Old Computer Challenge 2024 Day 5
It took some effort but I finally managed to find a way to get Windows 3.11 printing colour PDFs with Adobe Distiller, at least for Aldus Pagemaker 5.0 and MS Publisher 2.0.
In both cases I need to choose Adobe's Postscript printer driver that redirects to Adobe Distiller instead of the direct Adobe Distiller printer. I also needed to set this up to embed all fonts, which fixed the "dEsIgn Is My PaSsIoN" look I showed off previously. I tested it with my zine cover et voila:
I also spent some time playing with MS Publisher 2.0. I used to use this back in college because although I'd later administrate systems running QuarkXPress I wasn't a DTP student, and MS Publisher was the best I had access to. In hindsight, it's not a terrible DTP tool. It has a lot of templates and wizards, and a slightly clippy-esque interface. I'd say it's easier to get started than Aldus, and more user friendly but less powerful. It's no QuarkXPress but given Quark is only printing in black and white, that's not all bad.
I knocked up a couple of quick draft pages in MS Publisher using a newsletter template far quicker than I could've done in Quark. I mostly vented frustrations although some of this might make it to final draft. I imagine a lot of things would've had that very same-y feel back in the day but it doesn't feel quite as common these days. It was quite the experience using clip-art again!
The biggest problem for writing something on installing is that I can't get screenshots. In the old days, computer magazines would take photos of the screens, carefully sync'd to refresh and develop them before scanning them in. I'll try with the Mavica next and see where that gets me.