Dominic,
"...(eg, a garland of "ibid"s)."
Nice poetry. ;-)
I'd considered that, but figured this would still allow one to get 25 footnotes on five lines -- not bad -- certainly not enough to write off the program entirely.... Here I thought I was the hardest man on the planet to please: Perhaps he should write his own software.
As for me, I have to confess: I've mostly decided to learn to like endnotes.
Mitra
Thanks, but I can't take credit for what I didn't write - the "garland of 'ibid's" phrase is one that has been hanging around in my mind for years - I'm pretty sure it came from the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed), but I do know I didn't write it!
I think that I am going to use Microsoft Publisher
Despite the fact that I have a working version of Indesign, I went back to Word because at least it has autonumbering of footnotes, even if they do become a...confetti trail? ticker tape? kite's tail? of
1. ibid.
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. ibid.
5. ibid.
In design may be great for people that publish but for those of us the write and publish lacking this most basic of features is a pain in the brain.
And then I have just found out that there is something called Microsoft Publisher. Unlike Indesign, I seem to be able to paste my word documents as objects just fine. They retain their formatting! I can add page numbering and other image files.
There are lots of people bewailing the lack of footnotes. E.g.
Timothy Takemoto "Footnotes!" 3/31/04 2:07am </cgi-bin/webx?13@@no-spam>
While far from Ideal, Word and Publisher are not so bad.
Indesign CS assumes that authors are not publishers.
InDesign assumes that authors are authors and designers are designers.
> While far from Ideal, Word and Publisher are not so bad.
If that MS-stuff satisfies you needs, go ahead.
UR
What amazes me is that there does not seem to be a way of pasting Word files keeping their footnotes. If you use that MS stuff then you can insert a Word page just like that. Okay, Word formatting (jumping images etc etc) stinks but if InDesign does not offer basic tools for writers (such as footnote auto numbering) then what choice is there? Have you written anything? If InDesign satisfies your needs as a writer then go ahead. But without footnotes it seems to be more basic than that MS stuff was generations ago.
I think that Marilyn got it right when she said
InDesign assumes that authors are authors and designers are designers.
Since you are not p*ssed off with the inability of InDesign to be able
to perform *basic* word processing functions, I assume that you are a
cool designer. But I am even cooler! I am a writer and desinger! And I
am not satisfied with InDesign.
Get your act together Adobe.
Tim
If InDesign does not offer basic tools for writers (such as footnote auto numbering) then what choice is there?
Um, Framemaker, Ventura, TeX, Quark Xpress with AutoPage, or even ID with the footnotes plugin or simply by doing the footnotes manually. The simple fact is that ID is not primarily designed for writing documents or for laying out long documents. While it may not have the feature set I would like, I can't deny that it has targeted its market accurately. So, rather than it being a case of Adobe getting its act together, I think it's a matter of you choosing more suitable software for your workflow.
I have tried the ID footnotes plugin, it was both basic and easy to crash (I had to be really careful while using it). Aditionally it was not cheap.
Framemaker has issues with two byte characters apparently.
TeX...yes..but it is not user friendly. Especially the two-byte character version. I could not get it to work.
Perhaps I shoudl try Quark Express.
I think that the market is changing. Software is getting so good that even non-designers, like me, are one step away from being able to design (if badly).
Adobe is stil playing to the designer only market. I think that that there is a new growing, and potentially massive, market for people that write and want to design. Word is still crap at design (Those jumping images!! ach).
Adobe is so close to being able to offer a Word beating package. Word does not have layers (is that the right terminology?), there is only one layer/dimesion in which to place text (excluding the header & footer layers). But Adobe is almost there. It is letting a small company in Virginia? or thereabouts produce a plugin for footnotes. This is not rockket science. If a plugin can almost do it then a bit of work on Adobe's part would get there.
Get your act together Adobe!
Tim
A small correction to post 16. I only said the first sentence that is attributed to me.
I do believe that long document features may come to InDesign. But it's first target was certainly Quark and then PageMaker. Why target Word anyway? Now FrameMaker is another thing. I do think InDesign beefed up with long document features could be a great successor to FrameMaker, Ventura, etc. Since Adobe owns FrameMaker and is letting development slide (at least on the Mac side), it would be great to roll it into InDesign if that's possible. One problem might be that it might complicate things for non-book designers -- and writers.
Adobe is so close to being able to offer a Word beating package.
InDesign is a LONG way from "beating Word" as a word processor - and always will be. The dumbest thing Adobe could do would be to try to beard the Microsoft behemoth in its own lair.
Adobe is stil playing to the designer only market. I think that that there is a new growing, and potentially massive, market for people that write and want to design.
