CONTENTS
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1. A CHANGE FOR FORMAT
2. INDESIGN 2 ANNOUNCED
3. SURVEYS -- WHAT DO THEY PROVE?
4. NEW PLUGINS FROM WOODWING
5. COMMENTS
6. UTILITIES/UPDATES
7. HINTS
8. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
9. LAST WORD
1. A CHANGE FOR FORMAT
======================
Firstly, many thanks to all our subscribers. Passing 2000 direct subscribers in more than 60 countries (plus more who receive the newsletter via automatic forwarding systems or get it via our autoresponder) is another milestone.
We are in the process of changing our web hosts and that also involves changing the way Format is despatched, as lists.best.com will cease to exist. There should not be any change in the way Format looks, but, if all goes as we plan, there will be an easier way to sign on and off, and change settings.
Also a reminder that if you buy any of our books direct from us or from our US distributor, FAP Books, mention the Format newsletter and get a 10% discount.
2. INDESIGN 2 ANNOUNCED
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Hot on the heels of the release of a public beta of QuarkXPress 5 came the news from Adobe that InDesign 2.0 will be released in the first quarter of next year. As well as improved performance, the new version includes a reworked color management engine, and it incorporates transparency throughout the application -- transparency which can be "flattened" to print to a PostScript 2 printer.
The program includes support for Mac OS X, XML import and export, transparency, table creation, a Glyph palette, a hyphenation zone slider bar, long document features ("group multiple documents into a book list for numbering pages sequentially and generating tables of contents and indexes"), and featuring a "streamlined new printing interface" and "tighter integration with other Adobe products, including the new Illustrator 10".
The transparency feature allows users to apply editable drop shadows, feathering and opacity settings to objects and place transparent Photoshop,Illustrator and PDF files into InDesign. Drop shadows on a spot colour background have been demonstrated.
InDesign 2.0 can also export designs in the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format.
The following are things which may not be obvious from the downloadable info on the Adobe web site: <http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/main.html>
Among changes which have made a difference to performance are that the multi-line composer was rewritten from the ground up and is said to be "several times faster than the original". It also is now a 'paragraph' composer in that it composes in paragraph units rather than a user editable number of lines.
The file format has also been rewritten so that read-write operations are "exponentially" faster. This should show particularly in placing large text files. The trade off is that creating a new file format means files from 2.0 will not be backwards compatible.
Reportedly, the Table feature of InDesign offers a lot more than the new Table feature in QXP5. Things we've been told so far include that while in QXP5 you can set attributes for individual gridlines, you can't format the borders around a cell. Quark tables can't include transparency, either in the background or on the cell border. Quark tables can't flow from text frame to text frame. Quark can't import Excel tables or Word tables directly; you must convert to tab text first. All these are said to be handled in InDesign 2. Tables are also scriptable and there's a convert-text-to-table function which turns tab delimited text into a basic table. Graphics can be inserted into cells.
Part of an easier system of applying color is a button to change a font or apply a style just by selecting the frame, rather than having to select the type using the text tool. And there's a "preview" mode with everything still editable, but which hides all that doesn't print, including bleeds, items on the pasteboard, hidden characters, grids, guides, frame edges and non-printing elements.
InDesign 2 also allows the printing of Master Pages, visible guides and grids, thumbnails, and you can simulate overprint on composite printers.
It also includes more OpenType fonts, but not the complete families: Adobe Garamond Pro (four of six), Adobe Caslon Pro (four of six), and Caflisch Script Pro (one of four).
3. SURVEYS -- WHAT DO THEY PROVE?
=================================
An item in the daily email issued by CreativePro for the Seybold Seminars in San Francisco set us thinking about surveys. Thomas Penberthy was reporting on a session with the title "There's No 'You' in 'User': Tools and Tactics for User-Centered Design."
Tom reported that the room was overflowing (which was in itself unusual at this year's sparsely attended event), and a quick question by the moderator showed that attendance was divided equally between Web and print people.
