Frame/InDesign

[Steve Rickaby]

At 14:56 +0000 11/1/11, Martin Ley wrote:

>The InDesign route: I would have to spend a lot of time getting fairly complicated Frame book files working in InDesign. Conditional builds, text insets, variables, markers, tables, etc etc.

Martin: I use both too. Many of the features you list above (conditionality, insets, variables, markers) are not implemented, or are implemented differently, in InDesign, afaik.

You have a difficult problem; for me the above might well be the killer issue. InD will do you lovely typography, but for my money it's still not quite a player in the tech book world. Also afaik, it still doesn't even support cross-references, or at least CS3 didn't. I use it, happily, for non-technical books, but I'd not like to work with it for link-rich long-doc material.

As both products are from Adobe, as as there might be license fees for them whichever way you go, why not try and rope in an Adobe product specialist to advise you? In the UK Chris Kitchener used to be the main man, certainly for InD, but I don't know whether he's still with Adobe. Or possibly one of their added-value vendors, like Mekon (Sutton)?

<mailto:chris.kitchener at adobe.com>

HTH; just my view.

-- 
Steve