Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. InDesign can also publish content suitable for tablet devices in conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Graphic designers and production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out periodical publications, posters, and print media. It also supports export to EPUB and SWF formats to create digital publications, and content suitable for consumption on tablet computers. The Adobe InCopy word processor uses the same formatting engine as InDesign.
History
InDesign is the successor to Adobe's own PageMaker, which was acquired with the purchase of Aldus in late 1994. By 1998 PageMaker had lost almost the entire professional market to the comparatively feature-rich QuarkXPress 3.3, released in 1992, and 4.0, released in 1996. Quark stated its intention to buy out Adobe[1] and to divest the combined company of PageMaker to avoid anti-trust issues.
Adobe rebuffed the offer and instead continued to work on a new page layout application. The project had been started by Aldus and was code-named "Shuksan". It was later code-named "K2" and was released as InDesign 1.0 in 1999.
In 2002, InDesign was the first Mac OS X-native desktop publishing (DTP) software. In version 3 (InDesign CS) it received a boost in distribution by being bundled with Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat in the Creative Suite.
InDesign exports documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and has multilingual support. It was the first DTP application to support Unicode for text processing, advanced typography with OpenType fonts, advanced transparency features, layout styles, optical margin alignment, and cross-platform scripting using JavaScript.
Later versions of the software introduced new file formats. To support the new features, especially typographic, introduced with InDesign CS, both the program and its document format are not backward-compatible. Instead, InDesign CS2 has the backward-compatible .inx format, an XML-based document representation. InDesign CS versions updated with the 3.1 April 2005 update can read InDesign CS2-saved files exported to the .inx format. The InDesign Interchange format does not support versions earlier than InDesign CS.
Adobe developed InDesign CS3 (and Creative Suite 3) as universal binary software compatible with native Intel and PowerPC Mac machines in 2007, two years after the announced 2005 schedule, inconveniencing Intel-Mac early-adopters. Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen had announced that "Adobe will be first with a complete line of universal applications."[2] The CS2 Mac version had code tightly integrated to the PPC architecture, and not natively compatible with the Intel processors in Apple's new machines, so porting the products to another platform was more difficult than had been anticipated. Adobe developed the CS3 application integrating Macromedia products (2005), rather than recompiling CS2 and simultaneously developing CS3.
InDesign and Leopard
InDesign CS3 initially had a serious compatibility issue with Leopard (Mac OS X v10.5), as Adobe stated: "InDesign CS3 may unexpectedly quit when using the Place, Save, Save As or Export commands using either the OS or Adobe dialog boxes. Unfortunately, there are no workarounds for these known issues."[3] Apple fixed this with their OS X 10.5.4 update.[4]
Server version
In October 2005, Adobe released "InDesign Server CS2", a modified version of InDesign (without user interface) for Windows and Macintosh server platforms. It does not provide any editing client; rather it is for use by developers in creating client-server solutions with the InDesign plug-in technology.[5] In March 2007 Adobe officially announced Adobe InDesign CS3 Server as part of the Adobe InDesign family.
Versions
- InDesign 1.0 (codenamed Shuksan, then K2): August 31, 1999.
- InDesign 1.0J (codenamed Hotaka): Japanese support
- InDesign 1.5 (codenamed Sherpa): April 2001.
- InDesign 2.0 (codenamed Annapurna): January 2002 (just days before QuarkXPress 5). First version to support Mac OS X and native transparencies & drop shadows.
- InDesign CS (codenamed Dragontail) and InDesign CS Page Maker Edition (3.0): October 2003.
- InDesign CS2 (4.0) (codenamed Firedrake): shipped in May 2005.
- InDesign Server (codenamed Bishop): released October 2005
- InDesign CS3 (5.0) (codenamed Cobalt): April 2007. First Universal binary versions to natively support Intel-based Macs, Regular expression, Table styles, new interface
- InDesign CS3 Server (codenamed Xenon): released May 2007
- InDesign CS4 (6.0) (codenamed Basil): Introduced September 23, shipped in October 2008.
