Discussion: InDesign problems and innovations...

What problems are faced in the domain of typography that you think must be solved? For example: #Fontphoria: Adobe MAX 2018 (Sneak Peek) | Adobe Creative Cloud - YouTube

1) [footnote WITH XML support]

2) [footnote with Separate stories]

3) [Keep options application crash]

The File>New Document box is terrible.

It's far to focused on the use of templates, and pushing Adobe stock templates.

When I hit a new document and select print - it should automatically bring me to a preset list of A sizes paper, from A7 all the way to A0.

With an option for B sizes - although B presses are limited where I am, so maybe a list.

Plus maybe it should be A,RA, SRA sizes - for print professionals - this is who this programme is designed for right?

That's why I don't understand the push towards templates with a new dialog box - it doesn't make sense and is a push towards amatures - preselecting templates and they haven't thought about how it's finished, before they begin!

But I digress - the New Document dialog box - the BLEED setting is hidden! WHY? When I select a PRINT document???

You should be able to preference this - most of the time I have this set to 3mm - so why not all my new documents can I not select Print and auto add in 3mm bleed?

Not everything requires 3mm bleed but in 99% of what I'm doing it is the right call.

There's so much needs to be done with InDesign - I think BobLevine​ is right!

Build it from the Ground Up! Rebuild it - make it better!

Text Variables that don't squish up when not enough room, i.e., that they line break when needed.

There are a lot of features, and I can't recall them all, added to InDesign many years ago and they have never been made better.

Text Variables are brilliant, but a bit more work and they would be amazing.

In relation to other things - like SWF Previews and the like - these could be removed, and flash export, nobody is using it anymore.

There are also lots of functions added to InDesign over the years that are no longer viable - and should be removed.

amaarora  wrote Hi community members, As users of InDesign and other lay-outing tools, I want to ask you some questions: What is new in the world of document layouting? Something innovative? For example: Gridifying based on page dimensions Nothing new it's been the same for the last 30 years! What problems are faced in the domain of typography that you think must be solved? For example: #Fontphoria: Adobe MAX 2018 (Sneak Peek) | Adobe Creative Cloud - YouTube Endnotes, still not fully supported. Footnotes, no updates in functionallity in a while Numbering lists in complex numbering documents is far too complex in InDesign Long document features have not been updated in about 20 years (InDesign Book) Any smart solutions or workflows you want in the product that can ease work? For example: replacing all missing glyphs in a document in one click Master pages to have a Master Colours! For example, if you were to setup a Master Page and assign Pantone 123 to the content, then in a Paragraph Style, you would assign master colour (123) - if the content moves to new master page with a different master colour, all elements on that page automatically change to all colours matching the master page (meaning changing a colour in the Master Page would change all colours) This would translate down all features relating to master pages, Fonts, sizes, colours, gradients etc. Anything out of the box workflows? For example: Automatically applying fonts to a document based on context... Auto apply a style to things that are bullets/lists/body/headings etc. These could be generated by InDesign on import of text from Word - based on the content. URLs are another bug bear. Anything which you feel sounds cool and amazing and is useful? Preview InDesign Book - which would give you a full preview page by page of the entire book file from InDesign without exporting to PDF. Something which other tools do but not InDesign? For example: Messages in iOS 10: How to Use Emoji Replacement and Prediction - MacRumors Check out all of Affinity's software - it's doing things that were asked of Adobe 20 years ago! For example, the ability to edit a vector file Insitu - and edit raster images insitu - full controls - not watered down Affinity Publisher can just open a PDF and make edits right there and then! Incredible, given that Adobe is the author of the PDF and converting a PDF to InDesign requires a third party plugin at the moment.

My replies are in bold.

I, and I’m sure many other users, would like Adobe to implement the use of the features now available in the PDF2.00 specification, so that we can include video, audio and controllable reflowable text in an Interactive PDF.

Mathematics. It would be good to be able to type LaTeX and have it render automatically.

I've been trying to revive the idea of an actions panel in InDesign, my team desperately needs this feature.

Import of various mark-up languages, esp. Markdown. Have a look at what Leanpub is doing. And, fix the import of HTML. Mark-up first, with import to ID, etc. for output to PDF and print; and transformation to HTML + CSS is the future of publishing. 

Apologies, as I know I'm late to the conversation.

I would suggest allowing multiple styles to apply to the same paragraph or characters, as to make them more like css classes, and let us avoid the style-overload of having bold, italic, and a separate bold-italic.

Exporting to html and ePub could use some love. In addition to the extra classes mentioned above, InDesign seems to add a lot of... cruft to the output. No matter how carefully I map and rename the export tags or clear all of the overrides, I find myself having to write a good deal of regexes post-export to get rid of all the _idParaOverrides, the dozens of nearly-identical uniquely-named classes, and the rather verbose, duplicate, and/or otherwise-unnecessary styles and tags added in the export process.

Maybe InCopy's already dead, but as we do a good deal of writing and editing, something like an updated InCopy could be rather useful—especially when deadlines are tight and the design and writing/rewriting/editing process is intermingled with the design process. Right now they use Microsoft Word (blech!) but it seems to work well enough with track changes and the ilk, but not ideal. Then again, it'd probably have to be free, as I'm not sure I could convince my boss of the necessity of a number of additional creative suite seats.

Thanks

Hello together,

maybe it's not realistic at this point, but what if InDesign works more like xhtml/xml + css?

indd is then an xml or xhtml file (package), maybe web-based (Flat-File-CMS, like Kirby for content) but with UI for design (Texture from substance with UI like XD) – following the concept of separating content and design.

A summary, if you want, of these three approaches. Texters can change the text content, designers can change the design in parallel.

If an error has occurred in the file, you can look in and fix it and edit xml file directly with extensions.

+ relative sizes (as already mentioned): em, rem, %

+ e.g. calculate the text frame width with calc(100% - 3rem)

+ Dependencies of styles with selectors for paragraph and character styles, e.g. h1 + h2 if h2 follows h1 directly, h1 > p, :nth-child(n), [attribute=value], ...

Just for brainstorming ...

Roland