Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

In InDesign, a book is a special type of file that you create to track multiple documents for yourself or for a workgroup. A book file displays as a palette, and it lists each InDesign document ‚ let's call them chapters to distinguish them from standalone documents ‚ that you add to the book. Using the book palette, you can add, open and edit, rearrange, and print chapters of the book. Although the book feature is intended for workgroups ‚ and indeed, multiple users can open the same book and access chapters ‚ it also works well in a single- user environment. See the sidebar "The pros and cons of books" for more information.

Planning your book

If you decide that the book feature is appropriate and useful for a project, you'll want to do some planning before you even create a book. Use the following guidelines before you begin building your book in InDesign:

• Organize your chapters in advance by deciding on the number, names , and order of the chapters. You can make changes to a chapter's number, name , and order at any time, but figuring out these basics ahead of time will save you time in the long run.

• Make decisions about the format of the book (style sheets, colors, pagination style, and so on) at the chapter level, beginning with the first chapter.

• Pay attention to formatting. Formatting is important, because if your chapters use different color swatch names, style sheet names, and so on, synchronizing the formatting across the chapters will be difficult.

• Use templates and style sheets to format the chapters uniformly.

• Decide where to store the book file itself (this must be a shared server for a workgroup); store the documents in this folder as well. Set up the appropriate sharing through your operating system.

• Make sure members of the workgroup have access to any templates, libraries, graphics, fonts, plug-ins, and so on necessary to work on the project.

  Cross-Reference ‚

  If you decide to use the book feature in a workgroup, be sure to review Chapter 36 for information about implementing standard preferences, templates, and more.

Creating and opening books

To create a new book, choose File ‚ New ‚ Book. The New Book dialog box, shown in Figure 9-1, lets you specify a location for the book and give it a name. If you're on a Mac and creating a book that may be used in Windows, you'll notice that InDesign automatically adds the .indb extension to the filename. Click OK to create and open the book.

Figure 9-1: To create a new book, choose File ‚ New ‚ Book.

To open an existing book, use the File ‚ Open command ( z +O or Ctrl+O). The book will appear in its own pane in the palette (the palette has no title and will appear automatically if you open a book when no other books are open). If you're opening a book from a shared server, make sure to mount the server on your desktop first. You can also double-click a book's icon, which also shows the open book pane. To close a book pane, and any book panes that are in it, simply click its close box.

Although designed for workgroups, the implementation of the book feature in InDesign has some fatal flaws that may discourage you from using it that way. The problem is with how multiple users access book chapters:

• For a workgroup to access a book, the book itself must be stored on a shared server. Users can then open the book across the network and leave it open while they're working. To work on a document in the book, the user opens the document across the network as well. Not only can opening and saving the file be slow, but it leaves documents vulnerable to any instability in your network. (While you're working on the document, there is no local copy of it.)

• If multiple users are working on a book or its constituent documents, they might end up saving different versions, overwriting each other, since there is no built-in document-management system for multiuser access. However, InDesign will indicate in the book palette whether someone else has a document open, so you can at least monitor usage before saving changes.

Despite these drawbacks, the book feature does provide advantages in a workgroup situation that may outweigh any concerns you have. These include the abilities to:

• See who is working on each chapter and when.

• Update style sheets, colors, and TOC styles across documents for consistency.

• Update page numbers across multiple documents.

• Create a table of contents and an index for multiple documents. (In fact, using a book is the only way to generate a TOC and index for multiple documents.)

• Easily print all the chapters of a book with the same settings.

If you need some of the benefits of using a book (such as a table of contents for multiple documents), but you can't live with one of the drawbacks, you can start out with separate documents. Then, once the documents are in close-to-final form, you can combine them into a book on one computer and finish up the project in book form.

None of this is meant to discourage the single user from managing longer projects through the book feature. If you're producing a book by yourself, and it consists of multiple InDesign documents, by all means take advantage of the book feature. The only consideration is whether your output provider can handle the book file or will require you to combine the documents into a single document. (This may also be an issue if you're creating a PDF form of the document.)

Adding chapters to books

New book panes are empty ‚ you need to add your carefully prepared documents to them. To do this, click the Add Document button, the + button on the bottom-right of your book's pane (see Figure 9-2), or use the Add Document option in the book pane's palette menu. Use the Add Chapter dialog box to locate and select the first chapter you want to add. Click the Add button to make this the first chapter in the book. Repeat this process to add to the book all the chapters you have ready (you can also add more later).

Figure 9-2: A book pane and its palette menu. The icon to the left of a chapter's filename indicates the style source. The status column shows which chapters are open on your computer, which are available to be opened, and which are missing (both are open here).

Working with style sources

The first chapter you add to the book is, by default, the style source, as indicated by the icon to the left of its filename. If the chapters of your book don't share common formatting, you don't need to worry about this feature. But with a book, that's rarely the case ‚ usually you want the text formatting, colors, and so on to remain the same. The style source in an InDesign book defines the style sheets and swatches that are common to all the chapters in the book. When you use the Synchronize Styles and Swatches features, discussed in the "Synchronizing chapter formatting section" later in this chapter, InDesign makes sure that the common style sheets and swatches in each chapter in the book match those in the style source.

If you decide to make a different chapter the style source, all you need to do is click in the column to the left of that chapter's filename. This moves the icon indicating the style source to that chapter (see Figure 9-2).

