In the frames of the Creative Suite second edition, Adobe presented a new version of its software pack for publishers and designers - InDesign. The InDesign is the up-to-date complex solution for professionals, dealing with designing and publishing of newspapers, books and other printing materials.
An interesting fact is that Adobe implemented a new format of files, created by the InDesign pack. To decrease the volume of the files and to improve the interoperability and exchange of data, Adobe combined its own .indd format with the best features and technologies of the XML format. Actually, the popularity of the XML format is constantly growing, more and more developers use it in different applications; even Microsoft has announced that the XML format of the data organization and presentation will be in use in the next Office pack. The XML technology allowed to organize the file structure so that the separate parts of the file can be presented as the fragments, called Snippets. These Snippets can be edited and managed as the separate objects.
Along with the Snippets, Adobe also presented the Footnotes and Anchored Objects as the new tools in the next version of the InDesign. The Footnotes are actually comments, which can be attachments to the text frames; besides, the footnotes can be imported from the Microsoft Word documents. The Anchored Objects are the wide class of objects, and the Footnotes are only a part of them. The user can attach the marker (anchor) to a certain object in any place of the frame; such objects will move in correspondence to the moves of the appropriate marker.
The working area of the InDesign CS2 has not experienced significant changes - the user will find the familiar sets of instruments and tools at their familiar places. At the same time, quite a great number of small improvements appeared. For instance, the Fill Frame Proportion option permits fitting the image into the frame dimensions. The objects, when selected, are now with a dotted line instead of a solid line, making it easier to find and work with them. The reveal in the Explorer command shows the location of the selected object in the physical folder.
To offer the users easy and quick ways to format the documents, the Adobe developers equipped the InDesign with a sufficient set of Object Styles, containing all the necessary attributes for the formatting of the objects. Moreover, the InDesign CS2 gives a possibility to import the styles from other documents and to apply the same style from the previous text fragment to the next one. Traditionally, the InDesign pack contains a full set of instruments to perform the check of the orthography and punctuation in texts with a multiple languages support.
One more feature of the InDesign should be noted as a conclusion of this article. The InDesign contains the special module, called InCopy, which makes available to edit the text content before it is processed by the InDesign tools. Earlier, the MS Word application performed these tasks. Thus, Adobe provides editors and publishers with an efficient and modern software pack to solve all the professional tasks in the publishing business.