Extensis has made a business of adding long-desired features to Adobe PageMaker and QuarkXPress. Its latest effort, PageTools 2.0, beefs up PageMaker 5 and 6 with 18 plug-ins that either add new features or enhance existing ones.
Most of the eight brand-new tools improve PageMaker’s text-handling capabilities. PageType, for example, is a floating palette that lets you define and apply character-based styles (PageMaker supports only paragraph-based style sheets). You can include or exclude formatting attributes; For example, you can create a style that applies a specific color, size, and tracking to selected text but leaves the font untouched. The only disappointment is that you must have the PageType palette open to apply character-level styles. You can’t access them through a pop-up menu or PageTools tool ban nor by assigning them a keystroke or button.
Two other welcome text-handling tools are PageCounter and PageCaps. PageCounter is smarter than your average word-count utility; you can tell it to include or exclude nonprinting text, overset text, and text on the pasteboard. PageCaps lets you quickly change the case of selected blocks of text.
One of the more powerful tools is PageGlossary, which adds a text-macro function. You can store frequently used chunks of text or graphics and retrieve them later from the PageGlossary palette. As with the PageType tool, though, you can only select a PageGlossary entry from the floating palette; you have to either keep the palette open, or open it each time you want to use an entry.
Also new are PageMarks, which lets you draw crop marks and registration marks around objects; PageSca1er, which lets you select and scale multiple objects; PageTabs, a palette that stores tabs and indents so you can apply them to other paragraphs; and PageTips, an innocuous tip-a-day screen.
PageTools also includes the ten tools that came with version 1.0. Among the best of the originals: PageMover lets you copy or move selected items from one page to another without actually going to the new page; PagePrinter enables you to print noncontiguous pages or only pages chat have been modified; the PageThumb palette lets you navigate a document by clicking on page thumbnails; and PageZoom allows you to zoom in on pan of a screen (in a separate window) without redrawing the entire screen.
As in other Extensis products, you access all the plug-ins from tool bars and floating palettes. The tool bars are now fully customizable; you can move buttons from bar to bar in any configuration, and create custom buttons that activate PageMaker commands. You can also anchor each tool bar to the top or side of your screen, or configure it as a floating palette. PageTools' full array of tool bars and palettes is visually overwhelming, however...; you’ll want to customize them to eliminate the buttons you don't use and group the ones you do.
The Last Word
Extensis has done a good job of figuring out what PageMaker users really need. Some components are less elegant than others, but overall PageTools goes a long way toward making PageMaker more powerful and precise.
Extensis Corporation
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
9 / 
2014-04-14 / 
7390f3e2b34c622f2c6c913018bd363dd44b6b15 / 
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extensis_pagetools2.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
