1. ADOBE LAUNCHES INCOPY
2. A TEXT EDITOR FOR PC USERS
3. BOOKS ON INDESIGN
4. WHAT'S COMING FOR INDESIGN?
5. IN PRINT TO ON-LINE
6. XTENSIONS AND PLUGINS
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES
8. HINTS
9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
10. LAST WORD
1. ADOBE LAUNCHES INCOPY
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At the IFRA newspaper exhibition and conference in Amsterdam last week, Adobe launched InCopy 1.0, a tool for use with InDesign intended "for writers, editors and copy-fitters". It has word-processing interface that allows writers and editors to also choose a layout view or a galley view of their publication. The layout view displays text exactly as it will appear in print, while the galley view displays edits and editorial notes with the editor's name attached.
It shares InDesign's text composition engine and uses the same hyphenation and justification rules, aiming to provide virtually error-free copy fitting and supports multiple levels of undo and redo. InCopy is also intended to work towards web publication.
InCopy will be available for Mac OS 8.5, Windows 98, and NT 4.0 and is expected in the second quarter of 2000. It will be available solely through the "Adobe InDesign system integrator channel", which we take to mean in a similar way to the Quark Publishing System, rather than through normal retain channels.
It is uncertain yet whether it is solely a high-end tool, or whether it will be suitable for smaller newspaper operations.
2. A TEXT EDITOR FOR PC USERS
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We've felt for a long time that, when you are going to place text into a page layout program, you don't need to type that text into a full featured word processor.
We've even overstated the position by suggesting that even Windows Notepad would be suitable if only it had a spell checker. Seriously, it should also have a means of easily adding tags, so that editorial copy can be pre-tagged if necessary, and if it could give a column length reading, that would be a real bonus.
Well, via journalist Sue Thompson, and production manager Frank Anthony, who has been quoted in this newsletter before, we found what we were looking for.
NoteTab Pro is a text editor with a spell check that works in either US English with an optional British add-on (or a full British dictionary), and even has a thesaurus.
It has a system by which "clips" can be listed and inserted into the text by clicking on their name in a secondary window (which we've placed to the left of the main editing window) which takes care of tagging.
Sue said that when journalists worked with it, one problem was that the spell check ran from where the cursor was, so we wrote a "clip" which put a "spellcheck" command in the clip window to send the cursor to the beginning of the story before running the spell check.
The program has a word and character count command, but we added another "clip" which calculated an estimated column length and we've even had the idea of writing the filename and column length to a separate index text file, maybe even with the text taken from the <headline> and <byline> tags.
There's a freeware "lite" version (which will give a hint of what's in the program, which originates in Switzerland), at <http://www.notetab.com>. It costs US$19.95 with site licences at US$16 a copy if you are buying 3 to 19.
3. BOOKS ON INDESIGN
====================
The InDesign Talk list has had contributions from several of the authors of books about the program... and they are beginning to hit the market.
We had a look at Deke McClelland and Amy Thomas Buscaglia's InDesign for Dummies, and, while it is ideal for someone starting in new to a page layout program with ID, it doesn't really answer any of the kinds of questions which will be asked by former PM or QXP users. US$19.99
Better is Adobe's InDesign Classroom In A Book, which is now out and similar to the others in the CIB series. Better than the above but not a style that suits everyone. US$45.
Sandee Cohen's InDesign for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guidebook from Peachpit Press is also out, and can best be described in Sandee's own words that "the VQS books are good, quick references; I used to recommend them for freelancers who can't drag around a Bible-type book." Peachpit Press were due to be putting sample pages on their web site by around now. US$17.99.
Elaine Betts' "Adobe InDesign fx and design" from the Coriolis Group is completed and due out mid-November. The author describes it as "project based, with a CD full of files for the projects, plus some useful, elementary scripting information and snippets of scripts in both AppleScript and VBA. The level of the book is stated as intermediate to advanced. I studiously avoided swarming readers with every dit and dot of detail in order to get them up to speed as quickly as possible. The project files are all professionally designed (not by me) publications." US$49.99
The "Beat the Clock" book on InDesign -- a series used by many class tutors of page layout programs and which comes with a CD of examples and exercises -- won't be available until March 2000.
Other titles on the way include InDesign InDetail by Frank J. Romano (no price yet), Mastering Adobe InDesign by Mike Cuenca and Renee LeWinter (US$39.99) and Short Order Adobe InDesign by Clay Andres (US$19.99).
Olav Martin Kvern is writing Real World InDesign and is using InDesign to create it -- which, as he says, means that he is learning more and more about the program from using it on such a major project. We'd be surprised if this isn't the one which ends up on our "must get" list. Sandee Cohen commented on what might be regarded as an opposition title: "Whenever it does come out, it will be an excellent reference work. That's the problem with the Beat the Clock and Classroom in a Book series. They tend not to be good for references." Expect it in December. US$44.99.
Our own Newspaper Production using InDesign is in the very early stages. We expect that to be at least six months away, as we need to see ID in actual workplace use.
