Now that Quark Inc. has pushed its much-anticipated XPress 6 upgrade out the door, Adobe Systems
plans to show its hand to the page layout market this fall with
InDesign 3.0.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company has been beta testing the upgrade
for Mac OS X and Windows in recent months. Sources said users will
experience changes when working with text, tables, color, InDesign's
work area, import/export, and other areas. Adobe also reportedly plans to ship a PageMaker Edition of InDesign aimed at reining in users of its legacy design software, as well as InCopy 3, a new version of its editorial workflow product.

eWEEK
first reported on InDesign 3, code-named Dragontail, in April.

Work Area and Document Setup

InDesign 3 includes a number of enhancements aimed at streaming the
user interface of InDesign's work area, as well as new features
designed to give users more flexibility when setting up documents.

One such feature is the Control palette, a contextual info window that displays different options depending on what page element is selected. This control palette also includes a "toggle palettes" control that
invokes palettes related to the selected item.

Another addition is the Info palette, which provides users with a
variety of information for whatever page element is selected. Sources
said InDesign 3 includes a Measure tool which determines the angle and
distance between points on a page, and that the resulting measurement
is displayed in the Info palette.

Users will also be able to save custom palette layouts as multiple
"workspaces," as well as snap InDesign palettes to the edge of the
screen.

InDesign 3's Objects menu includes a new Pathfinder feature, which
combines objects' paths to add or subtract object shapes, or create an
intersecting path. The Objects menu also contains a Select sub-menu
that can be used to select objects located above or below an object
that is already selected.

Other work area improvements include enhancements to InDesign's
shortcuts, adjustable pasteboard size, and the ability to delete page
items by dragging them to the Mac Trash or Windows desktop. Users will
also be able to adjust InDesign's default preview background color,
collapse palettes into side tabs, and use percentages in edit boxes.
InDesign 3 also supports mouse scroll wheels in Mac OS X.

For document setup, InDesign 3 includes the ability to define presets
of custom page sizes. Users will also be able to create Document
Styles, or sets of customized settings such as margins, columns, page
size, bleed settings, and slug presets. Users will be able to select a
Document Style or a custom page size when creating a new document.

InDesign 3 boasts other setup enhancements. When using drag-and-drop
between two documents to duplicate a page, InDesign 3 also copies the
appropriate master page for easy page reuse. The new version also
includes new options for setting a document's bleed and slug areas, as
well as functionality for overriding master page contents.

Next Page: Text and Type

Text and Type

InDesign 3's new Story Editor will enable users to edit a story's text
in its own window, separate from the layout. The Story Editor displays
text continuously in a wrapped stream, instead of displaying the page
layout and accurate line endings. This focuses users' attention on
content, meeting a need previously delegated to InCopy.

The upgrade also supports Nested Styles, where InDesign can be set to
automatically apply a character style at the start of a paragraph.
Users will be able to define a certain number of text elements --
characters, sentences or words -- to which InDesign is to apply the style.

In addition, InDesign 3 is set by default to paste unformatted text
into InDesign when it is copied from another application, though users
will be able to override this setting. The upgrade also includes the
ability to draw upon tables and text from Word and Excel documents, and
import them as unformatted text.

Other text features include an option for InDesign to suppress text
wrap objects for hidden layers, as well as the ability to specify
whether a text wrap affects all of a stack's text frames, or only
frames located beneath it. When resizing text frames, users will be
able to dynamically preview the reflow of text. Users will also be able
to scale text in text frames while resizing them, and scale text in a
frame while scaling a group that contains it.

InDesign 3 also includes a new command that can be used to balance
ragged aligned text across multiple lines. Additionally, the upgrade
boasts improved handling of font name conflicts, and users will be able
to create custom sets of frequently-used glyphs from multiple fonts.

The Japanese version of InDesign, 3.0J, includes a number of
improvements relating to CJK grids, XML, composite font support, and
the Mojikumi user interface.

Next Page: Tables

Tables

Sources said users will experience a variety of improvements when
working with tables in InDesign 3. The upgrade will sport the ability
to convert text selections into tables by defining a separator type for
rows and columns: comma, paragraph or tab. InDesign will also have an
accompanying command that performs the opposite function, converting
tables into text.

Another new InDesign feature is the ability to align text in table
cells by decimals or other characters. Users will also be able to
convert table rows at the top or bottom into header or footer rows.
Additionally, InDesign 3 will enable users to apply a number of stroke
types to table cells edges, as well as preview cells' frame edges with
no swatch, a Paper swatch, or strokes of zero-point width. InDesign 3
also includes an option to determine the drawing order for strokes in
tables, enabling users to set whether column or row strokes should
appear front-most.

Other table enhancements include a new command that unmerges merged
table cells, and the ability to convert "heading rows" from Word and
RTS files into InDesign header rows upon import.

