July 5 2007 • 12:52 AM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 054
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InDesignSecrets-054.mp3 (18.0 MB, 37:57 minutes)
or read the transcript.
- Episode 52 Quizzler Update — Yet another way to duplicate!
- Mixing InDesign CS2 and CS3: Possible, with caveats
- Hot Button Post of the Week: Do’s and Don’ts of Text in InDesign
- Corner Effects Tips and Fixes
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Point/Pica Size
Links mentioned in the Podcast:
Episode 52 Quizzler answers are in the Show Notes
Update CS1 (Mac/Win) and CS2 (Mac/Win) to read later version .inx files
CS3 Online Help page about vertical align and corner effects
History of the pica measure from Wikipedia
Listener Comment Line: +1-206-202-6483
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Thank you both for the podcast (though it’s quite complicated to keep beeing concentrated on english speaking people for 37 minutes). I was wondering why when i open an .inx doc made from CS3 into CS2, *some* of my images block get a black stroke around them. Not all, just *some*
Oh, and it seems that one of the 29 different spaces (the ones I put before a ! (we do these sort of things in France)) appears missing in CS2, and remains a pink underline empty thing.
Thanks a lot for another great episode!
I too have experienced problems with exchanging data between versions using .inx files such as linked files being displayed as grayscale only and stuff like that.
One thing I wanted to point out is why you can mix InDesign and InCopy versions (the text model changes aside): Both snippets and InCopy exchange files are in fact based on the .inx file format. (That’s why InCopy sometimes says “Importing snippet” when opening files by the way, in case anyone was wondering).
Another consequence is that since you can’t open CS3-INX files in InDesign CS, you won’t be able to use InCopy CS3 with InDesign CS either. The same should go for snippets.
About that copy & paste thing: It’s actually not as simple as that. Usually applications negotiate the format in which data is transfered using the clipboard as soon as the user chooses “paste” in the target application. On Windows, some applications optionally let the user make the choice him or herself by providing a “Paste Special” command.
Sorry if it gets a bit technical here… While most of the time (especially on OS X) the format of choice is going to be PDF, pasting from InDesign to InDesign is actually handled using a different method. Once you copy or cut stuff in InDesign, it is copied to a thing called a scrap document. The scrap document is basically a hidden InDesign document that does not have any windows and thus is invisible. Once you paste, the data is copied over from that scrap document.
So are you sure the thing that gets pasted is really a PDF and not some junk that comes out of a scrap document? Or was that just a guess? Because if InDesign did indeed use the scrap document for the transfer, that could lead to severe and irreparable document corruption. It all comes down to whether InDesign recognizes that the other one is a different version or not. I’d definitely stay as far away from cross-version-copy&paste as possible…
Yeh so you cannot put text from CS3 into CS? File> Export> Rich Text Format
Import the RTF, you keep styles in tact.
RTF is the way forward as regards to backward compatability. I mean, all I hear is trouble with .inx, etc., how well does the RTF actually work? In my opinion, extremely well, it even imports anchored text boxes (loses properties though), and tables.
I still think RTF is the best format around for switching bewtween packages and versions of packages.
I’m always thrilled to hear my name during the ID Secrets Podcast. Thanks for the mention.
One more thing about using .inx as an interchange between CS3 and CS2:
If you a text inset, APPLIED AS PART OF AN OBJECT STYLE to text frames, the style definitions will move the text insets to other positions when opened in CS2.
I found this out when the text inset for my figure captions moved from the top to the bottom of the frame, and from the left to the right in the side captions.
But what’s even weirder is that text insets applied without object styles have no problems. (So much for the benefits of a strict style-driven workflow).
And even weirder still, the text insets for bottom and right won’t change at all.
This also causes a problem if you simply use the .inx format as a way to “clean up” any funky-acting CS3 files.
I wonder if the PostScript standard of 72 dpi arose because monitors display 72 dpi??
Here’s the text that flowed differently in a table cell, thereby causing my CS3 story to become overset:
w/ CD61 to form GPIIb-IIIa, binds fibrinogen, fibronectin, vWF and thrombospondin
CS2 set this like this:
w/ CD61 to form
GPIIb-IIIa, binds
fibrinogen, fibro-
nectin, vWF and
thrombospondin
while CS3 set it like this:
w/ CD61 to form
GPIIb-IIIa, binds
fibrinogen,
fibronectin,
vWF and throm-
bospondin
Like I said, words that InDesign doesn’t recognize. Those of us who work with fibrinogen, fibronectin, and thrombospondin every day will just have to beef up our user dictionaries.
Dave
Dave, thanks. Fascinating.
I just pasted the same text into CS2 and resized the text frame width to match your breaks. (Using default Basic Paragraph formatting.)
I saved that document, then opened that CS2 file in CS3. After it opened, the text (its line breaks) was exactly the same as in CS2. But as soon as I clicked after the last word and hit Return, the lines re-wrapped to show how CS3 would set that line… quite differently, as you found. (Actually CS3 did hyphenate one of those fribi words.)
This confirms what David said in the podcast, that you won’t see different line breaks in converted docs until you do something to the text that forces it to recompose.
The only difference between Basic Paragraph in CS2/CS3 is that “Hyphenate last word” is turned on by default (sigh) in CS3’s Justification dialog box. Turning it off did not make CS3 suddenly match CS2’s line breaks in this example. Would’ve been cool if it did, though.
