InDesign and InCopy CS4 Trials Available

JohnnyK says:

So far, it seems like we tend to skip all the even numbered updates (which aren’t necessarily upgrades). So far it is looking like CS4 won’t be any different. Here’s to hoping CS5 brings us something more worthwhile and less buggy.

In all fairness, there may be some new features that I’m just not seeing because I don’t need them. In using the trial for about an hour or so, working on a newsletter, I was really glad to go back to CS3 when done.

Mike Rankin says:

Klaus, what happens when you export IDML? You should be getting a file that you can double click and create a new “untitled” copy of the original INDD. The IDML is really a zip archive of several folders containing XML files. If you inspect it with an application that can manipulate ZIP files (sorry, I don’t know what they are on PC) you should be able to open and see the components with any text editor. I’ll do some IDML posts here soon to explain in more detail.

As for CS4 itself, check out GREP styles, line styles, cross-references, and conditional text. They are some of the things that I like the most.

Klaus Nordby says:

Mike, thanks for your concern. Yes, I know the IDML format is a zip format, no problemo. However: no matter WHICH export format I choose from the dropdown –PDF, SWF, etc. — I ALWAYS get the XFL dialog! Hence, the files I output, even if they have the other extensions, are presumably XFL. I don’t have the Flash trial yet, hence I cannot test them — but from where I sit, the exports stuff is totally broken: no real SWF, IDML, etc. emerges.

UPDATE: I renamed the extension to ZIP, and yes, I can now poke inside and get the XML — however, I still can’t get any SWF files out of the app, and I always get the XFL dialog.

Harbs says:

To play around with IDML, you can not use standard zip utilities (at least on Mac — I have not tried on Windows). The easiest way to deal with IDML files is directly from InDesign using scripting. Here’s two functions I use to package and un-package IDML files.

//To Expand an IDML file into folder format
function ExpandIDML(){
var fromIDMLFile = File.openDialog( “Please Select The IDML File to unpackage” );
var fullName = fromIDMLFile.fullName;
fullName = fullName.replace(/.idml/,””);
var toFolder = new Folder( fullName );
app.unpackageUCF( fromIDMLFile, toFolder );
}
//To produce a package from the contents of a directory:
function CreateIDML(){
var fromFolder = Folder.selectDialog(“Please Select The Folder to package as IDML”);
if(!fromFolder){return}
var fullName = fromFolder.fullName;
// var name = fromFolder.name;
// var path = fromFolder.path;
var toIDMLFile = new File( fullName+”.idml” );
app.packageUCF( fromFolder, toIDMLFile );
}

Mats says:

Bill: InCopy has never been included in CS2 or CS3. There are some InCopy-related plug-ins included that is needed to use InCopy workflows and exporting stories for example, and these are still there in CS4. To use InCopy as a standalone program you always had to purchase it. In fact, earlier versions of InCopy wasn’t even possible to purchase as a standalone product and was only sold through 3rd party developers as a part of their workflow solutions.

Nadya Miloserdova says:

Cross-references cannot be transformed into XML in InDesign.
I have the similar book of about 1200 pages (a telephone directory), and it is full of cross references like “See section BOOKSTORES at page 963”.
For CS3 version I have purchased the plug-in InXRef (Virginia Systems).
It worked, but I couldn’t do the x-referencing automatically. Every single reference has to be entered and managed manually. Anyway, the plug-in did its job, although for this huge book it often was a narrow squeak (InD worked too slowly. TOO SLOWLY. And InD has often hung.)
Now in CS4 assuming I can use native Cross References Panel and preparing myself to relax and enjoy, I can’t even Copy-Paste the names of the References: I have to choose them from the long list of paragraphs of certain style.
My solution is: use the InDesign Tagged text. I want my X-Refs to be introduced into plain text BEFORE I import the text into InD document.
So far (hate to tell you), for this particular purpose you’d better stay with Frame Maker.

Nadya Miloserdova says:

I use XML tags to automatically import images with my text for a big catalog.
However, XML tags to be mapped to styles in large scale DON’T work. The text itself comes plain, but the pictures are already in.
I ‘mark’ paragraphs with some keywords, and after the import I find/change them into the real paragraph styles. Hundreds of thousands of consecutive replaces work as good as you can’t imagine: fast and very stable. The same words also apply to GREP changes.

Daniel says:

We are working to finalize a catalog design in InDesign and currently use InCopy to update content changes.

Will we able to merge the InCopy files into the finalized InDesign Document without getting into issues or how should it be done?

Appreciate your response. Thank you very much.

Dan

Dorothy Hoskins says:

Generally, I would not recommend anything except light XML editing within InDesign itself. You will not be happy with XML editing in InDesign (Cs2-CS5) because there are no good controls to prevent making mistakes and you need XML experience to understand how to fix them. The best use of XML in InDesign is for beautiful printing of XML content, not for editing XML. If you can have a workflow where you edit XML externally then import it into InDesign for layout and formatting, that is the best general use case for XML content.
Sometimes you have to simplify XML that you get from other sources before you import it into InDesign, I write XSL transforms to use when improting the XML into InDesign for this kind of situation. In some cases, you can create a “back transform” to recreate the original XML structure on export from InDesign. Theoretically, this would be a “round trip” scenario, but in practice it is harder than you might expect to add back structure when exporting the XML.