The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Corel Ventura 5
Ash Nallawalla
 ash@melbpc.org.au

In the June 1994 issue of this magazine I did a "First Looks" report of CorelDRAW 5, based on a late beta copy of the product. It turned out that the Ventura module was not shipped in the first release, so this follow-up report should be read in conjunction with the earlier one. Unfortunately, this is also a "First Looks" report because I received the shipping version of Ventura one day before this issue went to the film maker. This report covers the Ventura module in particular.

What I received was a complete package of CorelDRAW 5 (which includes Corel Ventura 5) Rev B or E2 (you may hear it referred to both ways). I have not had the time to use it to produce anything, but you will hear about our production experiences with it in the months to come.

Corel Ventura 5 (CV5) is one of the major desktop publishing packages for the IBM-PC family and competes with products such as PageMaker, FrameMaker and Quark Express.

System Requirements

The recommended system requirements for running CV5 are an 80486 PC with 16 MB RAM, Super VGA monitor, mouse, CD-ROM drive, Math Co-processor, and Windows 3.1 or higher.

The minimum system requirements are an 80386 PC with 8 MB RAM, VGA monitor, mouse, CD-ROM drive, and Windows 3.1 or higher. To have enough memory to run it on a 386 computer, you will probably need to create a swap file.

Documentation

The sharp-eyed reader might notice that there is no consistency in capitalisation and spacing in the Corel product names, e.g. CorelDRAW!, Corel DRAW, Corel VENTURA, Corel Ventura Publisher, Corel Ventura? Yes, the manuals are inconsistent but the last variant is the most prevalent. That said, the manuals are well-designed and easy to follow. Extensive use of colour has been made to good effect.

The TagWrite user documentation is provided in PDF format and you can use the supplied Acrobat READER to display and print the documentation.

Read the README.TXT File!

You must read the README.TXT file before attempting to install CorelDRAW Rev E2 over an earlier version or as a new installation. If you fail to do so, you might not discover that many apparent bugs have been documented and work-arounds are provided. Some of these look like unfinished features to me, for example, to create a personal spelling list, one must first create the file with a text editor and save it with a .PD extension.


Figure 1. Text now follows contours easily


Figure 2. Type Assist replaces text with the string your provide


Figure 3. The Story Editor view.


Figure 4. The new Chapter Settings dialog box

Packaging

There have been some complaints about the way Corel shipped CD-ROMs in the first release of CorelDRAW 5. In that package the CD-ROMs were lying loose in a plastic bag with no protection in between. Now they come in individual Tyvek-like sleeves that resemble floppy disk sleeves. Not as nice as a jewel case but better than nothing. The rest of the packaging is of the usual high standard.

New Features in Rev E2

I have reproduced some extracts from the README.TXT file below:

DRAW Features

  • When doing colour separations, CorelDRAW and Corel Ventura will detect colours used in EPS files imported using the "EPS (Placeable) (*.eps,*.ps,*ai)".
  • When Preview Image (Print Options dialog box) is deselected, the print area occupied by all objects is now shown by a grey rectangle with an X in it.
PHOTO-PAINT Features
  • The magic wand, lasso, and the flood fill now work faster.
  • Holding down S key on button-up snaps the Clone tools anchor point back to its original position.
  • Revert menu item added to file menu. Revert reloads the most recently saved version of the current file.
  • Last Filter menu item added to effects menu. Last Filter runs the last executed filter on the current image.
  • Photopaint supports any plug-ins that conform to the Adobe Photoshop standard plug-ins.
  • The Plug-in filters now remember the last parameters used.
  • Masking now supported in the plug-ins. If a transparency is present, the image is passed to the plug-in as an 8-bit mask. Currently, only Kai's Power Tools Gradient-on-a-Path plug-in exploits this feature.
  • When filters are applied to a partially loaded file, the entire image is affected and not just the partial area loaded. This allows huge files to be filtered on disk.
  • There is a new dialog box -"Transparency Mask Creation" that allows you to create a transparency from a mask.
  • There is now no limit on cropped image size. If the cropped image size is 16 MB, the partial loading feature is activated.
  • Holding down Shift + Ctrl switches direction between horizontal and vertical for Freehand tools.
  • You can display the Pen/Paper/Fill Roll-ups by double clicking the appropriate icon in the Status bar.
  • A "Remove" button has been added to the Canvas rollup. You click this button to remove the current canvas from the image. Previously, to remove a canvas, you had to chose "None" and then click Apply.
  • New Merge modes for objects have been added. These include: Add, Subtract, Difference, Multiply, Divide, Hue, Saturation, Brightness, RGB, CMYK, etc.
  • "Hide Unselected" and "Show All" buttons have been added to the Layers/Object rollup.
  • Optimised conversions from 24 bit to 256 colour formats now produce significantly better images.
  • Object feathering capabilities have been enhanced.
  • Mask/Object brush tool supports XOR mode.
  • When exporting as an EPS, the current mask is converted to clipping path.
  • Many keyboard shortcuts have been redefined.
CHART Features
  • CorelCHART now allows you to import and export Microsoft EXCEL 5.0 files.
  • Scatter charts now support data analysis.
MOVE Features
  • An option for "Constant" was added to Cel Sequencer roll-up. This option displays selected cels the same size as the first cell of the selected frame range.
  • Improved Sound Engine. The option of using a new improved sound engine has been added. The new engine supports individual volumes for each sound, and allows you to assign left and right channels. It is also far less susceptible to the skipping problems that the old engine had.
Corel Presentation Exchange Data

The Corel Presentation Exchange Data (CMX) is new for CorelDRAW5. It allows you to save files so they can be used in any Corel application. This is more efficient because Corel applications can open or import such files directly.

