Have You Hugged your Developer Today?

Four years ago, as a newly self employed designer, I started attending PepCon. As the decision maker at my own little company, I felt it was worthwhile to spend my personal money to go to my very first professional conference. And let me tell you, it was a real stretch financially. But it so worthwhile that I keep going back.

These days, I spend a bit less time in the sessions, and more time with the developers: those nice guys at the vendor tables, quietly sitting and waiting to demo their amazing tools to anyone willing to stop by and take a look at what they've created.

But what's really great about the developers is that they're not just there to sell existing tools. They are also there to listen to the end users and find out what their needs are. Kris from Rorohiko told me once, "I'm not an InDesign user. I just write scripts for InDesign." Think at about that one for a moment.

Kris and me: InDesign plugin developer and InDesign user

So every year I spend a little less time at the sessions and a little more time chatting with the developers. And not just with independent developers. I've also met members of the InDesign engineering team. I've personally given them my list of feature requests (complete with links to blog articles with additional information), and I've personally show them reproducible bugs.

At my last PepCon, I got to meet a former InDesign team member, Ashley Mitchell, who graciously gave his permission for me to get a T-shirt printed with some of his LBOP artwork on it. (This T-shirt is a joke about using GREP styles.)

Me and Ashley Mitchell, former senior tester for the InDesign team

Also at my most recent PepCon, I managed to corner one of the InDesign engineers right after the Meet the InDesign Team session. I think he handles the code for a part of InDesign that I wanted to see improved. I was chatting with this developer recently and he said "Oh, you did that thing on patterns at the InDesign smackdown." He was talking about my Ignite session! He remembered me from the conference!

Slowly but surely, some of my ideas for InDesign tools are becoming reality. Today I discovered that an obscure bug I had personally shown to an InDesign engineer at PepCon two years ago has been fixed in InDesign CC. It took my breath away to see that they had fixed it. Here's what they fixed:

"In the Find/Change dialog box, under Conditions, the scroll bar doesn't scroll with the mouse scroll wheel. It just jumps all the way from the top to the bottom. It should scroll properly."

I think only about 5% of InDesign users ever use conditional text. And probably a very small fraction of those will ever have enough conditions in a single document to warrant a scroll bar in the Find/Change dialog box. So the amount of people who would ever experience this bug is very small. But perhaps the fix was a quick and simple one. I don't know, as I am not a developer. But I know people who are!

So if you want feature improvements to InDesign, start coming to PepCon and hang out with the developers. Develop friendships with them, encourage them, write articles about the awesome tools they make. While I think that petitions and survey sites can be useful tools for making your needs known, I've personally gotten a lot more accomplished by simply having relationships with the people who can build the tools I need. In doing so, I am more than just a signature on a petition or three votes on a survey site. I am a friend. And friends help each other out with projects that may not be huge money makers.

I don't know what developers make on the plugins that I conceive and beta-test. And I will never ask. But I have tools now that a few years ago, I could only dream of.

So if you have plugins that you want, go befriend some developers. And I think it doesn't hurt to bring some chocolate or other goodies just to make what you have to say more memorable.

What To Do When InDesign Text Variables Don't Display Correctly

Text Variables are a way that InDesign can display different strings of text without you having to retype every different instance. I use them for things like inserting a modification date, or chapter numbers. The examples we'll be discussing in this article are page numbers and file names.

In case you're not familiar with Text Variables, here are a couple of links to good resources to learn more about them.

Adobe Help File : Text Variables
InDesign Secrets: Using variables in InDesign slugs

Recently, I found a couple of different instances where text variables do not output as expected. I used the different workarounds for both instances, and I wanted to share it here for the inevitable time when some other poor InDesign user encounters the same problem.

Text Variable Error Type 1: File Name Extension

On my master page, I have placed a File Name text variable. Notice how "Include File Extension" is unchecked. It all looks good so far. See how the extension is not displayed? (If it was diplayed, there would be a .indd at the end.

But see what happens when I then place the first InDesign document into a second InDesign document. The extension appears! I tried releasing the object from the master page of the first InDesign document, but that didn't change anything. The extension still displays in the second InDesign document. (On a side note, because my text frame was fit the the exact size of the original text, it now looks very crowded trying to also fit an extension into the same size text frame.)

In this case, the workaround was to simply NOT USE the File Name variable. Instead, I had to manually type the file name in each and every single chapter, and I also have to remember to change this text whenever I do a Save As and for a new chapter.

Text Variable Error Type 2: Page Numbers Gone Wild

My second unexplainable text variable problem had to do with Page Numbers. You see, page numbers aren't listed in the Text Variable dialog box, but I think they should be. By the very nature of what they do, Page Numbers are variables.

Page numbers are so commonplace. Who doesn't use page numbers? Perhaps that's why they are accessed in a different spot in InDesign, outside of the Text Variable dialog box.

But Text Variables (the ones listed below) seem a little more mysterious, and are harder to find, so fewer people use them. Granted, Text Variables have more options, like including text before and text after, and plenty of different ways to customize a Modification Date.

But page numbers have a lot in common with Text Variables. One type of page number even made it into the Text Variables dialog box: "Last Page Number." But we won't tell his other page number buddies about that. They'd just get jealous.

The type of page number I experienced problems with was "Current Page Number,"which is located under: Type > Insert Special Character > Markers (see screenshot above).

