January 10 2010 • 10:17 AM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 117
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The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon.
- Happy New Year!
- Our new sister site: InDesignSecretsLive.com, with info and links for:
- 2010 InDesign seminar tour cities and dates
- Our new Print and e-Publishing (“PeP”) Conference, May 12-14, 2009, Seattle, Wash.
- Interview with Diane Burns, ID trainer/multilingual publishing expert/table diva
- Winners of our first InDesignSecrets Member drawing
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Paste Without Formatting
News and special offers from our sponsors:
>> Rorohiko has a new version of Soxy out, that oh-so-useful utility that knows (or learns) which program/version should open which file on your computer. Great for when you have multiple versions of InDesign installed, or when you work with mix of vector and raster EPS files, or many other situations! Normally $19, you can get $5 off by entering INDESIGNSECRETS117 in the coupon code are of Rorohiko’s shopping cart.
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Links mentioned in this podcast:
> InDesignSecretsLive.com for seminar and conference info
> Diane Burns’ company, TransPacificDigital.com
> You can watch a recording of Diane’s InDesignSecrets webinar, “Table Magic”
> Make sure you’re in our Members database (free) for upcoming prize drawings!
> You can watch a recording of Diane’s InDesignSecrets webinar, “Table Magic”
> Make sure you’re in our Members database (free) for upcoming prize drawings!
I heard Diane Burns mention she prefers Mac over Windows because she observed more folks on the Windows side having issues with type than those on the Mac side. Doesn’t InDesign use its own type rendering (not OS-dependent) so platform should make no difference?
@Jim: Well, I certainly don’t want to get in a platform war here. I don’t think it’s just type, though. And I think she was commenting on Asian languages in particular. In that case, no, it’s not just InDesign. There are input method issues that are different, I believe.
I find Diane so interesting to listen to. I enjoyed this interview and the tables webinar. Thank you.
@ David
The Asian language staff I work with are using Windows and I have not heard complaints from them so I was wondering how a Mac would do better in that regard.
I’m no fan of platform wars either, which is why I found her observation unusual that any particular platform worked better for her language applicati0n. For the past decade, it has been a pretty even competition. I cannot imagine that the Eastern World would use a greater ratio of Mac:Windows than the Western World because Mac makes Asian languages any easier to manage.
@Jim: Thanks for your post, which gives me the opportunity to clarify the platform point. I did say, but should have probably emphasized, that one platform isn’t really better than the other for multilingual publishing.
When I made the comment about font handling, I was thinking of font encoding, unrelated to font rendering. Especially for older Type 1 and TrueType fonts, and especially for Chinese, Simplified and Traditional font encoding can get wormy. E.g., some font might only have Simplified characters, some just Traditional, etc. some fonts have both.
I was also thinking of the question for users who are in the U.S. or Europe, for whom Asian language publishing can be quite daunting. After all, the standard Japanese font has 20,000 characters! And to be honest, my comment on font handling issues is only from my impression of posts I’ve seen on Adobe Forums; when users have problems with Asian text and fonts, it’s often on Windows, though this could be simply because more Asian publishing is being done on Windows. And you are right, Windows has by far the larger market share in Asia, and especially in China.
And David touched on another point: Windows XP required an extra install to get the input system and related fonts for Asian text. I assume this is not an issue with more recent versions, especially Windows 7, but it could, I suppose, affect those working with legacy documents or workgroups using older Windows systems.
Anyway, the bottom line is if you’re working with Asian staff on Windows, please don’t feel you’re missing anything. After all, I gave my disclaimer in the podcast–I’m definitely biased in favor of Macintosh, but happy to live in a cross-platform world!