What number follows 11? According to Serif it's X2, an oddly similar scheme to Corel, who couldn't face releasing CorelDraw 13 and switched to the Roman hybrid X3 a year or so ago. Whatever the reasoning, PagePlus X2 continues Serif's progress towards the perfect DTP program.

PagePlus 11 could already import and export PDF files, handle tables and forms with aplomb, edit photos more comprehensively than some dedicated photo applications and deal with long-document functions, like indexes and tables of contents. To these attributes it now adds multi-page templates, live calendars, a new connector tool, sounds and videos in PDFs and the Media Bar.

Templates are very useful if you want to put together a document quickly, by modifying a pre-designed page rather than starting from scratch. Serif has a good range of well-designed templates, but has now added multi-page templates. This means you can have standard designs for different parts of the same publication - in the case of a newsletter or magazine, templates for news, reviews, features and listings sections, for example.

A calendar sheet is a useful template, even if you only print it once a year, but if you have to go through and change the 365 numbers, it can also be a chore. PagePlus X2's new live calendars automatically update with the correct dates each year, and you can add special days, like birthdays and anniversaries, which will stick to their dates.

If you use PagePlus to draw business charts, you'll value the new connector tool, which produces symbol connectors that stay attached to their symbols and move when the symbols are repositioned. There's a wider range of line styles for connectors, too.

PDF files can now include sounds and videos, so can be used as real multimedia platforms. You can even turn them into elementary Powerpoint-style slideshows.

The Media Bar is a slide-away bar at the bottom of the screen; you can slide away the palettes at the right of the screen, too, to give you a more uncluttered screen. It acts as a clipboard for photos, so you can drag and drop images to and from your documents. It's a good idea, but one that is rather similar to the Gallery, introduced several versions ago, which could handle other PagePlus graphics and texts clips, too.

It might have been better to enhance that, and make it exchangeable with the Gallery in DrawPlus, than to introduce a new clipboard. In fact, a universal Gallery for exchanging elements in all Serif applications would be a neat and useful way of tying them together as a suite.

Where some software houses run out of steam when their applications reach double figures, Serif still manages to find worthwhile improvements to make to its flagship DTP program. After 20 years, there is nothing to touch PagePlus's feature set in any page layout application costing under £400.