As many publications tend to feel it necessary to send out regular survey forms, it was interesting to hear that Jonathon Korman, of Cooper Interaction Design, offered a compelling case that this "scientific approach" to research is less than ideal at achieving the type of information needed.
He argued that design in particular affects users on an emotional level, and that statistical questions rarely get deep enough. Korman's firm favors one-on-one sampling of a much smaller number of "qualified" users (existing customers or definite members of the target audience). "With this approach, you start to see trends very quickly, and pretty soon you can predict what people are going to say early on in your conversation."
One-on-one interviewing may seem like more effort up front, but the information that comes out in the end is far more useful.
We've long felt that the way to find out what your publication should be doing, either in coverage or in appearance, is to get out and talk to the people it is aimed at. And we've taken to putting all surveys in the circular file -- or the virtual trash.
CreativePro's newspage on Seybold is at <http://www.creativepro.com/SFprose/newsLink>
4. NEW PLUGINS FROM WOODWING
============================
WoodWing Software <http://www.WoodWing.com> has two new and two upgraded plug-ins for Adobe InDesign 2.0 including Smart Catalog, selected as a Hot Pick by Seybold.
Smart Tables is a new product enhancing the InDesign 2 table functions with "smart styling", table calculations, sorting and a tool for easy creation. Just apply a table style to completely format a table, including all of the table, row, column, cell, paragraph and character attributes.
It recognizes sequences within the formatting and allows for instance the header row, individual columns or even single cells to be formatted separately with a single table style.
It also enables basic math within InDesign tables including calculating the sum, product or average of all cells in a column. Formatting options can be used to specify the format of numbers, create value dependent text styling e.g. to style negative values in red. There is a sorting function to organize rows and columns based on content.
Smart Catalog offers linking to text files, XML and to databases such as FileMaker Pro, MS SQL Server and Oracle. This link is bi-directional allowing changes made within the InDesign document to be saved back to the database. Blocks created in SmartLayout can be linked to data through this plug-in.
Smart Styles v2.0 adds high-level object styling to InDesign. The new version supports transparency, drop shadows, feathering and tables. Scripting support is also added.
Smart Layout v2.0 offers automatic article layout including XML tagging.
The new version 1.5 of Smart Connections from WoodWing includes a new user interface, which no longer involves dealing directly with the file system, but can work with concepts like publication, issue, section and basket. An editor can just mark a story ready after editing which will route the story automatically to the next stage in the workflow. Page designers will be notified automatically when a story reaches the ready-for-page status. It also allows users to send a message to the person working on a story or page, without knowing who is working on that page. Another new feature is the automatic publication overview: A web-browser can be used to view the progress of the publication through thumbnails of all pages.
5. COMMENTS
===========
Vincent Albanese of Lime Leaf Publications wrote: "I am disappointed with the 2 books that I purchased from you! I finished them both. I WANT MORE. They were easy to read, had information that I could not source anywhere else and a damn pleasure- my compliments Gordon! <I'm disappointed because I finished reading them!>. Might have to buy the PageMaker 6.5 book, not because it pertains to what I am wanting to do but because the knowledge content is worth MORE than the price of the text."
6. UTILITIES/UPDATES
====================
It was reported at Seybold that Illustrator 10 will ship "before the end of the year."
Adobe Acrobat Approval is also promised shortly. It is intended to make forms easier to use for the Acrobat Reader user, and allows forms to be saved from the Web for offline viewing, completion, and sending.
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Suitcase 10.01 on the Mac now auto-activates fonts in Illustrator. There's a free download to registered Suitcase 10 users at <http://www.extensis.com/download/>
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Extensis Portfolio Network Edition 5.02 is a free updater for Mac users of v5 including support to randomly access 200 CDs from the PowerFile CD/DVD Jukebox. A Windows version is planned for later this year.
