Figure 2. This stylesheet in the library is now being used by both publications.

Figure 2 shows the subtle but significant results: Both publications are now using Big Book style, and the little figure-8 symbol on the stylesheet icons indicates that both are linked to the copy of Big Book that lives in the Big Book Library. (You do not need to name the style and the library the same, but having a project name for your publication, and naming your .vp file that, too, is a good idea, for organizational purposes.) From this point forward, any change made to a tag (paragraph, frame, character, table, or page), will be reflected in both publications.

Let's clear up two common misconceptions. First, you do not have to have the library open to work on these publications, or even to edit the style. Second, you can break the link any time you want to, just by right-clicking the style in Navigator and choosing Embed.

Aside from the obvious benefit of having global styles established for a multi-publication project, I have found linked stylesheets to provide a comforting insurance policy for my work. When you create a library, you are actually producing a file that lives in the VENTURA\LIBRARY subdirectory underneath the main VENTURA directory. That means you can back it up easily. I regularly drag important elements into my libraries--even complete chapters--because I know I can archive them just by copying the .vlb file.

I also like how difficult it is-impossible, really--to inadvertently alter a tag. When you open a publication with a linked stylesheet, that stylesheet is read-only, until you say otherwise. You do that by right-clicking on the stylesheet name in Navigator, choosing Linked Item, and then Check Out, as shown in Figure 3. The icon on the stylesheet changes and now your actions take on potentially global significance. Potentially, but not positively, because you can still change your mind. When you are done editing a stylesheet, the Linked Item flyout offers you the choice of Check In or Undo Checkout. These are equivalent to Save Changes and Abandon Changes. If you choose Check In, your changes are written to the stylesheet in the library and all other publications will see those changes. If you choose to Undo Checkout, it's as if you never checked the stylesheet out in the first place.

Figure 3. To edit a linked stylesheet, first you must check it out of the library.

Figure 4. This page takes advantage of page tag elements, including cross-references, frames for variable text, and guidelines.

Figure 4 shows a few of these strategies in action. The blue left border and the black ellipse at the top are part of a graphic embedded in the page tag. The white text at the top ("Chapter 5") is part of the text file flowed onto the page. It is simply positioned with spacing and alignment values to fit in the black ellipse.
    The mini table of contents in the blue border will have different content for each chapter, but its position will always be the same. Therefore, it is placed in a frame that is being supplied by the page tag. The large chapter number that bleeds off of the top-right of the page is courtesy of a cross-reference placed on the page tag, and finally, the horizontal guideline sets the position for the TOC, the main headline, and the large chapter number.
    Note in Figure 4 how many page tags this publication has.

Figure 5. This might look like a frame with a figure and a secondary caption frame attached, but actually it is one frame containing a figure and a text file.

This has completely reshaped my strategies for handling captions, and Figure 5 offers a hint of that strategy. For each chapter of a publication, I create the main text file and I create a caption file (which sounds a lot like the good old GEM days, I know-I even name them with .cap extensions...). The caption file would look something like this:

@CAP HEAD: Figure 5-1:
@CAPTION: This is the caption for Figure 5-1, and it is a very nice caption.
@CAP HEAD: Figure 5-2:
@CAPTION: This is the caption for Figure 5-2, and it is also a very nice caption, although not quite as nice as Figure 5-1, but still nice.
etc.

Go back to Figure 5 and study the Status bar along the bottom: Notice it displays both 05-01 (the name of the graphic) and captions05 (the name of the text file). Both are loaded into this frame, and what's more, captions05 is flowing from this frame to the next. The @caption tag is set to break to the next page (or frame) at the end. This is easier to manage in pre-production, and perhaps more important, much easier in post-production. These days, with so many book projects being destined for distribution on CD-ROM or the Web after they go to print, it is essential to be able to export all text elements to standard formats. Text stored in VENTURA's captions cannot be exported very easily, but all of my caption text in the publication can be exported with a single export command.
    Oh, and that reminds me--do you know that you can easily export text without having to go through the hassles of setting your text file to Export on Save? Just drop your cursor in any text and go to File | Export Text. This does not create an external link or anything spooky like that; it simply saves a copy of your text to a file. You can export text anytime, not just when you save. You can make an on-the-fly backup of a text file if you need to perform experimental editing and you suspect you might need to retreat to that point later.

Frames Come in Lots of Sizes and Shapes
At first, I thought it was just a bunch of fluff. A marketing toy. A way to stay ahead of the competition. I refer to the relatively new capability of creating frames in shapes other than rectangles. Sure, a freeform text wrap greatly benefits from the ability to node-edit a frame, but create a frame the shape of a triangle, or an ellipse? When would I ever do that?

Figure 6. This index separator used to require 26 individual imported graphics. Now it can be done with one frame tag and one text file.

