I recently did a big project (a vacation photobook that I exported to bitmaps to give me full control of design of a Shutterfly book) with Pgs 5 and I recorded the issues that I observed. If there are any questions or things I could do to help diagnose them let me know and I will do follow ups. Included are hard bugs, weird behavior, and a couple of wishlist items.

Problems in 5.0.5.8 that seem to have been corrected in 5.1.2:
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+ 5.0.5.8 takes a long time to start up and while waiting for it to start up my Windows desktop is locked up.
+ There was also a problem with file requestor thumbnails not being refreshed which seems to be fixed in 5.1.2.
+ Interestingly, 5.0.5.8 used to print well to PDF but now it produces empty files (this seems to have happened after installing 5.1.2, which fortunately prints to PDF just fine)

Affecting both versions:
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+ Double-click word & triple click line - flaky, often does not work. Hard to select text. Works so well in PGS 4 - what happened? I also sometimes get the "window loses focus when I have just drag-selected some text" issue
+ I don't use Arial anymore because it Pgs 5 insists on adding a ligature for "st" that I can't seem to turn off. It doesn't happen in Pgs 4.
+ (wishlist) Earlier versions of pgs had a hotkey for turning on and off the "snap-to" buttons on the toolbar. It definitely made my work faster. Alt: if there was a way to temporarily disable snapping (holding down <alt> or something like that) that would work, too.

5.1.2-only issues:
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+ The layout menu is ghosted (not active) unless a text box is selected on that page. (really frustrating putting together a photo album with some pages having no text!)
+ Won't offer print to bitmap, or if it does, it is only temporary, At some point it disappears until the computer is rebooted.
+ Screen refreshes are wonky when scrolling around in the window. 5.0.5.8 redraws the page when I let go and stop scrolling, but not 5.1.2
+ 5.1.2 64 bit version does not work at all on my 64 bit windows 10 OS
+ Copy or Cut of a graphic from a document (at least a picture-heavy document with many graphics) takes forever
+ Noticed a weird screen artifact: Ghosts of the cropped parts of pictures can show up in attenuated form beside the uncropped part on the page. Is that a bug or a feature?

My system:
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System info: Windows 10
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core Processor 3.40 GHz
Installed RAM 32.0 GB
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Hi Steven, I can't really comment with good knowledge on the Windows version of PageStream (though I do have a registered copy of v5.0.5.8 and v5.1.2) as I usually use the MorphOS version of 5.1.2 which doesn't seem to exhibit the issues you mention, not that it doesn't have a few issues of its own that Deron is well aware of!

I believe that the 64-bit version of PageStream v5.1.2 for Windows is not as stable or reliable as the 32-bit version, but I have only used it a few times, but I will try to 'dig it out' and try to check a few of the issues you have noticed, and report back here.

Deron did state in another message thread, and to me personally, that he intended to do some further bug-fixing and feature improvement work over March/April 2024, but I've not heard back from him on the state of any improvements/fixes to date, and we are nearing the end of April!

With regard to your comments

Quote:

I'll try to get back to you fairly soon with some observations from a Windows perspective in the next day or so, if I don't get side-tracked with other projects.

No rush. When I posted back in January (after a several year absence) Deron asked for any inputs I had, so I collected these when working on my photo book.
I also used pgs4 for basic stuff, but pgs5 for Windows has been pretty good except for some occasional crash-i-ness and screen issues and I use it also because it is better integrated with the windows clipboard (yay! I can directly paste pics and text!) and because the pdf output was 1000% better than in pgs 4 which was only good for basic documents (I generally make tables and things and also pgs4 did not handle applied text styles well in pdf export). So I went back and forth between them frequently. If there is a way to send pictures I could probably do screen grabs of some of the screen issues. The files I was generating for our vacation books were very large (I ended up doing six separate documents for the 30 page photobook to cut loading times) so the huge copy/cut times may have been just too much memory usage to put something into the clipboard?
Thanks for looking into the issues. My A3000 is a museum piece that I don't use at all now and I only use the Windows version, but I still use it a lot and I hope to see pgs5 streamlined a bit so I can retire my pgs 4 finally after all this time.

