Publishing systems/software

[cezarym99335960]

Hi, I don't know if this is the right place to ask the question. 

Can you describe what systems you use to produce content? 

I'm looking for some solution/CMS that works great with InDesign. 

It's about a system for authors to enter content.

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

Are you looking for software in which a writer/author/editor could produce InDesign content that could be used in an InDesign layout by designers.

If that's true., the Adobe InCopy is an excellent solution:

https://helpx.adobe.com/incopy/using/using-incopy-workflow.html

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If you can provide your authors with InCopy and some training/guidelines, it would be hard to find a better author/input solution specifically for InDesign production. Steve's link should tell you quite a bit about the process.

If you have less control over authors and providing them with software isn't an option, Word can be an excellent authoring tool as long as the authors either follow good practices (mainly, consistent and thorough application of styles) or you have a pre-processing/cleanup workflow between a raw Word manuscript and a managed import into InDesign. The hardest part of this option, by far, is getting a general spectrum of Word users to abandon sloppy habits and poor document construction, which Word doesn't just allow, but seems to encourage. 😛

[Nick Passmore]

InCopy used with InDesign allows writers to write to length and to see exactly how their words are being displayed on a page. It is as scriptable as InDesign and has the same plugin architecture meaning significant functionality can be added if you have the resources. InCopy is a cheap addition to Creative Cloud if you don't already pay for it.

With a degree of vigilance over InDesign lock files, something like Dropbox can be made to work very well for smaller workgroups and not-too-demanding deadlines. (Dropbox's peer-to-peer LAN sync worked very well last time I used it in this way.)

If you need to manage a larger group of users and/or have very tight deadlines then something like Vjoon's K4 or WoodWing Studio offer some real workflow tools as well as versioning and file locking. I've used both and both work well. They both offer hosted systems. Setting them up takes significant effort and the costs are not trivial though.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

IME, there is alway a high-end solution for these sorts of integration and collaboration needs, for all apps and all platforms, with a customized installation and integration and live help/server support... for a price. A high and generally ongoing price. And for the right shops, it's the necessary/useful option, no matter what the penny-pinchers up in Accounting say.

IME again, though, users who ask vaguely about solutions in a general user forum are looking for something that can be implemented in-house, with a cost between zero and something their supervisor won't choke at. 🙂

[Nick Passmore]

I don't disagree with either observation James! 

Perhaps eventually one of Adobe's projects to produce something as lightweight as the original Quark Publishing System will bear fruit.

I stopped holding my breath some years ago though . . . .

[Pickory]

QPS was brilliant!

I wonder if there is a market for such a system, for InDesign. Maybe the InDesign / InCopy duo are waiting for some smart integragtion.

P.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

A truly integrated collaboration/authoring system would be very useful and a great advance from what we have, but as is implicit here, such systems have existed... and faded away. Even many newspapers don't have the fully integrated reporter-to-press content management system that used to be standard.

I'll compress a long historical observation/rant into the simple observation that "real writing" seems to be an all but lost art, in the face of "content generation" on iPhones. The market for a comprehensive, long-form, author-to-portal publication system is shrinking in much the same way forums are almost obsolete in the face of the Twitterverse. There's steadily diminishing need for the full chain of author/editor/senior editor/publisher/publication step any more, when "reporters" file stories directly to the blogpaper from their smartphones. (Copy that, with appropriate terminology change, to any organization that writes and publishes stuff, even for internal libraries/archives.)

Leaving only some small core of organizations that have, use and intend to maintain something like a traditional publication model. You know, the one with editors in it, and no expectation that authors in Dubuque will be able to change the front page layout.

So I don't really expect Adobe or anyone else to develop and market anything like what's being talked about. But putting the Word import and content management feature on steroids would be a useful start, even relative to the above.

[Nick Passmore]

There is indeed a tidal wave of badly-edited, or sometimes clearly entirely un-edited, writing being published both through the internet and often enough in print too. I suspect it was never in short supply but the speed, ease and ubiquity of the web has made it unavoidable.

I think that the "core of organizations that have, use and intend to maintain something like a traditional publication model" is not so small as all that. But one might have to substitute "need" for "intend"!

Much better tools to pass text from Word to InCopy (and back again) are certainly needed though.

I'm much less able to come to terms with (or perhaps understand) Word's model of what a piece of text is than it seems James is. I'm also much more of an admirer of InCopy as a writing tool. Whether that's because or why I spent many, many hours in the early 2000s writing scripts to make use of it as a newspaper text editor I'm not sure. (The results would have been familiar to anyone who ever used an Atex system.)

It seems a great pity and a missed opportunity that Adobe has not made more of InCopy. Back when Bruce Chizen was running the company, my colleagues and I did try to convince him to give away a free InCopy Lite that might have created a higher profile for it but it's always been treated a bit like a red-haired stepchild.

Anyway, WoodWing in particular seems to have made a pretty substantial business out of an InDesign-InCopy workflow system and shows no signs of fading away. I suppose the ratio of development effort to profit just doesn't work for a QPS-scale version by a third party and Adobe themselves don't seem interested.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Why not go for CMS + WYSIWYG editor - on company's local website? 

There is no point in editing whole text at once - single paragraph at a time would be enough... 

[BobLevine]

You can create a two-way link to Word using Wordsflow. You don't even need InCopy.

[Nick Passmore]

WordsFlow is very clever and certainly attractive if using Word is what's preferred. 

It costs more than InCopy though and, while it would work for reporters and others just writing body copy, it wouldn't be so good for sub-editors / copy editors writing headlines and other furniture to fit.

Horses for courses as ever!

[BobLevine]

Indeed, but Word is what so many are comfortable using. Trying to get some of these folks to use InCopy is like pulling teeth. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That was the gist of my post — unless you are going to bring a fullscale replacement system, with subscription-based service and active management and staff re/training, Word is about the only common tool on which you can base a wide user spread. Any of the solutions that integrate Word with ID are options, but even things like Wordsflow need quite a bit of 'management' to keep a distributed workflow going.

As for even the gentle jump to InCopy being difficult, the first rung on that ladder — getting people to use Word, much less any other tool, as something other than one of those rubber typesetting toys that were once common — is 500 feet up. I have lost count of the clients/customers/trainees I have had throw a full-body flinch when I first use the word "styles."

[Pickory]

QPS

The important part is PS, Publishing System.

Roles in that system were well defined.

Journalist, Copy Editor

....

Sub Editor

.....

Editor

....

The publication styles were imposed by the Publishing System.

Access / privileges were controlled through a login.

The system took care of the various output formats.

Quite simple really.

Probably does not fit with publishing today 🙂

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well... let's not go there, sport. 🙂

Any professional publishing schema has a necessary workflow with more steps than "cub reporter in the field with a smartphone" and "front page." Or the equivalent in an organizational info, doc or publishing system. Junior tech writers don't get to send critical reports to board-level or public distribution. And so forth.

That, functionally, our wondrous array of incestuously interconnected tech does allow semiliterate field observers to post stories directly, without so much as a desperately-needed copy editor, never mind a salted content editor in the path... is neither here nor there when talking about professional publication systems, either the technology or the TO.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@cezarym99335960 

You need to describe in more detail what exactly are you looking for - just text or full layout redesign capabilities?

Then, size of your organisation - number of authors and other people who would need to have access.

Office use and / or remotely? Work on desktops or tablets / phones?

Then platform - PC or Mac or mix?