4. WHAT'S COMING FOR INDESIGN?
==============================
David Evans of Adobe offered the following list of things they are already working on for the next version of InDesign in a slide at the latest Seybold Show:
Host-Based Trapping
TOC and Indexing
Text on a Path
Vertical Justification
Transparency
XML/SVG Support
Improved Color Workflow
Print Styles and Scripting
Story Editor
Build Booklet
Better Clipping Path Support
Improved Scaling Behavior
Eyedropper Tool
History Palette
Better Align/Distribute *numeric*
Smaller Palettes
More Line Styles
Font Usage palette
Tables
Better Print UI
He added: "Just because there are only 20 items listed does not mean that these are all the feature requests we've had - these are just the top 20. Of course, we're working hard to try to answer all of them (plus the ones that didn't make the top 20)... some of these are harder than others and may take longer for us to build.
5. IN PRINT TO ON-LINE
======================
Melissa Landers wrote from San Diego: "I am delving into a project and need some advice. I am starting a new Christian Newspaper and want to know the easiest program to use: that will allow me to publish it online as well as printed... Quark, Page Maker? Which one would be best? And are there any trial versions that I could play with anywhere?"
We replied that there are trial versions of PageMaker and QuarkXPress available from their websites and though there is not yet a trial version of InDesign, one is promised soon.
The only "easy" way to create an on-line version of a print publication is to create a PDF (Acrobat) file. One way to make use of these is to include summaries of articles in HTML format and offer PDF files for download either the complete issue or of individual articles or pages.
Otherwise it is necessary to create a separate HTML version. PM and QXP include or offer HTML export functions but these produce files which need quite a lot of tweaking afterwards.
InDesign offers the best HTML export we have yet seen, but the problem is still that good newspaper pages don't make good web pages. And you may need a text-cum-HTML editor to drag in the links as InDesign doesn't yet have a hyperlink plugin.
6. XTENSIONS AND PLUGINS
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ALAP (A lowly apprentice production) is shipping Imposer 2.0 for QuarkXPress for Windows. This allows 2-Up, 4-Up, Work & Turn and Work & Tumble impositions. It includes Saddle Stitch, Perfect Bound and Single Sheet binding options.
Imposer for Windows is compatible with QuarkXPress 4.04 or later for Windows 95, 98 and NT with a price of US$199.99. Details at <http://www.alap.com>
7. UTILITIES/UPDATES
====================
There's a known bug with the ATI Rage video drivers that ship with the blue & white Mac G3s.
If you're running Mac OS 8.5, or 8.6 go to <http://www.info.apple.com/support/downloads.html>. It can be a particular problem with PageMaker display but there are problems with QXP too.
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If you use Zip disks, it can be well worth an occasional visit to their web site: <http://www.iomega.com/software/drivers.html>. "IomegaWare" is now at v.1.1.3 for Mac and with a trialware version of v.2.0 for Windows.
Findit is a new tool which automatically catalogs changes on Zip, JAZ, or CDs each time a disk or cartridge is ejected if the extension is loaded. A new feature in Tools is "Disk Life" that suggests when to retire/replace disks.
However, we warn that we had great difficulty connecting to the Iomega site and the v2 software is an 11MB download.
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If you bought a Western Digital Caviar 5400 RPM EIDE hard drive which could have been made in August or September this year, and is from 6.4GB to 20.5GB in size go to <http://www.wdc.com> and download a little testing file that will check if it could be in a faulty batch. They could fail after six to 12 months of full-time use.
8. HINTS
========
If a TIFF image is embedded in PageMaker, you can return it to linked format by exporting the image and then selecting the option to link to the new image. You can't do the same with an EPS, but if you still have the EPS file you can opt to create a new preview image when placing the file and select a high resolution preview. Exporting the image will then let you create a TIFF from this high resolution preview.
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You can extract an EPS from a PageMaker document by copying the EPS to a new page, on its own, and then printing just that page to a PostScript file. Open the new file in a text editor and look for a line which begins %!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2. Delete everything in the file up to this line. Now look for the next %EndDocument line and delete everything after that. Rename this file with an EPS extension.
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A "beat the bad record index tip" for PageMaker users: Never click-create a text block in PM without typing something, a space, at least. THEN you can delete it.
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If you are importing Word files into QuarkXPress, make the plus sign in the styles list disappear by changing the definition of Normal in Quark to match the specs of what has actually come in from Word. With the plus sign gone you can apply any style sheet in Quark without losing local style such as bold or italic.
Another answer is to persuade the Word user to use a style called for example "Body" as their style. They can then define this in any way they like. When it is placed in QXP, if you get a message of "Two styles with same names" make sure you pick "Use Quark style".
9. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
=========================
An article on Adobe InDesign, was published in the September issue of Desktop Publishers Journal. It's not on their web site, but it is on the site of author Kate Binder: <http://www.prospecthillpub.com/>
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In our previous issue we mentioned the problem with Acrobat 4 not embedding some fonts. There more information at <http://www.pdfzone.com/>
Rich Sprague suggests that a partial check may be to One method is available to all Acrobat users: access the font window in PDFWriter; all fonts that cannot be embedded will be shown in red. But there's a lot more to it than that. His article includes a statement from Corel that it was not their intention to cause problems with WordPerfect fonts.
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London Transport's typeface, used on stations and buses, is almost instantly recognisable around the world: It's available at: <http://www.p22.com/products/london.html> for US$23.95. For many years it's use was restricted.
10. LAST WORD
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We liked the response by Chris Mason in Antigua to an email list question on what to do when you "get some numskull who doesn't think they can email a file, can't cope with a DPF, or can't generate an EPS".
Chris commented: "I take pleasure in reminding them that I'm the one in the third world. It's amazing how backward some first world operations are."
Gordon Woolf
The Worsley Press
Hastings, Australia.
====================