On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:47:07 -0700 (PDT) Rich Shepard <[email protected]> dijo:
> > I mean what you see on the screen is exactly what will come out of the > > printer, and exactly what the PDF export will look like. > > And you need to see this as you write and edit because ...? You *can* write in InDesign, and I have done so, but that is not what it's primarily designed for. It is a layout app. It is designed as the tool in which you assemble text created in (typically) a word processor and graphics created in something that can create bitmaps or vector graphics, and then tweak them both as you position them on the page. Everything is in frames, which can be linked. Having things in frames makes it easy to position them on the page. Normally I would do the major chunks of writing in OOo and then place into InDesign. But I much prefer to do the laying out as I write. You ask why I would do this as though it is contrary to the natural order of things. For you, it probably is. For me, it's the logical way to write a book. You see, to me the appearance is as important as what I say. If I'm getting close to the end of a chapter and I'm near the end of an even numbered page, I need to decide if I want to condense what I say so it will fit, or go ahead and add two more pages to the book (because I'm traditional enough that I like chapters to start on an odd numbered page). InDesign is not a text editor where it automatically creates new pages for you. In fact, when you create a new document you must specify how many pages you want it to be. You can add and delete pages if you guess wrong, but it is page based. If you're typing and get to the end of the page you can continue typing, but the text will be overset. To me InDesign is the logical way to create a book. Scribus is too, because the paradigm is similar, except that Scribus lacks so many features that it is not usable for much beyond newsletters and book covers. The reason that InDesign seems logical is because it is exactly the same process that you would use if you were laying things up with hot wax. And I could have done the résumé in about five minutes, ten at the outside. The text would be optically kerned (ignoring the kerning tables in the font) the margins would be optically aligned and the line endings would be adjusted according to the paragraph (they actually used Knuth's code). I have no doubt that you would dislike InDesign. But you and I are wired very differently. I am totally visual, so to me the appearance is part of the content. I can't conceive of "just writing." When I do "just write" I must at least have in mind what it is going to end up looking like on the page. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
