Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing (DTP) application produced by Adobe Systems. Launched as a direct competitor to QuarkXPress, it initially had difficulty in wooing users away from Quark's offering, but in 2002 it outsold QuarkXPress, largely because Quark was slow to release a native version of XPress for Mac OS X. In addition, Adobe can bundle InDesign with its other design tools, such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop—tools that XPress buyers probably need as well—and undercut Quark's price. However, InDesign remains a distant second to XPress in the high-end DTP market, despite the fact that InDesign is more powerful than XPress in most scenarios.

InDesign can export documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format and offers multilingual support that Quark users can get only by purchasing a much more expensive "Passport" version. InDesign is the first major DTP application to support Unicode for text processing and the advanced typography of OpenType fonts. Its advanced transparency features and cross-platform scriptability using Javascript also set it apart. Finally, it features tight integration and user interface similarities with Illustrator and Photoshop programs.

InDesign is positioned as a higher-end alternative to Adobe's own PageMaker. The program is primarily used to design short documents (that is, not books) or articles in periodical publications, posters, and other print media, but it also has some web/PDF features. Longer documents such as books are usually still designed with FrameMaker. The combination of a relational database, InDesign and Adobe's InCopy word processor, which uses the same formatting engine as InDesign, is the heart of several publishing systems designed for newspapers. Designers using InDesign and editors using InCopy can collaborate on documents, seeing the same line endings and other typographic details.

New versions of the software introduced new file formats. Adobe upset its user base by not allowing to downsave to older versions of InDesign. However, with the new release of InDesign CS2 saving in the InDesign CS file format will be allowed.

Versions

• InDesign 1.0 shipped August 16, 2000.
• InDesign 1.5 shipped in early 2001.
• InDesign 2.0 shipped in January, 2002 (just days before QuarkXPress 5).
• InDesign CS (3.0) shipped in October, 2003
• InDesign CS2 will be shipping in May, 2005

External links

Comparisons with QuarkXPress:

• Creative Pro
• Ars Technica
• GXO
• Macworld

Adobe InDesign Tutorials:

• About Desktop Publishing: InDesign Tutorials and Online Class
• Adobe Evangelists: InDesign Tutorials
• Mac Design Magazine: InDesign Forum and Tutorials

Some system integrators whose newspaper publishing systems use InDesign and InCopy:

• [1]
• [2]
• [3]