Page layout file formats

The primary file(s) that you work with in a print design job are page layout design programs. The current industry standards are Quark Xpress and InDesign. Adobe has put their full atention to InDesign since they've dropped support and development for PageMaker.

These three packages all have basically the same features and operate on roughly the same paradigm. Text is flowed into a document, and graphics are placed. As the name of these type of software implies, documents are organized into a series of pages. Margins, gutters, page size, column guides, and master pages are defined for the document and control the flow of text throughout the document.

Various other page layout programs

I've listed the programs used for page layout design with their respective owner, file type extension and website link if availlable. Some programs are not intended for page layout design but are used for that purpose anyway, others are focused on specific jobs like mathematics and forms.

Program name	File extention
Acrobat by Adobe	.pdf	view information
Canvas by Deneba	.cnv .tpl	view information
ChemDraw by Cambridge Software	.tgf	view information
Corel Draw by Corel	.cdr	view information
Corel PhotoPaint by Corel	.cdr	view information
Debabelizer by Equilibrium	.cut	view information
DICOM by Open Source	.img	view information
DVI by Open Source	.dvi
Excel by Microsoft	.xls	view information
Fireworks by Adobe	.wbmp	view information
Framemaker by Adobe	.fm	view information
Freehand by Adobe	.eps	view information
GhostScript by Open Source	.ps	view information
Illustrator by Adobe	.ai	view information
InDesign by Adobe	.indd .indx	view information
Math Player by Design Science	.mml	view information
Math Type by Design Science	.mmt	view information
Mathematica by Wolfram	.nb .ma	view information
Matlab by MathWorks Users Manual	.fig	view information
PageMaker by Adobe	.add	view information
Photoshop Elements by Adobe	.psd	view information
Photoshop by Adobe	.psd	view information
Pitstop by Enfocus	.pdf	view information
Powerpoint by Microsoft	.ppt	view information
Prism	.prism	view information
PSI-Plot	.plt	view information
QuarkXPress by Quark	.qxd	view information
SigmaPlot by SPSS	.spw	view information
Tex and LaTeX by Open Source	.tex
Visio by Microsoft	.vsd	view information
Word by Microsoft	.doc	view information

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