Quote:
Originally Posted by sjkramer
brewt: I know that you're anti-export from InDesign, but this does sound like an awful lot of steps to go through. Maybe you should give it one more try—just for fun. On the other hand, I know that what sounds complicated (to wit: my own seemingly crazy process) can become second nature.
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The biggest trouble I have with InDesign is that when I want to make some minor changes, I often end up starting ALL the way over, from scratch.
For instance, one of the biggest issues I have with InDesign is with hyperlinking. Multi-document hyperlinking via Word is fairly transparent, and the hyperlinks survive the process, end to end.
Let's take for the example, a multi-file, heavily hyperlinked book of books (mostly what I do). The Complete Works of, you know, So and So.
If I want to change style sets, which I do often, it's a matter of creating the quickstyle set that does what I want (say, changing Times to Minion), adapting the css, and run the gauntlet.
Doing the same thing in Indesign, if I start with Word, my hyperlinks all die on the transition back into ID and all need to be rebuilt, one at a time, by hand.
If I restyle in Indesign, I have to hand redo every file (on a multi-file), and, because I'm no good at Indesign, every paragraph, too.
THAT, to me, is the hard way. And God Save Me if I come up with a new component, say, a different way to handle poetry in the book.
So maybe the problem is, as always, me, in that I consider my catalog a continual work in process and a learning experience, because as I continue to develop ideas, I tend to want to retro-fit them to previous efforts. And, I want multiple output formats. Epub & Kindle are both necessary outputs for me.
Indesign is Ok for one file = 1 output book; if you can afford it and are willing to live with the limitations Adobe thought of 3 years ago, by all means, do it. However, The Complete Works of Jane Austen, with footnotes, is more effort via Indesign than I am willing to expend. Especially since I can't make up my mind between Minion, Garamond, Caslon, or Kepler, or just leaving it at defaults. My process will make those 5 example outputs less of a chore.
And no, I'm not done with that; lots of fiddling around still to do.
-bjc