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Provides: Page Layout
Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4.11, G5 or Intel processor, 512 MB of RAM, 1 GB recommended, 1.6 GB of hard disk space
Premium Retail Price: $699 for standalone version, $199 for upgrade, and is part of the Adobe Creative Suite 4.

In my review of Adobe InDesign CS3, I complimented all the various aspects about that new version, but lamented how Adobe still had a lot of work to do to fill in the shoes of the missing FrameMaker for Mac. They did it! Well, mostly. There still are some corners to sand and polish, but, for the most part, one can finally, really, truly do long format documents again on the Mac. Now, InDesign CS4 has Conditional Text and Cross References, not to mention Smart Guides, GREP nested styles within paragraph styles, and a whole lot more. If you use InDesign, this is one of the best upgrades in many years. Needless to say, there are many many new features in InDesign CS4. In this review, I will be focusing on some of the biggies—there aretoo many to cover them all.

One of the first things you will notice when you open the new InDesign is the OWL2 look seen throughout all of the CS4 programs (except Acrobat, of course). The tabbed document structure is great for programs like InDesign. If you are working on multiple chapters of a book, multiple articles, or needing to look at different iterations of the same document, working with tabs is excellent.

Smart Guides

From the moment you start to place items on a new document, you will encounter Smart Guides. From images to text boxes (or any kind of frame), Smart Guides will start to appear, letting you know you have placed something that is aligned with something else. This might be another object on the page, or the page itself. Below, I've placed one text frame on the left in a Master page and am in the process of increasing the vertical height of the text frame on the right side to the one on the left. As soon as I've stretched the height on the right text box to match the left side, a Smart Guide pops up and not only establishes when I've set the height, but also displays the objects width and height.

Now when Placing animage, if you drag out the frame for placement, the aspect ratio of the image in the Image Gun is maintained, and the Smart Guides will display what percentage of the original image you are creating. As you place the images, any alignment is snapped to any previous image. Lastly, as you drag the image, it will snap to the placement between the previous image(s). In addition, if you rotate one image, any rotation of subsequent images will also snap to match the previous image's rotation. Getting your ducks in a row has never been easier.

Smart Text Reflow

If you are like me, you compose in InDesign (ID). The thought of composing in Word or something else and then pasting into ID has always seemed wrong. However, one of the problems when composing in ID shows up when you get to the last pre-made page, and you are not finished writing. In the past, you've had to stop, add some pages, perhaps some text boxes, and then try to go back to where you were as if nothing has happened. Tedious at best, and, truth be told, it's not conducive to the creative process.

Finally, ID has automatic page generation. So, if you've reached the last page, you can keep on typing, and new pages will appear just as they do in any other program. Alas, there are some catches, and you do have to prepare for this feature. Part of the problem is that there are two ways to do this: whether you use Master Pages and, regardless if you do, you still have to lay the groundwork for Text ReFlow to properly work.

If you use Master pages and you use Master Text Frames, you are good to go, sort of. Smart Text Reflow is on by default and can be seen in the Preferences under the Text option. Also set by default is the "Limit to Master Text Frames." [Note that there is also an option to "Delete Empty Pages," this is turned off by default.]

The interesting catch here is that you do need to check "Use Master Text Frames" when setting up a new document because that option is not automatically set when starting a new document.

But you are not done yet. Now, you also need to set in your Master Text Frames on your Master Pages, and you have to set the overflow link between those two text frames on the Master Pages as shown below. Note in the image below that I'm showing a three column page setup, but I'm only using the bottom part of the spline's inner two columns. This is a good example of why one would use Master Text Frames in the first place: if you have uniquely shaped, or placed text frames, using them from the Master Pages will lock the size and location of those text frames for you. [An arrangement like this is very good is you want to have a built in sidebar on your pages].

