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Adobe PageMaker (formerly Aldus) is a discontinued
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...
computer program introduced in 1985 by the Aldus Corporation on the
Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software ...
. The combination of the Macintosh's
graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...
, PageMaker publishing software, and the
Apple LaserWriter The LaserWriter is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker, ...
laser printer marked the beginning of the
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...
revolution. Ported to
PCs A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...
running Windows 1.0 in 1987, PageMaker helped to popularize both the Macintosh platform and the Windows environment. A key component that led to PageMaker's success was its native support for
Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the cre ...
'
PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Do ...
page description language. After Adobe purchased the majority of Aldus's assets (including FreeHand, PressWise, PageMaker, etc.) in 1994 and subsequently phased out the Aldus name, version 6 was released. The program remained a major force in the high-end DTP market through the early 1990s, but new features were slow in coming. By the mid-1990s, it faced increasing competition from QuarkXPress on the Mac, and to a lesser degree, Ventura on the PC, and by the end of the decade it was no longer a major force. Quark proposed buying the product and cancelling it, but instead, in 1999 Adobe released their "Quark Killer", Adobe InDesign. The last major release of PageMaker came in 2001, and customers were offered InDesign licenses at a lower cost.


Release history

* Aldus Pagemaker 1.0 was released in July 1985 for the Macintosh and in December 1986 for the IBM PC. * Aldus Pagemaker 1.2 for Macintosh was released in 1986 and added support for PostScript fonts built into
LaserWriter Plus The LaserWriter is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple Inc., Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like ...
or downloaded to the memory of other output devices. PageMaker was awarded a Codie award for ''Best New Use of a Computer'' in 1986. In October 1986, a version of Pagemaker was made available for
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
's HP Vectra computers. In 1987, Pagemaker was available on Digital Equipment's VAXstation computers. * Aldus Pagemaker 2.0 was released in 1987. Until May 1987, the initial Windows release was bundled with a full version of Windows 1.0.3; after that date, a "Windows-runtime" without task-switching capabilities was included. Thus, users who did not have Windows could run the application from
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few o ...
. * Aldus Pagemaker 3.0 for Macintosh was shipped in April 1988. PageMaker 3.0 for the PC was shipped in May 1988 and required
Windows 2.0 Windows 2.0 is a major release of Microsoft Windows, a family of graphical operating systems for personal computers developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on December 9, 1987, as a successor to Windows 1.0. The product i ...
, which was bundled as a run-time version. Version 3.01 was available for OS/2 and took extensive advantage of multithreading for improved user responsiveness. * Aldus PageMaker 4.0 for Macintosh was released in 1990 and offered new word-processing capabilities, expanded typographic controls, and enhanced features for handling long documents. A version for the PC was available by 1991. * Aldus PageMaker 5.0 was released in January 1993. * Adobe PageMaker 6.0 was released in 1995, a year after Adobe Systems acquired Aldus Corporation. * Adobe PageMaker 6.5 was released in 1996. Support for versions 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, and 6.5 is no longer offered through the official Adobe support system. Due to Aldus' use of closed, proprietary data formats, this poses substantial problems for users who have works authored in these legacy versions. * Adobe PageMaker 7.0 was the final version made available. It was released 9 July 2001, though updates have been released for the two supported platforms since. The Macintosh version runs only in Mac OS 9 or earlier; there is no native support for
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
, and it does not run on Intel-based Macs without SheepShaver. It does not run well under Classic, and Adobe recommends that customers use an older Macintosh capable of booting into Mac OS 9. The Windows version supports
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...
, but according to Adobe, "PageMaker 7.x does not install or run on Windows Vista."


End of development

Development of PageMaker had flagged in the later years at Aldus and, by 1998, PageMaker had lost almost the entire professional market to the comparatively feature-rich QuarkXPress 3.3, released in 1992, and 4.0, released in 1996. Quark stated its intention to buy out Adobe and to divest the combined company of PageMaker to avoid anti-trust issues. Adobe rebuffed the offer and instead continued to work on a new page layout application code-named "Shuksan" (later "K2"), originally started by Aldus, openly planned and positioned as a "Quark killer". This was released as Adobe InDesign 1.0 in 1999. The last major release of PageMaker was 7.0 in 2001, after which the product was seen as "languishing on life support". Adobe ceased all development of PageMaker in 2004 and "strongly encouraged" users to migrate to InDesign, initially through special "InDesign PageMaker Edition" and "PageMaker Plug-in" versions, which added PageMaker's data merge, bullet, and numbering features to InDesign, and provided PageMaker-oriented help topics, complimentary Myriad Pro fonts, and templates. From 2005, these features were bundled into InDesign CS2, which was offered at half-price to existing PageMaker customers. No new major versions of Adobe PageMaker have been released since, and it does not ship alongside Adobe InDesign.


Reception

''
BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
'' in 1989 listed PageMaker 3.0 as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards, stating that it "is the program that showed many of us how to use the Macintosh to its full potential".


File formats

Adobe PageMaker file formats use various
filename extensions A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...
, including PMD, PM3, PM4, PM5, PM6 and P65; these should be able to be opened in the applications Collabora Online, LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice, they can then be saved into the OpenDocument format or other file formats.


References

https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/54/Aldus-Corporation.html Reference for Business Company History Index Information Technology Aldus Corporation - Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, Background Information on Aldus Corporation 41 First Avenue South Seattle, Washington 98104-2871 U.S.A.


External links


Adobe - PageMaker 7 (official site)



PageMaker History
{{Adobe Systems 1985 software Aldus software Desktop publishing software Desktop publishing software for macOS Desktop publishing software for Windows