Personally, I would hate to see ID become a word processor as well as a page layout app. I believe in horses for courses. You compose your text in a word processor and lay it out in a page layout app. Sure, I would like some long-document features in ID to make my life easier, but I'm not looking to compose text in ID. As for the "massive" market, I just think you're wrong. I venture to say that most people in this forum would not want ID to add WP features and Word users would just get lost if they had to deal with DTP features.
Be aware that XPress does not have native footnote support - you need the AutoPage plugin, and if you thought the ID plugin was expensive, you're not going to like the cost of AutoPage. I use Ventura for those documents that have lots of footnotes, but I still find manual placement gives the best results.
I think that most of the people on this forum are proably designers so they would have little interest in word processing features since their creativity lies in the fact that they design.
There are a lot more people out there that write. And we are used to paying designers to layout what we write. But software is getting so good, and cheap, that it will not be long before we writers are able to do our own designing. It won't be as good, of course, but a lot of the time it does not have to be. Then will not need publishers, we will be able to send our work to printers. And desk top publishing will have come of age.
This is what I am doing but it is painful. With the traditional divide between designers and writers, both types of software are painfully inadequate to the integrated task.
Desk top publishing software lacks the tools to facilitate writing. There are not all that many needed. Most of the tools Word provides are never used by most writers. Just the basics. Autonumbering, of not just footnotes, and a spell checker would be nice.
Word with its lack of layers, and hence jumping images, is still probably closer to filling the gap.
I recon there are a lot of frustrated writers that would pay to for DPT software just to be able to position text and images without it jumping around.
By the way, does anyone know where I can hire a designer? For the cover of my text book. A place were people can bid would be nice.
Tim
>
> I recon there are a lot of frustrated writers that would pay to for DPT
software just to be able to position text and images without it jumping
around.
I'll up that bet. :-) A couple years ago I spent some serious time trying
to figure out how to use Word for some basic layout, and maybe it was my PM
background or just density, but Word is the most complicated mess ever for
basic layout....if you want control.
But to an earlier point...Adobe isn't (conceivably) going to add writing
tools to satisfy us, they probably do it to increase market share. After
all, how many copies of Photoshop have been sold to folks who use 5% of its
capabilities? From Adobe's standpoint, that's just perfect. :-)
-John O
I think that most of the people on this forum are proably designers so
they would have little interest in word processing features since their
creativity lies in the fact that they design.
I'm both a writer and a layout person (I'm not a "designer," as I think most people here use that term, but I do use DTP tools extensively to lay out publications) and an editor and a bunch of other things (work for yourself in a startup business and you wear a lot of hats). I think Word is a magnificent writing tool. I think InDesign is a magnificent layout tool. It neither slows me down nor impedes me in any way to do my writing in Word and place the Word documents in InDesign. I do some editing in InDesign, and the tools it provides are adequate for that - not great, but adequate.
Given that Adobe does not have unlimited development resources, I would much rather see them devote those resources to making InDesign an even better layout program than to trying to make it into a layout-program-cum-word-processor.
a spell checker would be nice
ID has one
I recon there are a lot of frustrated writers that would pay to for DPT
software just to be able to position text and images without it jumping
around.
It's been years since I've used WordPerfect, but it has always had better tools for positioning blocks of things on a page than has Word. MS Publisher might be another solution. As a third choice, I had a client whose engineering department used FrameMaker as its departmental word processor and did so reasonably successfully.
This is what I am doing but it is painful. With the traditional divide between designers and writers, both types of software are painfully inadequate to the integrated task.
Then I suggest it is your workflow and choice of software that is the problem, not the software per se. I routinely take reports of 400+ pages, with thousands of footnotes, illustrations, tables, cross-references, section numbering, and the like and I don't find it painful at all. The reports are written by people working in Word, I recive the Word files, run a macro over them to pretag them, and then import them into Ventura. I could use ID for this, but it lacks some of the features I want.
Desk top publishing software lacks the tools to facilitate writing.
It also lacks a full range of bitmap and vector editing tools, but that's why you buy Photoshop and Freehand. It has some basic text tools, but it's not a word processor.
But software is getting so good, and cheap, that it will not be long before we writers are able to do our own designing.
Sadly, the day is already here. And this is why we see so much badly set matter. Once upon a time, typesetters were able to impose a minimum standard on most printed matter; now we get "writers" who know nothing about typography who just want to save money and cut out the middlemen. And thus we get bad typography.
There are times when one does not need good typography. My students would be happier with a textbook costing 8 dollars (if I lay it out) than one which costs 16 dollars (if I go through a publisher).
I think that publishers are useful. The value added that they provide as far as I am concerned is editing and layout/design.
And certainly, if I do the layout/design it will be poop compared to a professional like you.
But frankly my students and I do not want layout and design.
There are times when you want to eat a four course meal at a snazzy restaurant. There are times when you are happy with a hunk of bread.
But the trouble with Word is that it the bread it produces is not even cooked.