If you do not want to bother with Master Pages and Master Text Frames, no problem (sort of). You do have to go into your preferences and turn off "Limit to Master Text Frames," as that will be on. However, you do not have to turn off "Master Text Frames" when creating the page, as that will be off. The unfortunate catch when not using Master Text Frames is that InDesign will default to the full page region for subsequent pages or mirror multiple columns, not span across multiple columns as I've done above.

Another limitation when not using Master Text Frames is that you have to have two pages of linked text created before Text Flow will initiate. This makes sense insofar as you have to formally let ID know what your intentions are with these pages and any frames therein. In addition, if you have multiple text boxes, only one threaded set will be used as the initiator for Text Flow. Again, this makes sense, but admittedly it might frustrate some.

Text flow is probably best for those who are not using a fancy page setup or unique text frame layout, or someone who is and is using Master Text Frames. For publications like newsletters with multiple text columns and many split stories, it is not going to be viable. Also, be warned that unless you have every duck in a row, and there are a number of ducks to line up with Text Flow, it will not work as advertised. Text Flow can be very frustrating until you learn about all the ducks and how to line them up. It works, but it is not user friendly.

Conditional Text

Conditional Text is here. First of all, what is it and why would one use it? The reasons and uses are many:

• You can have multiple language documents and turn on the appropriate language for each printing.
• Often, teachers and professors make multiple versions of an exam so that people sitting next to each other can't cheat. Now, rather than writing two (or more) separate documents, one exam can be created with every other question being conditional. In addition, the teachers can also write the answers directly into the exam and turn them off prior to either version being printed (if the answers use red text, it's easy to know that they are on or off prior to printing).
• If you are creating multiple versions of the same contract, you can conditionally turn on or off sections as needed.

Admittedly, everything I've mentioned or could mention can be done on multiple documents. However, by having different documents all in one, that means that any text or images that are common across all variations of the document does not have to be duplicated. This means that you do not need to update each and every document if any change is made across the common material for each document. For example, let's say you are setting up a contract and it's late in 2008. By the time 2009 comes around you fix the date in one contract and not the other. Now you have two variations of the same contract, but one with the wrong date. This is a simple example of why it can be much more efficient to have any variations within the same document, and now that can be done with Conditional Text.

To create Conditional Text is simply a matter of bringing up the Conditional Text Panel (buried in the Type & Tables dropdown in the Windows menu). Create a condition within the Panel, then you simply select any text you want applied to that condition and check the appropriate condition box. The wavy colored lines are visual indicators that that text has a condition applied to it. You can choose to have them display, print, or neither, the default is for them to show up and not print.

At that point, it's simply a matter of checking or unchecking the "eye" associated with that condition to let it be seen or not. This is no different from turning on or off layers in Photoshop, Illustrator, or any other Adobe application that has "eye" options.

The biggest limitation I could find is that you cannot select non-contiguous text in InDesign. That means that you cannot select (as in this example) just the Group B text, and then check the Group B Conditional Text box; you have to select text, check the Group B Conditional Text box; select text, check the Group B Conditional Text box; etc., and repeat again as necessary because you do have to do each non-contiguous block of text one at a time. Hopefully, non-contiguous text selection is something that will be added in CS5.

Cross-referencing

The other really really big new feature is cross-referencing. What is this and why is it important? Simply put, cross-referencing lets you reference an item in a story or book in a different part of the story or book. The classic example is if you have a Figure in Chapter 8 of a book (let's call it "Figure 8-3") and earlier in the book—say, in Chapter 2—you want to reference that Figure. In the past, you had two choices:

1. Identify the reference to Figure 8-3 (and/or Page 568) with the intention that just before publication you need to verify that neither the Figures number nor its page location has changed since you last looked (along with every other reference in the book).
2. Simply state "See a Figure in Chapter 8."

Cross-referencing lets InDesign properly maintain the latest Figure number and its proper page location. That means if, due to editing and other changes, that image later becomes Figure 8-5 and ends up on page 608, no problem—InDesign is properly tracking these links.

