Ad index ideas

In Format issue No.86, there is an item on ways to create an advertisement index for a publication, which brought the folllowing comment from publishing guru Pete Masterson: I liked your article in Format Newsletter about ad indexing in InDesign. Thought you'd like to hear what I've been doing for 3 years with a 32-36 page monthly newsletter. Our workflow is all electronic -- the editor and proofreader receive the finished newsletter as a PDF which they 'tag' with comments and correx. However, the ads cause a full PDF to be over 10 MB -- a little large for convenient emailing. So, long ago, we set a separate layer for the display ads and another layer for a proxy box showing the size and positions of the display ads. On the proxy layer a box is positioned in the size and location of each ad with the name of the advertiser in the box. This is ideal for capturing with the index feature (although the names could be captured with the table of contents feature, if preferred). When generating the index, we ensure that the "use hidden layers" box is checked ... and then create our index as needed. When moving ads, I turn on both layers so I can select the ad and the proxy box to move to the desired location. When making the proof PDFs the proxy layer is on and the ad layer is hidden. When making the final PDF for the printer, the proxy layer is hidden and the ad layer is active. The proof PDFs are usually 1 mb or less... Works like a charm. It also allows me to print an early proof without display ads (and the print time penalty they incur), if needed. (Ads are a variety of PDF, EPS, and TIF images. Hard copy ads are scanned to TIF.) Incidentally, Pete has a lot of useful publishing hints on his web site at http://www.aeonix.com

Getting AutoCAD drawings into InDesign

Belinda in North Sydney just asked:

Just a quick question to see if you may know the best way to bring in a plan drawn in AutoCAD into InDesign. At the moment I have been writing the AutoCAD drawing as a pdf first, it there a better way??

The options are usually limited by what the drafting program can export so the options were commonly limited to EPS (perhaps as an Adobe Illustrator file) so PDF is probably a welcome improvement. One of the old problems was that output from drafting programs, and similarly from signwriting programs, might come to the page layout operator with no width specified for the lines, so the initial impression on trying to open them in a program such as Illustrator was that there was nothing there. Using "Select All" would then produce a mass of little black dots! Now drafting and signwriting programs seem to talk to us in publication production much more easily, and though I'd tend to think PDF is probably the best answer, let us hear from others. What is your view?

Underline or not

Within a very short time of mailing our latest Format newsletter (No.86, which you can get by sending a blank email to our autoresponder at getformat@worsleypress.com) I had these comments from Lyn:

This issue has been brought up a number of times in the Adobe User-to-user forum for Pagemaker Windows, and the solution offered is basically - don't use underlining. When I suggested this in a recent thread (http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@251.gxcecmRM0yT.1@.3bb5795d) I was roundly criticised for being a member of "the typography police [who] have outlawed underlining" and that I had given "pompous advice not to use underlining". I'm glad to know there are others who agree with the opinion I offered.

The comments in Format started over a newspaper publisher finding that at least some problems with mysterious black boxes appearing in PDFs of pages could be tracked to underlines which had disappeared from text on a completely different part of the tabloid page.

Welcome toThe Worsley Blog

As owner of the Worsley Press, I have been writing the Format newsletter for several years - a newsletter which is intended for those who produce formatted publications, i.e. newsletters, magazines, newspapers, or books. We also issue very occasional email newsletters for those who have bought our books such as How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter, and Publication Production using PageMaker. Many of the items which make their way into those newsletters will now be published in this blog, which will enable anyone to comment on them at the time they are written. This will also enable those who have asked questions to ask them more publicly and, hopefully, to receive answers more quickly. For back issues of the Format newsletter see www.worsleypress.com/format