In my first reply to this thread I failed to mention that Corel has a free 
30 day full-feature demo of Ventura 10 available on their web site. You can 
also purchase the older version 8 at very reasonable prices from online 
sites.

I have used Framemaker, Quark Express, InDesign, Pagemaker, and about a 
dozen other desktop publishing programs. My favorite is Corel Ventura 10. 
Try the demo. You have 30 days to examine it for free. If you take the time 
to learn it, I think you will find that it is excellent for producing 
manuals and books and all other kinds of documents. If you have any other 
Corel products you can easily add them to the toolbar. I use Corel 
Photopaint a lot, and all I have to do is right-click on a photo or bitmap 
in any document to bring up Photopaint to edit the bitmap.

As with any full-feature program, there is a learning curve, especially if 
you are interested in some of the more esoteric features. That said, 
however, I found Ventura easier to learn than many of the other products. It 
has a large number of import filters, so you can import files created in 
wordprocessors with no problem. It has built-in options for producing PDF 
and HTML output. To say I like it is an understatement.

Fr. Tom McGahee


> I use Corel Ventura 10, which has special features that make it good for
> producing larger documents like manuals and books. I have had access over
> the years to several desktop publishing and word processors, but Ventura 
> is
> my favorite. Does TOC and Index and Cross Referencing. Has excellent 
> control
> over style sheets and the like. They also have a database publisher 
> program
> that converts raw database info into a Ventura file for publication.
>
> Fr. Tom Mcgahee


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