Setting up auto-numbering in your paragraph styles is not necessary for cross-referencing, but is worth it in the long run, and you will need to use InDesign's Paragraph Styling's auto-number formatting (improved in CS3).

Once you have the text created where the cross-reference is to be placed and you have the text or paragraph that you want to cross-reference (you can't link to nothing, and you miust have somwhere to place the reference), you bring up the Cross-reference window from the Type menu (Hyperlinks & Cross-references). From there, you look for the Paragraph style on the left side of the window (see below), and on the right side of the window you locate the specific paragraph to which you want to link. Once you've done that, you select how you want the cross-referenced text to be placed in the Cross-reference. As can be seen below, there is an excellent range of options. If you want more, you can click on the Pencil icon (to the right of the cursor below). That lets you create more options as well as customize how they apepar. In addition, you can use Character Styles to customize referenced text (e.g., all referenced text will be italic). [Also note from the image below that you can place Text Anchors on a page if you need to link to a page or a block of text but no specific item or paragraph.]

To maintain these cross-references, in the Hyperlinks Panel you will find a new region for Cross-references which displays the cross-references in your text, and can take you to the source or destination of the references.

As someone who's written books, long articles, and manuals, I cannot express how important a feature this is.

New Character Style...

It's always a pleasure when little things are placed in a program simply to make you more efficient by overcoming your absentmindedness. Case in point: you go to create a nested style, and during the process you have the Paragraph Style window open and you need to enter your Character Style you want—but you forgot to create the Character style you want before going to the Paragraph style. In the past, you'd have to close the Paragraph window, open Character Style Panel, create a new Character Style, name and customize the style and then go back to the Paragraph style to set the Nested style you want.

Well, absent-minded folks all over the world can now rejoice! Every dialog box, window, Panel, anything that lets you set a Character style now lets you create one as well from the window's Character selector menu. As seen below in the Nested Style window, in the drop-down menu where you can select the Character style is now a new option on the bottom "New Character Style..." If I had a nickel for every time I've...

GREP Styles

As long as I'm in the Paragraph Style window, let me point out a spectacular new option, GREP Styles. GREP is a profoundly geeky UNIX tool that lets you look for patterns within text as opposed to specific text, using characters, letters, and punctuation in seemingly random (but certainly not random) order. The Find and Replace window had GREP added in CS3, letting users locate general formats like telephone numbers (e.g., xxx-xxx-xxxx). Using GREP in the Find and Replace window lets you stop and start all over your story to catch to change and/or alter text. What GREP styles let you do within Paragraph styles is to let you create, in effect, uber-nested styles.

Above, I've set this to set the GREPed text to use the Character style I've created for Bold. The default GREP setting is to look for one or more digits. If you are not fluent in GREP (and I am certainly not), there are cheater fill-ins that can be accessed when clicking on an "@" character icon at the end of the GREP field.

One example might be things like chemical formulas. If you are using an OpenType font, the appearance of OpenType super and subscripting is vastly superior than using InDesign's built in display of Super and Subscripting. However, the catch is that accessing this format is very, very PIA. If you are typing a large number of chemical formulas, it isn't worth the effort to obtain the better quality. However, using GREP Styles, I was able to take a Character Style that used the OpenType subscripting and every time I typed a number after a character, InDesign would automatically slip into the preferred subscript as I typed. I did not have to do anything to subscript the numbers, as I typed the numbers subscripted. This is oh so cool.

As cool as it is, there are some strongly needed enhancements. What this window desperately needs is an "interpreter" for what you've created in GREP. It could be located below the "New GREP Style" button, where it could state what you've created, like "all text between paragraphs unless it contains numbers" or the like. This window does provide a Preview option, but that doesn't mean much if you are making a mistake and are not sure if what you've created is what you want. Think of walking into a restaurant in a foreign country, holding your phrase book, and asking "please to eat a chicken cooked with tires." In other words, unless you know how to read GREP, there's no real way to know what you've created and why it does or does not work. Another desired feature is to let us save the GREP creations so they can be shared with others. Rather than having to retype, copy/paste, whatever, it would be great if these could be saved with identifiable names and loaded on other computers. This addition would make the full power of GREP more accessible to more people.

