Weekend Widget: Adobe InDesign CS4
It is really hard to call this a "widget" since it is a huge piece of software. And it isn't a piece of software that is unknown to anyone. When I recommended a book about Adobe InDesign a few days ago, I got a question about why I was finally making the switch from Corel Ventura to Adobe InDesign. I'll try to explain the pros and cons that made up my decision.
First, a little bit on my background and that of Corel Corporation will help you understand the difficulty of my decision. In college, I worked as a typesetting laying out a magazine using Ventura Publisher. This was before I had even heard of Corel Corporation and before CorelDRAW even existed. When Corel Corporation was formed, they were a VAR making hardware (laser printers) and software (Corel HEADLINE, Corel NEWFONT, etc.) to add functionality to Ventura Publisher. So when Corel purchased Ventura, I was thrilled that my two favorite pieces of software were brought together.
Now comes one of the biggest cons to Ventura. Corel last released a new version in 2002. Since it was released, they have done absolutely nothing in the way of development. Not even a single service pack. When asked about the future at various events, the most common answer is none at all. Users have hoped that Corel's management would come to realize the powerful product they had and invest in new development. After years of getting no answer, I have lost hope that it will ever be developed. This is really sad since I still feel Ventura is more powerful than any other publishing product on the market.
There is no doubt in my mind that I could continue to use Corel Ventura to produce my future books and tutorials. It still works really well for me. The problem is that one day it could just stop working. Some users are already having difficulty installing on Vista and who knows what future operating systems will bring. Yes, there are workarounds that will get Ventura installed on Vista and even Windows 7 that work for 99% of users. Switching to InDesign is requiring a massive learning curve for me and it will take me longer to produce each book because InDesign does not automate many of the processes as does Ventura.
My finished goal with books is almost always a PDF file with everything composed it the RGB color space. If I use Ventura's built-in Publish to PDF function, I get great files. But there are limitations. I can't place EPS files in Ventura and output via Publish to PDF. InDesign can work with those EPS files just fine. Don't misunderstand, the EPS files in Ventura would print fine and can be sent to a PDF via Adobe Distiller. But that destroys my RGB workflow so it doesn't meet my needs. The upside to Ventura is that I could directly place a CorelDRAW file so EPS files weren't really necessary. Yet those files had to be saved in CorelDRAW 11 format since that was the current version when Corel Ventura was last updated.
Between my college typesetting job and becoming an author, I worked at a font foundry. So deep down I'm a font geek. I love the fact that InDesign can do all kinds of cool things with typography. The way the Paragraph Composer works magic is awesome. Automatic substitution of ligatures, swashes, old style numbers and other special characters really gives pages of some projects a nice finishing touch. Those things just aren't easily possible in Corel Ventura.
Ventura users have done a great job of building a support community over the years. There isn't a question that they can't answer. But the community is shrinking as more users switch to something else. InDesign has a very vibrant, and growing, community of users. I've not yet asked too many questions so it is hard to say if I can get answers. I do know that when making this decision to switch that I talked to valued experts who knew both packages and their answers were unanimous that it was time to switch.
There are still hurdles for me to overcome. Right now the biggest one is learning InDesign so that I can be as efficient as possible. Once that happens, I have massive amounts of text in Ventura that needs to be updated with new information and then converted to work in InDesign. It is a big project that I know has to be done at some point in the future and I've decided the future is now.
If you have favorite features of either InDesign or Ventura, I'd love to hear your thoughts. As I learn more about InDesign, I'm sure I'll have more to share with you.
First, a little bit on my background and that of Corel Corporation will help you understand the difficulty of my decision. In college, I worked as a typesetting laying out a magazine using Ventura Publisher. This was before I had even heard of Corel Corporation and before CorelDRAW even existed. When Corel Corporation was formed, they were a VAR making hardware (laser printers) and software (Corel HEADLINE, Corel NEWFONT, etc.) to add functionality to Ventura Publisher. So when Corel purchased Ventura, I was thrilled that my two favorite pieces of software were brought together.
Now comes one of the biggest cons to Ventura. Corel last released a new version in 2002. Since it was released, they have done absolutely nothing in the way of development. Not even a single service pack. When asked about the future at various events, the most common answer is none at all. Users have hoped that Corel's management would come to realize the powerful product they had and invest in new development. After years of getting no answer, I have lost hope that it will ever be developed. This is really sad since I still feel Ventura is more powerful than any other publishing product on the market.
There is no doubt in my mind that I could continue to use Corel Ventura to produce my future books and tutorials. It still works really well for me. The problem is that one day it could just stop working. Some users are already having difficulty installing on Vista and who knows what future operating systems will bring. Yes, there are workarounds that will get Ventura installed on Vista and even Windows 7 that work for 99% of users. Switching to InDesign is requiring a massive learning curve for me and it will take me longer to produce each book because InDesign does not automate many of the processes as does Ventura.
My finished goal with books is almost always a PDF file with everything composed it the RGB color space. If I use Ventura's built-in Publish to PDF function, I get great files. But there are limitations. I can't place EPS files in Ventura and output via Publish to PDF. InDesign can work with those EPS files just fine. Don't misunderstand, the EPS files in Ventura would print fine and can be sent to a PDF via Adobe Distiller. But that destroys my RGB workflow so it doesn't meet my needs. The upside to Ventura is that I could directly place a CorelDRAW file so EPS files weren't really necessary. Yet those files had to be saved in CorelDRAW 11 format since that was the current version when Corel Ventura was last updated.
Between my college typesetting job and becoming an author, I worked at a font foundry. So deep down I'm a font geek. I love the fact that InDesign can do all kinds of cool things with typography. The way the Paragraph Composer works magic is awesome. Automatic substitution of ligatures, swashes, old style numbers and other special characters really gives pages of some projects a nice finishing touch. Those things just aren't easily possible in Corel Ventura.
Ventura users have done a great job of building a support community over the years. There isn't a question that they can't answer. But the community is shrinking as more users switch to something else. InDesign has a very vibrant, and growing, community of users. I've not yet asked too many questions so it is hard to say if I can get answers. I do know that when making this decision to switch that I talked to valued experts who knew both packages and their answers were unanimous that it was time to switch.
There are still hurdles for me to overcome. Right now the biggest one is learning InDesign so that I can be as efficient as possible. Once that happens, I have massive amounts of text in Ventura that needs to be updated with new information and then converted to work in InDesign. It is a big project that I know has to be done at some point in the future and I've decided the future is now.
If you have favorite features of either InDesign or Ventura, I'd love to hear your thoughts. As I learn more about InDesign, I'm sure I'll have more to share with you.
Labels: weekend-widget
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