a thousand furnished rooms

GENERAL

First, what is it about the CS release of InDesign that has convinced companies that this is the version to trust for production? Is this a matter of CS having the right feature list? Stability? Performance? Platform support? Integration with other tools (InCopy, Illustrator, PhotoShop)?

FEATURES

Second, how does InDesign compare with QuarkXpress in terms of core composition and pagination features? Is it fair to say that InDesign CS is competitive with QuarkXpress on a feature-by-feature basis? If I were to create a matrix of composition and pagination features (or examine ones from Adove and Quark), how would the two products stack up? Where does Quark still lead the way? Where does InDesign lead the way?

XML

Coming at InDesign more from the editorial side, two things seem to be attractive about it: support for XML and ability to integrate InDesign in a workflow where text needs to be "roundtripped" through a lot of editorial iterations. Can you comment on these things? Specifically:

-- How does InDesign support XML? Does it maintain XML throughout the process? If so, does it handle any XML schema? Only a single one? Same questions for InCopy.

-- What are some of the workflows involving XML? Are customers using XML in the editorial process and then publishing through InDesign where InDesign is kind of a black box? Are they using XML in the editorial process and then publishing through InDesign in a more iterative process where there is a lot of export in and out of InDesign back to XML?

EDITORIAL WORKFLOW--INDESIGN AND INCOPY

-- What about InDesign and InCopy? Precisely how do the products support iterative design and editorial work where both tools are used? What underlying data structure is maintained for the text and other elements while all of this editorial work is going on?

-- What about the combination of InDesign and InCopy with third-party content management platforms, such as those from Managing Editor? Do some of these questions of workflow and XML maintenance and support get answered by the third-party tools?

INDESIGN AND MULTICHANNEL PUBLISHING

-- The above questions go to the point of InDesign/InCopy as a "hub" for multichannel publishing. Publishers who have iterative and design-centric workflows have been "locked in" to tools such as QuarkXpress, where the "master" version of the content is locked into a complex, design-heavy, and proprietary format. In such a workflow, only the print can be most efficiently done, and the other formats--HTML, wireless, syndication format--lag in the process. For some types of publishers, these other formats have proven to be expensive and cumbersome to produce, even as they become increasingly important to the business (or, worse, not! where they are "must have" additional formats that do not neceassrily bring additional revenue).

(long windup to the question...)

-- So does InDesign solve this problem? Can it be a better "hub" for multichannel publishing? Why?

PLATFORM SUPPORT, INTEGRATION

-- What about platform support? Mac vs Windows? What impact is this having?

-- What about integration with the rest of the Adobe creative suite? Does this differ materially from what people can do with Quark?

-- What about the programmability of InDesign? I hear from developers that InDesign has better support for programmers who want to automate steps in the workflow? I even heard at one point that InDesign's APIs are designed in a modular fashion, allowing developers to address individual elements of the InDesign functionality? Is this true? In general, how does the programmability of InDesign compare with QuarkXpress?

PERFORMANCE, PRODUCTIVITY

-- What about performance, support for humongous files, creating PostScript/PDF, other areas that heavy production users would worry about?

OTHERS?