Comments on: The Appeal of Adobe InDesign

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:35:33 +0000

Brad, thanks for the comment. I know that if Adobe ever did axe Framemaker, there would be a lot of unhappy writers, as this is a pretty common application in our field.

By: Brad Moldofsky

Brad Moldofsky — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:54:52 +0000

I agree that Adobe might ultimately axe FrameMaker, or at least discontinue improvements or support for financial reasons, as it is clearly designed for our niche market. While I am a long-time QuarkXPress user, I was very impressed by the CS4 version of InDesign. I would have rather used FrameMaker, but InDesign is so versatile and lets one really stretch one’s design muscle (all in the service of improved readability, of course). For shorter documents, definitely the way to go.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:40:38 +0000

Said Flare but was thinking Flash. Oopsy!

By: Milan Davidovic

Milan Davidovic — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:39:29 +0000

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of limiting oneself to achieving a clearly defined *goal* for the topic rather than some optimal page count.

Can you give us an example of a topic you’d write about that has the danger of getting too large?

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:09:29 +0000

Mike, thanks for the comment. I’d be interested to hear how you’re handling figure references and captions in long docs with InDesign. I find them to be particularly buggy when I’m moving content around.

If your Joomla site is public, let me know the URL so I can see how you’re implementing it. I’m curious to see it used as a CMS for tech docs.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:08:00 +0000

Milan, you’re right that I could plan to be concise and limit myself to the equivalent of 16 printed pages, but it’s harder to see that prolixity when it’s in a topic-based format in a HAT. You don’t realize how many pages the printed output really is going to be unless you constantly generate it.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:03:41 +0000

I’ve been using InDesign for 2 years now and still feel somewhat of a novice. I recommend using it only for smaller documents under 20 pages.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:03:12 +0000

Joe, thanks for the comment. You realize that you paired up Flare with Indesign, which is an Adobe-Madcap combination? It’s kind of like mixing the Utes with the Cougars there, as those companies have strong feelings of antagonism toward each other.

Some people on my team have the eLearning Suite. I’d love to see Adobe add InDesign to the mix.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:52:49 +0000

I think from Adobe’s perspective, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have both Framemaker and InDesign. I would love to see more long doc features in InDesign. Some of the things in InDesign, such as figure references and tables of contents, are buggy and non-intuitive. They’ll have to fix that if they want to appeal to tech writers creating long documents.

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:23:49 +0000

InDesign is really a web-enabled version of PageMaker. Or what PageMaker would have become if Adobe really invested in it.

My guess is that in the long run Adobe will dis-continue FrameMaker and dovetail the ‘long doc’ features into a TW version of the InDesign.

Just speculation but my reading of how Adobe values FM leads me to this conclusion.

FWIW InDesign is excellent for layouts, if that’s what your after. Could be suitable for case studies, white papers etc.

Regards,

Ivan

now in Beijing!