'Adobe' tries to take on 'QuarkXpress' with 'InDesign'

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): First there was Xerox Ventura Publisher. Then there was Aldus PageMaker. Both were godsends to page layout professionals and desktop publishers back in late 1980s, when a 386 PC was still rare.

But Aldus also had a great graphics design program called Freehand. It competed fiercely with Adobe's Illustrator, particularly on the Mac platform. Eventually Adobe bought Aldus, and we ended up having Adobe PageMaker.

In the hands of the Adobe people, the page layout program became more Adobe-ish. As new upgrades were introduced,PageMaker integrated better and better with Adobe Photoshop, the industry- leader image editing and manipulating software. In the meantime, Freehand fell into the hands of Macromedia and slid into oblivion.

Was Adobe happy?

Obviously not. In the last few years there has been a strong contender to PageMaker in the desktop publishing arena. Too strong, actually. It is called QuarkXpress (Version 5.0 is in the pipeline). It was produced by a company called Quark, and it has collected troops of fanatics who consider PageMaker as a child's toy. Certainly QuarkXpress can do more than PageMaker, although it is not an easy program to master. I tried it a couple of times, and I gave up after a while. For those, including myself, who are accustomed to the metaphors used in PageMaker, making the move to QuarkXpress would require a large investment in effort and time. Besides, my days as a desktop publisher were getting fewer and fewer.

What has Adobe done? It turned out that Adobe devoted a couple of years to developing what it hoped would kill QuarkXpress. Called InDesign, the program has garnered quite a lot of applause from reviewers and users. You can download a tryout version of InDesign 1.0 from Adobe's Web site. However, I must remind you up front that the file size is more than 30 MB. There is a demo version for the Mac, too.

Not just catching up

One thing that struck me when I started to play around with InDesign was the use of frames to put text on the page. This is a complete break from PageMaker tradition, in which we place text on the page much like hanging a poster on the wall. The use of frames facilitates the transition from QuarkXpress to InDesign as easy as possible, as QuarkXpress also relies on frames.

And, of course, in addition to the ability to open files created in PageMaker, InDesign also converts QuarkXpress' files as well (Version 3.0 through Version 4.04). To top it all, a set of shortcuts compatible with QuarkXpress is also provided for converts.

The change is also in line with Adobe's repositioning of PageMaker. This program, which has been repackaged as PageMaker 6.5 Plus, is now aimed at corporate users who want to create their own print and Web publications. It's going to be a tough war for PageMaker, as that segment is now controlled by some very easy-to-use programs, such as PrintShop and Microsoft Publisher. InDesign, on the other hand, replaces PageMaker as Adobe's main offering for the professional desktop publishers.

At first glance, InDesign's interface is not much different from PageMaker or most of Adobe's other products, as you can see from the accompanying picture. There are palettes that you can place anywhere on the screen, and each of them has tabs for different tasks or settings. I especially like the Navigator tool, which allows us to pan around a zoomed area. InDesign also uses layers, which are not available in PageMaker. However, objects such as a Photoshop image or an Illustrator graphics can be placed directly on the InDesign's page, much like how we do it in PageMaker.

To cater to the needs of professional DTP workers, Adobe has added a slew of new facilities. Have you ever scratched your head because the text in your column has too many holes if you apply full justification? The new multi-line composer function automatically takes care of word spacing and line breaks so that there will be fewer hyphens and better spacing. In QuarkXpress, users will have to create the so-called H&J (hyphenation and justification) profiles to achieve the same effect.

InDesign allows multiple views of the same document, so we can zoom in up to 800 percent and still retain a bird's eye view of the page in the other window. Or we can work on one page and see how the text will flow into subsequent pages. If you have ever worked on a multi-page document, you will understand the facility this function provides.

If you have been downloading manuscripts or manuals from the Internet, chances are they come in the PDF (Portable Document Format) standard. Normally, Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed to open files in this format and Acrobat Distiller required to create a PDF file. Now you can export a file directly from InDesign in PDF format. The Help tab, like most other Adobe products, is very helpful.

The downside

Perhaps because it is meant for high-end professional use, Adobe is not targeting those who still work with 486 or Pentium machines as potential customers for this product. The minimum requirement is a Pentium II processor with at least 48 MB of RAM. None of my PCs satisfy this minimum requirement, let alone the 300 MHz processor with 64 MB of RAM configuration that Adobe recommends. I was lucky I still had the Vectra Ve from HP sitting on my desk, and with a Pentium III and 128 MB of RAM it was a joyful experience to get acquainted with this program.

The list price is US$ 699, but I found a Web retailer that offered the product for US$ 299. If you've been working with QuarkXpress and are already feeling squeezed, you may want to have a close look at Adobe InDesign. One strong point that this program has over QuarkXpress is that Adobe is known for its technical support; much better than Quark. Technical support is always a crucial factor when you migrating or upgrading.

There are some other things on my wish list, however. I wish the right mouse button were used more to make quick adjustments to the tools. InDesign has no table editor and cannot create a table of contents or index automatically, although it can create a document up to 9,999-page long. In addition, although they can be applied to text, the gradient fills are available only in the linear and radial types. There are many, many more strengths and weaknesses, but, as is the case with the just launched Windows 2000, you had better wait a while longer before the bugs are ironed out and it is safe for you to take the plunge.