Morten, I admire you for what you are doing and the adventure you are about to step into. I have a 1000 questions about InDesign being the right product for my needs also.
I am developing the editorial content for a magazine and I am unclear if InDesign 2.0 the full version is a great stand alone program or if I will need several more products such a photoshop, pagemaker etc.
I would, like you and your partners, like to prep/prepare/layout/complete the entire project in house and just send it to the printer for printing and distribution. Can I achieve that with InDesign by itself?
Anyone...
Thank you very much for your help in advance:-)
Brian R Maritn
Can I achieve that with InDesign by itself?
No, because you're going to need to edit photos, and InDesign can't do that. You'll need Photoshop for that.
You will also probably want Illustrator, for high-end illustrating needs. InDesign has some of Illustrator's features, but not all of them.
You will also probably want Acrobat (the full version, not the free reader), to work with InDesign-generated PDFs prior to sending them to the printer. It's also occasionally useful if other people send you PDFs that need minor (very minor) corrections.
>...I am unclear if InDesign 2.0 the full version is a great stand alone
program or if I will need several more products such a photoshop, pagemaker
etc.
Stu's right, you should look at the Premium Creative Suite.
The wild card is handling the material submitted by outside
authors/designers/ad agencies. Sometimes it's great to have a copy of
PageMaker, a complete MS Office setup, and who knows what else. Seems like
you wouldn't need all of that at once, though.
-John O
Seems like
you wouldn't need all of that at once, though.
Thanks Stu and JohnO.
So, would I be safe to start off with InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator? Would this be enough to get a quality Pilot copy/issue out? I am very excited about the project and want to get started but I don't want to produce a sub-standard Pilot issue.
And as far as the Ad agencies, is the standard for them to email or snail mail the "artwork" file? (or put a disc in my hand).
BRM
"And as far as the Ad agencies, is the standard for them to email or snail
mail the "artwork" file? (or put a disc in my hand)."
You will probably get Quark files on a Mac CD. Totally useless from your
point of view. Are you placing the ads directly to page, or are you using a
repro company who could save the ads back to you as PDFs?
As far as your software list is concerned, I exist happily on InDesign,
Photoshop Elements (too mean to buy the full product) and Acrobat. But then
I don't really do much vector graphics creation, and most of my
illustrations are supplied from outside.
k
> So, would I be safe to start off with InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator?
Yep, and you're likely to find Acrobat very useful too. If you buy the suite
you get all of this stuff cheaper than buying any three individually.
-John O
This is great help guys....:-)
Now for another "you can tell I am new" question.... Keep in mind budget..tight budget...very tight budget. At least until I start signing up the Advertisers. So to answer your question Ken, I want to do as much in-house prepress work as possible... and I do mean "in house" :-)
Are the earlier versions of these programs... PhotoShop 5.0 LE, lets say and Indesign 1.5 (or 1.0 God forbid) as well as illustrator 6, 7 or whatever, going to cut back on the quality or just the options for creative layout? And will they work as well together as the newer versions?
BRM
I'll go out on a limb and say that anything at version 6 or better is fine.
Don't do ID any lower than 2, but get CS if you can.
-John O
So, would I be safe to start off with InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator?
Safe but not wise due to your very tight budget amongst other reasons.
Photoshop Elements is the choice for raster image processing on a budget. The one really significant limitation for print work is its lack of CMYK capability. I use it exclusively, but then I only do B&W work, so CMYK is not an issue.
On a budget, you can probably survive without Illustrator. InDesign and Photoshop, or InDesign and Photoshop Elements, are the two must-haves.
"to take care of the publishing of our book project(s), meaning fairly large books (around 300 pages)."
Two questions:
1. What does your printer NEED as input? Check with various printers and find out what their requirements are, what their prices are, and make a tentative selection of printer. Take in some examples of the kind of pages you will be printing for your chats.
If a printer's rep will not take the time to meet with you, cross them off your list. Small projects like this are their bread and butter.
When you know what they need as input, then you are in a better position to pick software.
2. What does your audience expect? Are they information-driven and happy with a clean easy to read format, or do they expect "professional" doo-dads like bleeds, microjustification, etc. To be brutal, most readers can't tell (and don't care) whether the book was produced by a $$$$$ layout program or Timmy Typesetting software. They care about the content - perfect your writing and editing before you worry about typesetting.