On a recent project, I had one document where the page numbers went completely crazy...but only in the PDF. All was fine in the InDesign document. But when I exported the document to PDF, the page numbers did not display properly in the footer. They looked something like this: (click to enlarge)

Now, keep in mind that I didn't put in any section markers. I have no idea what caused the problem. I exported the file as an INX and then reopened the file and put it back into the correct spot in the book, but the problem persisted. I tried Acrobat 4.0 compatibility, as well as opening the file in Acrobat 9 and X. I even tried to go into the PDF and edit the page numbers there, but when I edited several of the page numbers, all the page numbers I edited (with the Text Edit tool in Acrobat) reverted back to whatever was the latest page number that I typed. So in this example, I edited the Left-hand facing pages, ending with the last left-hand facing page, changing that to 94. Then ALL the previous page numbers that I just edited also became page 94. WHAT??? I am stumped.

I also tried exporting just a single chapter from the book, and replacing the incorrect pages in Acrobat, but again...it didn't work. In that case, instead of displaying the correct page number, the first Left-facing page displayed the word "Variable." Aha! I knew page numbers were Variables!

However, in this case of Page Numbers Gone Wild, I found that simply detaching the page number text frames from the master page fixed the problem. Then they all outputted as expected.

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Edit: 3-11-15: Today I once again encountered the problem where the word "Variable" instead of the page number appears in random places in the PDF. The solution to the problem was to open every file in the book and then export the PDF with all the files open.

Edit 1-8-16: I again encountered the strange "Variable" issue and found that instead of detaching the items from the master page, I could simply reapply the master page and the page number then displayed properly.

If this was helpful, please also check out a related post: Why Does InDesign Think There are 69 days in the Month?

My Wish List for Notes in Adobe InDesign

This is a post for the Adobe InDesign team, or for any InDesign developer who would like to tackle this project.

I would like to see Notes move seamlessly between Adobe products:
There are two  plugins that address the issue of Notes in InDesign.

• PDF Stickies and TomaxxiAnnotations let me export InDesign Notes to PDF.
• DTP Tools Annotations lets me import and apply PDF annotations back into InDesign.

The missing link is a solution that will let me export all sorts of annotations to Acrobat in one fell swoop. The reason is because I create technical documents and I often need to get clarification about certain bits of text in a long threaded text frame. I would like a way to tag that text right in InDesign and have that tag appear as a PDF annotation.

I’d like a way to repurpose the XML tagging capabilities of InDesign to allow me to create PDF annotations. Here is how I envision the annotated text to look in the Story Editor.

Story Editor display, with annotated text markup displayed

Here is what I envision the capabilities of the new and improved Notes panel:

• Blocks of text can be marked for PDF annotation, right in InDesign
• We should be able to choose annotation type, icon, and color in the InDesign Notes panel (preferably without having to open a second dialog box to do so.
• A note navigator that lists all the notes at the bottom of the Notes Panel, under a new twirl down.
• These annotations would be capable of appearing in both Print and Interactive PDFs

Here is an illustration demonstrating what I would like to see the UI look like. The Notes panel will have three new drop downs on the top right: Annotation Type, Icon, and Color. At the bottom of the panel will be a twirl down listing all the notes in the document.

New and Improved Notes Panel

New Drop Downs in the Notes Panel

If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about how notes can make your publishing workflow more efficient, join me at PePcon 2014, where I will be speaking on PDF Annotations.

Like this article? You may also be interested in: My Wish List for Notes - Across the Suite.

Making a Chevron Pattern Within InDesign

This is a pattern I saw recently while in the stationary aisle at Target. I like this pattern because it reminds me of the brightly colored crocheted chevron afghans that my grandmother made when I was a child. We had a number of these afghans around our house growing up, and after learning how to crochet at age eight, some of my first projects were efforts to duplicate her handiwork. My early efforts were not as well crafted, but they were good practice for me as I learned to be diligent in improving my craft.

So, how to create a chevron pattern in InDesign? At first, it's not clear. Usually, when creating a pattern in InDesign, I use TeaCup PatternMaker. Other times, I'll use tables and apply interesting stroke styles to them. But to create a chevron pattern, neither one of those methods will work. But I eventually found a suitable method.

But first, let's explore why my standard go-to pattern creating methods won't work.

TeaCup PatternMaker has a pattern type called "Waves," but it is exactly that: wavy. It's a really nice pattern, and I even wrote an entire blog post about it. But in this case, I need my "waves" to have sharp points, not curved points.

The "Waves" pattern is neat because you can change the amplitude stroke weight, and angle. But...you can't specify sharp corners.

Another limitation of the Waves pattern (or any Teacup pattern) is that it must fill a graphic frame: you cannot apply Patterns to strokes. Nonetheless, the Waves pattern is pretty neat, and one of of favorite TeaCup patterns.

My second go-to pattern creating method involves tables and stroke styles. In a couple of instances, I've used the "Wavy" strokes style on a table. While the Wavy stroke style is great because you can (obviously) apply it to a stroke, you have virtually no control over how it is applied. You can't change the amplitude, wave length, number of waves... nothing. All you can do change the stroke weight.  There seems to be a fairly strict limitation on the shape of the wave, and the number of waves will change in order to keep the built-in wave shape relatively constant. Thinner strokes get more waves. Thicker strokes get fewer waves.

