InCopy CS2, the World; World, InCopy CS2

Concurrency = Efficiency

Adobe calls it the “LiveEdit” or “par­al­lel” work­flow. Working in InDesign CS2, design­ers assign por­tions of the lay­out con­tent to edi­tors for edit­ing in InCopy CS2. From there, it’s hands-off those sec­tions for the art depart­ment until the final lay­out check.

Previous ver­sions of InCopy worked with sto­ries, sin­gle or thread­ed text frames form­ing a sin­gle text flow. Each sto­ry was export­ed from InDesign as an InCopy INCX file. Writers and edi­tors worked on sto­ries in InCopy while the Bridge plug-ins (not to be con­fused the Adobe Bridge dig­i­tal asset man­age­ment appli­ca­tion) used a check-in/check-out sys­tem to lock sto­ries from con­cur­rent edit­ing by both oth­er InCopy users as well as the InDesign-based design­ers. When edit­ing was com­plet­ed, the InCopy user checked the INCX file back in, releas­ing it for mod­i­fi­ca­tion by oth­er edi­to­r­i­al per­son­nel or allow­ing design­ers to update the InDesign layout.

One or many sto­ries could be edit­ed in InCopy simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, which was nec­es­sary because sto­ries and INCX files were lim­it­ed to a sin­gle text flow each–one sto­ry for the body copy, the head­line in anoth­er, a third for the byline, the kick­er was anoth­er sto­ry, yet more INCX files for each pho­to cap­tion, call­out, and pull quote, and so on. A sin­gle edi­tor often worked on a dozen sto­ries com­pris­ing a sin­gle arti­cle. Designers had to export and man­age every edi­tor’s dozen stories.

Recognizing that arti­cles are laid out in mul­ti­ple text and image frames, and that edi­tors are often respon­si­ble for edit­ing the con­tent of more than one frame, Adobe has sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved the col­lab­o­ra­tive InCopy-InDesign work­flow. Version CS2 intro­duces assign­ments.

Individual sto­ries may still be del­e­gat­ed to InCopy users, but most often mul­ti­ple sto­ries and even their accom­pa­ny­ing art­work are hand­ed off to edi­to­r­i­al in the form of assign­ments or groups of sto­ries. InDesign cre­atives sim­ply select the frames to assign, and, on the new Assignments palette, del­e­gate the lev­el of con­trol and, option­al­ly, to whom the mate­r­i­al is assigned. The LiveEdit plug-ins then auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ate INCX InCopy doc­u­ments and an INCA assign­ment file to wrap them togeth­er with a snap­shot of the lay­out. Editors work­ing in InCopy then open the assign­ment file via the match­ing Assignments palette in their appli­ca­tion, check-out the con­tent, and edit all sto­ries in the arti­cle simultaneously.

To help lim­it the con­fu­sion for edi­to­r­i­al per­son­nel not accus­tomed to see­ing an in-progress lay­out, the InDesign cre­ative has con­trol over what is vis­i­ble in InCopy. When mak­ing assign­ments, cre­atives may choose to include all spreads, only those spreads con­tain­ing assigned con­tent, or mere­ly the assigned con­tent, which con­sists of only spreads on which appear assigned con­tent and also greys out non-assigned frames.

Throughout the process, a live link between the sto­ry and lay­out allowed edi­tors to view a frozen snap­shot of the InDesign lay­out from with­in InCopy.

In both the InCopy Layout view as well as the actu­al InDesign doc­u­ment, are option­al­ly vis­i­ble frame adorn­ments that com­mu­ni­cate crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about assigned con­tent. Colored bor­ders cor­re­spond­ing to the indi­vid­ual InDesign and InCopy user iden­ti­ty col­ors give at-a-glance infor­ma­tion about what con­tent is assigned and to whom. Icons at the top of assigned frames denote the sta­tus of the content–whether it is checked-out and editable by the cur­rent user, checked-out by anoth­er team mem­ber, avail­able for check-out, or out of date.

