InDesign v. Pagemaker

[Ira Glunts]

Is InDesign a book publishing program?  Does it have all the capabilities that Pagemaker had? Is it advisable, producing a file for a reprint, to scan a book and apply the OCR software in Acrobat and then make the edits in InDesign?

[Ira Glunts]

Barb,

Is the OCR'ed copy messy because of the OCR program or because of errors in conversion to the docx format?  Thank again.

Ira

[Ira Glunts]

The OCR text from Acrobat looks reslly good.  So good I thought that the editing function may not have been spplied.  This did not happen initially, but somehow it got straightened around.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Ira,

Yes, InDesign is the forward evolution of PageMaker. 

You want to reprint, so...

Do you have the original PM files? They can be opened by those of us who have preserved an old install of PM6/7. This would get you into a new InDesign file for further editing.

Do you only have the PDF of the book? That can be opened in Acrobat Pro and the full text can be exported to a Word docx, which can be File > Place back into a new InDesign document.

Are there pixel-based pictures in the old book? If a PDF document exists, you can export them out all at once to an image assets folder and then File > Place the images into a new InDesign document.

If neither PM nor PDF exist anymore, then, yes, you can scan the pages and let Acrobat Pro optical-character-recognition the text and also export the text out to a Word docx again (for rebuilding into a new InDesign file). Yes, that will be time-consuming. One last thought: make sure those pages are scanned perfectly flat. Acrobat does a bad job of OCR-ing scanned pages that show curvature in 3 dimensions.

[Ira Glunts]

No pdf the publisher who transferred the copyright had just had the book transferred to them and said they lost it.  It wasn't machine  readable text so I am scanning and applying the OCR software in Acrobat.  After a number of false starts with other software and with Acrobat things are moving along at a good clip and I should have the 320 page book scanned in a few days.  Thanks for the tip on the curvature but I am OK there.  The book was originally published in 1991 but the book I am working from is a recent on demand printing.

[BobLevine]

What exactly is it that you need? Are you starting from scratch? If so, InDesign is the industry standard. Do you have a PM file? It can only be opened in InDesign version CS6 (released in 2012) or earlier and the results of that conversion will leave you with a file that needs work.

So, please back up and give us some details on this.

[Ira Glunts]

No pdf the publisher who transferred the copyright had just had the book transferred to them and said they lost it.  It wasn't machine  readable text so I am scanning and applying the OCR software in Acrobat.  After a number of false starts with other software and with Acrobat, things are moving along at a good clip and I should have the 320 page book scanned in a few days.   The book was originally published in 1991 but the book I am working from is a recent on demand printing.

[Stellar_Wonderland5049]

Yes, InDesign is a professional book publishing program and fully replaces PageMaker with far more advanced features for layout, typography, and digital publishing. It includes all of PageMaker's core capabilities and much more. For reprints, scanning the book, using OCR in Acrobat, and then editing in InDesign is a common and effective workflow—especially when original files are unavailable. Just be sure to proofread carefully, as OCR can introduce errors.

[BobLevine]

@Stellar_Wonderland5049 

If you want to contribute, please do so without using ChatGPT for your response especially since everything you just said is fully covered already.

[Ira Glunts]

Thanks so much.

[Randy Hagan]

I've done exactly that workflow on a number of occasions. But if that's the workflow you want to pursue I have a few suggestions for you:

• Break the files down to chapters, and assemble them using InDesign's built-in Book functions. They let you stitch a number of smaller files together to combine and process as an entire work while working out the bugs of doing the job into smaller, bite-sized pieces. You can learn more about InDesign's Book functions through this link. Be sure to read into the follow-on links in that help file. This essentially walks you through assembling your book step by step.
• Rather than just run the book through your scanner/OCR setup and suffer the consequences, take a little time fine-tuning your OCR process to get the best results on one chapter, then apply those lessons learned to speed the process for the rest of your book. Another writer helping others here has come up with an excellent primer for managing the scanning and OCR parts of your process and getting the best results from your efforts. Reading what he has to say through this link and using one chapter to adjust/refine your scans, then applying lessons learned for best results will pay dividends throughout the rest of your job.
• Like others here, I strongly recommend that you run your OCR output through a word processing program like MSWord to fix your copy, then place the corrected copy into InDesign. You can edit copy within InDesign, but it's unnecessarily painful and inefficient. Fixing all your OCR output in word processing, and then placing the corrected copy into your InDesign layouts will be much faster and efficient than doing it within InDesign, watching your page count go up or down like every third time you edit the text and having to adjust, then readjust your layouts repeatedly throughout the process.
• If you're building indexing (check out this link and follow-on links), save yourself as much aggravation as you can by waiting to build the index as one of the last things you do. For table of contents (this link and follow-on links) and other global changes/refinements like fine-tuning page breaks and eliminating widows/orphans from text, it's probably best to leave those off until the very last pass as well.

InDesign is a great book production program. Investing a little time in how to make it fully work for you will pay handsome dividends.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[Ira Glunts]

Randy I haven't look at the links you provided but this appears to be an invaluable resource for me.  Thanks so much.

Ira

[Randy Hagan]

Glad to help, and I hope you find it useful as you get to the InDesign layout of your book project.

Randy