On my most recent book project, it finally came in handy. The design for the index called for the letters of the alphabet to be formatted as solid black letters inside of a colored circle, as shown in Figure 6. In previous versions of this book, produced in PageMaker and QuarkXpress, the layout artist created a small graphic with each letter of the alphabet. That meant 26 individual graphic files that would need to be imported into the DTP program.
    But with circular frames, this became a simple job. Here is how you would do it:

1. Create the frame according to the spec: In this case a circle 1,6 picas in diameter, 30 percent shade of cyan in the interior and a 2pt 100 percent cyan outline.
2. Create a frame tag for it, making sure to include the height and width in the tag attributes (this is an option, because frames tagged the same are frequently used in different sizes).
3. Place your cursor in the frame and type an upper case A. If the text won't fit (based on your Body Text size, temporarily enlarge the frame). Create a paragraph tag for the letter and format it to fit in the circle.
4. With your cursor still at the letter, right-click, and choose Text | Text File Properties.
5. Name the file. It can stay embedded-you don't need to set it to Export on Save-but VENTURA can only flow text between frames if the text has a name.
6. Go to View | Copy Editor (or press Alt-F10) and type out the rest of the alphabet, each letter to a line.
7. Return to the first letter and then return to the page with View | Page Layout (Alt-F11).
8. Position the frame in the main text. This is best done with an in-line anchor attached to a dedicated tag governing its positioning. (Those instructions warrant an article by themselves; let me know if you would like to see that someday soon.)
9. Create a new frame, apply the frame tag, and then flow the text. Or better still, copy the first one to the Clipboard, and paste it as needed. As you paste each copy, the text will flow and each new frame will display the next letter in the alphabet.

Perhaps one of your publications calls for a similar design element. Maybe your margin notes are set with small triangles and numbers inside. Whatever the format, keep in mind non-rectangular frames as a potential strategy. It beats the heck out of creating and importing a few dozen little graphics.

Potpourri
Here are a few other items of interest for VENTURA users who begin to make their way past the fundamentals...

One Click Frames: Are you still drawing your frames? Too much work! VENTURA 8 will automatically create a default frame when you just click on the page with the Frame tool. If you're drawing a full-page frame, or a frame that is sized to a particular column width, fine-go ahead and drag. But if your frame is destined to be sized by a dialog box or a frame tag, then don't send yourself any closer to arthritis than you have to. Don't click and drag. Just click.

The Copy Editor is growing up: I don't make nearly as many trips to an outside text editor as I used to, thanks to the robust controls in the version 8 Copy Editor. That same index with the round letters came to me from the indexer with a significant formatting error: All page ranges were supposed to be abbreviated:

123-25

but instead, they were verbose, like

123-125

To my pleasant surprise, the Copy Editor's Replace function was able to search for the occurrence of "dash / anything" and replace it with "dash"--in other words, remove the character to the right of the dash. This saved me an estimated two hours of tedium.

Keep Your Graphics External: While it might work for DRAW, PageMaker, or other design-intensive programs, VENTURA works best when you keep graphic files externally-linked instead of embedded in the publication. Part of this advice is habit, I confess-we long-time VENTURA users have been linking graphics since the mid-1980s. But there is a pragmatic argument to this as well, as VENTURA performs better and keeps its .vp file size under control if it doesn't have to lug around a bunch of graphics. Version 8 allows you to set this as the default by going to Tools | Options | Save and checking Externally Reference All Imported Pictures.
    You can always embed individual graphics on an as-needed basis (and now also export graphics, yay!), but the smart money is on external graphics and leaner .vp files.

Keep Your Text Internal: I know, you're a VENTURA user from way back, and you are used to maintaining external text files. If you absolutely insist, then go ahead, but keep all text as ANSI. Better still...don't. Keep your text embedded. Not only does VENTURA open and save its text files faster if the text is not set to export, but you eliminate the risk of VENTURA messing with styles and character formatting. When it comes to text I/O, VENTURA Publisher isn't soup yet, and Corel knows it. VENTURA is as good as ever with the handling of external ANSI text, and it knows how to write clean RTF files. It's on the way back in where the trouble often occurs. VENTURA tends to create duplicate tags if it thinks the RTF style is not identical to its own tag-thus the dreaded Body Text(1) and Body Text(2) situation-and it often chokes on styles with automatic bullets.

If you are in a workgroup environment where a team member must work on external text files, stick to ANSI, or use RTF but only with VENTURA markup. Otherwise, it's better to keep the text embedded until further notice. Corel knows that this is a significant issue, and its engineers have this high on their list. Expect to see a fix for this in a maintenance release to 8. On

1. Set Text File Properties to Export on Save. Choose ANSI as the format.
2. Save and close the .vp file and open the text file in a text editor.
3. Snoop around. Sometimes, even if you don't find anything, like upper-ASCII characters or other garbage, just sending it out, saving in Notepad or WordPad, and having VENTURA gobble it back in does the trick.
4. Open the .vp file and see if that helped. If so, immediately embed the text again.

The other thing to try if you suffer from sudden and repeated crashing is a simple Save As, choosing the same name or a different name for the .vp file. The Save As command forces VENTURA to rewrite the entire .vp file. You'll probably find that the size of the file will shrink by about 35 percent, and with the elimination of the bloat often goes some trouble...

Customize! This remains my favorite interface feature of all. I just love the ability to create custom menus, add items to the context (right-click) menu, and create my own hotkeys. Practically the entire interface is there for the designing, via Tools | Options | Customize. Here are just a few of the changes I have made that make my life much easier: