DTP Tools Makes InDesign History

DTP Tools makes history filling in the last missing piece of InDesign CS

History for InDesign CS

pub­lish­er:

DTP Tools

plat­form:

price:

$39 usd

rat­ing:

Toward the end of an InDesign train­ing class or sem­i­nar one of my favorite things to do is to use InDesign’s undo his­to­ry to step back­ward through the pre­ced­ing sev­en hours of work, one demon­strat­ed tool or fea­ture at a time–CMD+Z time-traveling past numer­ous saves, all the way back to a blank page. That par­tic­u­lar trick nev­er fails to amaze my audi­ence, leav­ing at least most eyes wide and most jaws agape.

Invariably some­one whis­pers in awe: “InDesign can undo… even after saves?”

Amid a stac­ca­to of key­board click­ing as the entire room tries out CMD+Z or CTRL+Z, I often hear one or two sets of soft­ly click­ing mice. The mousers are the tru­ly astute stu­dents, and they are des­per­ate­ly search­ing amongst InDesign’s 34 palettes for the next log­i­cal step beyond a long undo history.

These stu­dents search for a History palette ala Photoshop. Alas, as I explain when the ques­tion is inevitably posed, they search in vain.

InDesign CS, won­der­ous, beau­ti­ful cre­ation that it is, lacks among its cor­nu­copia of palettes the one that has been for so long indis­pens­able in old­er broth­er Photoshop. For all its undo glo­ry, InDesign has not a History palette.

At least, not until now.

History palette (Windows)

Last week DTP Tools, the cre­ative soft­ware brand of Goldwein Research, LTD. filled in the last miss­ing piece of InDesign. DTP Tools gave the world History for InDesign CS and InCopy CS.

History for InDesign works exact­ly as Photoshop’s History Palette. It records each and every action tak­en in InDesign–from plac­ing an image to typ­ing text, from mov­ing and rotat­ing to insert­ing pages and layers–and lists those actions sequen­tial­ly, allow­ing instant rever­sion to any pri­or state of the doc­u­ment. After fifty actions, click­ing any one in the list imme­di­ate­ly undoes all the fol­low­ing, rolling the doc­u­ment back to a pre­vi­ous point in time.

Moreover, like Photoshop, History cre­ates snap­shots. The entire state of a document–all pages, lay­ers, and objects–can be saved. Various states of a doc­u­ment can be recalled instantly.

Experimenting with dif­fer­ent lay­outs can be done–and restored–simply by cre­at­ing new snap­shots. No need to wor­ry about undo­ing, chang­ing some­thing, and being unable to redo back to the orig­i­nal state.

Finally! The free­dom to exper­i­ment with­out wor­ry comes to InDesign!

With the click of a sin­gle but­ton History will even cre­ate a new doc­u­ment from the select­ed snapshot.

DTP Tools’ History for InDesign CS (and History for InCopy CS) is such a fun­da­men­tal tool, a fea­ture InDesign should have had all along, that, now that it is final­ly avail­able, no InDesign user should be with­out it. Not hav­ing the History palette at our fin­ger­tips is like not hav­ing the Text Wrap palette! How we got by with­out it baf­fles me; now that it is here, how could any­one could even think to delay installing baf­fles me even more.

Installing History for InDesign is one action you will nev­er want to undo.

Images cour­tesy of DTP Tools.