"as far as the Ad agencies, is the standard for them to email or snail mail the "artwork" file? (or put a disc in my hand). "
You are paying them ... tell them what you NEED (file format and OS) and they should deliver it. If they can't hand you what you need, find a different agency. You shouldn't have to maintain a full set of everything ever used by any artist ... it's their job to keep the customers happy.
Fuluna: We're located in a small country and more or less on the countryside. We've chosen our printer on the basis that we know some people there. Their prices are fair. They've already produced hundreds and hundreds of book, out of which many really look great and anytime we need an appointment it is only five minutes away instead of hours. The whole production of some 5000 books is also delivered at our doorstep with no extra cost.
We will check this with what they need more thoroughly, but they claim to possess InDesign and that they receive ID files.
As for what you write about picky design details I completely agree with you, and our main focus will stay on the writing and not the least the image quality which is both independant of the ID design skills.
And I must admit that although not directly copying any design we will spend a lot of time (and have already spent) studying other books.
I also don't think we risk to much if we go for a safe common type or usual combination of two types. Most of the books in our genre, although highly focused on large quality images, are fairly simple in their design..
QUESTION: I've just started playing around the first few ours with ID tryout and some documents, and I was wondering: when building books will you be able to force the start of any subdocument (read: chapter for our part) to either a left or a right page? Meaning if the final length of the previous document is so that it ends on a right hand side page and I want the next chapter / document to start on a right hand side, are there any settings, that if necessary add a blank page between the chapters / documents?
Stu:
"Photoshop Elements is the choice for raster image processing on a budget.
The one really significant limitation for print work is its lack of CMYK
capability. I use it exclusively, but then I only do B&W work, so CMYK is
not an issue."
CMYK is not really an issue if you have a PDF workflow. Work in RGB in
InDesign and do the CMYK conversion when you output to PDF - but with
reservations that need some trial error over things like transparency and
any other factors which call for cohesion between the colour settings of
different objects.
The major limitiation I find with PhotoShop Elements is pasting from a
screen grab, which it won't do. I have an older copy of PaintShop Pro which
I use for that, then save as TIFF and open in PSE.
Fulana:
"as far as the Ad agencies, is the standard for them to email or snail mail
the "artwork" file? (or put a disc in my hand). "
You are paying them ... "
Wrong. Ad agencies are being paid by the advetisers, not the publisher. And
in my experience many of them maintain a Quark/Mac-centric view of life
which says 'this is what I produce, you should be capable of handling it'.
You need to talk to them nicely to prise out a PDF.
k
Sorry, bit of a bum steer there. "The major limitiation I find with
PhotoShop Elements is pasting from a
screen grab, which it won't do. "
Of course it will, I was just doing it incorrectly - Paintshop Pro will
paste directly from the clipboard, creating a document as it goes. With PSE
you have to creat the document first, then you can paste into it from the
clipboard.
k
FWIW, Ken, that's the same way Photoshop works and IMO that's the right
way. PS knows what's on the clipboard and creates a new file properly
sized for you to paste into.
Bob
Thanks Bob.
I haven't had PSE for very long, and pasting from the clipboard is not
something I do very often. I just got used to pasting into nothing in
Paintshop Pro and getting everything set up in the process.
One thing I do miss from Paintshop Pro is the colour replacer. You can
select two colours with the eyedropper, and double click in the file for all
pixels of one selection to be coloured with the other. PSE doesn't have this
as far as I can find. Does the full Photoshop?
k
>Meaning if the final length of the previous document is so that it ends on
a right hand side page and I want the next chapter / document to start on a
right hand side, are there any settings, that if necessary add a blank page
between the chapters / documents?
Sure, just make sure every doc has an even number of pages. I do this
manually, it's 5 seconds of work.
-John O
Ken,
PSE will also create a new document automatically from a clipboard image. File->New From Clipboard. (Version 2, I don't know if version 1 does this.)
Thanks for the tip on CMYK conversion at PDF creation time. As I said, this is not an issue for us, since we do strictly grayscale work.
