Switching from Quark to InDesign?

[michael_wile@adobeforums.com]

I'm using Quark right now with AutoPage personal. KyTek said they are not supporting version 7 of Quark with the PE edition so I am thinking of switching to InDesign. Is there anyone here that has used Quark with AutoPage in the past? Does InDesign do a good job of paging with things such as margin notes? Most of the books we do use them and AutoPage is great for that. You can specify how much room to leave between the notes.

From what I understand in InDesign, you can have notes that will float with the text to the outside minor column. My question is: What about several notes called out in the same line. Does InDesign just put one callout on top of another or does it put them where there is space?

[Mike Witherell]

Kytek AutoPage I haven't worked with. They may not make anything for InDesign.

Similar to what you describe are Anchored Objects; a relative to inline frames. Anchored objects are positioned relative to the text where you say they should go. Yes, you can have several.

Mike Witherell

[Eric_@_MCA@adobeforums.com]

One note--anchored objects currently float on top of any text they accompany, which makes them useless for trying to place a background on a piece of text or a leader line/object that goes under the text. This may or may not affect your plans, naturally.

In general, I highly encourage you to try the 30 day InDesign trial software. There's a few things that XPress users take for granted that are very clunky in InDesign--especially master pages. And you've got to be a lot more careful about how you layer objects since ID has dynamic transparency (text always on top of the graphic layers if possible).

But on the other hand, there's lots to like too! The 30 day trial out to get you closer to deciding if it's for you or not for sure.

[Diane_King@adobeforums.com]

What about several notes called out in the same line. Does InDesign just
put one callout on top of another or does it put them where there is space?




Unfortunately, it does stack them on top of each other. I used the anchored objects for text notes in a book recently and had this problem. However, you can go and find all the stacked notes and just arrow them down so that they no longer overlap and ID remembers it. Using the object styles combined with anchored objects makes this kind of task pretty easy. The object style can contain your settings for the anchored object so all you have to do is insert the text box into the text and then select the object style.

XPress users complain about the master pages in ID, but those of us who have been using ID for years find them quite elegant. They aren't clunky, just different from what you are used to. Do try the trial, though, that's what it is there for.

[mike_wile@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Diane. This is exactly what I wanted to know. If InDesign can remember that I've moved a note down, that's great. I was afraid of them "sticking" to the original position when the doc was closed.