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Preflight Online has added EPS file format so EPS format work can now be automatically checked for color mode, font usage, image resolution and other attributes. The program also reports on images that are "nested" within EPS files. File collection, compression and FTP transmission are all included in the Preflight Online subscription service as well. <http://www.extensis.com/preflightonline/>
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There are some problems with FrameMaker under the Mac OS X "Classic mode" that Adobe have promised to fix in the next release. These include that opening a Word 97 file will cause a crash, error messages may be generated when opening a WordPerfect file, the application will crash when saving documents containing graphics to HTML, and online help does not work.
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Can't embed a Bitstream TrueType font in a PDF? It probably means the font was built before September 1999. Bitstream has now rebuilt its entire library and fixed this problem (along with adding the euro currency symbol). It may also be worth checking whether you are using the TTF version of the font when there may also be a Type1 version on your original CD.
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Need to have PageMaker 6.0 and 7 working on the same machine. We reported in the previous Format that there were problems with this, but they've been solved by a small download. See <http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/8aee.htm>
7. HINTS
========
Having trouble importing Word files? If you do it could be worth opening the file in Word, or asking the person who created it to do so, and then go to Edit>Preferences>Save and make sure "Allow fast saves" is unchecked. Then save your document again. Some page layout programs and versions won't import Word docs with fast save at all; others just have occasional problems.
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InDesign's Pages palette, as installed, works like QuarkXPress with pages in a vertical column, with master pages at the top. Try a better way: go to the palette options dialog and specify that your pages go on top, and that they're arranged horizontally. It's a quicker way to get around.
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Adding the command key to any of QuarkXPress's various space options makes them non-breaking. An EN space (Option-Spacebar) becomes non-breaking as Command-Option-Spacebar, punctuation space (Shift-Space) becomes non-breaking as Command-Shift-Space, and flex space (the width for which is set in document preferences), Option-Shift-Space won't break when it is Command-Option-Shift-Space.
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A hint on scanning pre-screened pics from Blatner and Fraser in their "Real World Photoshop 6": "When you rotate an image in Photoshop, the program has to do some heavy-duty calculation work, and those calculations typically soften the image somewhat, breaking up the halftone pattern. If you have a very slight patterning effect after scanning a pre-halftoned image, you might try rotating the entire image 10 or 20 degrees, and then rotate the same amount back again."
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Have you tried setting your laser printer density setting to one step lower? You may have to refer to the manual to check how it's done (some older ones have a wheel inside, on most it is done from the buttons). Often it won't reduce quality but it can add hundreds to the number of copies achieved from a cartridge. Also, when it is getting near empty, if there is any sign of streakiness, take the catridge out and shake it from side to side -- again it may go on for hundreds more copies. Another hint from our cartridge supplier -- the density level can usually be reduced on a new or newly refilled cartridge, and then eased back up as the cartridge gets used. The real hint: don't regard the density level as a "set and forget" feature.
8. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
=========================
Technical information about Apple products, has now been combined in one "AppleCare knowledge base" located at <http://kbase.info.apple.com/http://kbase.info.apple.com/>
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Try <http://www.refdesk.com> for access to nearly 300 links to reference and research information, 260 search engines covering 19 categories, a virtual encyclopedia covering 45 subjects, and loads more. There are also links to worldwide newspapers, plus search facilities for headlines and summaries on a range of topics.
9. LAST WORD
============
There was an interesting batch of admissions of worst errors on the PageMakr List recently -- including the not uncommon one of missing the "l" in "Public" -- and it was suggested that this happens so often that it either needs to be removed from spelling dictionaries, or, if there isn't an exceptions file to allow that, of putting it in the AutoCorrect setting of word processors. On the rare occasions the word is needed, then Control-Z will cancel the correction in Word.
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We came across an instance of a small regional ISP setting up their email server so that all incoming bulk email was prefixed in the subject line with the word [SPAM]. Complaints from several users produced no effect -- until every copy of the email newsletter from the local chamber of commerce was prefixed in that way.
Gordon Woolf
The Worsley Press
Hastings, Australia.
====================