I routinely take reports of 400+ pages, with thousands of footnotes, illustrations,
tables, cross-references, section numbering, and the like and I don't
find it painful at all.
That is because you do not write those reports. I do.
I am not saying that the middle men can be cut out entirely, but once upon a time it was necessary to pay typesetters to move little bits of steel type from one place to another. That job was cut out.
And similarly, when people want a sandwich, there will come a time when they don't have to pay for a 4 course meal. This is desktop publishing. And it will be here soon.
Tim
> I am not saying that the middle men can be cut out entirely, but once upon a time it was necessary to pay typesetters to move little bits of steel type from one place to another. That job was cut out.
Well, not completely:
http://elsa.photo.net/video/firefly-small.mov
It's about 8 megs or so broadband is advised.
Bob
I'm thinking perhaps both Word & ID have been unduly "roughed up" on the distal end of this thread. They both used to frustrate me terribly, but now I think they are both marvelously advanced for their very different purposes (Word = word processing and editing / ID = book design and layout). Neither of these two softwares should be expected to do the work of the other.
That said, it seems just a few small "long-doc" concessions on Adobe's part would take ID from "marvelous" to "stratospherically stellar" for those of us who have no other software choices for the kind of Unicode docs we handle.
I don't see that much beyond a more helpful approach to importing footnote annotation and streamlining bullet and outline numbering that would be required of ID to make it way beautiful for long docs. For all the talk about ID not being the proper choice of software for this, fact is, it seems to be the only sophisticated design/layout program which doesn't turn Unicode & Asian double-byte character requirements into a colossal headache.
So I'm not so sure it's fair to gripe that Adobe should "get its act together" here. I think it _already_ has its act together. I just wish they'd refine it a bit.
Mitra
Kalavinka Press
Dominic,
I just love this quote: "Sadly, the day is already here. And this is why we see so much badly set matter. Once upon a time, typesetters were able to impose a minimum standard on most printed matter; now we get 'writers' who know nothing about typography who just want to save money and cut out the middlemen. And thus we get bad typography."
Dominic, there are some of us who have no choice but to do their own design and layout. As a monk, there's no other way I could publish so much material of an esoteric nature having no viable market-share audience. (i.e. material which no "for-profit" publisher could afford to publish.)
So, getting past the obvious truth of your statement, have you come on any fairly comprehensive book design titles which might help some of us "hacks" produce genuinely beautifully-designed and tastefully typeset products? (Most of the titles I've perused seem to talk around all the of the topics in a rather "poetic" way without offering many genuinely useful guidelines for all of the parameters encountered in attempting design and layout.)
Like I said: Some of us have no choice but to be auto-didacts in this sphere. Sure would be nice to find a book that really goes "hammer-and-tongs" at this topic, providing nitty-gritty detail for this discipline equivalent to what Chicago Manual of Style does for other aspects of the document-creating process.
Dharmamitra
Kalavinka Press
So I'm not so sure it's fair to gripe that Adobe should "get its act together"
here. I think it _already_ has its act together. I just wish they'd refine
it a bit.
I agree with the sentiment but not the terminology. I agree that Adobe is doing very well and that in order to make their product usuable from the first stages of book production they do not have too much to add -- I agree with your definition of the functionality that is missing. Adobe Indesign is like a soldier dressed up for parade in his finest uniform, bemedalled and tremenously equipped he stands there with his flies undone.
It would not take much for Adobe to make that last bit of effort.
Get your act together Adobe.
Timothy, I don't get the point you're making. What's wrong with writing your book using a word processor and then laying it out in ID? What on earth is so hard about that? If you're looking for a wizard to do it all for you, then you're simply looking at the wrong program.
Why not try FM? Lots of people compare its features favourably with Word. No, it can't do unicode, but there are ways around that.
Desktop publishing is here already, but that doesn't mean that everyone who uses Word will be able to use those programs.
Hi Dharmamitra
There's a thread in the typography forum that lists some essential typography books, so I won't repeat them all here, but Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style is probably the most cited reference (it's closest to a Chicago Manual of typography). I also recommend Jost Hochuli's Detail in Typography and Designing Books and Jan Tschichold's Form of the Book and Asymmetric Typography. There's also Hugh Williamson's Methods of Book Design. I'm not much of a fan of titles like The Non-Designer's Design Book or The Mac is not a Typewriter, but others are. They should keep you going.
Dear Dominic
Timothy, I don't get the point you're making. What's wrong with writing
your book using a word processor and then laying it out in ID? What on
earth is so hard about that?
I may do that but it does not seem all that easy to me. It seems like it is going to be rather time consuming. Doesn't it take quite a while?