Using Presentation Exchange Data provides multiple benefits and Corel encourages their use. The following is a list of those benefits:
  • Most importantly, CDR and CCH files can be imported DIRECTLY into Corel Ventura, Corel PhotoPAINT and CorelCHART.
  • CDR and CCH files can be quickly previewed and printed in full quality from CorelMOSAIC. If the file does not contain the Presentation Exchange Data, CorelMOSAIC has to start the application (CorelDRAW and CorelCHART) to display the file.
  • Corel is committed to supporting the CMX format. All future Corel applications will use it.
Using Presentation Exchange Data results in bigger file sizes. Typically these files are about 30-60% larger. The Presentation Exchange Data format is a new concept introduced in CorelDRAW5. Files generated with previous versions of Corel applications don't contain Presentation Exchange Data.

Corel Ventura 4.2 Vs Corel Ventura 5.0

Printing and graphics are now controlled by the CorelDRAW engines. Managing publications has been reorganised and enhanced by the creation of the new Publication Manager.

Older File Formats

Several older word processing file formats are no longer supported by Corel Ventura 5.0. These file formats are:
  • Multimate
  • DCA
Other graphics file formats not supported by Corel Ventura 5.0 will need to be converted to a graphics file format used by Corel Ventura 5.0. These unsupported file formats are:
  • MacPaint
  • DCS
Importing .CDR Files

CDR files saved without Corel Presentation Exchange Data (CMX) will not load into Corel Ventura. To get around this, load the .CDR file into CorelDRAW! 5 and resave it with Corel Presentation Exchange Data.

Colour in Previous Versions of Corel Ventura

Corel Ventura 5.0 supports PANTONE Spot Colours, TRUMATCH Process Colours and FOCOLTONE Process Colours. Spot colours that were defined in style sheets in previous versions of Ventura will be loaded as PANTONE Spot Colours.

Modified Filter Support

Changes have been made to the support for filters to provide a literal interpretation. This has implications for older Ventura files because codes inserted into the text, which were not interpreted by previous versions of Ventura, will now be translated.

Installing a foreign-language dictionary

If you have the CD-ROM version of Corel Ventura, you can install multiple dictionaries to hyphenate and check the spelling of words in other languages.

Hyphenation
Previous versions of Corel Ventura did not save hyphenation module information in the chapter or style sheets (it depended on the files located in the Ventura directory). Since CV5 now saves hyphenation module information, you need to set the Default Hyphenation on the General tab of the Preferences dialog box. This will set the default hyphenation when loading older chapters. Changes to the default hyphenation are set within Paragraph Tags.

Line Endings

Corel Ventura 5.0 supports multiple Houghton Mifflin hyphenation dictionaries. Therefore, some of the line endings in your document will be adjusted.

Custom Page Sizes

Unlike earlier versions of Ventura where custom page sizes were set manually in the base frame Sizing and Scaling dialog box, Corel Ventura 5.0 supports custom page sizes and can automatically create custom page sizes for chapters saved in earlier versions.

When you open a chapter from an earlier version of Ventura with a custom frame setting for the base page, a dialog box will appear prompting you either to create a custom page size based on the base frame or retain your original settings.


Figure 5. Mosaic is accessible from Corel Ventura 5


Figure 6. Multimedia tutorial in progress

Reverse Text

Previous versions of Corel Ventura automatically set text to white if used in solid black box text or frames. These tags need to be changed from black to white text. When opening these chapters in Corel Ventura 5.0, the black frame/box text will appear with no text. Select the tag or select the text and set it to white.

Line Attributes
Line Attributes will differ slightly between Version 4.2 and Version 5.0 due to the change from the Ventura graphics engine to the CorelDRAW graphics engine. For example, dashed lines and line endings are affected.

Ventura File Import Auto-Sensing

When loading (importing) graphics and text files, selecting a file without specifying the specific import filter will invoke the auto-sensing feature. Since many graphics and text files appear similar, the auto-sensing feature may not accurately recognize the file format. To ensure correct loading of graphics and text files, Corel recommends that you always identify the specific filter after selecting a filename from the file list.

EPS Files

Corel Ventura 5.0 supports the importing of Placeable Encapsulated Postscript files from previous versions of Ventura Publisher, as well as from other applications. Corel Ventura 5.0 will not support EPS files that have been printed from Corel Ventura 5.0 through a postscript printer driver (Users may have used this method, rather than a screen grab, to place an image of a page in documents. In this case, you can use Corel CAPTURE to perform a screen capture).

Corel Ventura Files Exported as Microsoft Word 2.0 Files

Corel Ventura 5.0 supports a Microsoft Windows Word 6.0 files import filter. Since Corel Ventura 5.0 does not support a Microsoft Windows Word 6.0 export filter, files will be exported in Microsoft Windows Word 2.0 format.

Impressions

I like the ability to flow text around irregular-shaped graphics. No more tedious creation of little frames. I also liked the intrinsic support of CorelDRAW files.

The Story Editor is a welcome addition, for I tend to write some material directly into Ventura, particularly when I need to write within a given space. Now I can type away without the distraction of screen refreshes.

Type Assist is a customisable tool that enables you to replace one string with another. You can use it to substitute phrases for acronyms, typographically purer representations, e.g. (c) becomes ©, and so on.

Many other improvements have been made and I will discover them in due course.

Will this version make it easier to produce PC Update? Time will tell.

Reprinted from the December 1994 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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