InDesign hints

InDesign is at version 3.01, otherwise known as CS. There is a free update for owners of version 3.0 available at the Adobe web site.

WOODWING PLUGINS FOR INDESIGN

Smart Connection from WoodWing integrates InDesign and InCopy so that, for example, stories sent to InCopy for editing will be read-only within InDesign to prevent double editing; layout changes can be sent from InDesign to InCopy with automatic notification within InCopy.

InCopy is the text editor produced by Adobe but until now available only from "system integrators", the companies which sell complete high-end publication systems. Now it seems, Smart Connection and InCopy will be available to us mere mortals in the publishing industry. IDPLugIns.com is the first reseller ready to start selling InCopy together with Smart Connection for an introductory price of US$358 (plus shipping) on either platform.

For more info on Smart Connection have a look at <http://www.WoodWing.com>.

WoodWing have also launched Smart Styles v1.5, which offers object styling to InDesign including the possibility to apply multiple text styles at once. This new version is enhanced with character based formatting. It allows complete styling to be applied to tables, advertisements, features etc, and is available to, usable by, affordable, and probably indispensable for smaller publishers using InDesign. See <http://www.WoodWing.com>. A 30-day demo is available for download (1.7MB Windows, 1.3MB Mac).

WoodWing's Smart Layout plugin which adds the article concept to InDesign. An article consists of several elements, such as the head, intro and body, which become a single page item that you can work with in the way you usually think of articles. New items flow around items already on the spread. Smart Resizing minimizes the number of steps necessary to resize an article and its elements via automatic sizing, positioning and resizing individual columns.

Smart Layouts can have their own grid including both the column and baseline grid. Via shortcut keys the number of columns can be changed quickly. Items can also have their own border and fill.

The standard library functionality of InDesign can be used in combination with Smart Layout to have a powerful shape library.

In InDesign force a paragraph back to a paragraph style after trying local changes with Option (or Alt) and clicking on the style. with ALT you respect changes made in the paragraph with the character styles, with ALT SHIFT you remove every change.