Now that we know why my first two ideas didn't work to give us the pattern we're after, let's talk about the method that will give us the pattern we're after.

But first, let's take a step back and look more closely at the image.

Do the blue wavy lines it remind you of anything in InDesign? No? Well, how about if the lines were red? Now do you see how it looks similar to the squiggly underline beneath a mispelled word?

So, we know that InDesign has the capability to create a chevron pattern, as demonstrated by the squiggly red underline of dynamic spelling. But we need to find a way to translate this chevron pattern into a printable, editable object. Now, I don't know of a way to print the dynamic spelling underlines (why would anyone want to? See note below...), But I do know of another feature in InDesign that also has a wavy underline. This feature is "Conditional Text."

In case you've never used Conditional Text before, it is a great feature. It's got to be among my top ten favorite InDesign features. Basically, conditional text let's you show and hide different bits of text. For example, if you are doing a textbook with both a teacher and a student version, you can use conditional text to hide the teacher's portion of the document (such as the answer key). You can also use conditional text to hide bits of text that perhaps you don't need right now, but might want to save for use later. But in this case, what's so cool about conditional text is that you can show AND print text indicators!

So, now we have a way to create a chevron pattern, and to also print it. So how to get a whole frame of these wavy conditional text indicators, but not have any text to get in the way and obstruct the pattern?

First, let's attempt removing the letters, while still having the conditional text indicator. The solution is a right-indent tab (Shift + Tab). Right indent tabs are neat because they are dynamic. However wide your text frame is, a right-indent tab will extend all the way to the right-most edge of the text frame.

Now, we need to get a whole bunch of these little conditional text indicators stacked on top of each other. You may think that we would simply add a bunch of paragraphs, and the tighten up the leading to zero. That will work, but it would be very difficult to edit. Plus, it limits you to one color of chevron. Instead, we simply need to make more Conditions. InDesign will by default, want to make them all different colors, so you'll have to change the colors one by one.

Because I want to replicate the chevron pattern I saw at the store, I'll make all my conditions Light Blue.

Now, select your text (which is just a right-indent tab), and apply all five conditions. You have a chevron pattern!

You can add as many new conditions as you want, apply them, and the little chevrons will just be added to the top of the stack.

If you want to change your chevron colors, simply double click on the Condition, and change the color.   Here, I changed all the odd conditions to Blue (as opposed to Light Blue). Note that the conditions at the top of the panel are actually displayed at the bottom in the text frame. The conditions are sorted alphanumerically (top to bottom) in the Conditional text panel and in the reverse order (bottom to top) in the text frame.

So now that we have a chevron pattern that will show and print, and it's the colors that we want, it's fully dynamic and will extend as high and as wide as we want it to... what if we want to edit it further? What if I wanted real live strokes instead of just conditional text indicators?

A few weeks ago, I heard about a new plug-in from Markzware that converts a PDF into an InDesign layout. There is another piece of software (PDF2ID) that's does something similar, but I haven't tried it. During the course of my experiments with chevrons, Markzware was calling for beta testers for their new plugin, so I leaped at the opportunity. I think the original intent of the plugin was to translate recognizable patterns in text formatting of PDF documents, and recreate that text formatting as InDesign character and paragraph styles. But the cool thing about the Markzware plugin is that it will allow you to OPEN a PDF and have live, editable vector objects right in InDesign. Wow!

So, I exported my chevron pattern as a PDF, and then converted it using the PDF2DTP plugin. Once it's converted, when you select all the blue lines, you'll see that they are now fully editable strokes (click on image to enlarge).

If I wanted to, I could further stylize these strokes. And you can see that I can now easily change the stroke width, the amplitude, the stroke height, the colors, and pretty much whatever I want to change about them. I now have a fully editable chevron pattern, created right within InDesign.

Author edit on 6-10-12: If you don't have a copy of PDF2DTP, you can still use this method to create a chevron pattern. Simply open your PDF in Illustrator. If you like, you can simply copy and paste the strokes from Illustrator back into InDesign. The PDF2DTP plugin is very neat, because it allows you to "open" PDFs and edit them without ever having to leave InDesign.

Author edit on 8-24-12 regarding dynamic spelling underlines: I found a plugin that will include dynamic spelling indicators when exporting to PDF.

Did you like this article? Then check out my article about Chevrons at Creative Pro. That article discusses how we see chevrons and the simplest way to create a chevron in Illustrator.

http://www.creativepro.com/article/seeing-patterns

My Ideas for How InDesign and Acrobat Can Be Improved (Kickstarter Ideas)

I am currently at the Print and ePublishing Conference (PePcon) in Austin. Attending the conference with me are InDesign trainers, developers, users from around the world. It's an amazing event and I am so fortunate to be a part. During the course of this event, I have the opportunity to meet with independent InDesign developers as well as members of the Adobe InDesign team. We have so much to talk about! I have plenty of ideas about how to make InDesign (and Acrobat) better. So for you, the InDesign developers of the world, I have prepared detailed notes. I hope find my ideas thought-provoking. But moreover, I hope that you implement my ideas into a future version of InDesign.

And for those of you who are independent developers, if you see any ideas here that you'd be interested in developing, let's chat!

