Ventura Publisher Gone?

[Andrew B.]

I don't see Ventura Publisher in the Corel store anymore. I can link into it's page using Google, but that could be an artifact. Anyone know what the deal is?

[Franca]

I don't know what the official deal is but frankly I'd be very surprised to see it still in the store. It's an ancient program now as far as software goes and hasn't been updated in years. It requires jumping through a few hoops to run it on Win 7, though it can be done. I will be finding out about that firsthand very soon as my XP desktop seems to be toast. I'll be getting a new Win 7 64-bit system and am not looking forward to trying to get it to play nicely with all of my hardware and software dinosaurs.

[Andrew B.]

Do you know if they still have their news groups.

[LoisWakeman]

Don't give up yet - I got Homesite working on 7 - unless you are talking about the GEM version

[Steve Rindsberg]

Make sure you get a Win7 edition that allows you to use XP mode and you at least know you'll be covered with VP.

One oddity to watch out for ... the old way of getting a window to pop to the front doesn't always work in Win7 (and I think Vista). A couple of times I've had installs appear to stall partway through. Progress dialog's up but you can't hear anybody breathing.

It turns out that there's another window *behind* the progress box, one that's patiently waiting for a prod from the wetware. Click it to bring it to front and focused, answer its pressing question and away we go ...

[donmcc]

HOW? I would love to get Homesite working again on my PC.

[BobRoosth]

I have Homesite 5.5 working on my Win 7 system. Don't recall any specific problems. Given what it does, I am surprised there would be any issue.

[BobRoosth]

I don't recall what hoops I had to jump through to get VP7 working, but it is. Crashes every now and again.

The biggest issue for me was font handling. The Bitstream font loader that works with Draw and Ventura does not work with Win 7. I ended up buying Suitcase Fusion. Font names are different between XP and 7 and old documents need some finding fonts.

I only have one on-going Ventura job, so the issue is almost mute.

[Franca]

Thanks, Steve - noted.

[LoisWakeman]

When I ran it, it did the "bong" and screen blackout thing, and I told it to set the options so it would run. It does raise a security warning every time I start it, but I can live with that.

[edit] - that is on a 64-bit version, too.