1)
Ever create a business card or label layout in PageStream? To save paper, most designs will show numerous copies of the same card or label on a single page. This works, until a change is needed. Then that change needs to be made on each and every copy. Printing mailing labels using mail merge? Forget it! Unless it was done in PageStream4.0. Just design a single label or business card. Then select the number of copies across and down on each sheet of paper, and the distance between for a simple business card or a complex mailing label merge!

Configurable FPO size
External bitmap pictures are a mixed bag. For pictures who change during the design phase, are used in numerous locations in various documents, or are just too large to justify loading and saving in the main document, external is the way to go. For these external bitmaps, the right display resolution varies based on the purpose. Choose a course screen display to speed up redraws and shrink the FPO size when using it for a place holder and to provide a reminder of the contents of the picture. Pick a finer screen display when trying to place lines pointing into the picture or framing it with a complex path. Control like this brings external pictures close to ideal!

Collect for output
The benefits to external graphics are numerous, but the one downfall is a dangerous one. What if the document needs to be loaded on another machine? Gathering all the files together can be a laborious task. Let PageStream4.0 do the work! Collect for output works like saving a document, only it will save not only the document in the destination folder, but it will also copy all the external graphics to the destination folder.

Definable default text attributes
No longer limited to just the font, size, and language; PageStream4 can have any text attribute defaults changed. Prefer a tighter character spacing, looser leading, and larger paragraph spacing? Make it so! Gradient text fill? Unlikely, but possible!

Colors/Styles in use toggle
A simple toggle between all colors or styles () and just those in use () makes producing documents simple. Don't be afraid to create large sets of colors or styles. A click of the in use toggle will reduce the number of items in the list to those that are used in the current document.

Layers
PageStream has always had a strong collection of drawings features. Drawing layers are now an extension of drawings, continuing the tradition of drawing excellence. Any collection of objects can be made into a drawing. These drawings are now listed in the layers palette where many of their attributes can be changed. Adjust the depth of the layers. Turn off and on the display of the drawings. Lock them down and disable editing of the contents. With a click of the mouse, change the active drawing layer. All future drawing will occur inside that drawing layer until another drawing layer is selected.

Drag & Drop text
Click in the center of a highlighted range of text, and drag that text to a new insertion point.A cut and paste shortcut that speeds the editing process.

Find & Change improvements
- insert special characters
Searching for or replacing with characters outside the standard range of available characters can be difficult. Who can remember the Unicode or local character number for so many characters! No need to consult a preprinted table. Now just choose a character to append to the find or change string from the standard PageStream character list. Point and click simplicity.

- wildcards
Searching for a number of similar words or character sequence? Let the single character wild card (?) help. Need to match a variable number of characters? The multiple character wild card (*) is all that it takes to make a match.

- attributes
Not every document starts with the proper use of paragraph and character style tags. The change attributes option will make correcting that oversight easier. Change all occurrences of Helvetica 10pt into Times-Bold 9pt. Replace it with the Body Text paragraph style tag and simplify future changes easier, or make the addition of a table of contents go quickly.

Trapping
PageStream's one weakness has been color work. Well now PageStream has gotten serious in a big way towards color work. Trapping control is here! On an object by object basis, for both the fill and stroke of the object, the way that path is printed can be controlled in a number of ways. Choose to overprint the colors beneath it when printing a near black path over a light background. Spread it when printing a light path over a darker background. Choking will fix the most stubborn dark path over a light background.

Paragraph numbering
Number a sequence of paragraphs. Making top ten lists, or the assembly steps for a new product no longer require the numbering sequence to be updated by hand. Insert another paragraph, and all of the rest will renumber automatically. Got the steps out of sequence? Drag and drop in the proper sequence and let PageStream do the rest.

Automatic before and after paragraph rules
Rules (or lines) before and after a pull quote is a common appearance. Now it is as simple as it is common. Place a rule before and or after a paragraph. Define the offset from the start of end of that paragraph in either amounts relative to the paragraph spacing, or a fixed amount. Reduce the left and right margin of the line by either a percentage of the total width, or a fixed amount. Want a gradient bar? Step back and let PageStream do the work! Later on when location or size of the paragraph changes, the rules will change right along with it. No more embarrassing lines drawn through the middle of the paragraph that needed a manual correction.

True smallcaps
Adjusting the size of just the lowercase characters as they are forced to uppercase is the way small caps were meant to be. Titling caps are still provided giving yet another incredibly useful feature even more depth.

Table of contents generation
With the proper application of paragraph style tags, generating a table of contents is a breeze. Each styletag used for a heading or subhead can be selected as a table of content styletag. Then each section of text using those styletags are copied into a single list and set with a derivative styletag. Throw in a title, and call it done!

Figure numbering
Each important table, chart, graph or picture can now be sequentially numbered. Collect them into individual groups, or number them sequentially together. Refer to them in other locations of the document by the figures name, sequential number, or the page at which it can be located.

Table of figure generation
Building the list of tables, charts, graphs and pictures is one quick step away. After each of the figures are marked and numbered using Insert Figure Mark, the rest is up to PageStream4. Group them by chapters, or just one big list. Assigned styles make fine tuning the tables a snap. Long document publishing has never been so easy.

Definable Kerning Pairs
While most fonts come with a well defined list of kerning pairs, they are seldom as complete as they need to be. Create overriding custom kerning pairs, and not just for a single occurrence, but for ever occurrence in the current, and future documents if desired. Tighten up those less than common character kerning pairs, or fix that public domain font once and for all.

Definable Tracking Tables
With 5 default tracking tables ranging from very loose, loose, normal, tight, to very tight, keeping a consistent tightness is a breeze. Now modifying a specific font's tracking table gives the ability to define a global density that is constant across all fonts. When a font such a script font is mixed with other text, no longer does the tracking need to be adjusted for each occurrence of the script font. Just globally set the tracking off for that font and forget the hassle.

Optical alignment/Hanging punctuation
Typographical control is what PageStream delivers, and now it delivers it in the finest way. Optical alignment makes sure that the left and/or right edge of justified text is no longer mechanically aligned, but optically. For example, the letter O has a soft left and right side, which needs to "stick out" further than something like an H which has a hard left and right side. Punctuation is no longer considered part of the alignment of text either. It can be "hung" outside the edges of the column, to create that once common professional look.

Edit mask in place
Loose paths are no longer the only editable paths with the path tool. After applying a path or shape as a mask for a picture, drawing, or EPS, it can still be edited. Just choose the path tool, choose the masked object, and modify the mask. Insert, delete, or move points as need be. No need to release the mask, edit it, and then remask the object.

Page Setup for spreads/range of pages
Need to set the masterpage for a whole range of pages? Just specify the range, and set them all at once! Need the masterpage to be hidden? Sweeping changes are no longer repetitious.

Bookmarks
Finding a specific spot in a document can be time consuming. Now name a marked spot, and refer to it instead of a specific page. If the spot has moved, PageStream will take care of it. Imagine an unlimited number of easy to reference marks in a printed book. Add, rename, or remove as needs change.

Lasso select
Selecting objects in an irregular group is no longer a shift click, day long, task. Choose the lasso tool, drag out a freehand path around the objects to be selected, and move on! The lasso tool works just like the object tool in all respects except that instead of dragging a square selection range, freehand lassoing is at hand.

Distributed on CD-ROM
With a new help system choked full of screen shots, spelling dictionaries for an ever growing list of supported languages, and machines without floppies, CD-ROM is now the only way to go. Previous versions, more support files, fonts and much more all give a greater depth to the package. Floppies just doesn't do PageStream4 justice!

and more!

New Features in PageStream 3.4

Much improved Online Help
Improved Undo/Redo
- fix in/out of page/spread/pasteboard
- undo remainder of object editing
- undo delete page/chapter etc
Dynamically move articles to proper document/chapter level
Spell Checking with dictionaries for most languages supported
Color palette for text
Drag out guides
Reshape path curves->lines->curves and closing
Improved Min/Max/Opt Word/Character spacing
Speed-up editing of text, especially long articles
Tick based palette updates for faster execution of complex articles
Edit text hooks for extensions
Revamp styletags, including:
- Styletag delete loop
- Character/Paragraph combo
- Styletag override
and more!