Keeping assign­ments and lay­outs in synch is sim­i­lar to updat­ing linked images, with the Assignments palette tak­ing the place of the Links palette in this case. As an InCopy user checks in a sto­ry, the InDesign Assignments palette and, if vis­i­ble, the frame adorn­ments, change to denote that the con­tent requires updat­ing. The same holds true in InCopy: When the pro­duc­tion depart­ment saves its InDesign doc­u­ment, InCopy reports that the lay­out is out of date. InDesign can even push lay­out updates to InCopy.

Designers and edi­tors work con­cur­rent­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly, com­ing togeth­er only when actu­al layout–not content–revisions are required. Finally, gen­uine effi­cien­cy is inject­ed into edi­to­r­i­al and pro­duc­tion collaboration.

Safety First

Stories and assign­ments man­aged by the LiveEdit plug-ins–either at the direc­tion of an InDesign user or by sim­ply open­ing an INDD in InCopy–are secured through a check-in/check-out sys­tem. Before edit­ing the con­tent of frames, InCopy users must first check-out the sto­ry or assign­ment, which pre­vents oth­er InCopy or InDesign users from simul­ta­ne­ous­ly edit­ing the same mate­r­i­al. When the writer or edi­tor has com­plet­ed her work, she sim­ply checks the sto­ry or assign­ment back in, releas­ing it to check-in by oth­er team members.

Although check­ing mate­r­i­al in and out for edit­ing may sound like a has­sle, it’s actu­al­ly an easy and almost instant process. And, as with most fea­tures of InDesign and InCopy, there are sev­er­al ways to do it.

Once con­tent is del­e­gat­ed by the InDesign user for edit­ing with­in InCopy, either InCopy or InDesign may man­age assign­ments via the new Assignments palette. Highlight an assign­ment or indi­vid­ual sto­ries with­in an assign­ment, and click the Check Out Selection but­ton. On the File menu InCopy users may check-in one or all sto­ries instant­ly, or can­cel the check-out, revert­ing the con­tent to its pri­or state while releas­ing the lock. Context-sensitive menu entries (right-click or CTRL-click [Mac]) as well as key­board short­cuts are fast and easy. Even more facile is the abil­i­ty to sim­ply click in a sto­ry in any of InCopy’s three edit­ing views, and begin typ­ing; an alert will pop­up ask­ing if the user would like to check-out the sto­ry. Provided the assign­ment isn’t already checked out to some­one else, which is indi­cat­ed in Story and Galley views as well as on the Assignments palette, the process is near instantaneous.

Like InDesign, Illustrator, and all of the Creative Suite 2‑version appli­ca­tions, InCopy CS2 includes sup­port for Adobe Version Cue. Version Cue man­aged files, which includes sup­port for InDesign INDD files as well as InCopy Assigment INCA and InCopy doc­u­ment INCX files, are giv­en an extra lev­el of pro­tec­tion from double-modifications. And, of course, Version Cue can be con­fig­ured to cre­ate auto­mat­ic back­ups and mul­ti­ple restor­able ver­sions of InCopy-edited content.

The InDesign cre­ative is in the dri­ver’s seat of the LiveEdit work­flow, and may can­cel assign­ment check­outs or force a check-in at any time. By putting InDesign in con­trol of LiveEdit, Adobe has ensured that the pro­duc­tion depart­ment isn’t left hang­ing when a writer for­gets to check-in an assignment.

Not Your Father's Word Processor

Those mak­ing the leap from Microsoft Word to InCopy will find the path easy.

In addi­tion to its tight inte­gra­tion with InDesign, its copy­fit­ting fea­tures, and its safe­ty fea­tures, InCopy holds numer­ous oth­er advan­tages over Word in col­lab­o­ra­tive creative-editorial workflows.

At some point, near­ly every writer and edi­tor must insert accent­ed or non-keyboard spe­cial char­ac­ters such as the Euro sym­bol or a mid­dle dot into a sto­ry. InCopy con­tains InDesign’s Glyphs palette. Accented or spe­cial glyphs may be insert­ed on the fly with just a double-click, as opposed to Word’s Insert Special Characters func­tion buried two lev­els deep on a menu, then spread among a tabbed dia­log that must be invoked for each and every new glyph inser­tion point.

