Creating side heads?

[JohnO@adobeforums.com]

"Long Document" doesn't, IMO, have anything to do with length. It's a
feature set used for highly structured and complex books (docs).

I just updated a 450-page book in ID, and ID is the perfect layout app for
this book. :-)

-John O

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

I agree with John that long document is a bit of a misnomer, but I would also say that "long-document" apps like FM are not only for highly structured and complex books. I've set fairly simple books in such apps and still find them better suited to the task than ID. Having said that, you should be looking at whether you need such features as footnotes/endnotes, cross references, dictionary style running heads, conditional text, and anchored graphics. If you do, FM might be better suited to your task than ID.

[Andy_Fielding@adobeforums.com]

And if you plan to have lots of lists, plan to spend extra time on them. ID lets you set their margins, and even specify font properties for the first X characters (using Nested Styles)---but you must manually paste or type in each bullet or number.

I mean, sheesh---Word 2 handled that stuff. (Maybe it's coming in "InDesign CT"?)

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

And if you plan to have lots of lists, plan to spend extra time on them.
ID lets you set their margins, and even specify font properties for the
first X characters (using Nested Styles)---but you must manually paste
or type in each bullet or number.




You need the PageMaker Plug-in Pack. $49 extra in the US (don't know how much in pounds or euros). It has the bulleting and numbering feature from PageMaker. I'm sure in the next version it'll be incorporated into the app, but at the moment it's an add-on.

Again, remember InDesign's origins were to compete with QuarkXPress. XPress never had that feature unless you bought a third-party XTension.

[Marilyn_Langfeld@adobeforums.com]

Haven't you tried search and replace for bullets? If, and I know that's a big 'if', the lists in the manuscript always begin with the same character, you can search on ^p(character) or ^p(character)^t if the manuscript has a tabd there and replace the bullet character and convert to the nested style at the same time for the whole manuscript. But even if there are several different bullets in the manuscript, search and replace is pretty fast, compared to copy/paste.

I find it works best if you use the Unicode equivalent from glyphs menu for the new character you want in the bullet character style in your nested style. I use E0A9 and set the character style to use Universal News & Commercial Pi, along with a smaller point size than the list font and some baseline shift to move the bullet where I want it. If I use the code, I don't get the dreaded pinkness.

[Andy_Fielding@adobeforums.com]

Marilyn: Thanks for the bullet tip---I'll certainly try it!

Steve> You need the PageMaker Plug-in Pack. $49 extra in the US (don't
know how much in pounds or euros). It has the bulleting and numbering
feature from PageMaker...




At first I thought you were referring to a third-party plug-in. But sheesh---Adobe offers this "extra"? Why the heck didn't they just include this basic functionality in the app? (That is, unless they did it this way as a cash-grab . . . After all, they are a business.)

Unfortunately, $50 US is $75 to us here in Canada. After spending $600---that is, $900---on the app itself, I can't justify spending that much more to add something I've been able to do for five years in Microsoft Word. :?P

Anyway, I'm beginning to understand (or, I should say, to understand that I didn't understand) ID's focus. I'd just assumed that since ID was so much newer than FrameMaker, that it did everything FM did and more. (Adobe's references to ID CS's "long-document support" didn't help, either.)

[Bob_Levine]

My feeling is that they intended to add that functionality but simply
couldn't get it done in time. For owners of the entire suite, the
plugins are included. For owners of PM looking to upgrade only to
InDesign, they can get ID for 299.00 or ID with the plugins for 349.00.

Bob

[Andy_Fielding@adobeforums.com]

So, er . . . does it make much sense that those of us who bought ID at its full price should be at the bottom of the totem pole?

[Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com]

does it make much sense that those of us who bought ID at its full price
should be at the bottom of the totem pole?




Apparently it makes perfect sense to Adobe.

Not only are we required to pay extra for something that should be part of the core package, but we're also definitely second-class citizens when it comes to upgrade policy.

If you have any previous version of Photoshop, you can upgrade to Creative Suite for a very attractive upgrade price. OTOH, you can own the most recent pre-CS versions of Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat, and your only choices are to upgrade those individually or pay the full retail price for the CS suite.

[Andy_Fielding@adobeforums.com]

Upgrading to add basic functionality . . . What other large software-maker does that remind me of? :?)

[Skyline@adobeforums.com]

Real World InDesign CS, almost 800 pages and a VERY complex book IMO, was produced using InDesign CS. Coincidentally, it makes very liberal use of sideheads, though it doesn't say how the formatting was accomplished.

[Steve_Werner@adobeforums.com]

Real World InDesign CS describes two ways of creating sideheads--using inline frames (described on page 412) and using tables (described on page 385). I suspect they used the inline frame method.

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

Skyline, what features about the book make it "VERY complex" in your view? (I haven't actually looked at this book.)

[Skyline@adobeforums.com]

Re: Complexity, Real World InDesign--

Besides its length, and the huge number of graphics, it seems like there was a lot of customizing throughout the book. Either a lot of different master pages or quite a bit of massaging page-by-page. Either way, very time-consuming which perhaps I'm equating with complexity.

Most of the books I've worked on did not have this level of customization or graphics (most of our work involves brochures, rack cards, travel guides, catalogs, etc.--the latter two typically following just a few templates/master pages). So, by comparison I'd call Real World InDesign complex.

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

Fair enough. The fact that each page is so different makes it a good candidate for ID, whereas the sort of work I do (which also results in complex, but more structured, documents) calls for a more rigid, batch-pagination approach, which is where ID falls down. That is, "complex" to me conjures up lots of footnotes and/or endnotes, multicolumn text with spanning heads, dictionary-style running heads, section numbering, cross-references, tables, etc, etc.

[Andy_Fielding@adobeforums.com]

Maybe I'm naïve, but: Wouldn't it be lovely to have an app that would let us produce documents with varied page-layouts _and_ do such reasonable things as creating lists without manually entering their leading characters? Why must it be a matter of "what do you want to give up?"?

And honestly, how hard would it be for Adobe to allow us to specify actual characters to begin a nested style (e.g. bullet + space)? Or even---gasp---the idea of starting a nested style with a particular graphic (e.g. a message icon)? This doesn't seem like brain surgery.

Having said that, I've been using Marilyn's bulleted-list mass-replace tip with great success---and most imported ms's would need that anyway. So we do get some breaks.

[Marilyn_Langfeld@adobeforums.com]

I'm happy to have helped. I use find/change a lot, for replacing local formatted italics from Word with character style italics, bold for character style bold, superscript for character style superscripts, etc. Also for cleanup, deleting double word spaces, double tabs, double hard returns, etc. There's lots that can be automated that way. It doesn't help the lack of footnotes, but I've sometimes convinced clients to go with endnotes. Gotta do something when the feature you want is missing!

[Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com]

Why must it be a matter of "what do you want to give up?"?




Because developmental resources are finite.