Simply put, Harvard Publisher makes desktop publishing easy
In offices with modest publishing requirements, packages such as Adobe PageMaker or QuarkXPress from Quark Inc. of Denver are overkill. On the other hand, the layout options of Microsoft Word or other word processors might not quite meet expectations.
By William M. FrazierSpecial to GCNIn offices with modest publishing requirements, packages such as Adobe PageMaker or QuarkXPress from Quark Inc. of Denver are overkill. On the other hand, the layout options of Microsoft Word or other word processors might not quite meet expectations.Harvard Publisher makes a good compromise. It's easy to use, wizard-driven, affordable and undemanding in hardware requirements. A full installation, including all Quick Tours and Page Wizards, took up 150M on my system. A Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard required separate installation.The extensive online help included an on-screen hint line, tool tips about the icons and step-by-step How To procedures. About 300 built-in Page Wizards showed how to create new publications quickly. The manual, in tutorial format, concentrated on producing publications and Web pages.Although oriented toward casual use, Publisher has extensive layout and design tools. All objects can be scaled, resized and rotated by direct manipulation or by changing values in the Change Bar. You can set vertical and horizontal rulers, visible guidelines and a dot grid based on adjustable ruler increments. Objects snap to both guidelines and grid intersections.Styles in the Text and Graphics Style palettes let you create and modify standardized styles. All similar items in a publication change when the underlying style is modified.Harvard Publisher has several high-end color features. You can mix any color using either hue-saturation-luminance or red-green-blue models. You can also specify custom cyan, magenta, yellow and black mixtures. If the publication will be professionally printed, you can choose Pantone colors and convert spot into process color. Full-color pictures can be transformed into shades of a single color by selecting the new base color in the Change Bar.About 120,000 clip-art images and photos are bundled, mostly on a set of 10 CD-ROMs with a browser. Another disk, titled Harvard Gallery, has more clip art.Although the two browsers seem identical in appearance and function, they default to different file suffixes. The Harvard Browser defaults to files with the .hbg suffix, and the Serif Browser to files with the .gal suffix. To open a gallery with the opposite suffix, choose the All Files (*.*) option.Harvard Publisher can import text files and retain formatting from most word processors. You also can enter or edit text directly using the included WritePlus word processor. WritePlus does simple formatting and has a word counter, spell-check and thesaurus.Publisher is not a full-fledged Web page editor, but you can design and make simple Web pages entirely within it.Publisher saves the entire site in Hypertext Markup Language. The included Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard then uploads everything to a Web server.Publisher also has a number of tools for managing internal and external site links. The Hot Spot tool can designate any area of a publication as a hot spot that links like a standard hyperlink. And the Hyperlink Manager displays all the hyperlinks defined in the publication.
Software Publishing product is affordable, undemanding and offers many high-end color features
All this and more
William M. Frazier, a PC hobbyist, is the postmaster of Taholah, Wash.
 | Easy to learn and use, Software Publishing's Harvard Publisher desktop package comes with simple Web publishing as well as print publishing features, for $69.95. |
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Harvard Publisher Simple desktop publishing software
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All this and more
William M. Frazier, a PC hobbyist, is the postmaster of Taholah, Wash.