- InDesign CS4 Server (codenamed Thyme)
- InDesign CS5 (7.0) (codenamed Rocket) released April 2010
- InDesign CS5.5 (7.5) (codenamed Odin) released April 2011
- InDesign CS6 (8.0) (codenamed Athos) released 23. April 2012
Internationalization and localization
Language availability
Adobe InDesign CS5 is available in the following languages: Arabic (Middle Eastern version), Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (International & United States), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew (Middle Eastern version), Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian.[6]
Historical Language availability
Adobe InDesign CS4 offered a Romanian version, though this is no longer available for CS5. French (Canadian) and Spanish (Latin American) versions use the same files as are used in French and Spanish versions, respectively.
Text settings
InDesign Middle Eastern versions come with special settings for laying out Arabic or Hebrew text, such as:
- Ability to use Arabic, Persian or Hindi digits
- Use kashidas for letter spacing and full justification
- Ligature option
- Set vowels/diacritics positioning
- Justify text in three possible ways to get the desired results (Standard, Arabic, Naskh)
- Option to "Insert Special Character": three Hebrew characters (Geresh, Gershayim, Maqaf) and an Arabic one (Kashida)
- Apply standard, Arabic or Hebrew styles for page, paragraph and footnote numbering
Bi-directional text flow
In InDesign Middle Eastern versions, the notion of right-to-left behaviour applies to several objects: Story, Paragraph, Character and Table. It allows for mixing Right-to-Left and Left-to-Right Words, Paragraphs and Stories in a document.
- InDesign CS4 Middle Eastern versions make it possible to change the direction of neutral characters (for ex.:,/?, etc.) according to the user's keyboard language with a single click.
- InDesign CS6 Middle Eastern Editions provide additional support for right-to-left languages. See http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using /arabic-hebrew.html
Table of contents
InDesign Middle Eastern versions come with a set of Table of contents titles, one for each supported language. The TOC is also sorted according to the chosen language. InDesign CS4 Middle Eastern versions allows to choose the language of the index title and cross-references by right clicking in the title field in the Generate Index window.
Indices
InDesign allows for the creation of a simple keyword index or a somewhat more detailed index of the information in the text using embedded indexing codes which are instantiated as an index using a command in the Indexing palette. Unlike more sophisticated programs, InDesign is incapable of inserting character style information as part of an index entry (e.g., when indexing book, journal or movie titles). Indices are limited to four levels (top level and three sub-levels). InDesign Middle Eastern versions allow the user to set various Sort Options for the indices according to the language dealt with.
There are no provisions for importing index entries as part of an XML file.
Importing and exporting
InDesign Middle Eastern versions bring the capability of opening directly and converting QuarkXPress files, even using Arabic XT, Arabic Phonyx or Hebrew XPressWay fonts, retaining the layout and content. InDesign Middle Eastern versions come with more than 50 import/export filters enabling to place many kinds of images and Roman texts: Microsoft Word 97-98-2000 Import filter and Text Import filter. QuarkXPress data can be converted to InDesign with Markzware's Q2ID. InDesign can also be used as a front end on top of database applications, such as CCI Europe's NewsGate software.
Reverse layout
InDesign Middle Eastern versions include a reverse layout feature to reverse the layout of a document, when converting a Left to Right document (Roman) to a Right to Left one (Arabic or Hebrew) or vice versa. It is also helpful when creating a multilingual document.
The Middle Eastern versions are also available for Adobe Acrobat,[7] Adobe Illustrator,[8] Adobe Photoshop,[9] Adobe InCopy,[10] and Adobe Dreamweaver,[11] and also for Adobe Creative Suite[12] (Design Standard, Design Premium, Web Premium).
Complex script rendering
InDesign supports Unicode character encoding and there is a special Middle East version supporting complex text layout for Arabic and Hebrew types of complex script. The underlying Arabic and Hebrew support is present in the Western-language editions of InDesign CS4, CS5, CS5.5 and CS6, but the user interface is not exposed, so it is difficult to access.
User groups
InDesign has spawned 86 user groups in 36 countries with a total membership of over 51,000.[13]
References
External links
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