To be fair, here are 10 reasons why you might not want to switch:

Under the hood
So much for the Letterman-style summary. Let's open the hood and look at the engine. InDesign's has the advantage of being written from scratch in the object-oriented mode much favored by today's programmers. Obviously, the XPress core today is also much different from the 1.0 version of the program, but it doesn't have the extensibility of an application written from the ground up in the late 1990s.

To paraphrase the old TV commercial, I'm not a programmer, but I write about their products for the Cole Papers audience. So this is going to be greatly simplified, for both our sakes.

Let's start with kudos to Quark. Co-founder Tim Gill came up with the idea of XTensions back in version 2.x, which was the seed that begat plug-ins for first Photoshop, then Illustrator and now InDesign. XTensions have extended the functions of XPress so it can perform many diverse tasks, some oriented toward specific parts of the publishing industry. This is done through an Application Programming Interface (API) that makes specific program features extensible, i.e. able to do more than possible with the out-of-the-box program.

InDesign differs in being extensible by default. The core, required, plug-ins that come with InDesign are no different in form and structure than ones third-party developers can write, according to the InDesign users guide. The required internal plug-ins can communicate with the application's core code, themselves or external plug-ins without having to go through a specific API. So what does this mean for me, Joe Journalist?

To keep from bogging down in heavy programmer-ese, it means that if you don't like a specific hyphenation and justification engine, plug in a new one, or write a plug-in to make the H&J fit your paper's specifications.

With XPress, you can really tweak the basic H&J, but you can't completely replace it with something else. With InDesign, it's possible, although no one has done it yet (remember InDesign 1.0 is only now hitting the stores). The real power of the plug-in, though, is in the other direction -- using it in other applications around your paper (this is the direction DTI has taken: the InDesign H&J engine resides in its WireSpeed product to calculate lengths on incoming wire stories).

Performance
So, closing the hood, how does this new kid on the block perform? I can't say I subjected it to anything like the daily stress of a deadline-heavy newspaper environment, but I did put it through the paces with several small documents, and in a month of on-and-off use, the InDesign beta I had only crashed once.

To run InDesign, you do need a Macintosh PowerPC 603 or better running System 8.5 or better and at least 48 MB of RAM. Windows users need a like amount of RAM, Windows 98 or Windows NT workstation and a Pentium II or better processor. Be sure to have a color monitor, a CD-ROM drive and a PostScript Level 2 or higher printer. More RAM and a faster computer (Macintosh G3 -- or G4 -- or Pentium III) is recommended by Adobe.

Since I had all the minimums or greater, I proceeded with testing over the period of a month, give or take a few days. My tests were not infused with scientific rigor, but with the curiosity of a long-time XPress user looking for features on a par with or better than the current version of XPress.

I certainly found reason enough to believe that InDesign's H&J engine was much more versatile than that of the current XPress 4.04, aided by its ability to do multiline composition. Single-line composition basically composes one line at a time, much like the old Linotype operator back in the prehistoric hot type days. With its multiline composition engine, InDesign can look ahead a user-specified number of lines and make decisions based on that range, rather than a single line. Result: In longer documents, the type looks more pleasing, with fewer widows and orphans. InDesign lets the user have the option of either single or multiline composition. A fine feature, well implemented.

How about getting the elements on a page? InDesign uses the "place" command from PageMaker, but what you are placing depends on what sort of box you get. Pick some text to place, and you get a text box, and vice versa for graphics. Or drag-and-drop Illustrator and Photoshop files right on the page. Or copy and paste. Any way you do it, it's not that much different from XPress, except you don't have a content tool to use.

One annoyance is that with imported graphics resized by dragging, you have no idea how much you resized them until you click on them with the direct (content) selection tool. The transform palette then shows the resized percentages. With the regular selection tool, you see 100 percent in the horizontal and vertical values. This is because the frame for the graphic is 100 percent. But this minor confusion is no different from the dual selection tools in XPress.

The annoyance just manifests itself in a different way, and you can easily switch from one to another by hitting "v" (selection tool) or "a" (the direct selection tool) on the keyboard. In fact any of the tools in the toolbox can be selected with a single keystroke, a Windows-like feature that long-time mousers find handy.

Text handling, because of the improved H&J environment, makes for better-looking type columns, although I never flowed a megalength story. One welcome text-handling feature is the ease of linking and unlinking text blocks in InDesign. No more the separate tools for linking and unlinking a la XPress. Just select the text box and there are two little squares, the "in port" and the "out port." Click on an out port and then an in port to link two blocks manually, or choose automatic (option-click the loaded text icon) or semi-automatic (shift-click). Like PageMaker, you don't have to have a box selected to place text or graphics ... just click and go.

So graphics and text are on the page. Have a PostScript printer ready, because that's what InDesign expects. My handy software PostScript for the Apple Stylewriter 1500, StyleScript, sufficed well, if a bit slowly. One minor drawback in some operations might be the lack of trapping support within InDesign. It relies on the in-RIP trapping present in PostScript Level 3 printers, as well as some Level 2 models. It's not a bad idea, and takes some of the load off the program. As long as you are outputting to a fairly new device, there should be no problem. A third-party could also write a plug-in to have trapping done within the program, the same way it's handled in XPress.

Now a brief word about conversion, an important feature for those who want to try the program. Given that InDesign is at 1.0, the ability to open 3.3x to 4.04 XPress documents is there. In my limited opening of 3.3x documents, I found it to be quite accurate, except for the placing of some of the headlines in a long, insurance-related document. It seemed to have no problem with the simple 4.x files I opened. PDF files were more problematic. Many small problems were evident, like improper text placement in relation to the page boundaries of the document, but could be due to missing fonts substituted during the conversion process.

Converting an InDesign document to HTML was quick, the text didn't retain its position or styling. The graphics were positioned correctly, however. And yes, InDesign opens PDF files, but treats each line of text as a separate text box. Better to stick with Acrobat Exchange or Acrobat Reader, unless there's an emergency.

In summary, don't sell this product short. Despite feigned disinterest, Quark must be looking over its collective shoulder. In its first iteration, InDesign is robust and familiar enough for page producers of all stripes to want to take a good, long look at this product.

-- George Powell

Adobe
Systems Inc.,
(408) 536-4281;
Quark Inc.,
(303) 894-8888.

From THE COLE PAPERS, September 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.