New Features in PageStream 3.3

Fly Out Tools

Tools have now been grouped together in "popup" like icon list that let you switch between tools quickly. This gave us the "screen space" we needed to give you more tools. Also, by grouping them together it does so in a way that makes it easier to use.

The new tools are:

Rotation Tool

This new tool is now grouped with Object Tool, Reshape Tool, and the Crop tool. What does it do? It lets you finally set the rotation point of object(s), and if you grab and object you can rotate it right on screen! You can also slant/twist with keyboard qualifiers!

1,2,&3 Column Tool

Now you can switch between the 3 most common column counts in a text frame without changing your prefs.

Scallop, Bevel, Insert Box Tool

The rounded corner box and these are now grouped with the box tool. Pick a corner type from the toolbox and draw away.

Star, Wavy, Scallop, Puffy Polygon Tool

Like the above two, you can quickly switch between drawing these polygon types without changing your prefs between them or drawing it as one type and changing it to another. In the future we hope to add a few more useful polygon types such as gears.

Grid Tool

Yea, it was in a 3.2a beta for awhile, but there was no room for it and borders. While you could always get to it via macros or the configurable toolbar in 3.2, now its always there and "official". In the future we will group some other object types with this as a sort of Misc group.

Note Tool

Creates a yellow text frame with a dashed outline that is non-printing. Use this to write notes in the document to remind you of things to do, or locations of graphics or even special printing requirements.

Define Font Substitution

Big time feature! Load and old document and it uses a font you don't have? Transfering documents from other platforms? Any font that is not installed on your machine that is used in a document will be displayed in a list where you can select a replacement font. That replacement can be for display only, or a permanent change to the document. Entries in the font substitution list can be local to the document, or made part of the global font substitution table.

HTML Help

Now we can have the same help files between Mac and Amiga. Also, we can supply our help files with more content like we used to do, and better yet provide pictures where it helps. In the future, we hope to add interactive help.

Improved Adobe Illustrator Import/Export filter

The current Illustrator filter leaves much to be desired. Now you can export to Illustrator and expect it to keep as much as possible when importing into another application that supports Illustrator files.

RTF Text Export

Now you can exchange files with WordPerfect PC or Microsoft Word with most of the formatting intact.

2.2 Style Place Graphics

With the changes necessary for Font Subsitition, it makes it easier for us to return the old favorite 2.2 style placing of graphics. While you can configure PageStream to still place graphics automatically in the center of the screen like it works now in PageStream3.2, if you want you can set it to allow direct placing and scaling of the graphics before it is placed on the page. For those not familiar with PageStream2, after the graphic is imported, you get a paste mouse cursor. When you click on the page it places the upper left hand corner of the graphic where you clicked. If you click and drag the mouse, you actually define the "frame" that the graphic is scaled to fit into.

Automatic Text Frame "Like" Toggle

When you import text with Auto Text Frames on, any overflow text will be placed into columns created on blank pages. Before, it always created them the same as the Masterpage margins/column count & gutter specified. Now you can also choose to have the new columns created with the same coordinates, count and gutter (and even the same color!) as the last column in the article.

PostScript Style Dash Line

You can still define line dash styles using the old familiar bitmap on/off mannor, but you can now also describe the individual dash lengths as you do in PostScript and applications such as Adobe Illustrator and ProDraw.

Set Type Language Submenu

Installed languages are now in a submenu in the Type menu. Select one of these and you page numbers, dates, times and hyphenation will change to reflect that language if you didn't specify it in the afore mentioned attributes.

DPI Calculator

A little script for those DPI impared users! Basically, you type in the x/ydpi that you want the selected picture scaled to and it does the calculation and scales the picture for you.

Improved Color Palette

Tint: Set the percentage tint for the color directly from the palette.

From/To Color: Gradient to colors can now be set directly from the palette.

Swatches: Small swatches in the color palette now let you identify what the color looks like.

Note:

For users with low color depth this function is pretty worthless. Unless you in at least 32 colors, and hopefully 256 or 24bit, forget it!

Auto Page Orientation

Yea! Now you can mix landscape/portrait in a single document and print at once. Better yet, stop changing your printer prefs everytime you print a landscape document. Let PageStream do the work.