What tru­ly makes InCopy supe­ri­or to Word on the edi­to­r­i­al desk­top is as much what it does­n’t have, as what it does. There are no mail-merge fea­tures, no forms func­tions, no address book, and no man­gled code Web page design tools. Themes, text-to-speech, and doc­u­ment maps are irrel­e­vant to writ­ing, so InCopy does­n’t include them. InCopy is a purpose-built edi­to­r­i­al word proces­sor. It ful­fills that pur­pose ele­gant­ly, pow­er­ful­ly, and with­out the head-spinning tool glut of Microsoft Word.

When con­sid­er­ing a change in mis­sion crit­i­cal appli­ca­tions there are five pri­ma­ry con­cerns for any work­flow: Direct equip­ment (or soft­ware) cost, cost of req­ui­site col­lat­er­al equip­ment and soft­ware, cost of user edu­ca­tion and loss of pro­duc­tive time dur­ing that edu­ca­tion, com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with oth­er users, and sup­port for lega­cy doc­u­ments. Adobe has tak­en great care to address those concerns.

Making the Switch

The direct cost of equip­ment or soft­ware when mov­ing to InCopy is sim­ple: US$249 retail and $89 upgrade per copy. Volume dis­counts are, of course, available.

Collateral equip­ment costs are non-existent: InCopy requires no oth­er prod­uct to replace Word; it can make its own PDFs and export its own XML. And, to be used with­in a par­al­lel work­flow with the art depart­ment, requires only that InDesign be installed on the cre­ative team’s com­put­ers. Editorial need not have InDesign installed to par­tic­i­pate in LiveEdit collaboration.

The cost of user edu­ca­tion is min­i­mal, even if a pro­fes­sion­al train­er is brought in to ease the tran­si­tion. Because InCopy works like any oth­er word proces­sor, expe­ri­enced Word users will find them­selves instant­ly famil­iar and almost instant­ly productive. 

One of the most impor­tant fea­tures of InCopy speaks direct­ly to the con­cern over com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with oth­er users in the work­group and with oth­er work­groups: It’s cross-platform. Any mission-critical appli­ca­tion must have plat­form par­i­ty, with mir­rored inter­faces and func­tions between the lead­ing oper­at­ing sys­tems. InCopy looks and acts exact­ly the same on a Macintosh, the pre­ferred oper­at­ing sys­tem of design­ers and jour­nal­ists, as it does on Windows, which is steadi­ly pen­e­trat­ing not only the busi­ness pro­duc­tion sec­tor but all areas of pub­lish­ing. More to the point, the LiveEdit work­flow is plat­form homoge­nous: Creatives may cre­ate assign­ments in InDesign on the Mac (or Windows), then seam­less­ly hand those off to edi­tors work­ing on either Mac or Windows with­out the slight­est alter­ation in the workflow.

Finally, sup­port for lega­cy doc­u­ments is cru­cial. If the work­flow has used Word for ten years, amass­ing a library of con­tent, that can be a pow­er­ful induce­ment to main­tain the sta­tus quo. Fortunately, InCopy not imports Microsoft Word and ubiq­ui­tous Rich Text Format doc­u­ments, but it can export to them as well. It can also import and export application-independent XML to move data in to, or out from, a data­base, Web design appli­ca­tion, or for any oth­er pur­pose. Thus both lega­cy sup­port and work­group com­pat­i­bil­i­ty is addressed.

Like InDesign’s abil­i­ty to use QuarkXPress or PageMaker key­board short­cuts to ease users’ tran­si­tion from those appli­ca­tions, InCopy includes a key­board short­cut set for Microsoft Word users, reduc­ing the learn­ing curve while increas­ing com­fort level.

Word users will find InCopy’s clean inter­face and purpose-built word pro­cess­ing com­mands a refresh­ing change from the kitchen-sink-too Word. The tran­si­tion from pro­fi­cien­cy in Word to pro­fi­cien­cy in InCopy is remark­ably easy, and brings with it a new lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in its col­lab­o­ra­tion with InDesign creatives.