I've yet to find anything I wanted to do to a photo that I can't do with PSE and the add-ons that come with Richard Lynch's book. And that goes for the paid work I do in grayscale and the hobby stuff I do in color.
Ken, you say:
CMYK is not really an issue if you have a PDF workflow. Work in RGB in InDesign and do the CMYK conversion when you output to PDF - but with reservations that need some trial error over things like transparency and any other factors which call for cohesion between the colour settings of different objects.
I disagree. If your output is print, you should convert to CMYK before any color correction or placement. Using RGB photos that most likely will have some colors out of gamut can give you very poor results when letting the PDF do the conversion.
Many a time a photo is very nice and has vivid colors in RGB, but the conversion to CMYK can dull them. Most recently, I worked with graphic that had a very bright and pretty blue that was totally destroyed to an ugly blue/grey color when converted from RGB, to CMYK. It was out of gamut.
Gotta start with CMYK and keep it that way all the way through the process. That is if you are serious about your work. Can't imagine anyone spending the kind of money on programs like ID that aren't serious about having the highest quality.
If you are going greyscale 99% of the time and only have the rare color photo, then maybe Elements would work.
Just my opinion, and I have a lot left to learn, that is for sure.
Kirk
Kirk,
For the most part you're right. But, with a completely color managed
workflow, you can actually work in RGB from start to finish with
excellent results. This entails a lot of work to get set up as far as
getting everything--scanners, monitors, printers, presses, calibrated
and profiles created, but once that's done the results are excellent.
Bob
Thanks for pointing that out Stu.
k
I've been reading that the current vogue is to use RGB workflows.
And there are Photoshop gurus that argue for using L*a*b.
RGB colours - I find blues and oranges in particular - will inevitably look
duller in CMYK, but I haven't found that converting them prior to letting
InDesign do it in the PDF creation is any improvement.
I would agree that if you are working in created graphics, seeing CMYK from
the start would give you the option to modify the mix. But if you are
working with full colour photographic images you are getting into really
specialist territory to start adjusting colours, and that's not territory
I'm familiar with - or want to be.
I find placing a photographic image in whatever form it is supplied gives me
perfectly acceptable results in the final PDF - with the caveats that
embedded colour profiles can distort the result (why do people do that when
they have no way of knowing what the final press output is going to be?!)
and that mixing RGB and CMYK can cause problems if you are using
transparency.
k
Ken,
RGB files should always have embedded profiles. That's what makes the
conversion to CMYK successful.
I'm not going to get into any great detail here because I'm not a color
management expert, but the purpose of the profile is to let all the
devices that need to display the graphic, know just how it's supposed to
look.
Bob
What happens if you have a page with more than one coloured graphic, and the
graphics have different embedded profiles?
k
Ken -
"Wrong. Ad agencies are being paid by the advetisers, not the publisher."
If I hire someone to produce work for me, as the one who signs the PO, I am the one who gets to decide what format they submit to me. Of course, it's all specified up front in the request for a bid.
Yes, I have had some agencies and design shops say they can't give me what I know I need, so I tell them that I'm dreadfully sorry they will not be invited to bid on the project.
I quite agree, but that's got nothing to do with the original question.
The original poster was asking about setting up a magazine.
Magazines carry paid advertising.
The paid advertising is produced for the advertisers by advertising
agencies.
The advertisers pay both the publisher and the advertising agency.
I have never yet come across a publisher who pays an advertising agency to
produce advertisements.
Any publisher who takes to the snooty high ground and turns away paid
advertising because it's not supplied in a specific format won't be a
publisher for very long.
k
Any publisher who takes to the snooty high ground and turns away paid
advertising because it's not supplied in a specific format won't be a
publisher for very long.
We accept a narrow range of formats - InDesign, PageMaker, PDF, TIF, and (with warnings that we're not responsible for glitches) JPG. We turn down Word, Publisher, and Quark. The advertisers who aren't savvy enough to supply PDFs generally aren't the advertisers with leverage, and they're people who are not going to buy enough advertising to justify the cost of dealing with their oddball formats. We did have one advertiser who wanted to send us Quark files and who was valuable enough that we planned to hold our nose and buy a copy of Quark to accommodate him - but before that became necessary, one of our much larger competitors instituted a PDF-only policy, and that motivated our potential advertiser (now a current advertiser) to go the PDF route.
