Inspiring

Question

InDesign CS5

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
April 12, 2010
16 replies
31280 views

David and Anne-Marie has made an excellent article about InDesign CS5 new features...

http://indesignsecrets.com/roundup-of-indesign-cs5-features-honest-this-time.php

I´m very exited specially about those new interactive features...

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guardaroba

Participating Frequently

Some of the new features sound as though they'll be quite useful (different page sizes and some of the UI improvements especially), but I have to say I'm quite annoyed that endnotes still haven't been introduced to InDesign. The official help file still has to send readers to a blog for a work around (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/CS5/Using/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6f37a.html), which seems, to be honest, pathetic.

The fact that time and resources have been put into making InDesign able to produce and output Flash files and place video files into PDFs while ignoring endnotes, notes in tables, footnotes spanning columns, improved tables, etc. makes the whole update feel like a bit of a slap in the face to print designers.

Anyway, anger aside, does anyone know why it's taking so long for what seems like such a small change? Part of the reason that I'm so annoyed is that it seems as though, now that footnotes are supported, it would be quite simple to enable dynamic endnotes (aren't they just footnotes pulled to the end of the document, rather than the bottom of each page?). Or am I missing something? I'm no software developer, so it's certainly possible!

BobLevine

Community Expert

It's certainly not a slap in the face to ALL print designers. I can honestly tell you that I've been using ID since version 1.0 and have never created a document that needed footnotes or endnotes.

I'm not minimizing the need for this, but there most certainly has to be a very big technical challenge to get this right or it would have been done by now. Just because you think it's simple doesn't make it so.

I'm still waiting for PDF form fields. Seems simple enough, but they're just not there.

Bob

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guardaroba

Participating Frequently

You're right, of course, that not all print designers need all of these features. For that matter, I've used InDesign since version 1 as well and have never felt the need to have a footnote span two columns (I just plain don't like footnotes and use endnotes wherever possible, which is why it's always the first missing feature that comes to my mind!). I was mostly referring to the new emphasis on Flash authoring and interactive PDFs, even while there are still a number of long-document-production features missing.

Anyway, I'll add PDF form fields to my list of requests as well, in solidarity.

B

Big Jimm

Participating Frequently

I have IDcs5 on order from Adobe to be shipped on April 29. (Also updates for Illustrator, PS and Acrobat).

So far I'm a little disappointed to hear that the main new feature of ID “seems to be” that it will make smaller pages.

I would much rather hear that it has great new special effects, word manipulation, etc. (I watched the intro Monday

and most of the videos but it appeared to me that most of the changes were fairly minor - like going from cs3 to cs4.

But, anyway, I'm dying to get all 4 new programs! It’s just that I love ID and keep hoping that it will go more “graphic.”

I HATE Illustrator because it never seems like much ”fun” to work with. But, I keep buying it and not using it much.

QUESTION: Does anyone know when the first book will be out for ID?

Thanks.

Jongware

Community Expert

Apart from the exciting (and some less exiting ) new features, can we have a round-up of CS4 (and possibly earlier) problems that have been fixed?

From memory:

Footnotes (well, that's an obvious "no", it seems)
Proper RTL support (was that also a "no"? Can't remember if it was mentioned in the vid presentation)
Bad Word and RTF import -- fixed?
Full OpenType support for mark and mkmk features?
Footnotes crash in combo with "no last word hyphenation" (and I might be mistaken on that one, perhaps that was already fixed in an update)
(anyone else ..?)

[Add.]

Symbol font characters not getting converted to Opentype encoding

Harbs.

Legend

Footnotes (well, that's an obvious "no", it seems)

Correct.

Proper RTL support (was that also a "no"? Can't remember if it was mentioned in the vid presentation)

Same as CS4

Bad Word and RTF import -- fixed?

I think it was fixed in an update already.

Full OpenType support for mark and mkmk features?

I believe the same as CS4.

Footnotes crash in combo with "no last word hyphenation" (and I might be mistaken on that one, perhaps that was already fixed in an update)

Never seen that one...

(anyone else ..?)

[Add.]

Symbol font characters not getting converted to Opentype encoding

Not sure what you are talking about

Jongware

Community Expert

Full OpenType support for mark and mkmk features?
I believe the same as CS4.

Good answer ... I can't actually remember what the exact problem was. I'll have to fresh up on that.

Word import problems:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2620366#2620366 and http://forums.adobe.com/message/2615935#2615935

Decidedly not fixed, as I saw it today again on CS4 6.0.4; both "let's break the paragraph here and insert the rest of it at the end" and "now where should that footnote go? Let's insert a Replacement Character (U+FFFD) and have the user figger it out."

Symbol re-mapping problem:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2360336#2360336

Happened only last week, also on a fully updated '4.

Footnote in combination with "Hyphenate Across Columns" off:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/1294733#1294733 (hey! it mentions CS3! oh okay, I admit -- I don't know if that ever got fixed for '4, as I never used it anyway)

BobLevine

Community Expert

Here's a look at my top ten (with a bunch of honorable mentions) http://www.theindesignguy.com/cs5-thoughts.shtml

I love this upgrade. Of course, I don't use footnotes, but I think there's something for everyone here. My biggest disappointment, for the record is no form fields for PDFs.

Here's a link to The InDesigner (Michael Murphy) http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-54-a-first-look-at-indesign-cs5-2

Bob

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Good round-up Bob, I've been posting your link on multiple forums, it's a good write-up, well done.

I can live with spanning footnotes as I do it by hand with the "footnotes to endnotes" script and then a footnote object style, I just have to manually find the superscript and then work with placing the footnotes.

It doesn't take too long to do, but it would be better if InDesign just handled it.

I'd have some use for things. The different page size is interesting, wondering if I could have a 3 page spread, back cover/spine/front cover, with different sizes, so it would 210 + 5 + 210 in a spread?

It certainly looks interesting but I'm very disappointed with once again footnotes are igorned.

BobLevine

Community Expert

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This one just says YES!

Bob

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Apparently footnotes still can't span columns.Really, I'm so disappointed that this hasn't been addressed. It's been 6 years and I'm still asking for that one feature.

Jongware

Community Expert

Eugene -- it seems to me 'span columns' is a Paragraph style option. Do you have reasons to believe it won't work in footnotes?

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Just reading the comments posted on the blog. That's all I have to go on. If footnotes can span columns I'll rejoice.

Jongware

Community Expert

(Not read yet:) Does it address the five Most Frequent Complaints, as seen on this very forum?

5. Is CS5 free open source? "Adobe made so much money off of me the past (...) years, do I have to pay again for this new version?"

4. Does it run on my Mac SE II? "They have lots of programmers, there must be at least a few that don't need the latest, fastest CPU and ten gigabyte of memory to run a big & complicated piece of software on!"

3. Does it come with a Writers Mode? "I want to write a novel so I bought this expensive program, thinking it would be the best. If I start it, it has a gray screen and I can't type anything. Word allows you to type right away!"

2. Can it open PDFs? "Adobe designed the PDF format, so InDesign should logically be able to edit these files. Can't they understand their own PDF specifications?"

1. Does it come with a Mind Reading interface? "If I place something on a master page it suddenly appears on every page, not just on the ones I want! Help!"

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