One more bug: In 5.1.2 the "Type" menu is greyed out (inactive and unusable) when I have a text cursor in a text frame. I can type but I needed to add a special character to write the French word très. The Type menu works in PGS 4 and 5.0.5.8 but not in 5.1.2

Note: this was because when I tried to past plain text from a website and then from Notepad (to remove any special formatting) the paste failed at the "è" character with the popup "Unable to load the entire document using the character set encoding selected. Load anyway?" When I say "Load" the load stops at the offending character and doesn't load the rest. (This also seems to work in 5.0.5.8 so it must be a bug only in 5.1.2)

Hi Steven, OK I'm back, to report some observations, and maybe a solution or two for your issues you commented on.

Affecting both versions:
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The Double-click word & triple click line - on my basic HP Notebook running Windows 7 32 bit, which v5.1.2. I have installed it on, seems to cope well with ... and I find no instance of the "flaky, often does not work. Hard to select text" issue that you commented on. Also "window loses focus when I have just drag-selected some text" I cannot replicate with my system, though I have rarely used that feature, but it works very quickly and there is no de-focus of the screen image display when text is drag-selected.

With regard to the ligature issue. I presume you have tweaked, where necessary the Auto Kerning to whatever extent and thus the auto/manual ligature options within the Kerning dialog requester of PageStream to switch off any issue you arer having with the Arial font? That said, I am not having any noticeable issue with the Arial font of the type you have mentioned, but switching off the ligature will surely prevent this issue from happening when you need it to?!

The option for pagestream having a hotkey for turning on/off the "snap-to" buttons on the toolbar - that is a preference option within the Toolbar gadget/buttons you can add or remove, that you will need to add yourself to suit your own needs. There are many gadgets to 'tweak' the Toolbar to suit your requirements, and you probably set them up a long time ago, or they were pre-selected in PGS v4 and you have since forgot to add what you needed for a while in v5, as they are still there in the numerous gadgets you can add/remove to/from the Toolbar. There has always been the option to set your system up so that Snap to Grid and Snap to Guides can be active in all documents by choosing the Preferences> View option, and selecting those options, if they are not already preset by default, as they were with the program when I installed (unarchived) it.

With regard to the 5.1.2-only issues:
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I do not find that the layout menu is ghosted (not active) unless a text box is selected on a page, but obviously the Type menu option is ghosted unless some type/text box is available/present.

The printing options are always shown, though I usually use PostScript for printing, but the Windows (Bitmap) option is also available for me to choose, though I have not sent any data to it as yet, as it is not my preferred printing option. If you want me to try this option on your behalf, to ensure it does actually print via Bitmap then just ask me?

Again, I cannot find any issue with "Screen refreshes" being "wonky when scrolling around in the window" with v5.1.2. I won't be trying this problem with v5.0.5.8 as I never got any good results consistently with that version, and I think that v5.1.2 is a lot more stable and reliable at doing what it is supposed to do.

Any redrawing issues I cannot generate on my system, so I cannot give you any solution to your problem, based from my system, which is using solely v5.1.2.

My Windows 7 Notebook is 32-bit only, so I have not tried this issue of PageStream's 64-bit program being completely non-functional, but I seem to remember I installed it on one of my 64-bit systems, and it seemed to run OK for me, or I would have commented back to Deron about it being an issue. That said, I know that Deron has stated that the 64-bit version does seem to have a few 'niggles' that need fixing, so predominantly I would be using the 32 bit PageStream version until he reports that the 64-bit version is OK. However, I might try it out for you, and report back here with whatever results I find.

When I copy or cut a graphic into a document it happens virtually instantly, but I am only importing 1 image at a time, and I don't know how many images you have potentially just imported or pasted into the document you are referring to, but if you are utilising the cut/copy/paste options then it could be that the undo/redo memory is getting overloaded and maybe you need to increase the undo/redo capabilities in the Preferences> General options.

I have not noticed any weird screen artifact(s): "Ghosts of the cropped parts of pictures" showing up in other parts of a document, so I have no observations on that comment.

I hope I have replied to most of what you put forward, and given you some options to improve your setup, but if you need more help of any sort, then just ask, and if the thread is still active I will reply here.