We've yet to lose an account because of this policy.
Stu wrote:
"I produce a 12-to-28 page tabloid newspaper every week..."
That sounds like a fun job!
"We've yet to lose an account because of this policy."
I'm glad to hear that.
"We accept a narrow range of formats - InDesign, PageMaker, PDF, TIF, and
(with warnings that we're not responsible for glitches) JPG."
Not EPS? PSD?
"and they're people who are not going to buy enough advertising to justify
the cost of dealing with their oddball formats."
OK. But they're buying some advertising. And what does it cost to deal with
their oddball formats? I guess you do all your own pre-press, which makes a
difference. But I use a separate repro company because they've got all the
stuff I haven't, like professional scanning equipment, all the software on
all the hardware formats you could ever need, all the IT savvy to make this
stuff perform. I don't turn away any advertiser on the basis of the format
of his ad. He might be small today, but he might be a lot bigger tomorrow,
and I want to be the good guy.
"We've yet to lose an account because of this policy."
Again, I'm glad to hear that. How many accounts didn't you get because of
this policy?
And I'll just point you back to the reason for my comment, which was someone
up this thread who thought that publishers paid advertising agents and so
could call the tune.
k
I am in the same predicament with trying to find a suitable software to produce large manuals. I have found that InDesign can do almost everything Word can but I can't seem t find specific things I need. Maybe you can help. My company just "feels" Word is not the appropriate software. these books range from 50 to 500 pages and all use the same layout. The one thing I would love to have that word has is the fields that link the chapter title into the headers. That saves me a lot of sanity time when the writer changes thier mind. Also, Assigning a page to fall on an Odd setting. Even a different first page. It almost sounds as if I need FrameMaker but it's been a couple years since I have worked in it and boy did i hate it then. I had a lot of issues. Any Ideas?
Not EPS? PSD?
EPS only if there is no text (except as outlines), because of font issues. We'd take PSD, but we've never had anyone request it.
what does it cost to deal with their oddball formats?
More than it's worth
I guess you do all your own pre-press, which makes a difference
You guess wrong
How many accounts didn't you get because of this policy?
None. We've yet to have an advertiser pull an ad or a potential advertiser not place an ad because we told them we can't accept Publisher, or Word, or Quark, or CorelDraw, or PowerPoint, or (I am not making this up) Greeting Card Factory. They've all managed to figure out how to create PDFs or TIFs, or they've provided us hard copy to scan.
I use a separate repro company because they've got all the stuff I haven't,
like professional scanning equipment, all the software on all the hardware
formats you could ever need, all the IT savvy to make this stuff perform.
And they do all that for free, right? Where I live, they charge by the hour, and I don't have that kind of budget. Nor do our schedules permit it. I give the printer ready-to-impose PDFs.
I don't turn away any advertiser on the basis of the format of his ad.
He might be small today, but he might be a lot bigger tomorrow, and I
want to be the good guy.
With a layout staff consisting of two part-timers, I don't have the luxury of ignoring time and cost and being the good guy. Before we instituted this policy, it was not unusual to spend an hour and a half of staff time trying to convert a $30 ad.
Hi there,
In response to the original message in this forum as well as post number 50 (which concerns the question of whether or not to purchase InDesign), I thought I would make my contribution to the discussion. I used FrameMaker for two years producing technical manuals, and I think it has big advantages over InDesign in its indexing and Table of Contents generation. Also, being able to create bulleted lists without buying more software is nice. I think the real advantage of InDesign over other programs is all the software magic that you can't see: the sophisticated algorithms that Adobe created for the careful flowing of text. You do get nicer looking pages with InDesign than with just about anything else (although I admit my knowledge of other programs like Quark and Ventura, is limited). I would not recommend Word for anything other than letters or unformatted documents; it puts in a lot of code you can't control, and if you use lots of graphics, it gets very unstable. So, to perhaps settle the question: use InDesign for publications up to magazine length and/or with lots of graphics (i.e., where the 'look' is the key issue), but for proper books or manuals, FrameMaker is an excellent choice (especially if you need to create an index). I look forward to a barrage of responses.
