[macanonymous]

Anyone out there know the best way to switch and train 10 people from Quark and OS 9 to InDesign and OS X? Are there any videos? Great tutorials? We're willing to pay for any such materials..... THANKS!

On the same note, anyone done this? What problems have you run into? We layout and design magazines nationally and want to move to more of a database publishing solution.

AND.... Does anyone out there know of a really stable OS X database publishing solution for InDesign?

[MikeM32]

I'm not sure if there's an OSX solution but my last place of work used something called DataMerge" which has since been re-named to "DesignMerge". What you're looking to do is merge data from something like FileMaker or Excell into a page layout application such as InDesign.

I believe there is an InDesign version of this Plug-In/Extension as-well as a QuarkXPress version. It's literally the best thing I've ever used for this sort of work, and comes in handy for all sorts of things. It's the type of thing you could literally use to layout a phone book if necessary. Just merge all the names and phone numbers and addresses into your template and viola!!
http://www.meadowsinfo.com

* It's funny because I just re-checked that site and it mentions nothing about the InDesign version, but I know they used to have one so maybe you can call someone. There's a guy that used to work there named Joe Molnar and he literally helped me come-up with an effective workflow for the jobs we needed this for at my last place of work. The guy is a genius. It's not a cheap extension/plug-in from my understanding, but it's well worth the cost.

As for training people in InDesign, there is (or was in version 1.5) the option of making InDesign emulate QuarkXPress' keyboard shortcuts. I like InDesign, but admit I still stand by Quark for obvious output reasons. The move to OSX applications isn't as important in most of the places I've worked as simply getting the job done quickly and accurately.

Anyway I hope this helps. Please feel free to e-mail (see my profile) me with any database to page layout application questions. At my last place of work it was basically my specialty. I can almost do that stuff in my sleep You have to be a bit of a "geek" when you deal with these sorts of things

Mike

Total Training has training tapes for both InDesign and OSX. I swear by these products. I use them to train my staff.
http://www.totaltraining.com/

Hi

Emsoftware do a couple of database publishing plug-ins for InDesign. Check out http://www.emsoftware.com/products/indata and http://www.emsoftware.com/products/incatalog

And, if you're famliar with Photoshop and Illustrator, the jump to InDesign isn't that great, especially with the Quark keyboard shortcuts you can use.

[suhail]

InDesign is very easy to learn, and is very much like Quark to use. I don't think you are going to have many problems converting people over.
InDesign impressively imports Excel tables and updates them. IF you were refering to publishing based on a database, like have the database info generate a layout with the content, Adobe claims that every aspect in InDesign is scrptable through Apple-Script, therefore, I assume that Yes it is possible.
I've only used FileMaker, and it works well. Other databases, like Access, I find it takes longer to create the same thing.

Are you looking to publish databases, or are you looking to hook your pagination software into an asset management database?

If it's the latter, I suggest looking at Adobe's list of InCopy integrators. You could also check out Baseview's NewsEdit system, which now runs under OS X. Baseview's NewsEdit is now a pretty mature system in terms of feature set. Baseview says it has a set of InDesign plug-ins, but I've never seen them. InCopy looks like a great tool for editors and reporters.

If it's the former, I suggest developing an XML workflow so you can take full advantage of InDesign's table and scripting capabilities.

The key in training will first be finding out how InDesign behaves differently from Quark in your workflow. We've put many years into figuring out how to get reliable high quality output from Quark. There will be a learning curve with InDesign, so it's important to find those differences before InDesign is on users' desks.