when can we expect multicore usage in InDesign?

[tonimedia GmbH]

I don't understand, why InDesign still isn't taking advantage of multicore-systems. Lots of professionals spent thousends of dollars into high-performance machines, with many, many cores - but when working with InDesign (and also many other programms) the majority of cores are in idle.

It is pretty anoying to see, that it is impossible to speed up the workflows on faster and way more expensive machines. I do databased puplishing. My documents are usually many hundred megabytes in size. Every small change on a masterpage takes minutes to be applied... no difference between a 24-core Threadripper or a 6-core Ryzen 5 or a M1 MBA... that sucks !!!

Todays workhorses tend to get more cores instead of higher clock-speeds. So Adobe software enginieers: PLEASE help us professionals !!!!

[BobLevine · Accepted solution]

Feature requests go here: Adobe InDesign (uservoice.com)

[tonimedia GmbH]

there is already a thread related to this. It is from 2017...
https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/32235082-su...

[BobLevine]

That said, you have something else going on if "it takes minutes" to apply any kind of a change regardless of how large the document is. Give your lack of other information, it's impossible to guess.

[tonimedia GmbH]

The documents are extremely complex. There are 50 to 100 textframes on each page. Every textframe is connected with the next. And this for about 100 or more pages. So placing formated Text with style and pictures in the first textframe will result in a complex catalog with many pages. That's the way to use InData / InCatalog with InDesign. Doing this for years now. 1 change on the masterpage took my MBA M1 1 minute 5 seconds to apply. My 24-core Threadripper was "significant faster": same document, same operation: 1 minute 4 seconds... Only because of, that InDesign still isn't using multicore...

[Randy Hagan]

As a guy who's done a lot of catalog work, that's at the crux of the issue. I've felt your pain.

InDesign has a maddening tendency to respond this way. It seems to reach a threshold where it doesn't exactly lock, but each attempt to edit/revise/format text entries takes ... an ... interminable ... delay. Then works. Until you click into the next text frame and get ... another ... interminable ... delay.

The most maddening thing about it, by my experience, is that it doesn't happen as I'm creating the document. Or often, during the first set of revisions. But at some unpredictable point, it does. And continues to do so each time you work in that given document.

I've never discovered the threshold. But I sure as Hell know when I've crossed it. One day the file works fine. But when I open it the next time, whether it's the next day or six months later, the misery is there and it's difficult to overcome.

While I've never been able to solve the problem, I have found two tricks that seem to help mitigate the issue:

1) Close the file, then open it again. Immediately use the File>Save As menu command and save over the top. While I understand that InDesign is better at incremental saves than it's ancient predecessor PageMaker, this still works as a fix, and the file size reduction from saving over the top of an active problematic previous document file indicates that it is doing something ...

2) Split the file. This is yet another reason to compile a number of smaller files into a large document compiled through InDesign's book functions. With layout-intensive files, I've had to break down 10-15 page documents into halves to get a moderate improvement in the lag between clicking into a text frame and actually being able to edit it.

Please understand that neither of these tricks will fix the problem. Once an InDesign document file gets the yips, it doesn't go away. But it does seem to reduce the lag by a measurable amount. Like you, I've asked here in the forums and directly to Adobe developers when I had the opportunity. And I've never got a straight answer for why this happens, and what it'll take to fix it. While I imagine that multicore processing could help reduce the lag, it doesn't address the root of the problem.

Wish I had better news for you, but in the current environment I think this is all we're going to get.

Randy