OK Stu, we'll have to agree to differ. Your way works for you, my way works
for me.
I don't understand how I can be wrong when I suggest you might be doing your
own pre-press, but you also say you don't have the budget for someone else
to do it.
Anyway, this started from an assertion that advertising agencies should
deliver what a publisher requires, because the publisher pays - and that's
flat wrong.
I still believe it's necessary for a publisher to be able to accept all
formats. If someone books a £2,000 ad with me and a Mac CD arrives with a
Quark file on it by courier at the 11th hour, I'm not going to refuse to run
the ad because it's in the wrong format. I'll get the thing converted.
k
I didn't say I didn't have the budget to do my own prepress. I said that I didn't have the budget to pay someone to fiddle around with hard-to-process files, nor do my deadlines permit it. My job is on the press an hour after I upload PDFs to the printer's FTP site. They bring the PDFs into Quark, do the imposition, and onto the press she goes.
OK, so we do things in different ways. I use a prepress company that deals
with hundreds of publications and so has the ability to handle any kind of
format as standard. So it's not a question of fiddling about.
My deadlines are not as tight as yours, but if I receive a Mac/Quark CD I
can ship it overnight, it's opened the next morning, converted to PDF and I
can download it straight away.
If I get an e-mailed Stuffed Quark file, so the fonts are intact, I can
upload the stuffed file into the repro company where it goes through an
automation process in which it is UnStuffed, opened, PDF-ed, and put on the
server for me to download within a few minutes - without being touched by
human hand. The automation process also does a pre-flight.
The occasional film ad can be sent overnight, copy dot scanned, and, again,
made available as a PDF.
All my digitised ads going back years are stored and can be repeated into
the current workflow instantly.
k
> but for proper books or manuals, FrameMaker is an excellent choice
(especially if you need to create an index). I look forward to a barrage of
responses.
I only quibble with your use of the word 'proper.' I do an awful lot of
reading, I've been a voracious reader all my 40-something years, and these
features that make FM so special...I never see them in print. But then
again, I don't read college texts much, either. And besides, we all know
that *real* indices are created by people--not software. :-)
Several of the feature request and other discussions have reminded me of
what I went through 2.5 years ago...PageMaker was, in my opinion, clearly
dying and it was time to ride a horse in the direction it is running. So we
switched to ID and lived without a couple of our favorite PM features. Now
PM is all but dead, and Adobe has incorporated those features into ID,
effectively putting PM down. I suspect the next major version of ID will
incorporate many of the major features that make FrameMaker unique.
-John O
I've been a voracious reader all my 40-something years, and these features that make FM so special...I never see them in print.
You've never seen headlines straddling more than one column, footnotes, endnotes, section numbering, cross references (even a simple "see page X"), dictionary-style running heads, or inline graphics in print? Maybe you aren't quite as voracious a reader as you say you are!
InDesign CS with the Adobe Premium Creative Suite using a PDF workflow is the way to go!
Adobe just quit Macintosh support for FM too.
If Adobe has stopped supporting FrameMaker for the Mac, well the writing is on the wall, as they say. I have yet to use the indexing or book functions of InDesign, so perhaps they are just as good; it would make sense. Because otherwise, there is not a huge amount that separates the two. I did like the Paragraph Design window in FrameMaker, though; I think it had more control than even InDesign.
Cheers.
> Maybe you aren't quite as voracious a reader as you say you are!
I don't read academic texts much...these days. That's about the only place I
see these features used with any regularity. And even that is a minority of
the overall US textbook market (can't speak for elsewhere). They probably
also exist in special-purpose commercial docs, but at the consumer level
where are all these footnotes and endnotes???
BTW, my premise is that ID was challenged as missing the features necessary
to do 'proper' books. And I say BS...Junji is looking for what are IMHO
special-purpose features for special-purpose books.
-John O
"I don't read academic texts much...these days. That's about the only place I
see these features used with any regularity. And even that is a minority of
the overall US textbook market (can't speak for elsewhere)."
If books that have these features along with indexes and tables of content and figure labels were a minority, I would be out of a job!
Unless its a novel, bet on them having some feature like that.
