A Newsletter Designer Looks at InCopy CS2

Adobe's InCopy promises benefits from increased collaboration, with Adobe's famed integration with InDesign CS2, for editorial/creative layout workflows as a stand-alone application for workgroups of 2-12 members. Does it deliver? Associate Editor Sam Klein gives it the acid test, finds the benefits.

To any­one who has an idea of what the con­cept of the work­flow means when doing print lay­out, cer­tain bot­tle­necks and poten­tial obsta­cles come to mind, from edi­tors wait­ing on lay­out artists to get lay­out proofs to design­ers wait­ing for knowl­edge on how much space they’ll have to insert ads. Certainly the lay­out world of today is dif­fer­ent and more effi­cient than it once was, but the work­flow between edi­tors and lay­out artists is fre­quent­ly still a pipeline-editors give con­tent to lay­out who place pic­tures, text, and ads, who return a PDF to edi­tors with com­ments the copy­’s fit, which is fur­ther edit­ed (usu­al­ly in Microsoft Word) and returned to the design­er. It all either goes one way or the other.

Adobe’s edi­to­r­i­al pro­gram InCopy CS2 intends to address this by enabling edi­tors and design­ers to work on lay­outs simultaneously–a par­al­lel flow. By being able to assign con­tent, design­ers can enable edi­tors to work out copy fit­ting while leav­ing the design sacrosanct.

This, at least, is the promise and the goal. Does InCopy CS2 deliv­er on its promis­es? Come along with me as I put InCopy through its paces. I found out some use­ful things and came to some unexpected–and happy–conclusions.

The Testing Ground

The Columbia Overlook (which I have designed from the Winter 2004 issue for­ward) is a quar­ter­ly peri­od­i­cal, the pub­li­ca­tion of of the Columbia Group of the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club, a group that serves NW Oregon. The Overlook, deliv­ered as an insert to the Oregon Chapter’s Oregon Conifer pub­li­ca­tion, has an esti­mat­ed cir­cu­la­tion of about 25,000.

The work­flow is essen­tial­ly a pipeline. Me, the design­er, receive con­tent from my edi­tor (who I’ll refer to as Editor Mark) via var­i­ous email routes. The tex­tu­al con­tent is pre­pared, as in many places, in Microsoft Word. Through a series of cycles, con­tent is import­ed and arranged and edit­ed to fit, a PDF is gen­er­at­ed, sent to Mark for proof­ing and revi­sion sug­ges­tions which are then sent back to me and are com­mit­ted to the design, and the cycle begins anew.

According to Adobe’s InCopy CS2 FAQ file (http://​www​.adobe​.com/​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​s​/​i​n​c​o​p​y​/​p​d​f​s​/​f​aq.pdf), this is a pos­si­ble solu­tion that is right up our street. Though not nec­es­sar­i­ly appro­pri­ate to an email-based work­flow it’s not at all unrea­son­able to expect that at some near-future time the edi­tor and the design­er (a 2‑person work­group) can col­lab­o­rate on the same machine for pro­duc­ing this publication.

Therefore, let’s play a “what-if” game, where myself (as “Designer Sam”) and Editor Mark are work­ing from dif­fer­ent accounts same machine. We can imag­ine Editor Mark net­worked in. Our tools will be InDesignCS2 (for myself) and InCopyCS2 (for Editor Mark). The plat­form is a PowerMac G4 run­ning Mac OS X 10.3.9.

Breaking Open the Layout

From my account I open the lay­out for the Fall issue and save it to a direc­to­ry off the root direc­to­ry so Mark has access to the files I’ll be gen­er­at­ing. InCopy’s Live Edit work­flow depend on me set­ting up assign­ments and defin­ing users, so I’ll go there next.

