It's back – after several years of languishing with Letraset USA. ReadySetGo’s original developer, Manhattan Graphics, has regained control over its page-layout program and given it a major revision, to boot.
So who in the world needs an alternative to Aldus PageMaker and QuarkXPress? Not a lot of entrenched publishers, but ReadySetGo’s $395 list price will no doubt make it attractive to Macintosh newcomers who think the competitors’ $895 price is too steep.
Is the low price going to be enough to give ReadySetGo a chance to reenter the market in a big way? Perhaps. The product itself falls midway between PageMaker and QuarkXPress, offering the manual approach of PageMaker and the precise controls of QuarkXPress. For example, creating multiple-column documents means laying out each column and then flowing the text between them. That’s similar to PageMaker. On the other hand, you can have ReadySetGo format fractions and automatically create a non rectangular wrap that fits an image’s shape. That’s similar to QuarkXPress.
All in all, ReadySetGo offers a strong set of tools for color publishing (trapping and multiple color models) and for typography (fine levels of control over tracking, character styling, and hyphenation). Its layout features are weakened by its inability to link multiple columns, but there are many tools for creating objects of various shapes and creatively mixing text and graphics. If you’re producing manuals or technical documents, you’ll be disappointed; there are no indexing or table-of-contents tools, and page-numbering options arc limited (no footers or headers).
Despite its well-rounded set of features and its low price, I can’t really warm up to ReadySetGo. What makes me keep my distance is the interface. It’s clunky and unintuitive. You must constantly switch between tools — the one that selects a text box won’t let you import text into the box, for example. The mouse never rests. The menus are also oddly organized, and I don’t think it’s a question of just being different from PageMaker or QuarkXPress — it’s a question of being jumbled.
I also find the palettes to be too large and their text too small — they’re hard to read, and there’s no standard Macintosh feedback when you try to select a setting to change it. (The text doesn’t get highlighted so you can replace it; instead, you must pick an insert point and delete or add to the text-size values.) The manual likewise has a thrown-together feel.
There’s no strong reason not to use ReadySetGo if its tools match your needs. But there’s really no compelling reason to choose it over the competition, either. A low price is nice, but it’s not enough.
Gruman, Galen. (October 1994). ReadySetGo 6.0.2. Macworld. (pg. 82).
Esselte Pendalfex Corporation
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readysetgo.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