Just to be clear, InDesign has most of these features (and more if one buys InDesign CS PageMaker Edition), but many of them FrameMaker does better or more flexibly today.
However, footnotes are a particular lack.
Regards,
T
InDesign has most of these features
Huh?
headlines straddling more than one column
Only if you never need them to move
footnotes
Nope
endnotes
Nope
section numbering
Nope
cross references (even a simple "see page X")
Nope
dictionary-style running heads
Nope
inline graphics in print
Very weak implementation.
That's certainly not "most."
>
> Unless its a novel, bet on them having some feature like that.
Footnotes, endnotes, and long numbered/bulleted lists? I'll take that bet.
-John O
> Unless its a novel, bet on them having some feature like that.
Footnotes, endnotes, and long numbered/bulleted lists? I'll take that
bet.
"some" <> "all"
I agree with Stu. I use FM almost as much as ID for these reasons. Even simple numbering is done manually in InDesign. Stu didn't even mention independing numbering, equations, conditional text (not even close to the same as layers), runin paragraph formats, side headers, table styles (not the same as tables) etc.
But at the consumer level where are all these footnotes and endnotes???
Like I say, you are obviously not as voracious a reader as you claim. I could go to the nearest newsagent and find any number of books with footnotes or endnotes (history books are big sellers in New Zealand, for example, and they have many notes). And it wasn't just notes I listed - you've ignored those other features that FM has over ID. I think if you used programs that really were designed for long documents (FM, Ventura), you'd realise how much ID is missing.
And, Thomas, come on! Saying "InDesign has most of these features" is just not true. If you include the PM plugin, it has some rudimentary bullets and numbering ability, but if Adobe really thinks ID has these features, it explains why there has been so little work done on adding long-document support to date.
> Like I say, you are obviously not as voracious a reader as you claim.
You make me laugh, Dominic. :-) My shelves at home are loaded with history
and biographies. I read for fun, and I do it constantly. I always have.
The deal is, if I were doing a history book in ID I don't see the problem. I
don't see anything in these books that can't be easily done in ID, or even
Word for that matter. But maybe having never seen FM, I just don't see ID's
'limitations' with this simple layout component. (This is kinda like
convincing a MS Pub user that it's no good...)
Young and stupid, I am? Maybe, but there's no way I will ever suggest that
someone gets on the FM horse at this stage of its life. The time it takes to
learn a new GUI and layout paradigm is easily offset by just doing the work
in ID. Then when ID gets those FM features in version 4..... :-)
-John O
I recently completed a 208 page catalogue in ID. It was a product catalogue with mostly photos and some text. I was praising InDesign everyday for the 3 months is took me to complete the project. Absolutely no complaints. Using "Book file" saved a lot of time and kept the files organized.
FM is used in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Foundary (After effects plugins) manuals, and NVIDIA installation instructions. Great bedside reading, all of them.
My shelves at home are loaded with history and biographies.
And none of them contain footnotes or endnotes?
There's no way I will ever suggest that someone gets on the FM horse at this stage of its life. The time it takes to learn a new GUI and layout paradigm is easily offset by just doing the work in ID.
It really takes you that long to learn a new program? Long-document programs like FM do still offer me significant advantages over ID. It's never taken me long to learn them and the time saved from the functions they have far outweigh that initial investment. And when you say "just doing the work in ID", you'r ignoring all the scripting and workrounds you would have to go through to replace those functions. I also don't know how you can confidently assert that without having even seen FM.
I don't see anything in these books that can't be easily done in ID.
Okay. How about importing a several hundred page document with thousands of footnotes and a large number of section numbers and cross references, and manintaining them all while the document is still being added to and edited. And having dictionary-style running headers that automatically reflect the section numbers. How do you do that easily in ID?
or even Word for that matter.
This is where you make me laugh. So why don't you use Word instead of ID?
>thousands of footnotes and a large number of section numbers and cross
references,
These are the books I've never seen. Who writes them, and who buys them?
With that type of book I see your point.
My experience, which is probably typical, is that footnotes are not common.
I've seen them, and the most footnoted book I recall at this moment had
dozens of them...easily managed by any layout software, IMO.