InDesign

• Split columns should work at the end of a story, without having to add an extra non-splitting blank paragraph at the end.
• When creating a hyperlink, Shared Destination should not be the default. 
• When changing a hyperlink type from Shared Destination to URL (using the dropdown list), Shared Destination is checked by default. Then I have to uncheck it. Every time! Plus, after changing the hyperlink type from Shared Destination to URL, the URL I had before is gone, so then I have to paste/type in the destination URL that I had previously specified.
• Often (almost always), when making a note in InDesign, after I click the "New Note" button, I can only type one letter and then the text cursor jumps out of the note and back into the regular text flow, just to the right of the note. I think it's only let me make a new note and type directly in the note once or twice. Since most of my documents are from a previous version, this happens most of the time. I found that on new CS6 documents, and documents that I had exported as IDML and then back to INDD, this does not happen. It would be nice if it always worked as expected.

Conditional Text

• Sub Conditional Text (and here): Parent conditions can set be set that child conditions can all be applied, or be mutually exclusive I am pleased to announce that Rorohiko has built this! Read my writeup about Conditional Text Groups at InDesign Secrets. You can purchase Conditional Text Groups at the Rorohiko website.
• When renaming a condition, the cursor keys do not work to cursor through the characters in the name.
• Conditional Table Cells
• Apply/remove condition of text within cells by selecting a range of cells.
• An easier way to see the content within a hidden condition. Currently, you have to hover over the little condition marker. I would like to see the content of conditional text in the story editor, just as I can see the content of Notes in the story panel.
• I would like hidden conditional text to able to be included in Find functions.

Find/Change

• In the Find/Change Dialog box > Conditions: When searching for text with multiple certain conditions applied, only one of which I know, I cannot find the text unless I know exactly which conditions are applied. If I choose [Any Condition], that forces the checkboxes to act like radio buttons. I need to be able to find the text, regardless if I know all of the conditions are applied. I want to be able to search for Condition 1 + Any Condition.
• In the same Find/Change dialog box, under conditions, the scroll bar doesn't scroll with the mouse scroll wheel. It just jumps all the way from the top to the bottom. It should scroll properly. This was fixed in InDesign CC!
• In the Find/Change dialog box > Find Format Settings > Paragraph Style drop down menu: there should be a little twirl down triangle next to each style group, so we can easily see and close the groups.
• There should also be an option for alphabetizing the list, so it's easier to find what we're looking for. (Same thing goes for listing the paragraph styles in the TOC dialog box).

Images

• Relative links: I want to be able to specify a links folder where all the links are stored. It should function in the same way as the Document Fonts folder. InDesign should automatically look at the Links folder next to the InDEsign document, and relocate all the links. This should be something that I can turn on and off: a document-specific preference.

Colors and Gradients:

• Make the gradient panel bigger and easier to use
• Be able to add rotation to a gradient swatch, and the ability to set type to Linear, Radial, or doesn't matter
• To be able to set gradient rotation angle in gap colors and paragraph rules
• Gradients swatches with transparency (not just gradient feather)

Strokes:

• Make it so we can add custom stroke styles (more than just dashes, dots, and stripes. More like Illustrator brushes, like the Easter egg stroke styles)
• The ability to add skew within a stroke style
• Scalable end caps (like in Illustrator)
• Be able to specify end cap colors that independently of the stroke and gap colors.
• Custom end caps (by defining our own arrowheads and such)
• Specify corner radius for both objects and strokes.

Preferences

• If my text is set is set to be displayed in points (and it always is) I also want to have other spacing associated with my text be displayed in points as well (such as spacing before and after, indents, etc). Even though I like to layout my entire document in inches, I want to be able to have more options when it comes to setting the units of choice for other things.
• In: Preferences > Unit and Increments > Other Units: There should be another one listed here besides Stroke. It should be for Effects. Just because I like to work in inches doesn't mean that I want my effects to work in inches. Those should work in points (or whatever I want them to). Perhaps the Stroke unit preference could be "Stroke and Effects."
• Units in the Strokes Styles dialog box should be the same as the units of measurement as specified in Preferences > Unit and Increments > Other Units > Stroke. (Currently, the units in the stroke styles dialog box is pulled from the default unit of measurement (what you set with no documents open).

Pages:

• A “Transformation Value” type of readout for page sizes. Hover your cursor next to a selected Page panel thumbnail, and a little gray box would appear showing that page’s width and height. 

Objects:

• Add the ability to have anchored objects sit BELOW the text frame in the stacking order
• To be able to have paragraph styles reference a certain object as a background

To PDF print export:

• Add the ability to include interactive elements when exporting a Print PDF (for PDF sticky notes and form objects).
• Add View and Layout options to Print PDF export
• Add the ability to fix hairlines when exporting to PDF

Table of Contents

• I would like to be able to tell InDesign which documents will be referenced in the table of contents. Let's say I have 75 documents in a book, but I know that only 20 of them have paragraph styles that will affect the table of contents. InDesign still has to open every single one of the files, even though they won't affect the TOC. 

Notes

• I wish that User Names and colors would automatically determine the PDF note author and color.
• I'd like to have a drop down property in the Notes panel so that I can choose a different sticky note icon for when the document is exported to PDF. I even designed a new UI for what I think the Notes panel should look like. Check it out here.
• To be able to add notes independent of text flow, just like I can in Photoshop or Acrobat.
• To be able to specify a geometric shape as a note, just like using the pencil or rectangle tool in Acrobat (so that the shape appears as a comment in the comments pane in Acrobat.

