Mastodawn

Chris Espinosa 18h ago

🪨 Aldus PageMaker on the Apple Macintosh 🛠️

It wasn't the first desktop publishing app, but it was the first of importance. I use it to rebuild the 40-year defunct #OMNI Magazine, resurrect a 40-year defunct software rivalry, and examine how the effects of the publishing revolution trickled through the public sector.

This post comes with a free gift!

#retrocomputing #mac #pagemaker

https://stonetools.ghost.io/pagemaker-mac

Aldus PageMaker on the Apple Macintosh

While resurrecting a 40-year old defunct magazine, I accidentally-on-purpose resurrect a 40-year old software rivalry.

Stone Tools

oscarfalcon 22h ago

@stonetoolsblog

Ha, I have an early iMac with system 9 and still runs Aldus Pagemaker (the before adobe acquisition Pagemaker).

oscarfalcon 22h ago

@stonetoolsblog

Thank you for the font, been wanting that font for ages and I thought I had it installed but alas no and then boom, gift!

Thanks!

Stone Tools 22h ago

@oscarfalcon You're very welcome! If you make something cool with it, please share with the class.

oscarfalcon 22h ago

@stonetoolsblog

Yes, will do!

Paul McAleer 22h ago

@stonetoolsblog Hell yeah, this is tremendous. Thank you. PageMaker was the first DTP program I ever used (but geoPublish was my home because I was a hardcore Commodore head), and you captured the fever pitch on the desktop publishing revolution well. We lost something along the way though.

Richard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴‍♂️📷 🗺️19h ago

@stonetoolsblog

I remember using Ventura Publisher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventura_Publisher

Ventura Publisher - Wikipedia

Ray McCarthy 13h ago

@stonetoolsblog
It's a pity they were devoured by Adobe.

Stone Tools 12h ago

@raymaccarthy Well, Brainerd said in an interview with the Museum of History and Industry in 2009 that *he* approached Adobe about a merger. He was tired and wanted out of the industry, basically. Still, since InDesign was already in the works at Aldus, maybe they could have fought on without Brainerd at the helm, but I get the feeling he really wanted a guaranteed pay day for the next phase of his life as a conservationist.

Ray McCarthy 12h ago

@stonetoolsblog
It's probably still good for paper publishing or Fixed layout Electronic distribution but it's terrible for reflowable ebooks.
Also ghastly that it's now rental only.

Ray McCarthy 12h ago

@stonetoolsblog
I also had Aldus photostyler on Win 3.x and for decades it had the best GUI to rotate an image to vertical or horizontal.
Later had Photoshop, PSP5, PSP7 & then The Gimp on XP, Win7 and now Linux since 2017.
I abandoned DTP SW about the time of LibreOffice 5? I don't do magazines or newspapers (since 1997) so now LibreOffice Writer for PDFs. Epub by LO Writer, extra Save As docx, Calibre to epub. Styles go 1:1 to HTML & CSS. Only have to manually edit some CSS values on images.

Stories of Apple 10h ago

@stonetoolsblog that picture of John Warnock at Seybold is 🔥

Stone Tools 25m ago

@storiesofapple It's pretty great, ain't it?

Magicmix1 10h ago

@stonetoolsblog Excellent article! Thank you.

Stone Tools 25m ago

@Magicmix1 Glad you enjoyed it!

Reginald 8h ago

@stonetoolsblog Whoa! Back in the 90s, my hustle was a classified ads app for PageMaker and QuarkXPress.

Aldus featured it at MacWorld Boston one year, and i got to meet Guy Kawasaki, who was promoting Aldus, IIRC...

Stone Tools 26m ago

@raganwald Fantastic to see those pics, thanks for sharing!