[MW Forums]

If you use InCopy, you’ll want to upgrade to CS3 at the same time that your colleagues in the design department move to InDesign CS3 for the sake of compatibility. more

[Keyon]

Well, it's a sensible review, but I am not sure I quite agree with the reviewer's objections and criticisms: first, IC is meant for production environment where writers want to AVOID having to use MS Word as the text editing software, exactly so as to have maximum type control - the inability to deal with MS Word revisions is a really minor issue then. Secondly, for many environments, especially in larger groups, giving everyone a copy of ID CS3 is not only more expensive, but also creates a real risk that someone will mess with the DESIGN, not just the copy; in such situations IC makes sure that the editors see all the artwork, work in context, and have complete access to all story editing features (e.g., redlining overset text), but do not have to worry about messing up any design elements on the page. IC is to ID what Contribute is to Dreamweaver. In offices where ID is used for layout, this will be a MUCH mores sensible solution than using MS Word.

[GMGruman]

FYI I don't believe it is realistic to avoid Word as the primary editing tool (and copy editing tool) for content BEFORE layout. It, or some RTF-capable word processor, is designed to do the kinds of extensive editing, spell-checking, etc. that editors expect and that their writers (many of who are freelance) can also deal with. Using a proprietary tool like InCopy for this requires too much change (and people would still need Word for other work, so they'll resist adding a duplicative tool.)
InCopy makes perfect sense for editing work post-layout, which typically means headline writing and post-layout copy editing/copyfitting. That's a much smaller number of users. I certainly don't object to the use of InCopy in these circumstances -- it is certainly a better option than equipping everyone with InDesign -- but I also know from experience that many organizations don't use InCopy (just as they don't use Quark's equivalent CopyDesk) because in reality they don't do a lot of post-layout text fiddling and typically can dedicate one or two workstations for that purpose -- editors use it to fit headlines, contract copy editors work on it for softproof corrections. At many smaller publications, the copyediting is done on paper and designer implements the changes in InDesign. The larger the environment (and thus the more editors working on postlayout text), the more likely you are to see InCopy in use.
Basically, I believe that if you haven't been able to justify the use of InCopy so far in your product workflow, the new version won't change your mind. Whether you SHOULD be using InCopy-type workflow is another question entirely! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[annemarie]

I agree with Keyon that the content having to do with MS Word's track changes seems out of place in this review. It's not a new feature, first of all, and second, that IC can understand and report on tracked changes in a Word file at all is a pretty amazing thing IMO. (Are there any other programs that can do that?)
It would be nice if IC could automatically assign a user color to a Word user (this seems to be the crux of the author's problem with the feature), I agree. But that's a cosmetic issue. When you have more than a couple or three editors marking up a story with track changes on, no one goes by colors anyway -- who can remember them? Keeping the Change Info panel open is SOP.
And in reality, very few IC/ID users care about this feature, assuming they know it exists. If they're using Word for pre-layout text composition, and they're using its track changes feature, someone is doing the accepting/rejecting before it ever gets to InDesign. Then the designer exports the stories to IC and in this proofing round stage, users start with a clean story, no previous track changes markup around. From then on they just use IC's track changes.
Galen said, "FYI I don't believe it is realistic to avoid Word as the primary editing tool (and copy editing tool) for content BEFORE layout"
It is an entirely realistic workflow. Of course some editors stay in Word. But I know of many companies where editors prefer to use InCopy to write articles before the layout is ready (and Word is relegated for internal reports and such). It has all the spellchecking, find/change, autocorrect, formatting and table features that Word has and more. If they need to share content with freelancers who don't have IC, they just export it as RTF. The freelancer sends them back an .rtf or a .doc that they can place right back into the IC file.
One of the primary reasons editors start in IC is that they can use the publication's actual Paragraph and Character style sheets to format the text, eliminating that long-standing problem with reconciling Word formatting with page layout formatting. Plus in IC they can easily set up a target word count or column inch count and thus get realtime copyfitting feedback as they write, something Word can't do.
There are lots of other areas where IC or the IC/ID workflow could stand improvement. How it handles Word's tracked changes is about 65th on the list, IMO. ;-)
AM

[kgilbert]

I agree with Anne-Marie that a workflow largely without Word is not only possible, but quite common. At some of the smaller publications such as trade magazines that I've worked with, one of the primary benefits of an ID-IC workflow is the blurring of the distinction between pre-layout and post-layout editing. The ID-IC workflow makes it possible to shorten the production cycle significantly. Some articles are begun by editors in IC and then brought into the layout later while some articles are started as placeholder text by the designers and picked up by the editors later. The workflow can be quite fluid of both the editorial side and the design side have a good understanding of the workflow and the capabilities of InCopy. I've never run across a workflow where anyone tries to incorporate Word's tracked changes. When Word is encountered in the workflow, it usually consists of an Editor opening a Word file from a freelance writer in InCopy, and beginning their edits fresh at that point.
Keith Gilbert (gilbertconsulting.com)

[Duncan]

We're just starting to get some great benefits from IC, but in various ways its coexisting in a Word world is extremely important to us. We work on Japanese-to-English translation/localization projects where updating copy happens a lot and has to be efficient. The issue we face is the need to invite client-side reviewers (who are not in a position to use IC) to provide often-extensive feedback, which they want to do with Word Tracked Changes. We are trying to figure out a reasonably quick and easy way to output multiple stories from IC and combine the resulting .rtf files in a sensible order and readable form without (extensive) manual adjustments. We need to output some 400 stories from a 100-page document and send them as a single Word file, and we want to be able to do it repeatedly. Has anyone mastered this? Any tips would be greatly appreciated:-)