This Week in InDesign Articles, Number 28

David Blatner

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Look, in every great relationship there are happy times and, well, misery. That’s what it was like yesterday between me any my page-layout app. InDesign was just making me angry in so many ways. Yes, I freely admit it: Sometimes InDesign is just the most annoying, frustrating #@#%$%. I love it, it’s the best thing on the market, but dang it, sometimes I have to take several deep breaths, remind myself that it’s good down deep, that the bug (or feature limitation, or whatever I’m banging my head against) is just a small part of the bigger picture.

But you know, we get through it. Somehow. Through patience, or drugs, or humor. We get through it, and then we move on, hoping to forgive and, if not forget, at least learn enough to not bumble into that bad situation again.

I survived yesterday, and here I am, once again, InSpired and InVigorated by InDesign… ready to learn more, read more, see more. So here’s my “weekly” list of links you should know about.

(Some of you are going to insist that I tell you why I was angry at InDesign. That’s really a personal question, you know. But I will tell you that it involved the Bookmarks and Hyperlinks panels, a Table of Contents, and — here’s the kicker — the Book panel. There’s some funky stuff under the hood when you mix all that stuff together.)

• Bob Bringhurst (who, until recently, wrote all the documentation for InDesign at Adobe, and who now, Ole Kvern and I welcome as our new co-author on Real World InDesign CS5) wrote a terrific explanation of Eight Great New Features in Adobe InDesign CS5.
• Want to learn how to script InDesign? Check out this introductory tutorial PDF from Adobe!
• Kovid Goyal, the developer of the very popular Calibre epub utility is speaking at the Print and ePublishing Conference in Seattle next month! Here’s a little article about how Calibre works.
• Do you know Flash and Actionscript? Curious about the InDesign CS5 to Flash CS5 workflow? Watch this video by Paul Trani: Using InDesign CS5 Content in Flash CS5.
• Pamela Pfiffner, who I’ve known for almost 20 years, wrote a wonderful write up of the CS5 upgrade for Macworld, called Adobe Creative Suite 5: Should you upgrade?
• Here’s a fun article about how choosing a different font may save you money when buying ink and toner for your printer!
• Jim Felici wrote a great piece on horizontal scaling of text. I agree him, and I love that he doesn’t tell you “don’t do it!” (which is what most fanatics who don’t live in the real world say).
• More CS5 feature videos! Check out our friend Cari Jansen’s video on the Gap tool. Awesome.
• Hey, who is going to the 2010 Developers Summit in Seattle in a couple of weeks? I’ll be there for part of it. If you’re going, check out MNR’s request for CS5 feedback here.
• Finally: Need to choose a font? If you haven’t seen this fun font flowchart, you must study it.

Enjoy!

(And don’t forget to breathe!)