Acrobat

Commenting

• Sort comments by color (which is missing in Acrobat X and XI) (This was added in Acrobat DC)
• Sort comments by fill color, not just stroke color
• Change sub-leveling sorting of sort comments by color to sort by order of appearance in the document (not by Y-coordinates) (This was fixed in Acrobat DC when the ability to sort comments by cold was added
• Add a "highlight mode" (via a multiply blending mode effect) to Acrobat shapes, so that they can be used a highlighters on a document
• Easier custom stamp management
• To be able to scale stamps non-proportionally
• Add "Mark as checked" back to the contextual menu when right clicking on a comment.
• Make it so that I can mark a comment as checked, by using a keystroke.
• When viewing comments in the Comments pane in Acrobat X and XI, the mouse scroll wheel doesn't work to scroll the comments. I have to actually click on the scroll bar and drag up and down. (This was fixed in Acrobat DC)
• In Acrobat 9, there used to be a way to Sort Comments by checkmark, and it would arrange the comments into two two groups with twirl down menus. Now in Acrobat X and XI, the amazing Sort Comments function has been replaced with Filter Comments, which is much less intuitive and harder to use. Sort Comments has returned in Acrobat DC!
• Also removed in Acrobat X and XI was the handy list of functions along the top of the comment pane. I used to be able to navigate through the comment using the Next and Previous buttons. Now I have to actually click on each and every comment in order to move through them. What a pain!

Sharing

• When sharing a file using Adobe send now, add a check box for "Choose Open file." The fields automatically populate sometimes, but I shouldn't have to navigate to a file that I already have open in order to select it as the file I want to send to someone.

Preferences

• Provide a list a keyboard shortcuts (quick key accelerators) somewhere within the program, rather than just in the online help file.
• Make the quick-key accelerators customizable.
• Bring back command + space bar for the marquee zoom tool.
• Make Comments pane one of the choices to have visible upon opening a PDF.
• Add "Fix Hairlines" to the Action Wizard. (Acrobat DC added the ability to create Custom Tools, to which you can add any tools that you want and appear in the Actions list) So I can now activate Fix Hairlines with just clicks, instead of navigating through a bunch of menus)).

The Top Eight Reasons You Should Attend the Print and ePublishing Conference

If you're active in the InDesign community, than you've probably heard of the Print and ePublishing Conference (PePcon). It's coming up soon and you don't want to miss it!

Being a self-employed designer, I can attest to how expensive conferences are to attend. There's airfare, hotel, meals, entertainment... all in addition to the conference registration. Attending conferences is not something I do lightly, as I have to foot the bill for 100% of the cost of attending. There are so many great conferences to attend, but I'd like to share with you my perspective as to why PePcon is so awesome. Please know that I'm not a professional trainer, and I'm not a conference presenter. They didn't pay me to write this. I've simply found this conference to be so valuable for my professional development that I am compelled to share why.

Reason 1: Easy Small Talk (for Once)

I'm in the publishing business. I spend all day at home, on my computer. My officemates are my dogs. I truly enjoy my job and my peaceful, quiet office environment. But I sometimes find small talk outside of work difficult. Why? Because my favorite topics are technical manuals, tables of contents, metadata, and conditional text. If I share these concepts with non-publishing people, I'm usually presented with a blank stare. But to you, my fellow publishers, these are great topics of conversation. Amongst you, My People, I can have effortless small talk. Not only is that amazing, it's not something I encounter very often in my day-to-day life.

Reason 2: Lots of Awkward People

Don't misunderstand. I mean this in the most affectionate way, as I count myself among the awkward crowd. I spend nearly every day alone behind a computer screen, and my social skills aren't the greatest to begin with. But plenty of other people at the conference have the same social skillset as me! It turns out that when you put a bunch of awkward people together, it becomes less awkward for all of them. Who knew?

As PePcon has progressed over the last few years, David and Anne-Marie keep coming up with new and better ways to help get us introverted, somewhat-socially-awkward people talking to one another. Some of their tools are:

• Business card bingo: a game in which you have to interact with and introduce yourself to approximately 25 different people (one at a time, of course). The bingo winner gets an awesome prize. We may be shy, but we still love prizes!
• Meet the Speaker table (so you can ask a question privately, in a quiet space, rather than in front of a crowd of people)
• Table signs: these signs are a helpful suggestion of where to sit during mealtime and breaks. There are tables for Government, Consultant, Business Publishing, Design Firm, software Developer, Education, etc. Those simple table signs help to guide us to the group of people with whom we have the most in common. I was amazed at the increase in interaction from one year to the next, just by the simple addition of signs onto the tables.

Reason 3: The world's experts at your fingertips

It's not uncommon to come to a conference like this, looking for a solution to a problem. Our industry is small enough that we are a pretty tight community. So if you explain your InDesign problem to one of the experts at the conference, they'll likely know the exact person who has already developed a tool to solve your problem. And chances are excellent that the developer you need is just a few tables away, waiting to talk to you.