Timothy
Hi
If you still need to make your life easier when work with footnotes (or etc.) - feel welcome to my page:
www.suwalski.pl/dtp <http://www.suwalski.pl/dtp>
robin
Timothy_Takemoto@no-spam wrote in
news:2ccdb61b.31@no-spam
> Dear Dominic
>
> Timothy, I don't get the point you're making. What's wrong
> with writing your book using a word processor and then
> laying it out in ID? What on earth is so hard about that?
>
>
>
>
> I may do that but it does not seem all that easy to me. It seems
> like it is going to be rather time consuming. Doesn't it take
> quite a while?
If you are very disciplined about using paragraph and character styles,
you can establish a workflow in which *all* text editing and formatting
is done in Microsoft Word, and *no* local formatting is applied in
InDesign. This workflow requires that you be willing to accept how
InDesign sets your text, and not apply any manual tweaks. Word is an
excellent word processor, and allows me to use the Endnote citation
manager plug-in.
Tim,
A great place to find free-lance designers and a variety of other professional types is www.guru.com. It offers market place free-lancers and employers to come together and meet each others needs.
(not in a 'Dr. Phil' sense) :)
Dominic,
Thanks so much for the title suggestions. I'm looking forward to contemplative reads of at least a few of them. It seems to be a multi-phase learning curve. Getting a handle on the program and its integration with word to produce books is one thing. Making the product genuinely pleasing aesthetically--that's another.
Mitra
Timothy,
Although I'm not highly skilled at it yet (I've only done about a dozen books this way), I've found that nothing seems quite so efficient as producing a well edited Word product first with careful and consistent invocation of styles, this to be followed by "placing" the finished Word doc in IDCS where one has been very careful to set up and name the ID paragraph, titling, and character styles _exactly_ as they are named in Word.
The remaining steps in ID are then but relatively few. If you go the extra step of creating your styles in all of the different leading configurations you'll need, then this saves a lot of labor in the end. Once you get the hang of it, then even as you are writing the Word doc, even at the rough draft stage, you invoke the styles correctly right away. After that, it's all rather lyrically smooth.
To tell you the truth, having troubled myself to really get with consistent style naming in the two programs, the results are so pleasing, I wouldn't dream of doing it any other way. (I do very complex text layouts involving Sanskrit, Chinese, multi-level outlining, multiple chapters, TOCs, etc. and ID really seems to shine at bringing in an honest version of the Word document, saving beaucoup labor.)
Mitra
I admire Mitra's perseverance in trying to use Word styles as the basis for DTP layout. I have never had any real success in doing this. In fact, my best workflow is to precode/tag Word text to within an inch of its life and then save the file as ASCII. That way I know that I have hit Word and its infuriating styling right on the head when I load the file into the *real* version of the document. No wrong fonts and leading, no plus signs after style names. Pure heaven.
But my main concern with this thread is the notion that InDesign is not really a book production tool and that one should look elsewhere is one wants so-called long-document features. The problem is that, unfortunately in my humble opinion, mainstream managers can see no further than QuarkXPress and InDesign for any aspect of publications work and their employees are forced to try to use them for book work. And, by and large, they can be used to do this. It shouldn't come as a surprise to Quark and Adobe that people do use their programs to produce anything from one to a thousand or more pages long. That's what I do in my government job. When I have my freelance hat on, I fortunately have other options.
My publications experience began in the 1960s, well before Paul Brainerd or whoever thinks they invented DTP, and guess what? The books I then edited and produced (in a hands-off manner) for a major book publishing company had footnotes, equations, chapters, indexes, tables of contents, cross-references, tables, flowcharts, a mix of portrait and landscape pages, etc., etc. These book elements (and they can apply to booklets as well as tomes) haven't just been invented. They are basic building blocks of books that have existed for centuries. Why, then, are Quark and Adobe so shy about them?
And what's this about InDesign being for 'designers'? You give me a leaflet, a newsletter, a booklet, a school textbook or an academic monograph and I would be able to lay it out using InDesign, QuarkXPress, Ventura, PageMaker or FrameMaker. I am amused by esoteric arguments that attempt to draw paradigmatic distinctions between these programs. They all bring text and graphics together to form a publication of some kind. They differ, for me, merely in the features they provide in making my job easier.
What the producers of InDesign need to do is to work towards reading in as many Word elements as possible and displaying them in editable form within InDesign. They have achieved this with Word tables and Excel spreadsheets, and they have also managed to read in entire QuarkXPress and PageMaker documents. They should now be burning the midnight oil trying the same trick with Word footnotes and equations.
I am sorry but I don't want to rely on Word any more than I need to. It merely supplies the raw material on which I want to build within a layout program.
The ability to import Word with footnotes would be another nice solution. I was amazed at the lack of the abilty to import Word text complete with formatting. If indesign is not going to provide Word Processing functions then one would hope that it would allow smooth placement of word processed objects.
I thought that this might be possible in Publisher but sadly Publisher (like Word) is DPT challenged.