Less on Word, More on Other Software

[rolanni]

OK, you knowledgeable bunch, you.

I drive a Mac at the day-job and, despite having used it for a year to make about a bazillion (really classy, if I do say so myself) posters (yes, in Word. Yes, I am made of Awesome. Also, patience. Or was that Sheer Bloody-mindedness? Whatever.) and do all the other report-making, database wrangling and whatever it is that somebody decides that I need to have been doing Forever for them this week with it, I don't know anything about, say, installing software on it. This is not an Insurmountable Problem, maybe; there is ITS. I can probably get the backing of my bosses (all of whom are In Awe of the design work I've been doing) to install a program that actually works, as long as it doesn't, like, come out of the departmental budget.

The heartbreaker, of course, is that all my artist and designer friends swear that Mac is an Artist's Machine; you can do beautiful work on it! Which makes me wonder just what I could do if I wasn't tied to the abomination that is Word. This all kinda came to a head today because I'm trying to do something that I have done many times in, ferghodssake, Publisher, and I can't cajole Word to play nice.

Suggestions, commentary, donations of large sums of money?

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Pages is really a lightweight page layout/DTP package -- emphasis is on design rather than writing text.

There's also NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org) a Mac port of OpenOffice (i.e. works mostly like MS Office, only it's free).

If your bosses are somewhat corporate in outlook, you might get best results by demanding a copy of Adobe Creative Suite -- it's about $1200 for the entry-level version, which comes with Photoshop (image manipulation), Illustrator (vector graphics) and InDesign (kick-ass DTP package that's eating Quark's lunch). The steep price might qualify as "reassuringly expensive", and folks in academia can get it for about half price (or even more steeply discounted).

Warning: these are power tools! There's a lot to learn. Flip side: if you can add them to your CV it's a big plus -- they're the professional tools and folks who can use them competently are in demand.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten that Sharon was dealing with Bureaucrats, where if it's more expensive, they're more likely to approve it...

Yeah, try for the Adobe package.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

With university discounts, the design bundle will run more like $300; the web bundle maybe $400.

And yes, by all means, ask for this! It is a delight.

CS3

[wdonohue.livejournal.com]

The advantage for CS3 is that Steve is (I believe) already rasslin' with it for SRM book production. The downside is that if you don't have background in layout, there is a learning curve to get through. If you DO have layout experience, I've found CS3 much easier to pick up than Quark. In messing with Pages, it's reversed: layout experience may trip you up when you first start working with it. Oh, and iWork also comes with Numbers (spreadsheet) and Keynote (slides) if you don't want to mess with Office. They do import/export some Office formats, too.

-- Brian sticking his oar in again --