That setting is not available in CS2 at all … don’t know if this means that in CS2, final words never break, or they always are allowed to break and there’s no way to turn it off.
Regardless, another thing I found was that about half of those words in your sample are not in the USA Medical dictionary, either.
Okay, here’s another thing. If I add those unrecognized words to CS2’s dictionary, then choose merge User Dictionary into document from Preferences, a) The text recomposes and the line breaks are quite different in CS2; and b) Those words are still unrecognized when CS3 opens the doc and converts them.
What am I not understanding here …
Dave, Dave, Dave… don’t know you know you’re never supposed to type fibronectin in InDesign? It’s just so gauche.
Peter: You’re right, I just made an educated guess. I don’t actually know if it’s a PDF (rather than a scrap). Gah! Well, at least we both come to the same conclusion: Don’t do it.
Bob: No, I don’t think PostScript standardized on 72 points per inch because of monitors. I think Warnock and Geschke simply decided 72.27 was too calculation intensive on those old 70s computers. However, that, too, is speculation. I’ve never asked them.
Franck, make sure that CS2 is fully patched to 4.0.5. Unlike CS which won’t open an INX at all unless fully patched, CS2 will open them but not as well as it would if fully patched.
Dave, I think David hit it on the head; you’re not supposed to use the word “fibronectin” in InDesign. As long as you stick with “a high-molecular-weight glycoprotein containing about 5% carbohydrate that binds to receptor proteins that span the cell’s membrane” instead, the line breaks should be cool.
I’ll suggest that to my client. They’ll probably need a larger poster though.
Dave
You know I would have sorn that Adobe changed the 72.27xxx pts/inch measurement to 72 pts/inch because of the Apple monitors.
But as this paragraph in Wikipedia indicates, it may have been the other way round. That the setting of the Alto monitor came from the PostScript setting:
>> The Alto monitor (72 pixels per inch) was designed so that one full page of text could be seen and then printed on the first laser printers. When the text was laid out on the screen 72 PPI font metric files were used, but when printed 300 PPI files were used — thus one would occasionally find characters and words slightly off, a problem that continues to this day. (72 PPI came from a new measure of 72 “PostScript points” per inch. Prior to this, the standard measure of 72.27 points per inch was used in typeface design, graphic design, typesetting and printing.)
How many cubits are in a French inch?
Sandee/vectorbabe: I had forgotten that the Alto also had a screen resolution of 72 ppi. That was my first DTP computer back around 1977, when I used to play and make “neighborhood newsletters” as a kid at PARC (my step-father was a researcher there and I got a programming internship). As PostScript was largely developed there, too, perhaps it would make sense that they tried to map it to the Alto system. Hm…
You know what really bothers me with this new text engine, no matter how similar it is to CS2’s?
Let’s say in 2020 I’m using InDesign CS10 or whatever. What kinds of changes will there be? So I need to run for a nostalgic piece a page I published in 200, made with CS2,6 with small changes long forgotten in a CD. I open it on ID CS10 (hopefully not having to search for some sort of conversion tool), and all my text gets refluxed in the wrong way.
I know, I know, worst-case scenario, not-nuch-likely situation, whatever. But it really bothers me.
An answer to the question on how to center text if corner effects are applied (or if you are using a circle) there is a free script available that was mentioned on this website. Look in the comments #3 by Dave. the script works great in CS2 and 3.
http://indesignsecrets.com/what-i-learned-at-the-creative-suite-conference.php
Alexandre, please note my comment (and Anne-Marie’s confirmation) that InDesign does not reflow the text if you simply open the document. You have to make edits to the text flow. If you are making edits, you have to expect changes throughout (even though there probably won’t be many or even any).
Yes, David, in this case even a PDF would do it, and in CS3 it might not even be an annoyance, but imagine after the many changes there would be after CS4, CS5, CS6 etc. you want to use an old page, and there is a typo you have to correct (I had this situation once). In CS3 there might be no reflux at all, because the changes in the text engine are subtle, but there’s no way to know yet how the text engine will be handled 13 years from now. This is not an InDesign-only problem. This could happen with any constantly-updated software (which reminds me of Freehand…
).
Alexandre, you’re right of course, but it’s an issue that has always been around in our industry, even way before desktop publishing. There was (and probably still is) an entire industry of re-keyers and compositors who re-create old publications in the current technology of the day in order to make alts for successive editions of a publication.
Without a crystal ball, I can’t see any way of getting away from it.
I’d bet the designers and typesetters who lived through the hot and cold metal phases of typesetting (500 years or so) would have loved to be able to keep a workstation or two running an older OS with older versions of QuarkXPress, PageMaker and InDesign in order to pull up live pages of decades-old publications without having to reset them. Or even to have a PDF of a publication, which can usually be leveraged to avoid 90% of rekeying work at least.
So Alexandre, keep an old computer running and hang on to your old software, that’s what I would do if subtle text engine changes would cause havoc for my clients and my projects.
It’s an idea, Anne-Marie. A good one, actually, and it doesn’t even require a huge investment (or even any investment at all). Just have to keep in mind to run an old OS version as well.
On an almost related topic, I once was a die-hard Freehand fan, but had “retired” it several years ago, and a couple weeks ago I needed an old file, and it was an FH file. Shoot. I tried online conversion tools, with no success. Ultimately, I had to download the trial, install it, save the file as EPS (and a few other ones I might need someday) and uninstall it again.
RE: photoshopped pictures in magazines.
What if it’s “No Photoshop Magazine?”