Reason 4: Awesome Swag

This conference has the obligatory conference goodie bag, but it's filled with much more than a notepad and a few flyers. They give away coffee mugs, plugins, books, posters, thumb drives, and more. And by stopping by the sponsor booths and speaking to the various software developers, you'll get even more coupon codes and freebies. Since many of the book authors are at the conference, it's easy to get them to autograph your books! Many of the individual sessions also offer prizes at the end, for correctly answering questions pertaining to the lesson.

For the last couple of years, a complimentary set of MOO business cards had been included in the conference registration. They also have impressive door prizes at the end of the conference, including a couple of big ticket items such as FontFolio 10 pack, or the entire boxed edition of the Master Collection. With the way things are headed, I wouldn't be surprised if they gave away a Creative Cloud subscription or two this year.

Reason 5: Great Food

They put on quite a spread for us every year. It strikes a great balance between healthful and decadent. The meals have great variety, and let you east as balanced (or as unbalanced) as you like. They also offer all kinds of snacks and goodies in between the amazing meals. Cookies at 10:30? Creme Brûlée at 3:00? Why yes, please! They also make accommodations for folks with special dietary requirements, such as gluten free, or kosher. And if you go to the Ignite Session (which is sort of like an open mic night), there is usually an amazing cupcake selection. Besides being really tasty, I find the food is a great buffer for when we're sitting at a table full of strangers, practicing our small talk.

Reason 6: Conquer Your Fear of Public Speaking

Growing up, I was one of those students who hated doing speeches in school. So much so, that I sometimes would opt to take a F on an assignment, rather than do a required speech. What can get me talk in front of people? Only my favorite topic: InDesign (and its Creative Suite siblings). What better way to get over your fear of public speaking than to commit to speak in front of hundreds of your colleagues and the superstars of the publishing world? If you've figured out a totally amazing trick that the rest of the InDesign world should hear, then come to Ignite and share it with us. We don't bite. We want to hear about your amazing trick.

I've found that nothing boosts confidence quite like having publishing superhero stop by the table and say "Great speech! How did do you that awesome thing in InDesign?" For those brave souls who choose to do an Ignite session, you'll get a very special gift. Last year, they gave out PePcon umbrellas. And I am among the dozen people in the world that has one!

Reason 7: Make New Friends

At my first PePcon, I knew no one there. I went alone, and I was scared to death. To my surprise, I came home having made new friends. For an introverted person, this is a very big deal. It is important to have personal connections with other InDesign users around the world who can offer feedback and assistance with my InDesign problems. Alternatively, if I'm having a rough day, we can commiserate together on twitter, and that is just as wonderful.

Reason 8: Meet the InDesign Team

You may have heard that there is an entire session dedicated to hearing from engineers that create InDesign. But here's something that's not in the conference schedule: those engineers are also walking around mingling in between sessions, just like the rest of us. At last year's conference, I got the opportunity to personally share my InDesign wish list with an InDesign Engineer. And he took notes! Sure, Adobe is a giant global company, but getting to chat with a software engineer face to face made me feel like a very valuable member of the InDesign community.

So please, join me at PePcon. It's going to be tons of fun. And maybe we'll go have BBQ together.

Book Review: InDesign Production Cookbook

Title: InDesign Production Cookbook: Easy-to-Follow Recipes for Desktop Publishers and Graphic Designers

Authors: Alistair Dabbs, Anne-Marie Concepcion, Ken McMahon, Keith Martin

Published by: O'Reilly

Published: 2005

Print ISBN: 978-0-596-10048-3

ISBN-10: 0-596-10048-5

# of Pages: 224

Reviewed by: Kelly Vaughn / Document Geek

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

I love this book because it is task-based, rather than project based. This is important because oftentimes, InDesign users will know the type of task they want to accomplish, but not necessarily know the correct terminology used by the program. So with this book, readers can simply go to the correct chapter, and quickly find the pictures that correspond to the task they want to accomplish. This type of organization makes it an excellent reference book.

The different types of InDesign tasks are categorized according to the following chapters:

• Text
• Pictures
• Drawing
• Color
• Transparency
• Pages and documents
• Interactivity
• Output
• InDesign for QuarkXPress users

The book is full color, and the many hundreds of screenshots are clearly labeled and explained. The book has a detailed index.

Though this book was published in 2005 (for InDesign CS2), it is still completely valid information. With each new version of InDesign, features are added and improved upon, but never removed. The production techniques discussed in this book are still excellent practices that every good designer should follow. The page design is a little dated, but that's understandable, considering this book was published in 2005. This is a technical book, rather than a coffee table book.

I would highly recommend this book to any InDesign user who wants to have a better understanding of InDesign production. This would also be a great addition to the reference library of any print shop. Much of the book is available for previewing on the O'Reilly site, via Google Preview.

My Wish List for Notes - Across the Suite

I am a huge fan of PDF Commenting. I love notes for a variety of reasons:

• For collaboration with editors
• To help me quickly locate non-searchable text (scanned text, or text in images)
• To give instructions to printers
• To keep myself organized
• For color coding systems and different types of information
• PDF commenting forces others to organizes their thoughts into something cohesive right on the page (as opposed to emailing general gibberish)

This article is a follow-up to one of my previous articles: My Wish List for Notes in Adobe InDesign.

