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The venerable Ventura 10 (née Ventura Publisher) traces its roots to the 1980s when it was a DOS program. A lot of time has passed since it was one of the first players in the market, and Ventura has lost much of its market share along the way. Without a major release since version 8, in March of 1998—ancient history for computer software—Corel needed a strong update to make Ventura relevant again.

Last March, Corel began its overhaul of Ventura with the purchase of SoftQuad and its XMetaL XML editor. This enabled Corel to integrate a quality XML editing tool into its product arsenal, and also provided the company with the XML integration and technology that had been conspicuously missing from Ventura. This, along with several other changes to the program—built-in PDF support, table tags, and some interface updates—give Ventura a much-needed boost that should appeal to users across the enterprise publishing cycle. However, it's not the major revamp you might expect after more than four years.

Enterprise Publishing

XML has been oft-touted as the ultimate enterprise publishing solution, with the potential for achieving the elusive goal of writing once and publishing many times. Such a goal, if possible, holds broad implications for print and Web production departments since it would allow rapid content targeting with little adjustment.

Corel requires you to use two separate procedures to generate XML content. You begin by developing your XML document in XMetaL (or any other XML editor), then import the XML file into Ventura, and use the built-in Mapping Editor to map elements from your DTD, or schema, against a set of saved tags in Ventura. Although the Map Editor is a powerful integration tool, it is far from intuitive, and even a seasoned content producer will likely need to climb a learning curve to understand how it works. It might have been easier if Corel had used a wizard approach instead of requiring users to undertake the process manually, a chore that includes locating the DTD and saved tagged files and then learning how to map one to the other. Compounding this, there is no Map Editor manual and the online help is thin. A Getting Started tutorial would help explain the overall map-editing process.

At a Glance
	Ventura 10
Rating
Company	Corel
URL	www.corel.com
Price	$699 full, $249 upgrade
Pros	PDF generator allows for PDF output without Adobe Acrobat; XML support.
Cons	XML support needs more work to allow true round tripping. Tighter integration with XmetaL needed.

It is also unfortunate that you cannot change XML content once you import it into Ventura, nor can you save content as XML (something you can do in Adobe FrameMaker 7.0). This means that you have to import your file and run the Map Editor each time you make changes to the source materials. While Corel should be applauded for incorporating XML into Ventura, the company needs to work harder to integrate XMetaL and Ventura into a more cohesive suite that allows true round-trip support between the two programs. Corel chose well in purchasing XMetaL, a robust, easy-to-use XML editor, but it should take advantage of XMetaL's well-designed interface and integrate XML functionality directly into Ventura.

Built-in PDF Support

Ventura 10 comes with an integrated PDF generator, which means you don't have to buy your own copy of Adobe Acrobat to create PDF files. It provides powerful controls for Web and print professionals alike to generate PDF output. If you plan to distribute a PDF on the Web, you can select "PDF for the Web" from the PDF Styles drop-down list in the Save As PDF dialog box. If you want more control over your PDF output, click the Settings button and the Publish to PDF dialog box opens. From here you can fine-tune your output. One particularly interesting feature here is the Preflight tab, new in version 10, which gives you recommendations for final output and points out possible design flaws. However, some of the suggestions are bizarre, such as suggesting changing your font size to 18 point for use in the Acrobat Reader or 20 point for viewing in a Web browser. These seem large by anyone's design standards. Still, the preflight checklist is customizable, allowing you to shut off items that aren't important to you.

Figure 1 [click for larger image] The new Mapping Editor provides a way to map information from your DTD to Ventura tags.

Table Tagging

Another new feature in Ventura 10, Table Tagging allows you to define the attributes of a table once, then use a single tag to apply those attributes many times. Web professionals should appreciate this feature, which provides an easy way to integrate several custom table styles into your publication without having to reinvent the wheel every time. You can use the table tagging feature to create tables (either for design or data), then publish them to the Web where they get converted to HTML. You can also edit them in your favorite HTML editor, if need be. While Ventura does not pretend to be an HTML editor, it does provide fairly sophisticated Web publishing output and allows you to link your output to a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). Furthermore, you can map Ventura tags to HTML tags and make formatting adjustments if needed.

Better Days Ahead?

If you are looking to purchase a new enterprise publishing solution, Ventura is certainly worth a look. Ventura has the potential to deliver end-to-end enterprise publishing with output to HTML, PDF, and print, all from one tool. The ability to import XML increases the prospects of a smooth publishing process across departments, regardless of the desired output.

Some retail outlets have been marketing XMetaL and Ventura 10 as a package (such as PC Connection, pricing the set for $399 upgrade, $699 new), but Corel continues to sell them separately on its Web site.

Ventura 10 does include most of the tools you need in a modern enterprise publishing package, but other than making a good decision to marry Ventura with XMetaL, Corel doesn't seem to have made a concerted effort to overhaul Ventura. With some fine-tuning to the XML support, Ventura has the potential to compete in the enterprise publishing market, but Corel must pay it more attention and update the product in a more timely fashion.

Ron Miller is a freelance technology journalist. Reach him at rsmiller@techdochelp.com.

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