RE: InDesign

[David Cramer <dacramer@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Thomas,

1) You want to subscribe to InDesign Talk:

   <http://www.blueworld.com/blueworld/lists/indesign.html>

This page has all the necessary info for subscribing/unsubscribing/etc.

It's a great group, like this one ;-) It even includes frequent 
wizardry from our favorite wiz, Dov Isaacs (how does he do it? time 
expansion? parallel universes? one wonders)

The list's main problem is that they generally have no idea of 
FrameMaker's *vastly* superior long and structured document handling 
;-)

2) InDesign can miraculously convert Quark XPress files to itself, 
and I assume it has no problem with PageMaker, either. However, since 
InDesign documents typically have little or no structure, converting 
from InDesign to FrameMaker would involve exporting one individual 
threaded text flow at at time to RTF, plain text, XML, or something 
called InDesign tagged text.

3) InDesign's handling of large files is unbelievably limited from 
the point of view of anyone used to FrameMaker. No user or system 
variables, so no dynamic headers or footers; no cross-references; no 
autonumbering except for pages, a really flakey master page control 
system, and numerous other frustrations.

There are also some problem areas with font handling, since ID works 
with Unicode; and advanced color features which require subtle 
understanding to use correctly.

Despite the caveats, ID is an amazing accomplishment of DTP design. 
My personal opinion is that it makes more sense to think of it as an 
advanced graphic program with integrated desktop publishing features. 
The elegance of a well-designed ID document can be breathtaking. The 
most distinguishing features include transparency and drop shadows. 
Anything whatsoever in an ID document can be transparent to any 
desired degree. Layers (a la Photoshop/Illustrator) of subtly 
transparent objects include text columns, any graphic, etc. The 
integrated drop shadow feature is way cool, too.

Just ask if you have any other questions. I may be opinionated, but 
at least I think I know what I'm talking about...um, not like some, I 
mean, you know...;-)

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Thomas V. Nielsen <thomas@integrator.dk> wrote:
>1) Is there a list similar to this, for discussion about InDesign
>2) Has anybody heard, or come across a utility to convert InDesign files
>to FrameMaker or visa versa
>3) How good is InDesign to handle large files (I see there is a book
>function now in 2.0)
>
>/Thomas

-- 
Regards,

David Cramer


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