Opening and editing chapters

To work on a chapter in a book, first open the book. Then double-click the chapter name in the book pane. The chapter will open in InDesign just like any other InDesign document opens. Note that to open a chapter, it must be available, as discussed in the next section. When you're finished editing a chapter, save and close it as usual. (Any open chapter documents will remain open in InDesign even if you close the books palette.)

Understanding book pane status reports

If you're using the book palette in a workgroup, it provides helpful status reports about each chapter, as shown in Figure 9-3. The statuses include

• Available: The chapter can be opened, edited, or printed. Only one user at a time can open a chapter.

• Open: You have the chapter open and can edit it or print it. Nobody else can open the chapter at this time.

• In Use: Another user has the chapter open. In this case, you cannot edit or open the chapter.

• Modified: The chapter has been changed since the last time you opened the book palette. Simply click on the book pane to update it.

• Missing: The chapter's file has been moved since it was added to the book. Double-click the chapter name to open a Find File dialog box and locate it.

Figure 9-3: The status icons to the right of the filename. From top to bottom: Open, Available, Missing, Modified, and In Use.

Synchronizing chapter formatting

To help you make sure that common formatting remains consistent across the document, the book pane provides a Synchronize Styles and Swatches button. Before you use the Synchronize Styles and Swatches button, be sure you're satisfied with the styles in the style source and that all chapters are available for editing. Then select the chapters you want to synchronize and click the Synchronize Styles and Swatches button. (You can also choose Synchronize Selected Documents from the palette menu.) InDesign will then:

• Compare the style sheets (character, paragraph, and TOC), swatches (color, tint, and gradient), and trap styles in the style source to those in each chapter.

• If anything is different, the information in each chapter will be updated to match the style source. This means that if someone changed the typeface in a style sheet in a chapter, it would revert to the typeface specified in the style source.

• If anything is missing from a chapter ‚ for example, if you've just added a swatch to the style source ‚ that information is added to each chapter.

If you click on Synchronize Styles and Swatches, each chapter will have the same basic set of style sheets, swatches, and trap styles as the style source. I say "basic set" because you can still add more of these specifications to each chapter. When using Synchronize Styles and Swatches, you need to keep in mind the following:

• Synchronize Styles and Swatches will not move additional style sheets, swatches, and trap styles with different names in chapters. Therefore, you can implement different formatting needs in a chapter by creating an additional style sheet in that chapter.

• Synchronize Styles and Swatches cannot solve any problems related to using the template or style sheets incorrectly, or change any local formatting applied to text (such as font changes or italics) or local changes to master page items.

Clearly, Synchronize Styles and Swatches is no cure-all for the renegade formatting that often occurs when multiple users work on the same project. Be sure everyone knows what the standards are for the design, how to implement the standards properly, and how to make local changes appropriately.

Printing chapters and books

If you want to print multiple chapters in the book with the same settings, you can print through the book pane. You can print any chapters with the status of Available or Open. Here's how:

1. To print the entire book, make sure no chapters are selected. To print a continuous range of chapters, Shift+click them. To print noncontinuous chapters, z +click or Ctrl+click the chapters to select them.

2. Click the Print Book icon or choose Print Book or Print Selected Documents in the book pane's palette menu (the option will depend on whether chapters are selected in the book pane).

   The standard InDesign Print dialog box opens. Note that the option to choose all pages or a range of pages is grayed out ‚ you must print all chapters in the selected chapters.

3. Make any adjustments in the Print dialog box.

4. Click Print to print the chapters.

   Tip ‚

   A related feature is the ability to output a book to PDF, using the Export Book to PDF or Export Selected Documents to PDF menu items in the palette menu. They work like their equivalent Print menus .

   Cross-Reference ‚

   For more on printing and output settings, see Chapters 31 and 32.

Handling chapters with sections

When working with books, you have two choices for numbering pages: You can let the book palette number pages consecutively from one chapter to the next. Or you can add sections of page numbers, which carry through the book until you start a new section. In long documents, section page numbering is common because it lets you have page numbering such as 2.1 ‚ 2.14 in, say, Chapter 2. (Plus, creating a section start is the only way to start a document on a left- facing page, which is often necessary in magazines.)

Numbering pages consecutively

If the chapters you add to a book have no sections in them, you end up with consecutive page numbering: The first page number of each chapter follows the last page number of the previous chapter (so if one chapter ends on page 16, the next chapter starts on page 17). If you open the Section dialog box (choose Numbering & Section Options in the Pages pane's palette menu), you'll see that Automatic Page Numbering is selected by default.

The consecutive page numbering works as follows:

• Whenever you add a chapter with no sections to a book, InDesign numbers pages consecutively throughout the book.

• As you add and delete pages from chapters, the page numbers are also updated.

• You can force repagination by choosing Repaginate from the book pane's palette menu.

• In facing-page documents, chapters always start on a right-facing page with an odd page number (even if the previous chapter ends on a right-facing page). In this case, InDesign "skips" the even page number (so one chapter might end on page 15 and the next chapter will start on page 17, leaving you to add a blank page 16 to the previous chapter for proper pagination).

Numbering pages with sections

If any chapters you add to books already contain sections of page numbers (implemented through the Section dialog box, which you access via the Numbering & Section Options menu option in the Pages pane's palette menu), the section page numbering overrides the book's consecutive page numbering. The section page numbering carries through chapters of the book until InDesign encounters a new section start. So if one chapter ends on page iv, the next page starts on page v unless you start a new section. Note that it's fairly typical in magazines to assign the page number in each article's document file, since there are usually ads between articles that are inserted later in the printing process.