Color and Printing

InDesign 3 will enable users to mix percentages of spot color and default process color swatches to create custom "mixed ink" swatches. In addition, users will be able to create Mixed Ink Groups, containing several swatches with different tint values for each. The upgrade also includes the ability to apply a gap color to any type of stroke, except for solid strokes, and users will be able to adjust the gap color's tint values.

The new version also incorporates a new Separations Preview palette
that shows a document's overprint preview, ink limits, multiple color
plates and single plates, highlighting page items above and below a
user-defined tint threshold. The palette also contains a "desaturate
black" option that previews areas where black is overprinting, so that
users can view page items under that area.

Other printing features include the ability to leave color space
information for multiple color spaces unchanged when exporting to EPS
or printing composite output. InDesign 3 also features improved support
for Photoshop DCS files as well as absolute page numbering for print
range in the Print dialog box.

Import and Export

InDesign 3 includes a new "Package for GoLive" feature, which provides
a way to export InDesign documents with a web-ready XML structure. When
the package contents are viewed in the forthcoming GoLive 7 release,
users will see a PDF view of the page, where page items can be selected
and dragged over to an HTML document.

The upgrade also boasts the ability to map tags to character/paragraph
styles, and vice versa, so that InDesign can style XML when it's
imported, and automatically tag documents that have already been
styled. InDesign 3 also can specify and import a DTD that can be
included when the document is exported to XML.

InDesign's File Info dialog box contains new fields, expanding the
software's Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) support. When images are
imported into InDesign 3, their XMP information is also saved in the
InDesign document, and can be reviewed.

InDesign 3 has a number of new PDF features, such as a Bookmarks
palette, which will enable users to create bookmarks for documents that
are exported to PDF. Users will also be able to export PDF files that
meet the specifications for PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3, as well as files with
PDF 1.5, or Acrobat 6, compatibility. In addition, the new version can
export to PDF with 128-bit encryption, can export layers to an Acrobat
6-compatible document, and preserves OPI 1.3 comments in images.

Users will be able to export pages and page items as JPEG images,
setting the image quality and format method. InDesign 3 can also import
spot inks from Photoshop images.

By double-clicking on a "linked" page item along with a key command,
users will be able to invoke the element's associated editor, such as
Photoshop or Illustrator. Additionally, the new version has the ability
to edit Illustrator gradients from within InDesign when pasted with the
Adobe Illustrator Clipboard format.

Next Page: Other Enhancements

Other Enhancements

InDesign 3 boasts a number of new features pertaining to eBook
creation, such as support for in-frame video, sound and animation
that's included in the eBook after it's exported to PDF. The upgrade
also incorporates a Push Button tool that enables easy creation of push
buttons for PDF forms, as well as support for rollovers that can be
assigned to those buttons.

Users will be able to create and apply custom stroke styles, as well as
use the Stroke palette to preview stroke effects. InDesign 3 includes
stroke alignment for frame edges, and 3.0J will ship with several new
Japanese strokes.

Extending InDesign's transparency features, the new Flattener Preview
palette will enable users to preview how page items work with the
flattener engine, which flattens a number of page elements when
printing and exporting to certain file formats. InDesign 3 also
includes the ability to have multiple users open read-only Library
files, simultaneously.

The upgrade also sports a number of changes to scripting support.
InDesign 3's scripting architecture includes support for Javascript,
featuring the same scripting access as AppleScript or Visual Basic.
InDesign 3 also includes enhancements to the label property, conversion
from QuarkXPress, and keyboard shortcuts.

PageMaker Edition

Adobe is also planning a special PageMaker Edition, code-named
Babushka, that will ship alongside InDesign 3. Sources described
Babushka as a combination of software and marketing campaign, made up
of a set of plug-ins, user interface modifications, and training aides
focused toward users of Adobe's legacy page layout application. The
campaign will also be directed toward service providers and printers,
pushing them to make the switch to InDesign.

InCopy 3.0

Adobe is also prepping InCopy 3.0, a new version of its editorial
workflow software, which works hand-in-hand with InDesign to streamline
the publishing process. The new version includes "bridge workflow"
between InCopy and InDesign, enabling users to share stories and
preventing simultaneous editing. InCopy 3 also provides for "checking
in" and "checking out" of stories.

Several updates are aimed at boosting editorial productivity. The
Copyfit Info palette now displays a story's depth, to help with space
planning. Users will be able to split notes or deleted text into two
separate runs, giving editors more flexibility in retaining optional
content. Additionally, deleted text is available for InCopy's spell
check.

Other new features in InCopy 3 pertain to text macros, where inserted
macro text can either keep its associated text attributes or adopt the
formatting of the destination paragraph. In addition, users will be
able to activate Track Changes across multiple stories, and InCopy 3 has
several additions to keyboard shortcuts.