InDesign® CS4 Bible

Chapter 35. Workgroup Editing with InCopy

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Preparing documents for workgroup editing

• Working with story assignments

• Using the InCopy program

Publishing is almost always a workgroup activity involving writers, editors, copy editors, layout artists, and production editors. Even when a person has multiple roles, most publications still involve multiple people. And that means that files go back and forth as edits are made, layouts are created, and text and other elements are adjusted to fit the available space. Just as its rival QuarkXPress has the CopyDesk companion product, InDesign has a companion product (called InCopy) to facilitate this constant "paper shuffling." InCopy is not as powerful as InDesign — it's not a layout tool — but it does let copy editors, editors, and other wordsmiths work on InDesign layouts to make sure headlines fit, stories fit, and captions can be written in context without needing a full copy of InDesign.

InCopy works best in a networked environment, where everyone shares files from a common folder (using Adobe's Version Cue or not, as you prefer). That way, a copy editor can work on a layout without worrying that the designer might be working on a local copy at the same time, for example.

InCopy is both a separate program that runs by itself for text editing stories in an InDesign layout and a plug-in that works within InDesign to provide shared editing capabilities.

Setting up Workgroup Assignments

InDesign comes ready out of the box to work with ...