-John O
John O: one of the major shortcomings of ID (compared to FM) is inline graphics placement. FM has many options: top of page, top of column, where placed, etc. If you have to modify graphic images and the size is not an exact match, InDesign is a major pain to get the images to place correctly. You won't see this reading some book, but these issues lurk behind the scenes.
These are the books I've never seen. Who writes them, and who buys them?
Many legal and academic books have 1000s of footnotes, section numbering, cross references, and running heads. I regularly set the reports of permanent commission of inquiry and each chapter may have 200+ footnotes (and there may be up to 20 chapters). They also use legal numbering (1.1, 1.1.1) and need running heads, cross references, and table and figure numbering. Who buys them? Speaking for the books I set, universiy students, lawyers, libraries, Government departments, interested members of the public.
My experience, which is probably typical, is that footnotes are not common.
If by experience you mean your experience of setting books, then I imagine it is common among ID forum users, because those that do this sort of work just don't use ID. However, if by experience you mean your experience of hardly ever seeing or reading books like this, I seriously doubt it is common. Or maybe it's just that in your country (the US, I presume), the market won't buy footnoted books.
But I can assure they that they're far from rare in New Zealand or other countries I have visited. Many non-fiction books have notes and many ordinary people buy them. And many more books have cross references (even just simple ones like "see page X"). For example, a quick look round my office reveals The Coming Plague (a non-fiction book on viruses that was marketed heavily here) with over 100 pages of endnotes, a biography of Stanley Morison with 22 pages of endnotes, Bringhurst, which has section numbering, the Chicago Manual of Style (section numbering and running heads), the OED (running heads), the Oxford Manual of Style (section numbering), Bowker's Bookmaking (running heads), Williamson's Methods of Book Design (numbering, running heads). I'd honestly be staggered if the situation were not the same in your country.
Ken -
FYI, the OP was talking about books, not magazines.
I was talking about having an ad agency or graphics artist doing illustrations for me, for publication in my books, my websites or whatever I'm creating. If I'm the one signing the cheques, they can't tell me what format I have to accept from them ... either they can give me something I can work with (or that my printer can work with) or they don't get work from me.
Magazines are at the mercy of their advertisers - and I've been an advertiser. The magazine has to be able accept what we deliver or they don't get the ads.
ARRGH: edited to add
Considering indexing, running headers taken from paragraph styles, footnotes and endnotes ... the bulk of non-fiction publication uses one or more of these. Look at at any cookbook, how-to book, biography, or legal book to see them. Because InDesign can't do them, you will not find many InDesign users who have encountered them.
Fulana
"FYI, the OP was talking about books, not magazines."
I agree, but that wasn't the question you were answering. Your reply wasn't
to the original poster, but to brian_r_martin who told us
"Im developing the editorial content for a magazine and I am unclear if
InDesign 2.0 the full version is a great stand alone program or if I will
need several more products such a photoshop, pagemaker etc."
You quoted his question "And as far as the Ad agencies, is the standard for
them to email or snail mail the "artwork" file? (or put a disc in my hand)."
in your post.
"I was talking about having an ad agency or graphics artist doing
illustrations for me, for publication in my books, my websites or whatever
I'm creating. If I'm the one signing the cheques, they can't tell me what
format I have to accept from them ... either they can give me something I
can work with (or that my printer can work with) or they don't get work from
me."
I quite agree.
"Magazines are at the mercy of their advertisers - and I've been an
advertiser. The magazine has to be able accept what we deliver or they don't
get the ads."
That's more or less what I was saying.
k
> If by experience you mean your experience of setting books, then I imagine
it is common among ID forum users, because those that do this sort of work
just don't use ID.
Thanks, I take your point and agree. My experience setting books is limited
to what my company does, and we don't do footnotes. As for reading, I don't
ever sit with a legal book or college text for pleasure reading, so my
experience is as a general reader of 'over-the-counter' works. :-) Many of
the history books I read have footnotes, but as I said, the quantity of them
doesn't appear high enough to warrant 'special' software.
-John O
As for reading, I don't ever sit with a legal book or college text for pleasure reading.
Fair enough, neither do I. And none of the titles I listed in my post fall into those categories. I'm still surprised that you don't ever see any for the features I listed in books that you read - and I'm not just talking footnotes here ("these features that make FM so special...I never see them in print").