Drag Duplicate

When your moving a object(s) with the Object Tool, or rotating them with the Rotate Tool, hold down the Alt (or Option) key and when you let go of the mouse button your original object will still be in the same place, but a duplicate will be placed in the new location.

Tab/Shift-Tab cycle through objects

Pressing Tab/Shift-Tab cycles through the objects on the current page.

New toolbar buttons for view pictures/drawings/column outline/text framelinks/invisibles

Turn pictures on and off with ease again!

Chapters can now be moved into and out of parent chapters

If you change the structure of your document you don't have to start over now. Add and remove chapter levels on the go.

Pages can be moved from a document to a new chapter

Create a document and decide you need chapters? No problem now.

Set screen frequency/angle/spot function for Halftone dither to non-PostScript printers

Thats right, now non-PostScript users can set all this (and more). 10dpi line spot functions for those special effects, or set the freq/angle for each ink on your color printer to finally get the best color you can.

** Flash ** Now you can also set a gamma for each ink and UCR/GCR for the RGB to CYMK conversion. Set them in the XPD pref file or just "customize" it in the print setup requester.

Improved Ordered and FS dither options to provide a better range of grays to high res printers.

Now the Ordered and FS dithers use a bigger cellsize when you print at higher resolutions. What does this mean? Less banding on your gradients and more recognizable shades of gray/color

Mirror, Negative, Thumbnail, Crop & Reg marks, and color seps to non-PostScript

I can't say that I agree with the use of several of these, but you wanted it, so you got it! At least thumbnails is _very_ nice!

Colorize B&W or Grayscale pictures.

Print them on a specific spot plate. Scan a black and white logo and change it to a spot color if you want! Make it red! It will print that way, and if its a spot color it will print on that spot plate!

Load/Save printer prefs

Switch between printers quickly. Just load/save miniprefs from the printer pref folder. Now you can switch between your color inkjet, black and white laser, and setup for printing to disk for an imagesetter without looking for those scraps of paper with the right settings for each.

Preview color seps on screen

Just shift-select the name of the view in the hide or show submenus in the window menu and now you can not only rename the view like before, but you can also show the color plates one at a time to make sure you have right spot colors or overprint/knockout options set!

External pictures FPOs are now saved with the document

When you load a document you don't have to wait to display those external pictures while it rebuilds the FPO!

Easier reselection of moved external pictures

If you ever reorganized your external pictures, you know what a pain it is to tell PageStream where those 50 pictures went. Now, it remembers where you helped it find each "lost" graphic and looks there for others before asking you where they went!

Unsupported accent characters get displayed as unaccented

Not every font supports every accented character. Now if it can't find the accented character it will use the unaccented character.

Total object count shown in Report...

Get a general idea how your document is shaping up.

Insert Character Requestor

When defining Bullet character; and Tab fill and align on character, select from a list using a requester similar to the insert character\ requester, say goodbye to typing strange unicode characters to access characters not found in the standard system fonts but that are handled by PageStream and its font engines.

Configurable Paper and DPI list in new ILBM XPD file Amiga Only

Now you can set configure the ILBM printer driver for any DPI or paper size you want.

HP driver now supports user editable XPD file Amiga Only

Add new resolutions or tweak defaults without waiting for an update from us.

New Features in PageStream 3.2

Configurable toolbar
Masking of graphics by any shape
Eyedropper tool for copying and pasting of text and object attributes
Automatic hanging indents
Automatic nested indents
Effect filters: PageStream can now share the plug-in effect filters used by BME, the free image processor included with PageStream. Nine filters, including an autotracer, are included free with PageStream. Twelve additional filters are available separately in the Gary's Effects package.
Pasteboard surrounding pages
Open Recent submenu
Default tab spacing
More extensive AppleGuide help system
AppleScript support
Vertical and horizontal page spreads
Automatic drop caps
Find/Change throughout documents and chapters
Smart Single and Double Quotes and Smart Dashes
Spot colors and overprinting
Object styles
Anchored objects

PageStream Professional Features

PageStream Professional is at this time a collection of PageStream4.1, and a number of addons and extensions which complement PageStream standard. These features which are unique to Pro release are listed below, and for details on what the standard PageStream can do, please read about it here!