InDesign

• I wish that like in Photoshop or Acrobat, a note could reside independent of a text flow.
• I wish that I could natively apply notes to objects and they would appear in the Notes panel. (Notes can be applied to objects via the ObjectNotes script, but they can only be navigated to using the NoteNavigator Script.)
• I wish that notes from InDesign could export to PDF automatically, to either Print PDF or Interactive PDF. (You can include InDesign Notes when exporting to PDF using PDF Stickies.)
• I wish that I could choose different note colors and icons, right within InDesign.
• I wish that my username and date would appear as the author of the note within Acrobat (just as they already do for InCopy.)
• I wish I could automatically import notes back into my InDesign document, from the corresponding Acrobat document. (This functionality is available using DTP Tools Annotations.) I also want the replies to come along with it.
• I wish that I could import text highlights into InDesign, as non-printing objects, sort of like invisible characters, that they would only appear in Normal Mode, and not in Preview mode. (This functionality is available using DTP Tools Annotations.)

Many of my ideas for InDesign notes can be incorporated right into the existing Notes panel.

Photoshop

• I wish that I could specify my username, and choose icons, colors, etc.
• I wish that drawing markups would import.
• 6-2-17: I wish that Photoshop would change how it handles notes. Formerly, it imported them, now it says they will be ignored, but in certain circumstance, it actually DELETES them!

Illustrator

• I wish that Illustrator could make notes. Or read notes. Or do anything at all with notes.

In Acrobat

• I wish that that when I have along list of comments, that the scroll wheel would scroll down through the list, but I have to instead use the scroll bar to scroll down.
• I wish that Sort Comments by Color would be restored as a feature (it was removed in Acrobat X). This was added to Acrobat DC in 2016!

• I wish for the return of the amazing comment toolbar in Acrobat 9. While I can undock the Comments Pane in Acrobat XI, all the handy tools are missing and I cannot dock the Comments pane to the bottom of my document. 

The Acrobat 9 Comments Pane has lots of many tools

The Acrobat XI Comments Pane (even when undocked) has just a couple difficult-to-use sorting methods, and is missing all the handy tools

Is there anything you would like to see in commenting throughout the suite? Leave your comments below.

Like this article? You may also be interested in: My Wish List for Notes in Adobe InDesign.

Edit: 9-13-918
If you need an easier way to create and manage annotations in your PDFs, check out my article on Bluebeam Revu. It's an amazing program designed specifically to meet the needs of users in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction. Specifically, read about the Toolchest, where you can store annotations that you use frequently. Revu has done an amazing job of listening to their users and building a tool to meet their needs.

InDesign Crashing and Making me Crazy

So for years, I thought that I knew the way to fix InDesign when it was crashing. Simple, right? Hold down the four buttons in the bottom left keyboard while launching the program. That's what the Adobe help file and forums say. For the past 2 weeks, I have had crashing issues like nothing I've ever seen. Deleting preferences didn't work. Deactivating Suitcase auto-activation didn't work. Uninstalling the program didn't work...

The crashes were so bad that not only did the InDesign "submit crash report to Adobe" dialog box pop up, but another one for Apple came up as well.

So a couple of days of and lost productivity, I finally found a multi-step solution. Perhaps not all of these steps are necessary to fix the problem, but here's everything I did, just in case.

1. Delete the ID lock files that are associated with the files you were working on during the crash.
2. Unplug (or force eject) any external hard drives you have plugged (Note: when ID crashed, the files I was working on were located on an external hard drive).
3. Restart the computer (I had to do a hard shut-down).
4. Launch ID with the external hard drive unplugged.
5. You may get a series of errors like, 'The recovery data for "" could not be found. Delete recovery data?" ... or something along those lines. I chose to delete recovery data, just so it would quit looking for those files.
6. Close and reopen InDesign another time just to make sure it opens without getting any more error messages.
7. Plug in the external hard drive.
8. Try opening your selected files again.

Apparently, InDesign saves recovery data in more than one place. I thought that all the recovery data was saved in the lock file, but not so! Even after deleting the lock files, and even unplugging the hard drive, InDesign was still looking for recovery data. Apparently, there is something in the architecture of InDesign that tells it to look for recovery data... even after a complete reinstall!

I am astounded and amazed.

After originally writing this post, I got some additional input from one of my favorite InDesign trainers and a fellow Geek: Anne Marie Concepcion:

"Though I don't think ID stores recovery files in more than one place (and it's not the Lock file). I think if you would've deleted the entire recovery folder that's inside your User > LIbrary > Caches > InDesign folder, and then restarted, that would've done the trick."

Note for Lion users: I recently upgraded to Lion and now the Library folder is hidden by default. Here are the instructions on how to access it in order to delete your recovery files. 

Help Make Adobe Products Better with UserVoice!

Recently, Adobe has totally changed the way it handles feature requests and bug reports. They used to seemingly go into a black hole at Adobe, never to be be spoken of again. Even on the pre-release forums they were difficult to find. The engineers would say that few people gave them feedback, and the users who did provide feedback complained that Adobe was ignoring them.

But good news! Adobe has now made the feature requests and bug reports open to the public! You can easily search through other people's feature requests, add comments, and VOTE!

Here is an example of a feature request. Notice that there is a comment from one of the Adobe engineers, who has assigned a status to the feature. Notice that there are also 13 comments, and 18 votes. Once you vote for a feature request, you are given the option to subscribe to the topic and be notified whenever there is a new comment on the topic.

So I've compiled links to the feature requests of my favorite InDesign features (which I personally think are extremely neglected). Would you please take a few moments and VOTE for this features?