The front page needs a lit­tle work. In try­ing to fit the con­tent in, I’ve made the lead­ing of the bot­tom sto­ry too big and it real­ly stands out against the nar­row­er lead­ing of the top sto­ry. I adjust the text frames on the bot­tom sto­ry and the gray side­bar imme­di­ate­ly to its right, and fix the lead­ing on the bot­tom sto­ry. I now have over­set text in those frames. I could do copy­fit­ting and PDF the results to Editor Mark, but InCopy will let me assign these frames to him so he can make the changes where he feels best. I also want his input on the top sto­ry as well, but I want to lock down the big pho­to that’s the centerpiece–both me and Editor Mark think it has great impact.

Getting the Editor into the Loop.

InCopy’s Live Edit plu­g­in for InDesign pro­vides new func­tions in the menus and a new “Assignments” palette. I undock the Assignments palette from its orig­i­nal posi­tion and dock it below the tool­box on the left side to keep it in a con­ve­nient position. 

Initiating assign­ment from the screen menu after select­ing text frames

I then Command-click the frames of the two sto­ries and the notice in the gray side­bar. A right click (CTRL-click) brings up the con­tex­tu­al menu; going to the bot­tom I find an “InCopy” item, and I do InCopy>Add To Assignment>New.… In the New Assignment dia­log that comes up, I spec­i­fy “Editor Mark’s Front Page.inca” as the Save As name, and in the suc­ceed­ing options dia­log, tell InDesign that it’s assigned to “Editor Mark”. I decide to only export the assigned spreads to him for this round, and choose an assign­ment col­or of Cyan.

Clicking Save I’m treat­ed to one more dia­log box. InCopy expects to find two sets of files, an .inca (assign­ment) file, and con­tent for the assign­ment in a series of .incx files. I tell the inter­face I want to cre­ate a new fold­er for orga­ni­za­tion’s sake, “Editor Mark’s Front Page Content”, for the .incx files. click­ing Save com­pletes the process–I’ve cre­at­ed an assign­ment for Mark to copyfit.

Check out from he design­er’s per­specive. Note the “In Use” pen­cil icon

The lit­tle sym­bols next to the assign­ment components–adornments–decorate the text frames in the lay­out and match to the sym­bols in the assign­ment palette, telling me at a glance that all assigned frames are avail­able for check­out by both me and Editor Mark. At the last moment, I decide I want to tweak the top sto­ry, so, using the selec­tion tool, I select a text frame in that sto­ry and select Check Out from the fly­out menu on the Assignments palette. The Available adorn­ment in the Assignments palette and next to each frame becomes the “checked out” adorn­ment a tiny yel­low #2 pencil.

Now, it’s time to invite Mark to the party.

Editor Mark Chimes In

Whilst I’ve been doing this, I’ve been hav­ing Mark fire up InCopy. He cre­ates a User iden­ti­ty (File>User…) of Editor Mark, match­ing the user name I’ve giv­en him in InDesign, and choos­ing a col­or to iden­ti­fy his assign­ment. He then does File>Open…, nav­i­gates to the fold­er where I’ve told him to find his assign­ment, and opens the file “Editor Mark’s Front Page.inca”.

Editor Mark sets his user name in InCopy

The assign­ment file opens. Mark is pre­sent­ed with the Story view, which looks very much like the Story Editor in InDesign. This view has a great deal of use­ful information-the title bars tell whether the sto­ry is avail­able for edit­ing and if it isn’t who has it (one sto­ry is marked as “In Use by Designer Sam” because I checked it out in the last sec­tion). Mark imme­di­ate­ly knows where the sto­ry goes over due to the bold “Copyfit” line and the red “Over ~1 line” warn­ing on the bot­tom tool­bar. I’ve showed him how to cus­tomize his dis­play to make work­ing in it easy on the eye (He likes his type in Optima and with green on a black back­ground, with ample space between lines). 

