Other Long Documents

Obviously books are long documents, but there are many other long documents as well. What makes a project a "long" document? The number of pages is important. But so is the amount of information on each page. For instance, annual reports contain a lot of financial data and need many long-document features especially when it comes to styling text. Here are some of the long-document projects that you can create in the CS2 applications.

Magazines and Newspapers

Just like textbooks, magazines and newspapers use InDesign for layout, with Photoshop and Illustrator for artwork. But magazines and newspapers aren't just created by production or design departments. The editorial department often has to work on its stories at the same time they are being laid out. That's when InDesign needs the addition of InCopy. This word-processing application works in tandem with InDesign.

Using InCopy With InDesign

With InCopy, the editorial department can make changes to the stories in an InDesign document at the same time that the design and production department is compositing the pages.

When large organizations such as major magazine and newspaper publishers work with InDesign and InCopy, they usually use third-party plug-ins that manage the assignments of stories, checking them in and out of the workflow. Two of these plug-ins are K-4 and Smart Connection. Larger organizations may also have software especially written to handle their own workflows. See the Appendix, "Creative Suite Resources," for information about these plug-ins.

Annual Reports

This is another area where InDesign is used for layout, with Photoshop and Illustrator used for artwork. There are, however, a few special needs for those creating annual reports.

InDesign can easily handle the front of the report with its regular text and page-layout features. But annual reports usually have many detailed tables at the back that need to be presented in attractive, easy-to-read styles.

These tables are most likely imported from Excel files. As much as we admire Excel for its powerful spreadsheet and calculation abilities, it is hardly an elegant typographic and design program. So it is an easy decision to do the table formatting in InDesign. In fact, InDesign has some of the most sophisticated table features of any program including Microsoft Word. Figure 2-3 shows some of the special features you can add to tables in InDesign. (We discuss InDesign's table features in "Tables in InDesign CS2," in Chapter 6, "Type Magic.")

Figure 2-3. Special effects in an InDesign table.

At this point the designer or compositor needs to make a workflow decision. It is very likely that some of the information in the table may be modified back in Excel at the same time that the report is produced. How should they handle those modifications?

If the changes are simple, the changes can be made by the designer right in the InDesign document or by an editor using InCopy. But there are many times when an entire table has to be regenerated in the original spreadsheet. This can be a problem if the table has had extensive formatting applied in InDesign. When the new spreadsheet information is imported into the layout, it loses all the formatting.

What about linking the table information back to the original spreadsheet file? That will allow you to update the information in the table, but in doing so you will lose any formatting that was applied in InDesign.

Those who work on annual reports or other documents that rely extensively on table data should consider a third-party plug-in such as Smart Styles from Woodwing or TableStyles and CellStyles from Teacup Software. These products allow you to reimport table data and then easily reapply complex table formatting. (See the Appendix, "Creative Suite Resources," for more information about these plug-ins.)

Annual reports also have many charts and graphs. While not many people are aware of it, Illustrator has some rather sophisticated features for creating pie charts as well as column, line, and scatter graphs. (See the section on "Charts and Graphs" later in this chapter for more considerations on creating charts and graphs in Illustrator.)

Catalogs

Catalogs are similar to books and magazines in that they use InDesign to combine text and graphics. However, unlike books and magazines, the information in catalogs often comes from databases that contain the items, colors, sizes, prices, links to images, and other information.

The text and images in simple catalogs can be assembled manually. But at some point you are most likely going to want to automate the process, because with automation, you can import text and images into templates and then format and style hundreds of items with little manual work.

There are various "software solutions" that can be used in conjunction with InDesign and a database to create catalogs:

• Data Merge. The most rudimentary way to create a catalog in InDesign is to use the built-in Data Merge feature. Steve has used this feature to import comma- or tab-delimited text from a database into data fields that are predefined as placeholder elements in the InDesign story. In addition to text fields, Data Merge can also import images into tagged placeholder image frames. (See "Other Automation Features" in Chapter 15, "Automating Your Work," for more information on using the Data Merge feature in InDesign.)

• XML Import. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a code that marks content so it can be output in multiple ways. XML tags describe the content categories of a document, such as item, price, colors, and so on. With an XML structure applied to a document, you can automatically create catalogs. Another benefit of working with XML is that the content can be easily repurposed; for example, the data for a catalog can also be used to generate price lists, web pages, or sales materials. (We don't cover XML in this book, but Real World InDesign CS2 from Peachpit Press is a good reference.)

• Third-party catalog software. There is a wealth of third-party software that works in conjunction with InDesign to create catalogs. InCatalog from em Software creates a two-directional link between the InDesign document and the database. You can make changes to the InDesign document, and they update in the database. Or modify the database, and it updates in the InDesign layout. Another product, RoboCatalog, not only works with InDesign, but also includes a version of mySQL, the open-source database. The Rolls Royce of catalog software comes from Apsiva. Apsiva offers a flexible suite of software products for the creation and maintenance of print, web, and electronic catalogs. See the Appendix for information about these software products.

We can't suggest which catalog solution is right for your organization; you need to examine your budget, production schedules, and database information. But the most important thing to remember is that you don't have to manually import and format catalog layouts.

Catalogs in Illustrator?

Below, in the sections on enterprise documents, we'll cover how you can use variables in Illustrator to create database-driven graphics. So, why aren't we mentioning using Illustrator for catalog production?

Simple. Illustrator doesn't provide the multipage documents that most catalog publishers require. That's why InDesign is the obvious choice for catalog production.