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My work thus far has been on Version 2. I considered 1.0 and 1.5
useless, in fact.
Adobe seems to be moving to gradually incorporate Frame-like long doc
features into InDesign--how well integrated they will be is anybody's
guess, however.
For marketing materials, I think InDesign is a major win. I used
Pagemaker from version 2 to 7.x--and it was both limited and too
difficult to work around its shortcomings when a better tool was
available.
InDesign has several *very* good features. For example, it uses native
Photoshop and Illustrator files and can do a reasonable amount of
manipulation of them directly. When you use one of these files in a
document by reference, just as in Frame you can update the graphics at
any time without making additional problems for yourself.
For the typographic power of InDesign, the only program of which I am
aware that competes is Quark...and even though they claim they are
*finally* becoming more customer-focused, they burned that bridge with
me years ago.
Each version, InDesign is also picking up additional XML
capabilities--and it can be a very good layout tool that can begin web
designs, moving to GoLive for the finishing touches and cleanup.
I have not done long docs with it, to date...but, since the code base
is much more modern than Frame's I would be somewhat surprised if it
couldn't handle them. Whether its complex-doc features are up to snuff
yet, I do not know (thinks like autonumbering and the like).
I do agree completely that trying to move your existing docs into
InDesign from Pagemaker might be more time-consuming than you would
like, especially if there is a lot of manipulation of the various bits
to look good on paper but which will not transfer cleanly.
However, if you have done most of your Pagemaker docs with the story
editor, I believe that recreating them in InDesign won't be much of a
real problem as you get up to speed with it.
In short, it is a HUGE improvement over Pagemaker and has many
advanced features for the highly styled kinds of things you do in
sales collateral and the like.
David
On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 09:56:18 -0500, Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> wrote:
>
> Al Geist wondered: <<The company I work for is looking to move from
> PageMaker 7.0 to InDesign.
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