I've used both and like features of both. FrameMaker I found more stable and I love its numbering and cross-referencing features (they're so simple and useful) but I hate its word-processor level typography. Ventura is buggy (though I've never had a corrupt file) but it has some great typography features that even ID doesn't and though I'm not fond of its numbering features, I really, really love the navigator (and the fact that one file = a publication, not a chapter). Because typographic control is a big thing for me, most of the time I use Ventura. I wouldn't mind trying out Quark XPress with the AutoPage XTension, but it's out of my price range. Whichever app I use, I still prefer to run footnotes in separate linked frames for maximum control, because neither Ventura nor FM does footnotes well enough for me to leave them up to the program.
Huh, that was a lot of pro FM and the opposite concerning ID. We've just ordered ID CS as a part of the creative suite and are expecting its arrival within some days and will have to stick it out.
As fars as our segment goes 1000s of footnotes, endnotes long bulleted lists etc. is not relevant. As with most books made for joyful reading and pleasant skimming through - a good design, clean text, good pictures and illustrations are essential. Footnotes will only occour in very limited numbers.
I guess we will manage somehow. I was just a bit anxious reading one comment above that ID was not so good placing images as FM, which of course would be bad for us.
All the comparing between ID, FM and others, are those based on ID CS or are the differences between CD and 2.0 so small that in most cases it is indifferent?
I guess I am a fairly slow learner and it usually takes me up to a year before I feel I fully master a program, and if the future of bookdesign lies within ID why not struggle a bit in the beginning, get real creative in finding solutions and enjoy the improvements as they come..Smart move from Adobe to save some major improvements, because if not why upgrade.. I don't belong to the people who upgrade just because there's a new version. There must be something substantial in it...
In any bookstore I've been to here in Europe (unless it is a bookstore within university / college boundaries) the books dominating are novels, and fairly light designed books connected to a subject (geography, travelling, cooking).. Of course there are books with complex text structures, but they belong to the minority :)
Having made a couple of books with ID we can always switch if it is too afwul :)
ID is better than FM for placing images manually. It is just more limited for inline graphics. So for long documents, you will have more manual work but better precision than in FM. You mentioned spreading an image across two pages: this is a real pain in FM (you have to create two copies of the image and crop them), but easy in ID. Something you didn't mention, though: ID most likely has a better future than FM and is likely to incorporate at least some of FM's features in the future.
>Something you didn't mention, though: ID most likely has a better future
than FM and is likely to incorporate at least some of FM's features in the
future.
I speculate ID will do to FM what it did to PM.
-John O
That would be my hope, but I really don't see it picking up as many of FM's features as it did PM's - after all, ID was designed specifically to be PM's replacement (and a "Quark killer"), so it's not a surprise that it duplicates most of PM. However, my belief is that there are not a large group of users who want FM's features in ID. (I can remember seeing posts in this forum around the time of ID2's release saying that ID was the perfect DTP app already and that it was hard to imagine what more could possibly be added to it.) Given that sort of user base, and the fact that Thomas Phinney said that ID already had most of FM's features, I don't expect that we'll see a lot of change any time soon. (I'd like to be proved wrong, though.)
I wouldn't think so. They can keep presenting new versions with minor changes some time, but sooner or later they will have to present som major changes in order to sell a lot of upgrades.
It might also depend on the salesvolume of FM. If this was to fall to insignificant levels, why put resources into developing that product? On the other hand, going through Adobes list of products I wonder if not quite some of them could be merged?
Anyway I am awaiting my copy of ID with excitement and ordered some books on it as well, so it will be ID for me.
Thanks for alle the replies. Some helped. Some made me more confused, but I guess that's the way it is :)
Oh, they will always be able to add new features for the magazine and ad design crowd (just check out the feature requests list!), but I just haven't seen any evidence that Adobe is at all serious about adding long-document features to ID. Sure, if the FM user base falls then they'll dump it (as they've just done for FM Mac), but that doesn't mean they'll copy the features over. After all, if the long-document user base is too small for FM, why add FM features to ID when the target market for ID (Quark Xpress users) don't want them either?