He switch­es to the Layout view. He sees at a glance which sto­ries he can edit with the “avail­able” adorn­ment and which sto­ry I have checked out (the In Use adorn­ment is the pen­cil sym­bol crossed over with a red line). Mousing over the sto­ry that’s checked out by me dis­plays a tooltip-style note say­ing that I have it in use. He knows it’s part of his assign­ment, though, because the frame is col­ored cyan and the fill of the frame is a screened-back cyan (all this is con­fig­urable by the user-my edi­tor can turn frame edges or assigned frames dis­play off in the view menu, or switch over to pre­view mode by going to View>Screen Mode>Preview)

Editor Mark Gets Busy

The edit­ed sto­ry in InCopy sto­ry view, show­ing tracked changes and alter­nate text saved as notes

Editor Mark goes to work copy­fit­ting the “Combined Disposal Facility” sto­ry. there’s not much edit­ing to do; just get the rest of an email address into the frame. There could be some clean­ing up too. He sees a soft return near the end of the arti­cle and fig­ures that’s a good place to start, so he places his inser­tion point and hits delete.

But wait! He has­n’t checked out this sto­ry yet. No wor­ries! The pro­gram sees him try­ing to make a change to an avail­able sto­ry and flash­es up a dia­log box ask­ing if he wants to check it out. He says “yes”, the sto­ry is checked out to him and he can start to edit.

Mark also likes to see what it is he’s changed, so he press­es Command‑Y on the key­board (or Changes>Track Changes in Current Story from the menu bar) and change track­ing is enabled. Now, when he press­es delete on the soft-return, it turns red, and the dis­play updates to show how much text is left to copy­fit. There’s still some work left to do. The red text indi­cates some­thing that’s been delet­ed, and it won’t show up in the lay­out, but the edi­tor will still see it until changes have been accept­ed (which can be done at any­time from the menu bar by Changes>Accept All Changes or the key­board short­cut CTRL-SHIFT-OPTION‑O).

We still need to cut down a bit. Mark iden­ti­fies a part of a sen­tence that could be a lit­tle more con­cise, and decides he wants to delete it but he thinks maybe he’d like to pre­serve the orig­i­nal text just in case fur­ther edits open up room for it. InCopy makes it all very easy by stor­ing alter­na­tive text as a note. This note trav­els with the sto­ry, and the design­er (or any­one who has access to the lay­out) will be able to see them, if the edi­tor wants opin­ions or input. All Mark has to do is high­light the text and press F8, and the text springs out into a box in the Story view. In the lay­out view the loca­tion of the note is mar­ket by a small hour­glass shape, and the con­tex­tu­al menu allows view­ing the note-which pops up in a lit­tle box of its own with com­plete iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and edit­ing capa­bil­i­ties. Mark adds a word; it’s marked as an addi­tion. He goes on, delet­ing and sav­ing alter­na­tive text, until he’s got the copy with­in the space I’ve defined.

Mark Updates Me

Alternative text note in pop­up display

While all this has been going on, I’ve been work­ing with the oth­er sto­ry. InCopy allows this free­dom for me to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly alter the design while Mark’s work­ing on changes to the copy, elim­i­nat­ing him hav­ing to ask me to edit a change into the copy he’s sent me, regen­er­at­ing a PDF and shoot­ing it off to him. 

About this time, though, I’m won­der­ing how his copy­fit­ting is going. I ask him to push the changes my way. He does this sim­ply by Saving (Command‑S) the file. On the lay­out I am noti­fied instant­ly the con­tent changes by the appear­ance of the warn­ing tri­an­gle next to the adorn­ment; on the Assignments palette I high­light the sto­ry he’s work­ing on and, using the fly­out menu, select “Update Content”. The sto­ry is updat­ed in the lay­out dis­play. It’s look­ing pret­ty good. I also see the places where he insert­ed notes and can view them the same way that he did in InCopy (this is Adobe’s “shared code base” con­cept in action).

Similarly, if I make a change to the text frames and rede­fine the text frame space, I push the changes back to him by updat­ing his assign­ment, and in InCopy he does a “Update Design”.

He also notices that the byline has lost its orig­i­nal for­mat­ting. I need­n’t both­er with this-Adobe’s shared code base to the res­cue again! By plac­ing his I‑beam in the byline, which is its own para­graph, and by hit­ting Command-Return–the exact same key­board short­cut that InDesign uses–a Quick Apply dia­log exact­ly iden­ti­cal to the InDesign dia­log appears, and he can apply the byline style just like that. Saving the file push­es the changes my way instantly.