Better Preflight

Nothing is worse than completing a project, printing it out, and then discovering there was a problem. To avoid this situation, there has been a Preflight Panel in ID for some time. The problem is that unless it was out in front, people occasionally left out that "one last check" before printing, requiring "one more" fix before "one more re-print." Now, in the bottom left side of the document's window is the Preflight warning light. It's just a small red dot (sitting to the right of the page navigation) that lights up if there are errors.

Just to the right of the red dot is a dropdown menu that lets you select either "Define Profiles..." where you can create your own set of conditions or issues you want to be warned about as shown below.

If you select the Preflight Panel, it opens to show you the error(s) in the document and the specific page where the error occurs in the document. If the problem was a simple overset text (more text than can fit the text block), clicking on the page will bring you to that page where any overset text can can be fixed right then and there. If, however, the problem was a missing link or font, you can't fix the problem from the Preflight Panel and you need to move over to the Links Panel. Because of that, I keep both the Preflight and the Links Panel together in any workspace I create.

The Links Panel has been significantly improved in CS4 with the ability to establish a wide variety of items that can be displayed either in the columns view on the upper half and/or in the Link Info region on the bottom half.

Bonus feature with Illustrator CS4

While there are a number of other new features within ID that warrant mention, to keep this review from going on and on, I will pass on them, but for one. This feature bleeds into the new Adobe Illustrator (our review for which will be posted very soon). One of the new features in Illustrator CS4 is that now you can have multiple pages within each Illustrator document. There's a lot more to it than just that, but the reason why I bring this up in an InDesign review is the manner in which ID lets you Place images from an Illustrator document. Below I'm showing three separate pages from one AI document.

If you open this Illustrator CS4 document from InDesign's Place command, and check the box for "Show Import Options," you get the window shown below. On the left side you can scroll through the various pages in the Illustrator document until you get to the image/page you want, and then Place that image.

The significance of this is huge: let's say you are working on a book and are doing your illustrations in Illustrator. Now, instead of having multiple documents, one for each image, you could have one document for each chapter in the book and different pages for each image.

The obvious limitation here is that since you cannot name each page, you cannot scroll for individual images via their name. Nonetheless, this is a significant improvement over past interactions between ID and AI.

InDesign is still not perfect...

Despite all these improvements, there still are some major missing pieces:

• Still no endnotes. There are ways to work around this gap, but the lack of Endnotes continues to make InDesign a larger challenge for academic work than it should.
• Footnotes still cannot wrap around objects. Even worse, if you have a multi-column page, Footnotes still cannot straddle multiple columns and are limited to exist within the same column as the footnote source.
• And speaking of text wrap, it only works "after" an anchored object, not on the same line of the anchored object nor above.
• Aligning objects in InDesign still doesn't have the "trick" that Illustrator has where the item last clicked will be the focused object to which other objects will align. Thus, if you have objects to align, they will align to the average location of the objects meaning that EVERYTHING will move.

Obviously some of these are not as significant as others, but that depends upon what you are doing at the time and how much the lack of that feature effects you. However, in the grand scheme of things, the complaints I've had (or am having) with InDesign are decreasing in number. While InDesign is not perfect, it's getting closer and closer.

In short, if you are writing a letter or a simple report, you do not need InDesign; Word or Pages should be more than ample. Likewise, if you are doing simple calculations you do not need anything more than a simple calculator. However, if you are doing complex calculations, you need a scientific calculator and if you are creating any level of complex documents, you need InDesign. This release delivers.

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___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.