I will update this list as I see more features that I'm really passionate about.

InDesign Notes

• Story Editor and Notes Panel font preference and display
• Add option To Find/Change dialog box to search within notes and conditional text
• Add Sticky Notes to Incopy like in Acrobat
• Get text corrections from Acrobat DC back into indesign (kinda like incopy does)
• Make InDesign be able to import/Export comments from/to PDF
• Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Sharing-Reviewing-Workflow

InDesign Conditional Text

• Add the Ability to turn off hover scrolling
• Add option To Find/Change dialog box to search within notes and conditional text
• Improved Find/Change with Conditional Text
• Allow manual reordering of Conditions
• Condition Sets: Show overrides when the set has a +
• Create the condition from a list of paragraphs/character styles
• Easier Conditional Text in Tables
• Make the color of the hidden conditional text indicator match the color assigned to the condition

Acrobat Commenting

• Customize Comment Pane
• Draw Shapes - add a no fill option
• Use the Drawing Tools to highlight objects
• Enable a keyboard shortcut to add a checkmark to a comment
• Right-click > Mark as Checked
• Provide option to customize keyboard shortcuts
• Comments and Annotations need marching ants
• Comment UI was better in former version
• Comment list takes too long to load
• Ability to undock the comments list
• Comments 'check boxes' saving/showing for other users viewing PDF file
• Auto refresh the sort by list when one of the properties changes
• Make sort by groups collapsed as the default behavior
• Add option to make comment pane open automatically if there are comments
• Comments pane window is too short and cuts off comments
• Make comment color in sidebar match the color of the comment

I love how Adobe is proactively seeking our feedback, and is providing a useful platform to do so. It is my understanding the David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion (from InDesign Secrets) pioneered the idea of using User Voice for InDesign feature requests.

Please consider visiting the InDesign UserVoice site where you become an active part of making InDesign better. You can also visit the Acrobat UserVoice site here.

Edit: 9-13-918

If you need an easier way to create and manage annotations in your PDFs, check out my article on Bluebeam Revu. It's an amazing program designed specifically to meet the needs of users in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction. Specifically, read about the Toolchest, where you can store annotations that you use frequently. Revu has done an amazing job of listening to their users and building a tool to meet their needs.

Making InDesign Absolute Links behave like Relative Links

If you were to ask an InDesign user to show you a "Link" in InDesign, they would likely point you to the "Links" panel. However, there are additional types of links that we don't necessarily think about as often. These links refer to absolute file paths on your computer hard drive or server.

• Cross references: linking to a specific paragraph or Text Anchor in an InDesign file
• Documents in a book: the book file links to the documents within the book

So let's say that you want to start a new project that is based off of a similar one. But you want to keep the files totally separate. I used to work in a FrameMaker 7 workflow. And there are a lot of things about that workflow that I didn't like, but one thing that was cool about it was that Framemaker had the ability to have relative links. Relative links are commonly used in web development. In your design program (Dreamweaver for example) you can instruct it that all the images will be located in a folder called "images". It doesn't concern itself with anything above that, like where the images folder is located on your drive. The hard code in each html file just lists the path as images/. That way, you can upload the files to a server and the html files will simply still point to a folder called "images."

Relative Linking offers an amazing portability. Sadly (for better for worse) InDesign is not capable of relative linking. It can only do absolute links. This is typically great, but if you have a lot of files linked together and you need to reuse them for another another project, it can be a nightmare. But it doesn't have to be. Read on and learn from my pain.

If you want to use an old project (in this case a book) as a starting point for a new project, you could do it the hard way:

1. Copy your old project folder into a new project folder.
2. Open your new book file and manually replace each each chapter in the book (because the book will still be pointing to the ID files in the old location).
3. Open each new InDesign file manually.
4. Manually relink your images, one InDesign file at a time.
5. Manually relink your cross references.
6. Grumble in frustration for hours.
7. Email your developer friends and see if they can write a script to do book-wide link updates within an entire folder.

Or you could do it the easy way.

1. Copy your old project files to a new project folder.
2. Change the name of the folder containing your old project files. I like to do something simple, like adding a dash or a space at the end.
3. Open your new book file and do some global action such as:

• Update a book-wide Table of Contents
• Update all cross references
• Update all numbering

For some reason, if InDesign can't find the links it's looking for (whether they are documents in a book, placed images, or cross references) it will look nearby and do it's best to find them. So if your book file in your old project was located in the same folder with all the document files, and now in your new project, the book file is still sitting right next to all the document files, InDesign somehow remembers the relationship. When you open your new book file, you'll get a little warning in the book panel. Those little yellow triangles are just letting you know that the files have changed. (They really haven't changed, but technically, they're now in a new location.)

Once you run some sort of book-wide global update, you can even go back into your old project folder and change the name back to what it used to be. Your new project is now completely disassociated with your old project.

This global-relinking is handy if for example, your server dies unexpectedly and you have to start immediately using your backup server... Or if you started a project on your desktop and then moved to your laptop (which has a different username, and thus a different file path), or you need to base one project off of another project and not have your original files accidentally updated.

I could kind of compare this to the time we moved down the street. We used to live one block away, in the exact same model of house. So this time, when we moved in, we already knew where all of belongings went. The inside structure was the same. It was just the outside structure that was different.