Take the afore­men­tioned exam­ple and repeat it as many times as need­ed. The imp­mor­tant thing to remem­ber is that my edi­tor and me are work­ing on the lay­out simultaneously-he on con­tent, me on lay­out design and some­times content-responding to each one’s changes almost instant­ly. This is true col­lab­o­ra­tion in action, and just a glimpse of the effi­cien­cy that can be had.

And it’s all due to adding just one component-InCopy-to the editorial/design mix.

Moreover, all this activ­i­ty does­n’t even cov­er all the fea­tures InCopyCS2 offers. Dynamic spell checking–just as in InDesign. The new Galley view takes the Story view one bet­ter by show­ing how many col­umn units (inch­es, points, and oth­er units) each sto­ry involves, and dic­tio­nar­ies that allow for adding of non­stan­dard words and abbre­vi­a­tions with just one or two clicks just wait for the learn­er discover.

A Workflow of One?

In mod­el­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of me and my edi­tor active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing on the pro­duc­tion of the quar­ter­ly, I noticed some­thing quite unex­pect­ed. InCopy is being mar­ket­ed as a work­group appli­ca­tion but I was see­ing that it pro­vid­ed to me things that the InDesign Story edi­tor did not.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand me here–the InDesign Story Editor is a bril­liant addi­tion, and as good as any improve­ment Adobe’s added to InDesign. Considered in the con­text of a sin­gle user work­flow, which is what I am in real­i­ty, InCopy pro­vides an incred­i­ble amount of con­trol over copy­fit­ting con­tent, far and away sur­pass­ing the Story Editor. It real­ly kicks the indi­vid­ual lay­out artist’s copy­fit­ting and for­mat­ting pow­er up to the next level.

The Dreaded Learning Curve

One oth­er thing that must be men­tioned are two words that make begin­ning users trem­ble in abject fear: “learn­ing curve”. 

Just about any new appli­ca­tion, regard­less of intu­itive­ness, requires ori­en­ta­tion. Few users can intu­it all the ben­e­fits an unfa­mil­iar pro­gram can pro­vide to them, regard­less of how ‘nat­ur­al’ the inter­face is designed. 

Adobe makes ori­en­ta­tion a snap, how­ev­er. All one has to do is down­load the Adobe hands-on files from the InCopy web­site and work through the exam­ples pro­vid­ed, and before you know it, you too will be build­ing assign­ments for you, your edi­tor, your spouse, and all your pets with impug­ni­ty (you can even try before you buy, with the 30-day tri­al version). 

Not only that but the shared code base of InCopy and InDesign pro­vide for all but iden­ti­cal inter­faces for such things as Quick Apply, Preferences, Story and Galley dis­play, and a great many oth­er func­tions. If you know how to use InDesign, you already know some things about using InCopy.

The Bottom Line

Adobe InCopyCS2 touts tight col­lab­o­ra­tion and coop­er­a­tion through a new assign­ment mod­el. My own tour and test shows that these are more than mere claims. And now, since Adobe sells InCopy as a stand alone appli­ca­tion, any­one who needs to col­lab­o­rate can join in. Even the solo design­er can use InCopy as a super­charged Story Editor, with the abil­i­ty to track changes and pre­serve alter­nate text that Story Editor only wish­es it had. I can eas­i­ly see myself using it in build­ing future layouts.

Adobe has appar­ent­ly decid­ed to stop hid­ing InCopy’s light under a bushel, and I have no reser­va­tions in say­ing it’s high time they let it shine. InCopyCS2 should become a valu­able part of your toolk­it no mat­ter what the size of your work­group is. This is def­i­nite­ly a must-have application.

InCopy CS2: In Production 6‑Part Special Report:

Part 1: InCopy CS2, the World; World, InCopy CS2

Part 3: Proposing Efficiency with InCopy CS2

Part 4: How-To: InDesign/InCopy Collaboration: The Designer

InDesign, InCopy, InDesign CS2, InCopy CS2, Adobe, Microsoft Word